Southern Hotshot: A North Carolina Highlands Novel

by Peterson, Jessica

Did he know I was V? Was he lying to me this whole time? But why?

  “Emma,” he says, turning fully to face me.

  Yup, that’s definitely Van Halen’s 1984 CD in his hand.

  “Hank,” I reply, because I have no idea what else to say.

  “It’s you.” He scoffs. “I knew it.”

  I don’t feel my legs as I approach him. “You knew I was V? How? And why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  Hank’s brow furrow. “Who’s V?”

  Okay, now I’m really confused. I’m also on the verge of puking. “I’m V. Which means you’re Blue.” I nod at the CD in his hand.

  I notice there’s two empty glasses on the table behind Hank.

  The hurt in his gaze tightens. “Guess you could say that, yeah.”

  “No. I mean you’re MyBoyBlue4.”

  His furrow deepens. “MyBoyBlue4? I don’t know who that is, but it’s definitely not me. Samuel’s number was 4 in the pros. Mine was 22.”

  Bile surges up my throat. I start to shake as a sense of foreboding grips my windpipe. What is going on here?

  “How long?” Hank asks. A muscle in his jaw tics. Same one as Samuel’s.

  “Hank, I’m really sorry, but I’m not following you. What are you doing here, and why are you holding that CD?”

  “Better question: why are you meeting Samuel here for what is clearly a date”—his gaze does that sweep down my body again—“when he swore up and down y’all were just friends?”

  I blink. “Samuel is here?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “But I-I’m not meeting Samuel,” I stammer, heat flooding my face.

  Hank scoffs again, mouth twisting in a disbelieving smirk. “Look at the three of us, lying to each other’s faces.”

  My cheeks burn hotter. “I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for here, Hank. But if I’ve hurt you in any way, I’m sorry.”

  “I am too.” He meets my eyes and lets out a breath, his shoulders falling, then runs a hand over his hair. “Fuck it. Someone has to start telling the truth. And the truth is, I’m falling in love with you, Emma.”

  I just stare at him, too stunned to move. To speak.

  “There’s nothing sexier than a woman who knows what she’s doing and knows what she wants. Watching you dominate my brother and enthrall everyone with your stories about wine and food and the meaning of life—shit, Emma, competence porn is a real thing, and damn are you it. Or maybe you have it? You embody it? Whatever. All I know is I’ve never seen anything like it, and I think you’re incredible. You’re smart. You’re confident. And good gracious are you beautiful.” He swallows, the sound audible in the sudden quiet of the restaurant. “It was only a matter of time before I fell for you. I knew that first day we met I was in trouble.”

  “Hank,” I blurt. People are staring, I can feel it, but I’m too—too shocked, too terrified—to move.

  The anger in Hank’s gaze evaporates, just for a second. Long enough to let me know I’m giving him hope.

  No. No, shit, this can’t be happening.

  Hank takes a step forward. “I mean every word, Emma. I know it happened fast, and I tried to stop it. Honestly, I did. You don’t have to tell me how much your job at the farm means to you. I would never, ever put that in jeopardy.”

  “But you are,” I say, and his face falls. “Hank, I need you to tell me what you’re doing here.”

  His Adam’s apple dips as he swallows again. “I followed Samuel. It’s fucked up and wrong, I know that, but I also know he’s been lying to me. He’s never lied to me before. Ever. So I parked outside his house and waited for him to get in his car. He drove down the mountain and I did too, and now we’re both here.”

  I glance around the restaurant for what feels like the millionth time. “Samuel’s—”

  “Yeah.” Hank glances around, too. “But I don’t know where the hell he went.”

  That foreboding is full-on choking me now. I glance at the CD. “Is that his? The Van Halen album?”

  “Guess so. I found it here on the table, and according to the hostess, this is where she sat him.”

  Oh.

  Oh, oh, oh my God in heaven.

  But really, what the fuck are the chances that Blue is Samuel and Samuel is Blue?

  But oh, oh, the dick and the honesty and the Van Halen in the car and the number and the sub stuff and the hair color and oh maybe Samuel was trying on honesty as Blue because he didn’t have the courage yet to try it in his real life.

  Maybe being Blue with Lady V was part of what gave Samuel the courage he needed to open up to me, Emma Crawford.

  Which means I was the one who helped get the ball rolling.

  The whole thing is lovely and tragic. Relief sweeps through me—Blue isn’t Hank, thank God—followed swiftly by fear. Guilt. Confusion. Because if Samuel is Blue, why did he float the idea of moving in together when he was still intending to meet with his cybersex partner?

  Is he a player after all? What am I missing?

  But nothing changes the fact that Hank just confessed he’s got it bad for me.

  I look at Hank, eyes filming over. What the hell do I do? “My turn to be honest. I’m here to see a guy I met on the internet.”

  “MyBoyBlue,” Hank replies hoarsely.

  “Yes. We’ve been chatting for a while now, and I asked him if he wanted to try meeting offline.”

  His eyes light up. “So you’re here to meet Blue. Not Samuel.”

  “Yes. But I am”—I draw a shaking breath—“I’m falling for Samuel, Hank. And now that I know they’re probably the same person…”

  His expression crumples, and I feel his disappointment like a bullet to the chest.

  So many emotions in such a short span of time. I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from this.

  But I’m not the one getting my heart torn out.

  “Right,” Hank manages. “I get it.”

  “I’m so sorry. I would’ve told you, it’s just—I mean, you understand why we didn’t say anything, right?” I lean forward to look in Hank’s eyes. “There was too much at risk for me. And for him.”

  “So he’s in love with you too.”

  I stand, and I shake. “Only Samuel can answer that, Hank.”

  “And only you can answer this. Why him? He was such a dick to you, Emma. I wasn’t.”

  “You weren’t.” I reach up and put a hand on his chest. “Thank God for that. Thank you for that. Hank, you’re the reason I stayed. If it wasn’t for you, I’m not sure I would’ve survived those first couple of weeks.”

  That jaw muscle tics again. “But you still chose him.” Hank scoffs. “Nice guys really do finish last.”

  “No, they don’t. Samuel is a nice guy. I just had to dig a little to find him.” I meet Hank’s gaze. “I’m sorry I wasn’t upfront about my feelings for Samuel, and I’m sorry things are such a mess because of it. I just don’t feel the same about you, Hank. You’re a wonderful coworker and even better friend. But that’s as far as my feelings go.”

  He dips his head in a slow nod. “Okay then.”

  “It’s not okay. I know that. But can we at least agree to try to sort this out together? The three of us?”

  Hank hesitates. Takes a breath through his nose. Hesitates some more. His eyes flick above my head. I turn around to see what he’s looking at, but I only glimpse the bar. Lindsey raises her eyebrows, sticking her thumb up. If only she knew how much of a thumbs down this situation is.

  “Okay,” Hank says at last.

  “Good. Now can I give you a hug?”

  He scoffs again, but this one is less angry than the others. “You can always hug me, Emma. No need to ask.”

  I don’t need to go up on my tiptoes to hug him the way I do with Samuel. But there’s something weirdly familiar about the way Hank wraps his arms around my waist and holds me against him. His body is warm and solid, and I silently ask the universe to send someone his way. Someone who deserves his unique brand of
awesomeness.

  I start to pull back at the same moment I hear footsteps behind me. Hank’s eyes flick above my head again. The look in his gaze darkens.

  “Hank? Everything okay?”

  He looks back at me. A beat of charged silence passes between us.

  And then, without warning, Hank ducks his head and kisses me.

  “What?” I say against his mouth, freezing. My heart bangs loudly against my breastbone, and my blood rushes cold. The sensation is awful, like what I imagine walking barefoot through the snow would feel like—a chill so deep it burns.

  There is no tenderness in this kiss. Just hurt.

  I jerk backward, our lips making this terrible smacking noise as I break contact. From the corner of my eye, I see my sister launching off her barstool.

  That’s when the voice behind me spits out, “What the fuck?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Samuel

  That twist in my center—it’s the knife. The one I thought for sure Emma would plunge into my back the second she got the chance.

  Turns out it was my brother who ended up stabbing me.

  Emma’s eyes go wide. What is she doing here? She pulls Hank’s arms off her waist and opens her mouth, but he beats her to the punch.

  “Now you know how it feels, brother.”

  I don’t need to ask Hank what he means by that. I can tell by the hard, mean gleam in his eyes that he did it on purpose.

  He wanted me to see him kissing Emma. Because I lied to him. Often, though not without remorse.

  But I had my reasons. Good reasons. If he’d only let me explain—

  No. This fuckwad is the one who owes me an explanation.

  “What are you doing here?” I growl.

  Hank’s nostrils flare. “I followed you.”

  “What the f—”

  “What else was I supposed to do? You’ve been lying constantly to me. You’ve been checked out, mentally anyway, for weeks. When I ask how you’re feeling, you shove me aside like I don’t matter. I was worried.”

  “Jealous,” I snap. “You were jealous. Don’t you dare confuse the two.”

  I stare him down, rage ballooning inside my body down to my fingertips. His face is bright red.

  I ball my hands into fists.

  A blonde with Emma’s chin and cheekbones appears at my elbow. “What in the world is going on?”

  “I’ll explain everything in a minute, Linds.” Emma turns to Hank, holding the back of her hand to her mouth. “Why’d you do that? Kiss me?”

  “Because he wants to hurt me,” I say. “Biggest dick move in the book.”

  The blonde gasps. Emma grimaces.

  Hank just stares me down, his shoulders starting to tremble as he takes deep breath after deep breath.

  I’m trembling too. I’m not used to feeling this way. Like I’m raw inside and out, bare nerve endings breaking through my skin to deliver shock after shock of agony. The depth of the pain is staggering.

  It knocks the wind out of me.

  This is what Emma was talking about when she said living this way, making myself vulnerable, is hard.

  “Even bigger dick move?” I ask, just barely managing not to shout. “Touching a woman without her permission. Apologize, Hank. Right fucking now.”

  He glances at Emma. “I’m sorry,” he says gruffly. “But not gonna lie, right now I hate y’all.”

  “Feeling is mutual,” I reply.

  “Stop,” Emma says. “Hank, what you did was so not okay, but I won’t be the reason you guys are fighting. Let’s talk this through. Hank, I know you have feelings for me—”

  “He said that?” I turn to my brother. “You motherfucker. You accuse me of lying, yet you’re guilty of the same sin? You literally told me you didn’t have feelings for Emma. What kind of bullshit is that?”

  “Your kind, actually,” he replies smoothly. “I learned how to bullshit from you.”

  Fuck.

  What the hell do I say to him? He’s not wrong. But this is not the time nor the place for this conversation, and at the end of the day, it was a dick move going after Emma, knowing there was something between us.

  “You know what?” I manage. “You’re right. I wasn’t upfront about my feelings for Emma. But there’s a reason for that.”

  “Many reasons,” Emma adds, silently imploring me to…what? Stay silent? Tell him everything?

  “So do it,” Hank says. “Be honest. Right now. Tell me everything, both of you.” The restaurant has gone completely silent. I feel everyone’s eyes on me, waiting for the next line of dialogue in this ridiculous tragicomedy we’ve got going on.

  I clench my jaw. Lock eyes with Emma for a beat. This is not the way I wanted to tell her I love her. I wanted something better for us. Something special, a memory that’d make us smile while we shuffle our walkers through the nursing home together fifty years from now.

  Welp. Leave it to me to fuck that up. But I’ll do what I can to salvage the moment. I move my gaze over her body, memorizing everything about her. The set of her shoulders. The color of her jeans. Her shoes—

  My hand comes down, hard, on my chest. Good news: my heart is not a hole. Bad news: I think it just stopped working.

  The stilettos are even more killer in person. They’re sky-high, giving Emma a good boost in height. The decoration on her heels glitters in the restaurant’s low lighting, making me blink.

  Emma is Lady V.

  I glance up at Emma and stare. “V?”

  Emma’s eyes glisten. She nods.

  “Wow,” I say like an idiot. I laugh, a hushed sound. “Wow. Now that I’m thinking about it…the ’76 Riesling you talked about, and our safe word…Jesus Christ, Em, how did I not see it sooner?”

  She sniffs, offering me a watery smile. “I know, right? We’re blind. Or maybe blinded by our—um, witty banter.”

  “My God,” Hank scoffs.

  I ignore him and step toward Emma.

  “Baby,” I say, and without thinking, I reach out and cup her face in my hand. “Please don’t cry. I’ll fix this, I promise. And you know I don’t make promises lightly. Not anymore.”

  “You,” she breathes, tears leaking out of her eyes left and right. They’re good tears. Bad tears. I feel each one like a pinprick in my heart. “It was you all along.”

  “The way you dominate,” I say. “The bossiness—”

  “Stop,” Hank says.

  “Please don’t,” the blonde says. “I want more.”

  I look at Emma and nod with a slight tip of my head, giving her the lead. Her chest rises on a deep inhale.

  Emma explains the whole LadyV and Blue story. “And, well.” She takes a deep breath. “Now here we are. He said he’d be wearing blue, and he’d have a Van Halen CD on the table.”

  Hank’s brows snap together. “Van Halen?”

  “Inside joke,” I say.

  Hank’s expression tenses.

  “You can’t make this shit up,” the blonde says, slowly shaking her head.

  I turn to her. “Hey, Lindsey. I’m Samuel. I’m sorry I was rude and didn’t introduce myself earlier, I just—”

  “Had a love triangle happening in real time.” She waves me away. “I get it.”

  I look at Emma’s tears and Hank’s beet-red face, and I suddenly feel very, very tired.

  For a split second, I regret it all. The good things that came my way when I let her in all outweighed by this. A kind of misery I couldn’t fathom until it hit me like a three-hundred-pound tackle.

  My brother kissed a girl I love, knowing it would piss me off. That isn’t like him at all. That’s not what a brother does. When I’m feeling less rage-y, we’ll be having that conversation.

  But for now? Yeah, so much for keeping our relationship under wraps. It’s only a matter of time before news of this clusterfuck reaches Blue Mountain. And then what? Emma’s concerns about her reputation will be very much warranted.

  I can tell she’s working through the sa
me knotty problems in her own head. She’s looking at me but not seeing, gaze hazy not with lust but with fear.

  “It’ll be all right,” I say and grab her hand.

  She gives me a look that says I’m not so sure.

  “You.” I point at Hank. “Stay the fuck away from us.”

  Emma startles. “Samuel—”

  “This is my family, Em. I’ll handle it.”

  She pulls her hand away from mine. “I should go.”

  “Emma,” Hank and I say in unison.

  “I need some time to think.” She curls her hand around the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “C’mon, Lindsey. We’ll grab something to eat on the way back to my apartment.”

  Her apartment. Not her cottage.

  I panic. “Please. Don’t do this.”

  She meets my eyes. “Please give me time.”

  “Em, if I did something—”

  “We all did bad things. Really bad things, Samuel. The kind of stuff that can tear apart a family. We need to be the adults in the room so that doesn’t happen. Let’s all take some time to cool off, okay? We could very well end up regretting the things we say now.”

  Emma puts a hand on my brother’s chest. “I’m begging you, Hank. Go. Go back home and, I don’t know, get some rest or something. We’ll talk about this in the morning, okay?”

  I look at Hank. Hank looks at me.

  “Okay,” we say.

  Hank and I watch her and her sister go, the two of us frozen to the spot like big, dumb statues.

  The silence that settles between us is excruciating.

  “I can’t believe this shit,” I say, and I grab the CD and my coat and walk out of there.

  Hank is hot on my heels. He follows me out to the parking lot, footfalls heavy on the wet pavement.

  “You gotta believe me when I say I tried so fucking hard not to want her. But you were so cold, and I could tell she was struggling. I only meant to help her out. And, well, you know how amazing she is.”

  My chest clenches. The thing is, I believe him. Mostly because I was cold. I was a jackass. Hank was there for Emma when I wasn’t. And she is amazing.

  My hand shakes when I put it on the handle of my car door. I press my thumb into the indent on the handle, making the locks click, then yank open the door.