God. He did sound numb, but then why did I occasionally see something vital inside Micah? Something that told me he could feel?
I struggled for something to say. “So . . . after he finds you this time, are you . . . Well, going to leave again?” I didn’t know why that should matter. I barely knew this guy, and from what he’d just told me, he wasn’t the type of person I’d ever been close to before. I, Shelby Carson, dated quarterbacks, had a beautiful mom, a college career—at least I still hoped—and a few select amazing friends. Micah was from an entirely different world.
But that didn’t mean I could stop myself from touching his arm this time, just to see if I could give him any comfort. Just because it seemed like he needed it.
He looked down at my hand, his muscles bunching beneath me.
“After Lucille showed up with the baby and her sister,” Micah said quietly, “I debated leaving this place. I don’t want my dad to ever come around them. But as I said, Marvin’s been here, anyway, with or without me. Plus, the twins pack hunting rifles and a shotgun, and now that Darwin has a family, they won’t hesitate to use some of that on him if he ever got feisty.” He stopped, then began again. “Oddly, Marvin hasn’t been violent with me or the twins or any other relatives lately. He doesn’t even come to our houses anymore. He prefers to catch me in a grocery store or a fast-food joint in public, maybe so he can keep himself in check. He says he’s going to AA, too, but I doubt it. Maybe he also doesn’t like to see me alone in case I fly off the handle with him one day.”
“But you haven’t ever done that.”
“What’s the use? The damage was already done.”
My hand slid down his arm, resting near the crook of his elbow. “Do you think he wants to make peace?”
“He’s tried that, but I’m not in a forgiving mood with him. I never will be.” Micah put his hand over mine.
His touch was warm and nothing like the cold-hearted seducer he’d always seemed like. “Do you think he tracks you down over and over again because he actually wants your forgiveness?”
Micah linked his fingers with mine, but instead of a tender moment, he only took my hand and lowered it from his arm. The gesture punched me, hard.
“He’s not gonna get it,” he said. “My dad’s just as out of the picture as yours is. I wish I didn’t know who he was. If he’d left Mom early on, then . . .”
As I instinctively slipped my arms around him, pulling him back toward me, I didn’t care how he’d interpret my intentions. He couldn’t have been telling me this story just to hook me. Every word had been real, raw, and all I wanted was for him to feel better. I’d want that for anyone who’d had this kind of tragedy in their life.
He didn’t say anything for the longest time. The sound of a breeze whistled through the high grass in back of the shed and a car swished by on the near distant road as I rested my cheek against his back, closing my eyes.
When he spoke, it was in a thick whisper that I could hear through the vibration in his body. “I told you about my dad for a reason.”
“Why?”
“When I mentioned I might know someone who knows who your father might be, it was because of him.”
I didn’t understand, and I loosened my grip.
He seemed to have expected that. “The last time I spoke with Marvin, he told me he’d been by to ‘visit’ Deacon and Darwin, and while he was in town, he saw your mom drive by on the road.”
My stomach went sour again. This didn’t sound like it was going to be good news.
“My father had just finished asking me for money again,” he said. “I told him to go to hell, and with him being drunk, he started getting pissy. He said he didn’t want my money because he knew who knocked up Jackie Carson, seeing as he was at the party where it happened, and that maybe he’d ask her for some cash just to keep the lid on her secret.”
Now I felt really sick. Here was a possible answer about my father, and I wasn’t ready for it—especially if it involved Micah’s dad.
Micah turned to face me. “If you wanted me to, I would ask him for more information, Shelby. I shouldn’t have tried to catch your interest by using what Marvin might know, but when I first met you, I found myself talking before my brain could stop me.”
“I’m not sure I want you to do that.” Didn’t I?
“All right.” He paused. “That’s for the best, because you should be careful what you wish for. It might be a good thing that you never knew who your dad was, especially if mine had anything to do with him.”
A terrible notion crept into me. “You don’t think . . . ?”
“No. Shit, Marvin isn’t your father. Believe me, my dad would’ve crowed about that, because it would’ve given him cause to definitely get money out of your mom.”
The air whooshed out of me in relief, and I bent to a crouch on the ground, getting my bearings. How gothic would that be if I’d made out with my own half brother? Ugh.
Micah squatted next to me. “You okay?”
I sent him an unsure gaze. “I should be the one asking you.”
“I’ve been living with all this for years. I’m fine.”
Was he? “I’m sorry you got in a fight because of me. I’m sorry it brought all this back.”
“Angel,” he said, affection in those eyes. “You were worth the injury.”
We looked at each other, moonlight the only thing between us. I couldn’t help thinking that tonight had changed everything—that he had a secret he could’ve spread around about me, and that I had one about him now. That neither of us would do that to each other.
“Know what you need?” he asked.
“A lobotomy, just to get that last image cleansed from my brain?”
He smiled and didn’t even bite back the pain from the bruise near his mouth this time. “We should get a hot fudge sundae or a strawberry shake. It’s a scientific fact that chocolate or pink food comforts a person.”
“Sounds like you know your science.” He had to need cheering more than I did, and I wasn’t about to reject his offer.
He walked me out of the shed, manually opening the house’s garage door where the Camaro sat in all its glory. I grabbed my purse from my pickup as he opened the door that led inside the house and shouted that he was taking off. Then he let me into the car.
It was like I’d entered a scene out of Fast and Furious. Everything was leather—the seats, the wheel, the scent—and when he climbed in and turned on the engine, the dash lit up in blue majesty.
I tried to hold back a dazzled smile, but he caught me with it, and that made him smile as well as he could. Honestly, seeing him distance himself from that story he’d just told made a bolt of happiness strike me, crashing against my chest.
Everything was going to be fine, even if his dad would inevitably come around again. I truly believed that because he was okay and I was okay.
He backed out of the garage and drove off, peeling onto the lane as I held on for dear life, smiling even wider, giving in to the night.
***
A strawberry shake really was the best medicine, and I nursed it as Micah zoomed down the road back toward his house, a sign for Miller Dock Lake swishing by us in a flash.
We’d gone through the DQ drive-thru, where I’d kept to the shadows of the car, doing my best to avoid the gaze of the high school fast-food worker who’d waited on us. Micah had devoured a whole burger in an empty parking lot down the road while he’d hooked up his iPhone to play vintage Merle Haggard. We didn’t listen to very much of the music, though, seeing as it took him about five minutes to wolf down his food and skid out again.
That’s when I started to suspect he had more than just a shake in mind. And when he drove on the turnoff for the lake, I had no doubts whatsoever.
“What’re you doing?” I asked, talking around the straw in my mouth.
“Micah . . .”
“Hey, I got punched for you.”
Oh, so he was going to play that card. But in spite of myself, I was having fun, just like I did whenever I was around him. Except for that weighty conversation we’d had earlier, he was a spirit lifter. It was good to see that he’d left his troubles behind.
He drove on the dirt road past the dock and into a thick copse of pines that would shelter his car. After he parked, he reached into the small backseat, grabbing two blankets and getting out, shutting his door.
Always prepared like an oversexed Boy Scout, I reminded myself.
“Why do you think you’ll need those?” I asked once I was outside, too.
“I keep my company comfortable.”
Leaves rustled under his work boots as he moved to the edge of the trees, where a patch of moon-beamed sky spread to the ends of the earth. To our left, a bunch of big rocks piled on one another to form a lookout where we’d be able to see the dock. It also shielded us from it.
He shook one blanket out, laid it down, tossed the folded one on top of it, then sat and patted the ground next to him. I put up a moment of token resistance and took my place next to him. Not too close, but near enough so that I caught a whiff of the cigarillo smoke that still wove through the threads of his clean shirt. Near enough so my pulse was dancing.
“How many girls,” I said over the croak of frogs, “has this blanket met?”
“Enough. And if you’re about to ask if Jadyn spent any time on here, let me reassure you by saying . . .” He left off, teasing me.
I gave him the side eye. His profile was almost beautiful, with a perfect nose and pouty lips and the sexy way he tied back his hair. He turned to look at me, and my heart blasted against my ribs.
“. . . no,” he finished.
“Jerk,” I said, laughing.
I let a moment slide by, hugging my bent legs and looking up at the moon. It wasn’t exactly full, but it was entirely silver and bright, the air crisp with the scent of pine and water around us. This was something I’d missed about Aidan Falls. At school, the sky was never this bright.
I kept my gaze trained upward. “Can I ask you a question?”
“What’s ever stopped you?”
The conversation we had tonight, I thought. I’d been throwing insults at him since I’d met him, mostly because I’d had no idea what he was about. But I didn’t want to do that anymore—I was seriously curious about what made him tick.
“Why do you go for so many girls?” I asked, following up on the questions that’d been running through my mind earlier. “Is it the only way you can feel something, after having to feel nothing for so long?”
As usual, he wasn’t offended. “I’ve never cared to investigate emotions, Sunshine.”
“Do you . . . have emotions when you’re with them?”
He focused on me, brushing me with a good old Micah Wyatt hot look. Phew.
“I’m happy when I can make them happy, when I see the way they look at me while I touch them, make them moan and come.”
Oh, man, he’d just said that. “So you don’t have to have some deep connection with them. Just something physical.”
“That’s how I like it.” He laid back on the blanket, looking at the moon, his head resting on his bent arms.
His chest seemed to expand with every breath, making me long to run my palm over him, feel his muscles beneath me.
“I should tell you there was more to Jadyn than just wanting to nail her because of Rex,” he said.
“Great. You nailed her. That’s definitely emotional.”
Unstoppable, he went on. “I knew in my gut that she wanted to feel something that night, and that’s what made her easy. She looked sad, and I knew I could make her forget whatever was bothering her. I didn’t stop to think about the consequences. Usually I’m not the one who suffers them.”
“Because you already have a bad reputation and your women don’t.”
He fixed his gaze on me. “I like bringing something out in someone when she hasn’t felt it before. You don’t get that with experienced women.”
“What about the married ones?”
“There’s unhappiness in marriage, too. But I told you I don’t work trouble on any woman who isn’t looking for it.”
I nudged him with my hand. “Are you saying I’m looking for it?”
“I’d say you discovered it pretty well before you got here. I’m just another level of trouble that you can’t stay away from.”
“You are unbelievably cocky.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Did your first woman tell you that, too?”
“My first.” He smiled up at the sky. “I wasn’t so cocky at that point. I was thirteen but still recovering from what my dad had done, and she was a high school junior in Dallas. She invited me under the bleachers after the team had finished football practice and broke me in.”
“A junior?” Wasn’t that predatory? “You were only thirteen.”
“I needed it. I liked it. And I couldn’t get enough of it from that point on.”
No wonder he thought he was the giver of sex joy—he’d been schooled on how to make someone unhappy happy.
And to think I’d thought this guy was simple to figure out.
As we sat there in silence, the water lapping nearby and a low wind combing through the trees, I shivered, but not with the cold. The lining of my belly was trembling, quivering deep inside me.
“Hey,” he said, pulling at my Angel’s Seat T-shirt, bringing me down to the blanket until I was lying next to him. He took the second blanket and spread it over us. “Is that better?”
Was it? Because Lana Peyton was stretching inside of me, like she was being pieced together, shiver by shiver, growing by the second. If I wasn’t careful, she was going to take me over.
Even scarier, I realized that Micah was a honeytrap; he was testing me right now, drawing me out and seeing how loyal I was to my own convictions. He was making me wonder if I could remain faithful to who I thought I was.
But much to my surprise, he hadn’t made a move on me yet—not unless you counted him slipping an arm under my head, making a pillow for me.
I was tense, and he knew it.
“Lighten up,” he said. “I’m not going to take advantage of you.”
The moon seemed to glide slightly in the sky as minutes passed, me holding my breath because I was afraid to move, him lying there so casual and relaxed.
Finally, I spoke. “Micah?”
“I’m still here.”
“Why did you really tell me about your dad tonight?”
He stayed silent, and I thought he was going to let the subject pass by. But then he said, “I figured I could be honest with a person who knows how damaging idle talk is. You’ll never tell a soul because you’ve been through the gossip grinder yourself.” There was that wistfulness in his voice again. “With you, I felt free to be honest about who I am. And, hell, if I can’t be honest, what can I be?”
I wasn’t cynical enough to question if he was still luring me in by using every trick in the book—honesty, vulnerability, creating a connection, and pulling on a girl’s heartstrings with the power of all of them combined. What he’d told me went beyond all that.
He chuckled. “You’re thinking of that Valmot . . .”
“Valmont?”
“Yeah. That Valmont guy again.”
“Actually, I wasn’t thinking of him.”
“Well, if I told you that sometimes I think it’d be nice to mean more to someone than only a nice lay—you know, like Valmont says when he talks about deserving someone and not just having them—would you believe me?”
I closed my eyes, liking the sound of his
voice, liking how I could feel him breathing as I let my head relax against the hard cushion of his arm. “I’d believe you. I think everyone needs to be appreciated at some point in their lives.”
He cupped his hand to the side of my head, cradling me. “Words of wisdom.”
“Yeah, that was real deep.”
“I mean it. No matter what you did to Rex, Angel, you’re one of the good ones.”
He said it like he wasn’t good enough for me, and he never expected to be.
I whispered, “No matter how much you don’t want people to know it, you’re pretty good, too, Micah.”
I’d gotten very comfortable with my cheek against his chest now, riding the smooth rise and fall of him. I listened to his heartbeat pound through him while he played with my hair.
“Thanks for saying that,” he murmured, “but I can’t change who I am. You, however, will go back to college and have a whole life ahead of you.”
Did he sound . . . sad? Couldn’t be.
“You’ve got a life.” My energy was sapping with every stroke of his hand. “And I blew a scholarship, so we’ll see what’s ahead of me.”
“You’ll recover.”
I laughed, but it barely came out. “It sounds like you’re pushing me out the door back to school already. Like I’m one of your conquests and you’re preparing for the next.”
“Now, now,” he said, just as kiddingly. “If you left before I nailed you, I’d never win any bet.”
I opened my eyes, my lashes brushing his T-shirt. Even if we were joking, there was an undercurrent of something serious going on. And when he spoke again, I was even surer of it.
“When you go off to college, you’ll never come back here. Not really. You’ll leave this place behind you, along with whatever comes with it.”
Did he come with it?
He was confusing me again, because it sounded like he was laying some corny lines on me. But hadn’t we gotten past that? Even more odd, I thought I heard that sadness again . . .
Neither of us said anything afterward. We only listened to the frogs, an owl’s hoot, the night deepening around us, and I closed my eyes, enjoying this while I could.
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