“Sure,” he agreed. His eyes settled on Ben for a moment. “Is that okay with you?”
I certainly did not need Ben’s permission. “Ben and I aren’t dating,” I clarified. Even if we were, I wouldn’t need his permission. I’d already had enough of that with Quinton. “We’re friends,” I told Rhett. “That was just a show for Sonya.”
Frankly, I was sick of all the lies I was already trying to keep up with because I was pretending to be this Lilly person. I didn’t want to bury myself under more of them. Which was exactly why I’d asked to speak with Rhett privately.
“I think he was asking if I’d be okay alone out here, Lilly,” Ben said. He leaned over the bar top and grabbed the bottle of Jameson right off the shelf. “Don’t worry, I’m good. I’ll be fine by myself. You two go talk.”
“I’m charging you for that,” Rhett grunted. “Okay. Follow me, Lilly.”
He walked around the bar and led the way. I followed him—nervous but determined—into the restaurant’s kitchen. It was clean and shiny—kind of surprising considering the place had plastic lawn chairs. There was one cook working, to which Rhett said a quick hello. Then he led me deeper through the kitchen until we reached a door in the back. He opened it, exposing an office. The space was tight with only a desk between two chairs. I had to shimmy behind the door to fit, while he sat in the chair on the opposite end of the room.
Suddenly, it felt like I was on a job interview.
Maybe I was.
For small second, I was in limbo with two possible paths looming in front of me. On one hand—I could lie some more and continue my charade of being Lilly Davenport. On the other hand—I could be one-hundred percent honest with Rhett and hope for the best. His history with Ben was cloudy. That much was obvious. But so far I’d gotten a really good vibe from Rhett. Something inside me trusted him already.
I could tell him the truth and not fear repercussion. At least, that was my belief.
“My name isn’t Lilly Davenport,” I said first. “Ben thinks I’m Lilly. I have no idea why. Maybe I look like her or maybe it’s simply because I’ve been staying in the Davenport’s house and he just assumed. I don’t know. I’m too afraid to tell him the truth. We’ve got a good friendship thing going on and I really don’t want to spoil it. You said he was a nice guy to your girlfriend in high school and he really is a nice guy.”
“Okay then?” Rhett questioned. “You’re telling me this because…”
“Because I need a job.” I squeezed my hands in and out of fists in my lap as I quickly explained, trying to keep my confidence up. “I need help. I’m pregnant—Ben knows that about me,” I explained. “My fiancé who got me pregnant was…um, is…well, he’s abusive, mean, controlling, and probably certifiably insane. It wasn’t a good relationship, and I shouldn’t have stayed in it for as long as I did. I ran away, and I came to the Outer Banks. Anyway, I’m running out of money fast. And I need a job that can pay me ‘off the books’—if you know what I mean.”
“Shit,” he groaned, plopping his head down on the desk. “Ben is like a magnet for disaster. And why do people take one look at me and think they can trust me with all their fucking secrets? They can’t!” He mumbled this into the wood of the desk.
“I’m not a disaster.” I was completely appalled by his comment… well, almost. Was I a disaster? Maybe a little. “Well, normally I’m not. And I’m trusting you because for some reason Ben thought you might be helpful.”
“Because Chancy’s Claw just screams off the books! We’re a respectable business. We do everything on the books. Don’t let the plastic chairs fool you. They’re part of the beach motif.” He sat up straight, lifting his head from the desk. “I might have an idea though. What’s your real name?”
“Juniper. Juniper Hugs.”
“Hugs? Seriously.” He almost smiled for second.
“Yes, seriously.”
“Okay, Hugs...” He trailed off and this time a full-blown smile lit up his face. “Wow, nicknames like that just don’t fall into your lap often,” he said to himself. “Can you play a musical instrument, Hugs?”
“What?” What kind of question was that?
“Anything. Tambourine. Maracas. The piano.”
“I’ve never even touched a piano in my whole life. So…no.”
Again, he groaned, dropping his head on the desk once more. “You’re killing me here, Hugs.”
“I can sing,” I offered.
His head popped up immediately. “Perfect! You’re in the band.”
“What band?”
“My band.” He stood up from his desk and started walking for the door. “The guys are going to kill me, but they’ll get over it. We aren’t great anyway. Maybe you’ll bring new life to our group.”
“Wait, wait, wait! I don’t sing in public! Or even in the shower!”
I might be a semi-decent singer, but that didn’t mean I could get up on a stage or do anything in front of other people!
“It’s all off the books,” Rhett informed me. “We do a couple performances at different bars, this one included, a few times a month. We split the pay equally. If it works out, and you actually are a good singer, you’d be looking at a few hundred dollars each show. So, unless you want to go line up at the nearest Home Depot or start tutoring high school kids in math or start a dog-walking business, you should take this offer. We practice every Wednesday and Thursday night at our drummer’s place. We do gigs whenever they come along, usually on Friday or Saturday nights. What do you say, Hugs? You can sing and be pregnant at the same time.”
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
I didn’t have a choice.
I had to say yes.
CHAPTER 7:
BEN
I was semi-drunk. Already.
Okay…so I hadn’t had even a sip of alcohol since before I’d joined the Coast Guard. Which was over two years ago. I used to drink all the time in high school. Sonya and I… well, we used to party every weekend. I had the tolerance of a four-hundred-pound man.
Had.
Had the tolerance.
Now, apparently, I was a lightweight. I guess tolerance was one of those ‘don’t use it, you lose it’ kind of things. I’d had barely a quarter bottle of the Jameson, while Rhett and Lilly had been talking in the back of the restaurant, and already I could feel tingles under my skin. Give me another thirty minutes, and I’d lose all feeling in my face.
Finally Lilly reappeared, walking through the double doors that led from the restaurant’s kitchen. Rhett wasn’t far behind her. He returned behind the bar, while she came around to where I sat waiting.
Damn, Lilly was beautiful. So beautiful. That face, those eyes, that hair, those lips…and her ass. She had one hell of an ass. It wasn’t mine to think about, obviously I knew that, but get a little alcohol in me and for some reason it became all my mind wanted to dwell on. And I’d missed her in the time she’d been gone. It was lonely without her, and I suddenly felt much better now that she was back in the same room as me.
“Oh, God,” she said to me, taking in my newly inebriated state. “You’re drunk.”
“You’re beautiful.”
She rolled her eyes, grabbing my arm so that I’d stand. “Come on,” she urged. “We need to go. It’s almost eight.”
“Seriously, Lilly, you are,” I insisted. She needed to know that.
“I can’t leave you alone, even for fifteen minutes,” she scolded.
In my defense, running into Sonya hadn’t been easy. Far from it. I’d rather have poured salt in my eyes than to see her once more. One look at her and a million repressed feelings had come rushing right back to the surface. My grief over our past was something I contended with on a daily basis. That was nothing new. But seeing Sonya again made it feel that much fresher, like it had only been yesterday that she’d had her abortion and subsequently we’d broken up.
“You okay?” Lilly whispered to me, softly so that Rhett wouldn�
�t hear her.
“No,” I answered honestly. I wasn’t.
“Let’s just get out of here then.” She grabbed her purse and then my hand. “Bye, Rhett,” she called out. “So, you’ll pick me up for practice on Wednesday at four. Right? You know where Ben lives? I live next door to him.”
“Sure thing,” Rhett answered. “I know where he lives. See you Wednesday, Hugs.”
Hugs? Really.
“You’re still doing that?” I questioned Rhett, slightly annoyed. “Hugs? That’s the best you could come up with for her?”
Rhett had some weird thing where he always gave every woman he came in contact with a special nickname. And once a nickname was given, he’d forever use it and never change it, rarely even using a person’s real name. As a teen, I used to think Rhett was the shit. He graduated a few years before me and we’d both been a big part of the ‘Kill Devil Hills High social scene.’ I used to admire him—the way he could easily befriend anyone, man or woman, and the way he always had a different girl desperate to get in his bed. Plus, he’d been exceptional at baseball before injuring his elbow. He was easy to look up to, at least to an impressionable sixteen-year-old me.
Until I realized how pointless it all was. It was Sonya’s unexpected pregnancy and the loss of a child that changed me. The rose-colored glasses I used to see the world through were gone, and I saw everything around me as it really was. Pure bullshit. Rhett was part of that bullshit.
But that was the old Rhett.
I didn’t know what to make of this new Rhett. The only thing I knew was that he’d been dating Sydney Michaels for over a year. And Sydney was everything Rhett was not. It was all very confusing.
Rhett shrugged. “I think you’re going to find Hugs really suits your girl.”
“She’s not my girl,” I clarified.
“I’m not his girl,” Lilly added.
“If you two say so,” Rhett mumbled. He turned around, and started collecting the dishes from where Sonya and Logan had been sitting. Not wasting anymore time, Lilly and I left the restaurant. There was no point in arguing with Rhett. The guy liked to say annoying shit just to instigate arguments sometimes.
“Rhett can be a dick,” I told Lilly once we were safely outside. “But in general, I think he’s an okay guy.” I had to believe that since Sydney believed that.
“He gave me a job. I’m in his band.”
I found that hilarious and started laughing. It wasn’t that funny, but in my semi-drunk state I couldn’t help myself. “No way. His band is terrible. It’s been years since I’ve seen them play, but they’re complete crap.”
“Good,” she exclaimed. “Maybe no one will come to the shows and no one will ever have to witness me singing. I'm not a ‘center of attention’ kind of girl.”
I could see that about her. Although, she rapidly was becoming the center of my attention. And seeing her sing, I'd be interested in that.
I dug in my pocket for my keys, wobbling a little. I'd literally chugged a quarter of that bottle and the effects were settling in harder now. The Chancy Claw parking lot spun a bit. “You've got to drive. I need to get home,” I told her, handing over my keys.
I fell into another fit of giggles. That was the thing about drunk me—the first stage was always laughter. I was a fun drunk. Then I had a tendency to get sappy and emotional. I needed to pass out in my own bed before she ever saw me reach stage two. I figured I had a little time before that, though.
Once we were in the Jeep, I reclined all the way back in my seat. Then I sat up for a moment to open up the moon roof—or whatever you want to call it—above me. The stars were in full force already in the night sky. In California, they never came out, not like this—too many city lights blocking them out, I suppose. But here, in a rural area like this, on a clear night like tonight, they were incredible.
Before she could start the car, I reached over and stopped her hand. “Lean back, you've got to see this.”
“It's seven fifty,” she argued.
“I have time. Lean back.”
She signed softly, but then ultimately reclined her chair also, staring up at the sky with me. “I don't think I've ever seen so many stars,” she whispered after a moment.
“Yeah, me neither.”
For a couple minutes we both lay there, looking up, not saying anything. There was a buzz of electricity between us—or maybe that was just me being drunk and imagining something that wasn't there. Either way, it felt nice relaxing with her for a brief moment.
“What does everyone mean when they talk about your death? Or when they make some back from the dead comment?” she asked. “What happened to you?”
The question hit me in the stomach. It wasn't something I wanted to answer in my current state. Or ever really. What would she think when she found out the truth? About the hell I'd purposely put my family through? All because I couldn't cope with the consequences of my own actions.
I glanced at the clock on the car's console. “It's seven fifty-five now...we should go,” I told her, deflecting her question.
“Okay,” she said, moving her seat back up. There was a hint of aggravation in her voice. I'd tell her about my ‘fake death’—just not now, not when my thoughts weren't completely in focus, not when we were getting along so well as friends.
The drive was short and silent.
When she parked in my driveway and we left my car, I knew I had to be pressing my luck on the time. But some part of me was desperate to keep this night going, to stay with her just a little while longer. “Want to come in? It will only take me a moment to call.”
“I’d rather not. I’m not feeling super social at the moment.”
Okay? “Will you wait one minute while I go call?”
“Sure,” she said, hugging her bare arms. “Shit,” she exclaimed all of a sudden. “I forgot my sweatshirt at the restaurant.”
Her eyes went wide with terror. It was just a sweatshirt. A very large, very unflattering one at that. But I could see the panic on her face. Maybe it meant something special to her somehow. “Take the car,” I suggested. “Or I can call Rhett and ask him to keep it for you.”
“Okay.” She still seemed uneasy somehow. “Would you call Rhett? I’ll walk up there tomorrow and get it."
My eyes narrowed. Had I said something wrong? She seemed super off suddenly—perhaps sad. Was it pregnancy hormones hitting her? I mean, shit. I swear to God it looked like she might cry. Over a sweatshirt?
But...whatever was bothering her would have to wait. I needed to go call in. Now. I couldn't postpone any longer. I left her, hurrying inside for the landline upstairs. I made it in time and quickly made my calls—one to Jack and one to Rhett at the restaurant. Rhett had found her sweatshirt, and he said he’d keep it for her in the lost-and-found until she came to get it.
When I finished on the phone, it had been several minutes. I'd left her outside and wasn't even sure if she'd still be there when I returned. As I rushed back down the stairs, I found my heart was pounding.
What the hell was I doing with her?
I didn't mean just tonight, I meant in general. She was pregnant...with some other guy's baby. If I helped her through her pregnancy, it wouldn't magically repair the wounds I still had from the baby Sonya and I chose to abort two years ago. Was it a fantasy to somehow think helping her could fix that, could heal me?
No. Either way, something would always be broken inside me because of that loss. Helping her wouldn't change that.
And that wasn't even the issue here. The real issue was that I couldn't deny it a second longer, I had started to form feelings for this girl. And they were needy and vulnerable as fuck. I was needy and vulnerable. I guess that was what running away, almost drowning, and going to prison would do to a person. Make them desperate and starved for love.
I recognized that. Was it even her I liked? Or the idea of her? I'd kind of already done the same thing once with Sydney Michaels, Rhett's girlfriend. For a moment, before my
trial and prison sentence, when I’d first let everyone know I was still alive, for a moment I'd thought I loved her too. Turned out that my feelings had been based on nothing but desperation and a need to fill the mile-wide hole inside my chest.
Was I about to do the same thing all over again?
I couldn't let myself do that. Not to Lilly. Because she was at a vulnerable point in her life, too. Whatever happened, the only thing I could be was a friend to her. Nothing more. Not ever.
“Hey,” I said to her as I came back outside. She hadn't left. She'd waited on me. I suddenly wished she hadn’t done that.
“You okay?” she asked me.
“Fine,” I lied. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I'm fine.” It was very apparent she was lying, too. Her big eyes screamed that she was the opposite of fine. And the desperate, needy, vulnerable, semi-intoxicated, part inside me wanted to kiss her because of it, as if that would somehow heal us both.
But I was smart enough to know better.
“Ghost crabs,” I said, an idea hitting me—a very safe, neutral idea, that might cheer her up. One a hell of a lot better than kissing.
“Excuse me?” She stared at me blankly, still holding her arms close to her body.
“Remember when we used to catch them together as kids? We should go try to catch some…for old time’s sake.”
“Okay,” she breathed, and for a moment I felt like an idiot for suggesting it.
But she’d been so passionate about the game when we were ten. Surely, it would lighten the tension between us now. Did life have to always be so serious? Plus, it was a beautiful night. Those were hard to come by in February. “Give me one second,” I told her, then I left and disappeared back into the house.
Inside, I grabbed her one of Ellie’s sweatshirts off the hook and a couple flashlights from the bathroom. Then I hurried back outside to her.
“Here.”
Kill Devil Hills: A Complete Beach Romance Series (4-Book Box Set) Page 61