by Jordan Marie
I am falling in love with Claudia Cooper.
27
CC
“Are you ready?” Gray asks, coming through the front door and acting like he’s going to fight a fire, he’s in such a rush.
“Ready for what?”
“I told you I was leaving for mom’s today for a couple of weeks.”
“I know.”
“So are you ready to roll?”
“Umm… Gray, I told you. I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to.”
“C…”
“I like you, Gray. I like you a lot. I’m even getting used to the fact that you whack innocent balls for a living.”
“I don’t think that’s the way to put it.”
I smile at him, knowing that would aggravate him. “The truth is, I have a job, a demanding job, and Jackson and I have three engine rebuilds to do this week. I just can’t leave right now. I have to work to keep my deadlines.”
“I want you with me,” he says.
He will never know how much I want to throw caution to the wind and agree. I can’t, though, and the fact that I’m using the garage as a reason feels wrong. The real reason is that I’m afraid. We haven’t really discussed how the dance went down two days ago. I feel like it was proof that I’m not in the same circles as Gray. It’s also proof that I’m not sure I ever want to be.
“Jackson can keep your deadlines. It’s just a couple weeks, C. We can make it one if that helps,” I’m willing to work with you.
“This is just proof of how different we are. I don’t have a bank account, Gray. All I have is my business. I can’t ignore it for some man and go traipsing across the…”
“Some man?” he asks, and even I wince. I didn’t mean it like that at all. Or, hell, maybe I did. I need him to give up on me because I’m not sure I’m strong enough to give up on my own.
“You know what I mean,” I try to defend.
“No, Cooper. I don’t know what you mean. Why don’t you enlighten me?”
“I don’t want to do this,” I mutter, unable to look at him. I move to go around him and put my coffee mug in the sink. It’s early, but I’ll just head out and get to work. And pretend my world doesn’t feel like it’s crashing around me.
“Do what, exactly? Fight? Meet my family? Be with me?”
“I think it’s pretty clear, Gray, that we just don’t mesh.”
“The fuck we don’t. I think if anything, we have proven over and over that we mesh fucking phenomenally.”
“Everything doesn’t boil down to sex!” I growl at him. I try to leave, but he grabs my arm and pulls me back around to him.
“What is this about? Is it about the dance? Because you never said anything and I thought we had a pretty good bout of make-up sex afterwards.”
“Make-up? That wasn’t make-up sex, you moron.”
“What the hell was it then?”
“Lust! That’s all we have. We scratch each other’s itches, but we’re toxic as a couple.”
“Whoa! Hold the hell up here. I thought what we’ve been sharing has been pretty damn good. How in the hell did we go from having fun and enjoying each other to being toxic?”
“We run in different circles!”
“Whatever, Cooper. You’re going to have to come up with one better than that.”
“How about the fact that you keep dragging me around people who hate me? People I hate? People who did their best to destroy me years ago? I don’t want to be in that circle again for any reason, Gray!” I yell, close to breaking down and telling him exactly what he’s asking of me. “Not even for you.” I whisper that last part, the part that hurts the most. I’m weak and I know it, but I can’t handle being around the Rivertons or anyone in their circle. My sense of self-preservation tells me that I can’t… even for Gray.
“I see.”
“I like you, Gray, I really do. But…”
“But?”
“We’re just too different.”
“I don’t think we are at all. I think if you took the time to go meet my family, you’d see that, CC. I think that if you cared even a little bit about me, you’d at least fucking try,” he growls, and this time it’s him who turns away. Funny how that seems to be the last thing I want after this conversation.
“I do care about you,” I argue and mean it. I think part of me is already in love with him. Or at least I think that’s what it is. I’ve never really seen or had that in my life to recognize it.
“Then prove it.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” he challenges.
That’s when I see it: the hurt in his eyes, the hurt I put there. The weight of that crushes down on me and I almost feel like I’m suffocating.
“It’s the same thing!” I lash out in regret, needing to get away because suddenly I can’t breathe.
“I never figured you for a woman without a backbone, Claudia Cooper. It’s good I found out now, I guess. Maybe I’ll see you around,” Gray says, and those words combined with the tone of his voice make me jerk my head up to look at him.
“Gray, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can keep having fun. We can—”
“What? Keep fucking? Oddly enough, Cooper, I don’t want that from you. For the first time in my life, I can honestly say that’s not even close to what I want,” he says disgustedly.
He looks like a stranger. He barely spares me a glance before he turns around and walks out the door. I’m left standing here wondering what happened. In the last two days, he’s joked about me meeting his family, and yeah he told me that he had made all the reservations to leave today, but I never realized he was completely serious about taking me with him. Other than mentioning it to Cammie and her father, he’s never once asked me. And now… we’ve gone from laughing and playing, making love every night to… this.
I head out the door and go to my car. I start it up and, on autopilot, I head to the garage. I don’t want to think about it anymore because this feels like I just broke up with Gray Lucas. I’m not ready to face that just yet. I may never be.
28
Gray
Three Days Later
“Grayson Lucas, you’ve been moping around here since you got back. What the hell is going on with you?”
My mother’s tone is one I’ve learned I shouldn’t ignore. It means she’s getting desperate, and when Ida Sue “Love” Lucas gets desperate, chaos ensues. Still, I can’t seem to drum up enough energy to care. Everything just seems… flat, lifeless, and colorless since I left CC’s home three days ago. God, I miss her. Me, missing a woman? It would be the world’s biggest joke except there’s nothing funny about how I’m feeling. There’s nothing to find humor in when I picture the rest of my life without CC in it. The woman has ruined me.
“Answer your mother when she speaks to you,” Cyan says, slapping me up the side of my head.
“Thank you, baby.”
“Anytime, Mama,” Cyan answers, dodging my halfhearted attempt to swat him back.
“Asshole,” I mutter, partly because he’s annoying me, but mostly because he’s the biggest mama’s boy on the face of the planet.
“Grayson Lucas, you stop that or I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”
I roll my eyes, though I do it where I’m sure Mom can’t see me. The truth is, she says worse than us boys ever thought of—and that’s saying a lot. She however, can’t stand it for her kids to say the same words in front of her.
“Yes, Mama,” I answer, looking out over the yard in front of the large farmhouse I was raised in. It’s a large three-story home which has been completely updated, much to Mother’s dismay. The boys and I got together while Mom was on vacation and completely renovated the place, giving her all the latest appliances and conveniences. Most mothers would have loved it; ours complained we ruined the charm of the place, though I notice she doesn’t complain that the utility room, with a new state of the art washer and dryer
, is now downstairs along with her newly remodeled bedroom and large master bath.
There’s a large wraparound porch that completely encircles the home—a fact my nephews, when they’re around love and make complete use of. It’s white with red trim and has a bright red tin roof. The yard is encased with matching red trim and it’s quite beautiful when you pull up and see it, but that’s not why I love this place and always will; it’s the memories. Even when we didn’t have two nickels to rub together, this place was the most magical place on Earth. No matter what has happened in my life, being home always had a way of healing me and making things better.
That is, until CC.
“Is Grayson still being moony-eyed over that woman?” Black asks.
“Seems so. I don’t get it. I haven’t seen a flitter worth that,” Maggie says.
“Magnolia Marie! You did not just say that!” Mama yells.
“Sorry, Mama. Terry has taken to using the word and it just slipped out.”
“You ruined that boy, naming him Terry. You should have kept the family tradition.”
“You mean naming him after where he was created? No, thank you. I don’t need a son named Subaru.”
“Yeah, cause we all know the story of how Maggie whoopty-do’ed in her Subaru and nine months later…”
Maggie elbows Cyan with a huff. “That wasn’t funny the first five-thousand times and it’s even less funny now that Terry is three years old, dumbass.”
“Ouch! Stop, that hurts! Mama, Maggie called me a name.”
“That’s because you are being a dumbass. I don’t need no grandchild named Subaru. Though you could have named him Cross, dear.”
I smile. It’s an old argument. Maggie was caught in the back of an old Subaru with Bryant Matthews out on Old Cross Road.
“You really need to make an honest man of that boy, and actually make it work this time,” Mama chides her.
“Like you have Jansen?” Maggie comes back.
Jansen is the foreman of the ranch and the unofficial boyfriend of my mother. Mom had her oldest child when she was barely seventeen, which means she will be turning fifty-four in just a week. All of us like Jansen and would love to welcome him completely in the family, but for whatever reason, my mom will not agree to marry him—even though he’s asked her a million times.
“Pffft…” Mom waves her off. “At our age,” she says, like they’re eighty, “we’re just celebrating the miracle that we’re both still even interested.”
“There sure is a lot of celebrating going on around here, specifically in the kitchen,” Cyan says, and from the look on his face, I don’t even want to know what he saw.
“Praise Jesus,” Mom says.
I take a drink of my beer to keep from laughing out loud. I manage to hide my smile around the rim of the can; Mom doesn’t need any encouragement.
“Lovey, that damn cow got out again,” Jansen growls, sliding onto the edge of the porch, sitting down, and letting his legs hang over the side. He spits out his tobacco and Cyan hands him a beer.
“He just wants his freedom, Jan,” Mom defends.
“If he don’t stop breaking my fence, I’ll give him his freedom. I’ll make sure he gets his ticket to the green pastures in the sky,” Jan grumbles. Mom ignores him, probably because she knows it’s the same empty threat he always gives. Instead, she focuses on the one thing about Jansen that she absolutely does not like.
“I thought I told you that if you didn’t give up chewing, Jansen Reed, there would be no more celebrating between us?” she grumbles, hitting his back with a fly swatter.
“You did, but I had a talk with the good Lord about it,” Jansen says, looking over his shoulder at her. “He said He’d allow the vice, if I celebrated and praised Him harder. So we’re working it out.”
“I call bullshit,” she says, but she’s smiling.
“I’ll show you later,” he promises with a wink.
“I don’t know what’s sadder,” Cyan says.
“What’s that?” Jansen asks.
“The fact that my mom gets more action than I do, or the fact that hearing about it is the highlight of my week.”
“Probably both, son,” Jansen says.
“Enough about this topic, please? It’s almost dinner time and I need my appetite. Besides, I want to hear about Gray and his new woman.”
“Nothing to tell, Mags,” I grunt, cutting her off.
“Life is short, son. Don’t waste it pissing in the wind. One day, you’ll wake up all alone and stinking to high heaven with nothing but a basket of laundry.”
“That’s deep, Mom,” Cyan says with a laugh.
“Thank you, sweetie.”
“Well, if she’s anything like Grayson’s usual women, she’s an airhead,” Maggie says.
“Yeah, we’ll probably see more of her than we want in the tabloids soon enough,” Cyan agrees.
“She’s not like anyone else,” I growl.
“Do tell, brother.” This comes from White as he comes outside. The screen door squeaks in protest. He leans up against the porch post and looks at me. Shit.
29
Gray
“Mind your own business,” I growl.
White is my oldest brother and he’s a self-declared permanent bachelor, which is a shame because his best friend is a woman named Kayla—a damn good woman, at that. Plus, everyone knows she’s completely in love with White. Well, everyone but him. He doesn’t give a fuck about anything other than his next football game, or even riding a bull in his spare time. White lives for the thrill.
Mom jokes she has a child in every profession and she’s not far from the truth. Football, golf, baseball, fireman, cop, and rancher. Then there’s Cyan. Cyan tells everyone he’s still finding himself, but the truth is that he finds himself at the tables gambling most of the time. That’s just my brothers. My sisters are just as diverse, from a novelist to Maggie, who’s the principal at a local elementary school.
“Come on, Gray, give it up,” Maggie says.
I take a deep breath. “Fine. Cooper is smart, funny, beautiful… caring. She’s—”
“What kind of name is Cooper?”
“Cooper?” Cyan interrupts.
“Her name is Claudia Cooper. Everyone calls her CC.”
“Dude, that’s a rough ass name for a girl,” Cyan says.
“Oh please, like any of us could talk,” Maggie says. “Hello? Magnolia tree, front and center here.”
“It was a hell of a Magnolia tree,” Mom says. Maggie holds her head down.
We all laugh, even me, and I don’t really feel like it, especially since talking about CC reminds me of everything I’ve lost.
“If she’s so wonderful, what the fuck are you doing here without her?”
“White Hall Lucas, watch your mouth!”
“Yes, Mom,” he sighs.
“I still want to see the woman who has one of my brothers all twisted up,” Maggie says. I flip her off without letting mom see me.
“We may not have to wait long, dear,” Mom says.
“Why’s that?” Cyan asks, and I just listen to them chatter while I open my second beer. I wonder how long it would take me to get drunk on drinking nothing but beer.
“Because, unless I miss my guess, the woman in question is getting out of that taxi at the end of our drive,” Mom says.
My heart speeds up at her words and joy spreads through me. CC must have changed her mind! I’ll make sure I reward her later tonight.
“Fuck!” I growl.
“What? What’s wrong?” Mom asks, and she must know something is way off from my tone, because for once she doesn’t bitch at me for my cursing.
“That’s not CC. That’s David Riverton and his daughter Cammie,” I growl.
“Oh, shit,” Maggie whispers while everyone else goes quiet. I hold my head down, wondering how the fuck life got so complicated.
30
CC
“Okay, so hit me,” Mir says, staring at
me from across the table. If she only knew how inviting that was right now, she wouldn’t tempt me. It’s been five days since Gray left to visit his family in Texas. Five days and I haven’t seen nor heard from him. I mean, I guess we broke up, so I understand it, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought he might try to contact me. I thought I’d get the chance to… maybe rethink things? Get a do-over? Hell, I don’t know. Truthfully, I didn’t think much past hearing from Gray again. “Earth to C. You get about five minutes to start talking,” Mir adds.
“And you’ll what?”
“I’ll throw such a fit they will kick us out of here.”
“That’s not much of a threat, woman,” I grumble. We’re at the new bar that just opened downtown called Drink. It’s a small hole in the wall filled with, from what I can tell, college-aged kids and rich snobs who never had a hard time in their life, unless you include chipping a nail or their daddy freezing their trust fund for a few days.
“I thought we both could use a change of pace,” she defends, but she doesn’t look exactly happy to be here either. “But you’re right, it blows. Which is why you have to tell me about Gray!”
“I told you, there’s not much to tell,” I all but growl, shifting in my seat.
“Oh, please. Last week you couldn’t stop talking about him. All I heard was Gray this and Gray that. Today it’s over, end of discussion. I’m getting whiplash from the change.”
“He went back to Texas to visit his family.” I shrug, staring at my drink and wishing I could just go home, curl up on the couch like I have for the last five days, and sleep until I have to get up in the morning.
“So? That does not constitute a breakup. I swear, C, if you kicked him to the curb just because his vine wasn’t going to be around to swing through the jungle on, I may kill you myself.”
I roll my eyes at her. I decide to talk with her, knowing that if I don’t, this is just going to go on all night, and I really need to talk about something else if I’m going to survive tonight.