by Lori Wilde
Carrie.
And Jesse!
The bad boy of Twilight High was alone in a secluded spot with her baby sister, and from the smell of it they were smoking. Anger rushed her, and—even if she didn’t want to admit it—so did a twinge of jealousy. She was torn between charging around the corner and reading them the riot act, or sitting there and eavesdropping on their conversation.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” Jesse said.
“You sound just like Flynn,” Carrie had replied petulantly.
“You should listen to her.”
“Blah, blah, blah, she thinks she’s my mother. She’s not my mother.”
“She’s raising you as if she is.”
“Well, I didn’t ask her to do it. I don’t want her to do it. I want my mama to get well, I want my sister back, I want my family back the way it used to be, I want…” The sound of Carrie’s sudden sobs wrenched something deep inside Flynn. She sat frozen in the canoe, listening to Jesse murmur soothing words, experiencing a mixed bag of unpleasant feelings.
“Come on,” he said after a few minutes. “I’ll walk you home.”
“No, that’s okay.” Carrie sniffled.
“Don’t want to be seen with me, huh?”
“It’s not that. It’s just that I told all my friends you were my secret boyfriend and if anyone sees you walking me home, they’ll know that’s a lie.”
Jesse’s laughter bounced through the treetops. “Maybe they’ll think I’m your real boyfriend.”
“Oh no, that would ruin everything.”
“Ah, I get it. You want the bad-girl rep without having to actually be bad.”
“I knew you’d understand! Thanks, Jesse. You really made me feel better.”
“Before you go, put out that cigarette.”
A couple of minutes passed. Flynn took a deep breath, stuck her oar in the water, and paddled around the corner.
Jesse lay stretched out on the bluff above the swimming hole, staring up at the clouds, hands cupped behind his head. “How much of that did you hear, Dimples?”
“You knew I was listening?” Flynn paddled closer. He’d called her Dimples. Her stomach gave a crazy little swoon. He’d given her a nickname.
Jesse sat up. “I could see the canoe from up here. It’s Day-Glo orange, Flynn.”
She cringed. “Cross covert spy off my list of career possibilities. Did Carrie see me?”
He shook his head. “Don’t think so. She was too upset about your mom to pay much attention.”
“Thank you.” She pulled the canoe up on shore a few yards from the bluff.
Jesse had gotten to his feet and was staring down at her. She shaded her eyes against the late afternoon sun. He looked at once terribly solitary and fiercely independent—that lone wolf isolated from his pack and pretending not to care. “You coming up?”
She hesitated. She shouldn’t, she should just go on back home, retrieve the twins from Marva, start making dinner. But there was Jesse at the river’s edge, holding out his hand, ready to help her on shore.
Heaven help her, she’d taken his hand and he’d pulled her up beside him. They climbed the bluff together, sat overlooking the river, saying nothing for the longest time. He sat close, but not touching her.
“You know what I’d like to see?”
She shouldn’t have played along. It was asking for trouble, but she’d done it anyway. “What?”
“You on the back of my motorcycle. Your hair blowing wild and free.”
“Ain’t never gonna happen.”
“Never say never.”
She wrapped her arms around her, planted her elbows in her palms. Closing herself off. Holding him at bay. “You don’t even own a motorcycle.”
“I’m saving up for one.”
“Pipe dreamer.”
“You know what else I’d like?”
“I don’t care,” she lied.
“You in a pink Harley jacket while you’re holding on to me as we ride on my motorcycle.”
“You’re so full of it. There’s no such thing as a pink Harley jacket.”
“There is if you have one custom made.”
“I tell you what, custom make me a pink Harley jacket and I’ll ride on your bike with you.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah, ’cause that plays so well into my good-little-girl act.”
“You’ve got a mean tongue,” he said. “I like it.”
“Thank you.”
They lapsed into silence. Finally, he took a deep breath. “You want to talk about it?”
She shrugged. “What’s to say? My mama’s dying and my daddy’s a drunk.”
He nodded. “Life sucks.”
“You said it. I’ve got nothing that’s all my own. I share a room with my sister. I get hand-me-down clothes from my cousins. Even my name isn’t my own. Half Floyd, half Lynn. Flynn. It’s my parents’ names morphed together. Who does that? If my dad’s name had been Clifton and my mother’s name Deloris, would they have called me Clitoris?”
Jesse had snorted a laugh. “Hey, look at it this way. At least you didn’t get named after an outlaw. Jesse James. Talk about setting someone up for a prison record. Who names their kid Jesse James?”
“You’ve got a point.”
“Feeling any better?”
“I’m getting there. You’re a good listener.”
“You’re a good talker. Here, maybe this will help.” He reached into the front pocket of his shirt and withdrew something wrapped in red foil. It was a milk chocolate candy heart. “You can have my heart.”
Their eyes met, their fingers touched over the chocolate. He must have realized how that sounded, because he quickly rushed on to make a joke of it. “Now you can’t say I never gave you anything.”
“I’ll share,” she said, unwrapping the chocolate and breaking it into two pieces right down the middle. “It’s the least I can do.”
Simultaneously, they popped the chocolate into their mouths. The candy melted warm against her tongue. Jesse’s eyes lit up. They stared into each other. It felt strangely like communion.
“If you ever need to talk,” he said, “I come here a lot after school.”
After that day, whenever Flynn could sneak away, she’d meet Jesse at the underground caves. Sometimes they’d arrive—she by water, he by land—to find fishermen had usurped their spot or other teenagers bent on swimming or making out, and they’d be forced to give up their rendezvous.
On the days they were alone, they talked for as long as Flynn dared stay away from home. Thirty minutes most of the time, an hour if they were lucky. Quickly she came to see past Jesse’s cocky, bad-boy façade to the wounded soul beneath. She was drawn to his intense nature and his enigmatic gray-blue eyes. They had something in common. Jesse had lost his mother to a drug overdose when he was eight, and Flynn was slowly losing her mother to ALS. Jesse had never known his father. Flynn’s father had disappeared inside a whiskey bottle. Circumstances had forced them both to abdicate their childhoods far too soon.
Jesse understood her in a way no one else did. He didn’t judge her for her snarky, smart-ass comments, and he shared her wicked sense of humor. She felt as if she could tell him anything. He gave her tips on how to deal with Carrie’s rebellion. She gave him pointers on fitting in at Twilight High.
They were just friends, she told herself. She was going steady with Beau, and Jesse hadn’t tried to kiss her. But she could see the fire in his eyes when he stared at her lips, and she felt a corresponding heat burning in her chest. She wanted him to kiss her, but wanting it made her feel ashamed.
And then came that night on the bridge…
“Flynn?”
Someone was calling her name.
“Flynn? Hello, anybody home?”
“Huh?” Blinking, Flynn looked around at the Sweethearts assembled in her living room. She’d been daydreaming of Jesse again, and right smack-dab in the middle of a knitting session.
“You’re a mil
lion miles away and I don’t think you’ve knitted a stitch,” Belinda Murphey said, breaking through her reverie.
“Are you still brooding over losing out on the theater?” Marva asked.
“Umm…” Flynn shot a glance at Patsy, who was pushing her rocker faster than usual. They hadn’t openly spoken about Jesse buying the theater out from under her, but everyone knew about it.
“She’s not brooding. She’s daydreaming about bridesmaid dresses and place settings and floral arrangements. How can she be brooding with that rock on her finger the size of Texas?” Terri teased.
Flynn looked down at the ring. It was ostentatious. And heavy. And it kept getting tangled up in the yarn.
“Yeah,” she quipped. “I keep thinking that it’ll come in handy living here on the river. Next time there’s a flood and I see someone getting washed away by the current, I can just toss out the ring with a line on it and they can anchor themselves.”
Raylene guffawed. “You could always use it as a doorstop.”
“Or a paperweight.” Marva snickered.
“It was nice of Beau to gift me with a dual-purpose engagement ring. I’ll never fly away in a hurricane.”
“So thoughtful of him,” Patsy said. “Considering that we’re four hundred miles inland.”
“You know,” Belinda added, raising her arm to block her eyes. “It’s so sparkly it would make a great beacon in a power outage.”
“In case I forgot to put batteries in the flashlight and all the candles in the house melted?” Flynn laughed.
“Exactly.”
“Oh, oh.” Flynn waved her left hand. “If someone tries to grab me in Froggy’s parking lot late at night, I can just crack them over the head with my ring.”
“Swwttt,” Marva said. “They’d be out cold.”
“TKO.”
“Comatose.”
“And when the attacker came out of the coma, he’d probably sue you for assault with a deadly weapon.”
Dotty Mae looked confused. “I don’t get it. You can’t do all those things with a diamond engagement ring. Even with a honker like that.”
“It’s a joke,” Terri said gently. “You know Flynn. She’s not the type to draw attention to herself, and a ring that size brings the spotlight. To ease the tension, she makes jokes.”
“I don’t,” Flynn denied. “Do I?”
Everyone nodded, even Dotty.
“She also cracks wise when she’s feeling overwhelmed. The more beleaguered she is, the snarkier she gets,” Carrie said, waltzing in from the kitchen. “It’s her fatal flaw.”
“Fatal flaw?” Patsy asked.
“Don’t encourage her,” Flynn said. “She’s dating a guy who’s getting a liberal farts degree. Apparently he’s taking a literature class and she’s absorbing it through osmosis.”
“See,” Carrie retorted. “Pure snark. She has to do it, even though she knows it will prove my point. Hence, her flaw is fatal. And FYI, Logan is taking creative writing.”
“Always having to have the last word is Carrie’s fatal flaw,” Flynn muttered.
“Is not.”
Flynn arched an eyebrow and took a purl stitch for dramatic effect.
“Are you feeling overwhelmed?” Marva asked. “You’re adding extra stitches.”
“What? Oh. No,” Flynn lied. “It’s the spotlight thing, like Terri said.”
Carrie snorted and disappeared upstairs.
“Oh, will you look at the time,” Patsy said. “I didn’t realize it was after nine. We gotta hit the road, girls.”
The Sweethearts gathered up their knitting, said their good-byes, and left Flynn waving at the front door. The minute they’d dispersed, Flynn slipped on a light sweater and headed down to the dock. She was feeling particularly lonely tonight.
And achy.
Those daydreams she’d been having were stirring up some powerful old emotions. Nothing like sitting on the dock and watching the water roll by to take the tension out of a woman’s shoulders.
She padded over the decking, settled on the lawn chair, sank down, snuggled into her sweater, and breathed in the air. The wind tossed her hair into her face. She tucked it behind both ears.
The breezy summer night reminded her of Jesse. Of that night when everything changed.
Jesse. His name hung in her mind like a prayer. Why couldn’t she stop thinking about him?
In the distance, she saw a boat headed upriver from the lake, its blue and yellow lights winking in the night. The motor was quiet, trolling slow. She watched it draw closer. She didn’t recognize the boat as belonging to any of her neighbors on this side of the river, but it was pulling closer to the shore as if intent on docking at one of the slips. Her father owned a johnboat for fishing and there was the canoe, but they hadn’t owned anything more ambitious since Floyd sold the ski boat to help pay for her mother’s medical bills that insurance didn’t cover.
The boat coming toward her was a ski boat. A very nice one. The driver killed the engine, let it drift toward her dock. Did she know who this was?
Flynn got to her feet, squinting into the darkness.
“Enjoying the evening, Dimples?”
“Jesse?”
He was standing up in the seat, guiding the boat in. “Ahoy there.”
The boat bumped against her pier. She grabbed the rope he tossed. “This is Dr. Longoria’s boat.”
“That it is.”
“What are you doing with it?”
“Making a little money on the side. It’ll be awhile before the motorcycle shop is pulling in any cash. The good doctor said she was running funny, asked me if I’d take her out for a spin. Diagnosed it right off the bat. Clogged fuel filter. Cleaned her up and now here I am, making sure she’s in top form.”
“Oh.”
“Thought you might like to go for a ride.”
Flynn shook her head.
“Ah, come on. When was the last time you went out on a late night river cruise?”
Umm, never?
“Come on,” he coaxed. “No one has to know.”
“I’ve got to work in the morning.”
“Don’t give me that. Froggy’s doesn’t open until ten. That’s twelve hours from now.”
“Jesse…”
“I need to talk to you.” He had one leg on the dock, one leg in the boat. She stood on the deck steps above him. He canted his head up at her, a sexy silhouette in the muted dock lighting. He wore blue jean shorts, a thin cotton T-shirt, and Nikes. The telepathy between them frightened her. She’d been thinking of him and poof, he’d appeared. A dark knight in a white speedboat.
“What about?”
“Let’s take a little trip upriver. We won’t be gone long. An hour, tops.”
The way he said “long” made her pulse pound. Her gaze hung on his lips—full, angular, sardonic. She held her breath. Waiting for what, she did not know, but she felt it. This odd sense of impending change. And Jesse was the catalyst.
He ran his hand through the sheaf of whiskey blond hair that had fallen across his forehead, pushing it back with his fingers, showing off his masculine brow. Shadows cloaked his face, making him look for all the world like the outlaw who shared his name. He tilted his head, lowered his eyes, and cast her a come-hither look that had perspiration dampening her underarms.
She came down the steps toward him. Old feelings—both dangerous and exciting—shot up between them like Pop-Tarts from a toaster, hot, sweet, startling.
The moment stretched into a minute. They stared into each other, their breaths rasping in tandem. Flynn’s heart slumped back against her spine. Fear tap-danced in her belly. What did he want from her?
What did she want from him?
Nothing. There was absolutely nothing she wanted from him. When it came down to it, she barely knew this man.
But that was her brain talking. Her heart—oh, her treacherous heart—was feeling something else entirely. Could she trust the feeling? Could she trust him? Could she
trust herself?
Her gaze hooked on his mouth. A mouth she yearned to kiss. A mouth that called to her in the middle of the night, in the midst of her darkest dreams. The forbidden fruit. Deadly, poisonous.
If she got into that boat…Heaven help her, she was not going to get into that boat.
Hypnotized, she found herself moving forward, getting closer. Not thinking, just wanting.
Jesse held out his hand.
Flynn never took her gaze off his face. They were both holding their breath, their fingers within touching distance. They were so close she could feel the heat of his skin.
So close. So easy.
But she should not, could not, would not.
Jesse touched his bottom lip with an index finger. The gesture wasn’t calculated. Flynn could tell he wasn’t trying to call attention to his mouth, he was just nervous because she hadn’t taken his hand and he was trying not to show it. She recognized his tension in the tautness of his shoulders. Unnerved, just as she was by this chemistry that time and circumstances had not erased.
“I’ve got a proposition for you,” he said, breaking the spell.
She drew in a deep breath, crossed her arms over her chest. Even in this breeze she could smell his warm, manly scent.
“Get in.” He inclined his head toward the passenger seat beside him. “Let’s take a ride and talk about Lynn’s Yarn Barn.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Flynn, come what may, we’ll always have that night on the bridge.
—Jesse Calloway, yearbook entry, 1999
She got in.
Yeah, it was stupid. Yeah, it was courting trouble. Yeah, if Beau found out there would be hell to pay, but Jesse had uttered the magic words that made her step into Dr. Longoria’s boat and plunk her butt in the seat beside him. Part of her couldn’t help hoping he’d come to offer to sell her the theater.
He didn’t say another word. Just started the engine and took off up the river, past the boat ramp, underneath the old Twilight Bridge.
Along the banks, bullfrogs hummed a deep-throated chorus. In the blue glow of the light on the stern, moths gathered. A fish jumped up, breaking the water with a smart slap. The air smelled rich, loamy. The breeze blew damp, coaxing a flutter from her curling hair, blowing it over her shoulders.