I scuff my shoes against the floor. “I just panicked. Flat-out panicked. I saw she was leaving, and I just felt like …”
Vincent looks at me. “Like everyone ends up leaving.”
I nod.
“Well, I get it. But I still think you need to do something. Don’t let this one go,” Vincent says. “If not, I’ll go find her—umph.”
I tackle him low and hard, smashing his back against the wall. If I were really trying to wrestle him, I would've gotten him a few inches lower and planted his head into the asphalt. But because I’m just fucking around, I grabbed him high.
“Stop it, you fuckheads,” Walker bellows.
Vincent reaches around and grabs my hand. I tap his back, and we call a truce.
Breaking apart, we’re panting and laughing.
“Damn, you’re quick,” he says.
“And you’re stronger than I remember.”
“Okay, enough fucking off. Back to work, Peck.” Walker kisses Sienna’s cheek. She follows him back to the spot where he dropped the cutoff saw earlier.
Vincent joins me by the truck that I’ve been working on all morning.
“You really like this chick, huh?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“So how are you gonna get her back?”
I shrug because I don’t know. I’m not sure if she’s still mine or not. She’s not mine like she used to be—the way I want her. And I want to fix it. I just can’t figure out what to do.
Vincent rifles through a coffee can of screws. “You need a grand gesture. That’s what you need.”
“How do you know?”
“The last girl I was fucking was big into those female-centric networks.” He shrugs. “I’ll learn if someone wants to teach.”
I work on the lug nuts on the tire as Vincent fucks around.
A grand gesture. What the hell is that?
Walker whistles through the bay. He holds open the door to the office, and Sienna goes inside. He motions for Vincent to come too.
“See ya later,” he says.
“Yeah.”
The garage quiets down and allows me to think. A grand gesture. Would that work? Is that something I can do to drive home my point to Dylan? Because I need one good solid try to win her back. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll have to let her go.
But it’ll work. It has to.
Thirty-One
Dylan
Last night sucked.
Come to think of it, so did yesterday and this morning and this afternoon too.
I’ve always been one of those people who doesn’t mind being alone, and I can entertain myself like nobody’s business. But Navie worked all last night and slept all day today until an hour ago when she got up and is prepping to go back to work. I’ve been alone too much. It’s taught me that Navie was kind of right: I am my own worst enemy.
The dialogue running through my head isn’t exactly kind. It’s not cheerful or positive. But … it’s real. It’s the truth.
And the truth is that I’m not a whole lot different than Molly. That’s a hard, jagged little pill to swallow.
It hit me around three a.m., the witching hour. The hour in which songs have been written about its loneliness. The hour that’s not quite today and not quite yesterday, an hour of time that exists to haunt you.
And haunt me, it did.
I might not sleep around, as I’ve heard Molly might do. I don’t stop at men’s houses that might have had a thing for me when someone else has moved in and try to play a card to get them back in my graces, as I’m pretty sure she did. I haven’t ever gone up to a woman at a bar and picked a fight or tried to intimidate someone to stay away from a guy I didn’t even like so he’d just like me.
That being said, I'm desperate for love. I have acted foolishly because I’m scared that someone isn’t going to love me back. And my behaviors probably stem from the way people have treated me growing up, and I haven’t been able to break that mental connection. Just like Molly.
I laugh out loud. It’s not a sound full of levity or humor. It’s a motion packed with disbelief and sadness and a little disgust.
I’m not better, no different, than Molly McCarter.
I take the blue pillow and press it against my eyes.
Neither one of us deserve Peck. When I think about the things Nana told me, and how his mother left him and how awful it must have been for him growing up, I realize how strong he is. None of that bullshit has stopped him from opening his heart. But when she implored me to love him …
“You can’t start or stop love, honey. It’s just there or it’s not, and it’s present between you and Peck.”
The look in her eyes. It was clear how much she adores her beautiful grandson.
“Just … love him. Like you, he’s never really had someone love him unconditionally … He’ll be kind. He’ll drive you crazy with his incessant need to make sure you’re all right. Please just be the same to him. For me.”
I’ve already let Nana down. I didn’t trust him to keep my heart safe. I didn’t love him unconditionally.
Is that what this is? It’s that I love Peck?
“Hey,” Navie says.
She runs a brush through her hair. She’s irritated with me, and I know it. But I’m irritated with myself, so there’s that.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. My voice is muffled under the pillow, but she gets the gist of the sentiment.
“Yeah, well, apologize to yourself.” She puts the brush on the table and works to pull her hair on top of her head. “Are you coming to Crave tonight?”
“Nah.”
She rolls her eyes. “Look, you can stay here all you want. My house is … not yours, but you’re welcome here. But, and this is a big but, if you think you’re going to stay here and mope around because you are, in fact, a fucking idiot, then you aren’t so welcome.”
Her words are harsh, but the look on her face is not. A smile touches her lips.
“Gee, thanks,” I kid.
“It’s for your own good. I can’t let you sit around here and add to that HAS Line.”
“Um, what?”
“Oh, nothing. I just woke up to six shipping notifications expected to arrive at my house in the next three days.”
I cringe. “Yeah. But two of those are ice cream. There’s a new Banana’s Foster flavor that really screamed my name.”
“Oh, so it screamed Hey Fool? Awesome name for an ice cream flavor.”
I throw the pillow at her. She laughs when it lands a few feet from her, not even getting remotely close to its target.
She sits in the chair. I sit up too so I don’t feel like a therapy patient getting help for my issues. That would only embolden her to give me a lecture, and that’s not what I need. Not that I particularly know what I need right now, but that’s not the point.
“Look, it’s the middle of the day,” she says. “You’ve literally not gotten off the couch today.”
“I’m sulking.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’m avoiding my problems.”
She smirks. “Seems like that would be hard to do when you are your problem.”
“Navie …”
“Have you even called about your rental?” she asks. “Or are you just pretending life off my couch isn’t happening today?”
“Yes, smartass.” I take out my phone and look at the screen. It’s blank. “No one has called or texted.”
She quirks a brow. “Not even Peck?”
“Once last night.” I half-groan, half-whine as I sit back against the cushions. “It was when you forced me to get into the shower and said I looked like the bride of Frankenstein.”
“Did you call him back?”
“No.”
“Dylan, you … Ugh.”
I throw my hands in the air. “What should I say? I don’t know whether to be mad at him or at me or at Molly or at the world or just … fucking … I don’t know. I. Don’t. Know. It’s all confusing. I do
n’t even know anymore.”
Navie shakes her head. “Honesty coming in five seconds.”
I make a point to grab on to the edge of the couch, making her laugh.
“When things get all confused in your head, it’s fear,” she says. “You are the most logical person I know. Except the HAS Line. But anyway, other than that, you’re great at breaking stuff down. At sorting your problems. At making decisions. But when that all gets muddy, it means there’s fear packed in there. That’s why it’s all jumbled.”
It actually makes a lot of sense logically. It also makes sense knowing how I feel inside.
I am scared. Scared shitless. I’m scared of falling in love with Peck. I’m terrified not to love him too. I’m scared of spending my whole life and never feeling the way I do when I’m with him.
What if I screw it up? What if I become a jealous monster because surely every person who lays eyes on him wants him? What if I end up disappointing him the way people always disappoint me?
I probably already have.
I rub the corners of my eyes. My heart aches when I think about him. I try to think about things from his perspective, and I think I might puke.
My breathing shallows as what has to be adrenaline shoots through my veins. My hands pat the seats next to me in a steady rhythm as my brain begins to rapid-fire a series of feelings and ideas.
Even though I told him we just needed some space, it doesn’t feel like that. I know it can’t feel like that to him either. He must feel like I walked out on him and left him.
Because that’s what I did. But it’s not what I really meant.
I was scared, and like Navie just said, fear makes a mockery out of you.
Maybe that’s what happened to Jessica too. Maybe she was scared. I don’t know what of, but maybe that’s why she could leave her two sweet boys behind.
He deserves better than that for once. He deserves better than that … from me.
The idea of doing that, of being there for Peck makes me happy. Being the strong one, the forgiving one, the one he knows he can come home to and be safe—that concept makes tears well in my eyes. Maybe, just maybe, he’s like my mom too. Maybe no one has asked him if he needs anything. He’s always given. Been kind. Forgiving. Maybe no one’s asked him what he wants. Who he wants. And maybe, just maybe, that could be me.
It feels absolutely, positively right. Because not only does he deserve that, but so do I.
I ignore Navie’s curious look as I stand. Thoughts are coming so quickly that moving seems to help make them easier to process.
I think of Charlie and the few men who came before him. Of my mother and Koty and Reese and even my relationship with Navie. In all those, without knowing it, I waited on someone to save me. I gave them the power to either make me happy and fulfilled and accepted … or to pass.
Maybe I’m the hero of my story.
Or at least, maybe I’m the co-writer of a tale as old as time, of a woman and a man who have all kinds of fears and bruises but come together to work them out.
I know. Suddenly, I know. This is what love feels like.
It wasn’t the lust and desperation I felt toward Charlie. It wasn’t the intense crushes I had on men before him. And it wasn’t the way I felt when I met Peck under that stupid truck or the way I felt when we burned the steaks.
This is love. It’s the moment when I realize just how bumpy this ride might be. It’s when I accept that I’m all kinds of bruised up, and he has scars deeper than I can see … and I still want to take his hand and navigate the waters with him. Even though his scars and my bruises together might make for some waves. And storms. And asteroid collisions. It’s still worth it. It’s still preferable even with the fear rolling around my stomach.
“I’m in love,” I whisper.
Navie grins. “I know.”
“No,” I say with a nervous laugh. “This isn’t an infatuation or a crush or just not wanting to be alone. Or even just not wanting to sleep on that couch again.”
She laughs.
“I love him, Navie. Like I love him like Nana loves Pops.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
My heart fills with a contentment that I’ve never experienced. It assuages some of the sharp edges of being scared and lets me know this is the right answer.
“This is what they mean when they say, ‘When you know, you know.’”
“Good. Now I wanna know what you’re talking about.”
I grin.
Navie stands and adjusts an elastic in her hair. “So what do we do with this revelation?”
“I’m not sure …”
I wonder where he is and what he’s doing. I could call him, for sure, and I want to. I need to hear his voice.
But he deserves more than that. And that’s what I’m going to give him.
“Can you do me a favor?” I ask carefully.
“Sure.”
I grin. “I have an idea …”
Thirty-Two
Dylan
“Change of plans,” Navie says through the phone.
“What do you mean, ‘Change of plans’? We can’t change the plan now.”
My voice is borderline frantic. Change the plan? No. We can’t. Not now.
Oh, shit.
I look ahead at the couple nearing the door to Crave.
She wasn’t kidding.
The bar.
Machlan’s bar.
At nine o’clock at night.
“Navie, this idea just got seriously out of hand,” I groan. “Um, is Machlan there?”
“Yes. That’s not the problem. The problem is … well, I can’t tell you the problem. But—”
“Okay, I’m cutting you off because this is way more important than whatever you were about to say.” I gulp. “Nana is walking into the bar.”
“What?” she squeaks.
“Yeah.”
“What bar? You mean, like, the prescription counter at the pharmacy, right?”
“Nope.” I wince. “I mean like you have Nana and a date—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Sorry.”
She gasps. “Oh, my gosh, Dylan. The boys are all here. Machlan will burn this motherfucker down.”
I want to cry. I’m not sure if it’s because Nana is actually beaming at the little old man who has her by the hand as they amble toward the door or because I know she’s right and her grandsons are going to kill her.
Or that they’re going to kill me because, unfortunately, this entire thing is kind of my fault.
“Well, go take the matches away while you can and prepare,” I say.
“Shit. Okay. I gotta go … do …. What, I don’t know. Maybe take cover.”
“Gotta go.”
“Hey, wait. About that change of plans—”
I end the call. I don’t have time for her shenanigans.
Nana is dressed in a bluish-purple dress that hits her mid-calf with giant white and red flowers on it. She also has on pearls. She looks absolutely lovely. And like she’s going to church. Not her grandson’s bar.
I want to cry.
“Hi,” I say as I reach them.
“Hi, honey,” Nana says. She pulls me to her and kisses my cheek. “I’m so excited for this.” She pats my hand.
She’s beaming. The woman is absolutely beaming. And as much as I want to redirect this little date or whatever it is, I can’t. I can’t take that happy away from her.
I’m here to bring happy. Not kill it.
“Um, so, you know that this place gets a little, you know, wild at night?” I say with a nervous laugh.
“We’ve been to bars before.” The man looks down at her and locks his hand with hers while he beams. “Not together, of course. This is our first time together, right, Michelle?”
She looks up at him and smiles like a high school girl going to prom.
They’re going to kill me. Peck is going to kill. Me.
“Let me get the door
for you,” the man says.
“Dave, you’re such a gentleman.”
The door pulls open. Sounds of Crave billow out onto the sidewalk and past our ears. I’m pretty sure I hear someone shout something about dick popsicles, but if Nana hears it, she doesn’t seem to mind.
“Thank you for inviting us,” Nana says. She places her hand on my forearm as she steps inside.
I laugh, my face screwed up like I might cry.
Because I might.
My nerves are so high I need a drink. My plan was to get a couple of shots of tequila before Peck gets here, and I put this harebrained plan into motion.
Nana’s eyes go wide as she takes in the fruits of Machlan’s labor. And the couple grinding so hard in the middle of the dance floor that they may as well be screwing.
“Ooh,” she says.
“Yeah. We can turn around and go back home,” I say, trying to steer her to turn around.
Dave laughs. “We’re old but not dead, Dylan. We’ve seen these things before.”
“In your grandson’s bar?” I ask Nana.
“Well, dear, no,” she says, clutching the string of pearls around her neck. “But Machlan can’t help if these people …” She gulps as the woman starts twerking. “Do whatever … that is.” She looks up at me. “Times sure have changed.”
I bet.
My eyes find Navie’s behind the bar. She looks as nervous as I feel. I hold out my hands to say, “I’m sorry,” but she fake cries, and I know we’re dead.
Or I’m dead.
The plan to win Peck’s heart is going to end with my heart and possibly other organs, depending on how mad they are, being nailed to the bulletin board and having darts thrown at them.
At me.
Like a witch in Salem.
I start to scan the bar for Peck. It’s not necessary, though. Because I have four of the hottest, most handsome, and shocked men barreling toward me.
This time, I clutch Nana’s hand. Even though she’s kind of the enemy right now. But they won’t kill her. They love her.
Which is why they’ll kill me.
I drop her hand and give her a small grin before stepping to the side and a few inches closer to the door.
My plans are halted, probably indefinitely, as I focus on preserving my life.
Gibson Boys Box Set Page 121