Sitting on the bed, the mattress dipping with my weight, I blow out a breath.
It’s none of my business what Peck is doing. None at all. Tonight was just us goofing off and having some fun. So what if I felt more alive on that bar with him than I might ever have before? It didn’t mean anything. To him.
“Damn you,” I whisper.
Despite the words toppling from my mouth, I smile. The man just gets better and better the more I see of him.
I can still feel his hands on my body and the weight of his gaze. His cologne still clings to my hair. I close my eyes and can almost put myself back on that bar with his body behind mine—nothing mattering except our movements to that song. I’ve never done anything so … sensual in my life. Not with any other boyfriends over the years. Not even with Charlie and I dated him for a year and a half.
No, this was different. Crazy in the best way. Real, raw, and electric.
But when I open my eyes, I’m forced back to reality.
And Molly.
A knock on the door gets my attention. I look up. My heart skips a beat as I see Peck standing in the doorway. I didn’t hear him come in, but there he stands with one arm gripping the top of the doorframe.
“Hey,” I say. “What are you doing back so early?”
His muscles flex as he grips the door tighter before releasing it. His hand drops to his side. The light from the hallway billows around him, making him look taller and broodier than he is.
I stand so that I’m not at a disadvantage.
“Did you have fun tonight?” he asks, ignoring my question. He moseys through the room, his bare feet slapping against the hardwood.
I hesitate. Did I have fun? With him, yes. But if he means all-around, including the last piece where I watched a girl Navie and Machlan hate, a girl Peck loves fawn all over him to stake her claim, then no. Not so much. They have history. Something that no amount of dancing on a bar can compete with. At least, unlike with Charlie, I was warned up front and knew I needed to pull back.
He reads my uncertainty. “I’m sorry about Molly,” he says.
“Don’t apologize for her. She’s a big girl. She knows what she’s doing.”
“You’re right,” he groans. “She does know exactly what she’s doing.”
We face each other a safe distance apart. I wonder why he doesn’t come closer—if he’s fighting the same pull to me that I’m struggling with over him.
There’s a chance I’ll never be able to be around him now and not feel this tingle, this need to be in his orbit. I’m not sure how all of this will work if I can’t shake that.
“Can I ask you a question?” I ask.
“Sure.”
“Is she always this …” I search for the right word. “Aggressive?”
“Believe it or not, she can be just as indifferent.”
He shoves his hands in his pockets. The waistband of his jeans dips, and I have to fight myself not to stare.
“Can I ask you another question?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Why do you like her?”
His eyes fire immediately. It’s like he was prepared for this question. His lips part, and I know I’m going to be given some spiel that he gives everyone about Molly. But that answer—that canned response—isn’t what I’m after.
I hold up a finger. “Whatever you’re going to say, don’t say it.”
“But I’m just tryin’ to answer the question you asked.”
“I want you to answer it,” I say, picking up a shirt and folding it. “But I want you to think about it first.”
He makes a face like he’s confused.
“You’re going to give me some practiced answer, and that’s not the answer to the question I asked.” I plop the shirt by the pillow. Turning around, I look at him directly. “I want to know why you like her for real.”
His hands slip out of his pockets, and he watches me curiously. A sober look filters his features. He looks around the room, meandering slowly until he ends at the window. Leaning against the wall, he stares into the night.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” I say softly.
“It’s fine. It’s just that no one has really asked me that before.”
“Really? No one?” It occurs to me that maybe it’s not my place to ask. “I’m sorry if I’m overstepping my bounds here—”
“You’re not.”
He doesn’t move. His body faces away from me as he stands there with his shoulder against the wall like he has all night to talk about this.
I sit on the edge of the bed. My stomach spirals with a flutter of nerves as I try to figure out what he’s thinking.
He bites his bottom lip as his gaze drifts out the window again.
“I just …” I stammer. “I just don’t understand. Clearly, you like her—even by your own admission. So there has to be something you see in her that justifies it. Not that it has to be justifiable to like someone. You can like people just because you do.”
I suck in a hasty breath.
His lip pops free of his teeth. His face becomes completely passive. It’s like he relaxes right in front of me.
The wrinkles on his forehead smoothen as his shoulders fall, and I wonder how I didn’t realize how stressed he looked before.
“It’s hard to explain,” he says softly. “It’s … complicated.”
“I think that’s pretty normal,” I offer. “I mean, I can’t really think of a relationship that I’ve ever had that’s not been complicated. Once emotions get involved, everything sort of tangles up.”
“Yeah …”
An awkward silence settles over us. The easiness that we usually enjoy is tainted somehow by the discussion of Molly.
“I told you about Charlie,” I say. “Not everyone understood our relationship, and I was fine with that.”
“What was your relationship with him like?”
“Good,” I say, picking up another shirt. “Mostly. We were together for about eighteen months. Navie really never understood our coupledom, and my mom hated him. But she hates anyone who takes potential attention away from her, so that’s not all that crazy. But anyway, no one really got why I liked him, and I couldn’t explain it. We just had over a year of experiences built up together that felt like something substantial. And it worked for me. I saw him differently because I knew the things he’d been through and fought against and his insecurities and all that.”
I fold the shirt and set it on top of the other one.
“I’m sorry he hurt you. He’s a fool.”
My heart hurts as I think of Charlie but not in a ravaged, heartbroken kind of way. I never did have that feeling with him. It was more like a betrayal that he lied to me about going on a work trip when, in reality, he was going to see his ex. Deciding while with me if the grass was actually greener on the other side. Which it was. Ouch.
“Nah, it’s okay,” I say. “He was my first serious boyfriend, so I think it meant more to me than it did to him. He had way more experiences with his first love than he did with me. Hence, my theory that first loves are always the most powerful.”
I wait for him to give me some indication of what he’s thinking. His features remain thoughtful as he presses off the wall and stands tall. But he still doesn’t come near me.
“I think you’re right in some ways,” he says. “I think the deeper your roots go with someone, the harder it is to cut that off. Even if it is sucking poison.”
My spirits fall.
His hands go back in his pockets again as the lines resurface on his forehead. “I met Molly right before the start of first grade. Her family moved in next to mine.” He wanders around the room. “My dad was a dick back then. He drank a lot and would yell and carry on. It was more emotional manipulation of my mother than anything because Vincent used to take me to the side and tell me how big and powerful we were and how all the garbage he said wasn’t true. And I knew that. I mean, we spent so much time with Nana and Pops that I kne
w nothing was wrong with Vin and me. It was that something wasn’t right with Dad.”
My chest pulls with the pain of imagining a little Peck scared or worried. I take another shirt, mostly to busy my hands.
“So, one night, Dad pulled his shit. Vincent and I had climbed out of my bedroom window and climbed the big oak tree on the border of our yard and Molly’s. We stayed until we figured Dad had passed out before coming back home and climbing through the window.” He frowns. “We weren’t in there that long before a little rapping sound knocked on my window. I turned to see this little girl with pigtails.”
I fold the fabric slowly, watching him choose his next words.
“She’d seen Vincent and I crawl through the window. She was scared.” He gulps. “I thought my dad was an asshole, but hers …” He snorts angrily. “Mine was nothing compared to hers.”
He turns and looks at me, a fire in his eyes so hot that I almost flinch.
“She kept coming back. Sometimes with bruises, other times with a swollen lip. Every time scared out of her little fucking mind of this six-foot-three-inch man who had full custody of her and her sister.”
“Peck …” I wad the fabric up in my hands. “I’m sorry.”
He smiles sadly. “Vincent and I were her safe place, you know? She’d tell us things he did and beg us not to tell.” His fists bunch at his sides. “She’d lay in my bed in her little Barbie pajamas and ask me if she deserved that.”
My eyes sting with tears as I imagine children having to deal with the things he’s alluding to. It’s not fair, and my heart breaks for them.
“I get it,” I say, my voice cracking.
“No one knows all that, so I’d appreciate it if you keep those things to yourself.”
“Of course.”
He nods. “I just … if people understood what she’s been through, maybe they’d have a little empathy for her. Maybe they’d cut her some damn slack. Or maybe not. She is a grown woman and needs to quit using that shit as an excuse.”
“That’s not really an excuse,” I say, unable to believe I’m defending the woman who was just a jerk to me. “That’s … rough.”
“Yeah. It is. It’s why she can’t connect with people. She trusts no one. She sleeps with anyone looking for someone to love her …” His face falls.
Mine does too. “But you love her,” I say cautiously.
He walks around the room. “I do. I love her. For sure. But …” He glances at me over his shoulder and stills. “Maybe not like I thought I did.”
“Oh.” My heart beats so hard I can hear it. My mouth dries like it’s swabbed in cotton. My brain sings with a mixture of hope and caution because this doesn’t mean anything.
This doesn’t mean he likes me.
“I’ve always cared about her,” he says. “Like you said, our roots run too deep not to. But it kind of became this … thing. People jumped to, ‘Oh, you love her—look at you defending her all the time,’ and I went with it. Because maybe I did. I don’t know. But looking back on it, maybe … I don’t know.” He shakes his head.
“Like you said … complicated.”
He leans against the wall again. “She deserves a lot of what she gets. As you witnessed tonight, she’s not easy to deal with. But it’s hard for me not to look at her and see the wounds that I know are there.”
“I get that. I do. And you’re a nice guy for being her friend when it’s not easy to do that.”
Bowing my head, I go back to my little pile of shirts. I fold the one in my hand, add it to the stack, and grab another.
I’m on my fifth shirt when I look up. Peck is standing right in front of me.
His lips are twisted into an unapologetic grin. I drop the shirt I’m holding onto the bed in a messy lump.
“What?” I ask, a nervous laugh woven into the word.
“I’ve had enough talking about Molly.”
“Okay.” I grin. “And?”
“I didn’t think you’d get up there with me tonight.”
“On the bar?” I raise my brows. “I’m not going to back down from a challenge.”
He laughs. “Good to know.”
My breathing matches his as he takes my hands and pulls me up. I stand in front of him, chin up so I can look into his eyes. There’s no sign of a thought of anything but me.
I gulp, energy surging through my veins so fast I think I might pass out.
He reaches out. A finger settles in beneath my chin, and he lifts it higher. I look into his eyes as he peers into mine.
I swallow carefully, not wanting to jostle his finger. The simple touch is like a match to a pile of embers deep inside me. My blood is hot as I wait for him to do something.
To kiss me.
“Thank you,” he says softly.
“For what?”
“For caring.” He smiles shyly, his finger falling from my face. “Don’t forget that I’m making you dinner tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I breathe.
“Good night, Hawkeye.”
With a final, lingering gaze, he turns toward my door.
“Night, Wesley,” I whisper.
He pauses for a moment in the doorway but doesn’t turn to look at me. He taps the wall with his palm, then makes a fist, then disappears down the hallway.
I sit on the bed again, my knees threatening to melt out from under me.
My fingers go to the spot where he touched me as I look at the doorway.
“Damn you, Peck.”
I grin, falling back into the pile of shirts stacked beside me.
Seventeen
Peck
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Vincent calls out.
I look across the parking lot of the grocery store to see my brother climbing out of his pickup truck. He slides his sunglasses off his face and tucks them into the front of his shirt.
He heads across the asphalt with a rip in the knee of his jeans that’s too straight to have been done by accident.
“You didn’t buy your jeans with a rip, did you?” I goad him.
He grins.
“Come on, Vin. You’re pussying out on me.”
He laughs, running a hand through his short hair. “They were a gift. From a very … happy woman.”
I slide my cart in the return slot and trek back to my truck.
“I just leave happy women in my wake,” he jokes. “So, really, what’s up?” He leans against the bed, his forearms resting on the rail. He toys with the handle of one of the bags. “What’s all this?”
“Nothing. Just doing a little cooking tonight.”
“This have anything to do with that hot little thing Machlan was telling me about last night?”
I unlock the driver’s side door and toss my keys in the cup holder. “When did this family turn into a bunch of gossiping assholes?”
“I dunno, but it’s better than everyone having a stick up their ass.” He laughs. “So does it?”
“Fuck you,” I say, shaking my head.
“That’s a yes. Good for you.”
A car pulls up beside Vincent. A woman who works at Carlson’s sometimes gets out. She waves at me before giving my brother a long, leisurely once-over. He nods at her in the subtlest way, as if to say, “I see you but haven’t decided if it’s worth a full nod yet.”
I sigh. “How did you even see Machlan last night? I left the bar around eleven or so, and he was still there.”
“He sent me a text after they closed, and I met him in the apartment over Crave. We just shot the shit for a while.” He fiddles with the bag again. “It’s kind of nice being back home.”
I kick at a pebble on the ground, thinking the same thing. It’s nice having him home. Sure, I have my cousins, and they’re great, but there’s a different bond between brothers.
“Where’s Sawyer?” I ask.
“Happy as a pig in shit with Nana,” he says with a laugh. “She let him have cherry pie for breakfast. Now he’s out back fixing up that treehouse in the woods.
Kid won’t want to go home.” He gazes into the distance. “He’s happy here.”
“Yeah, well, what’s not to be happy about?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I get sick of everyone every once in a while.”
“I can see that.”
“It doesn’t take long to get your fill of Lance,” he jokes. “What’s that fucker doing now, anyway? I haven’t seen him yet.”
“Still teaching. Engaged to Mariah. Adopting a kid. Living the life,” I say. “I’m sure he’ll be at Nana’s for dinner after church tomorrow.”
He nods. Pressing off the truck, he runs his hands through his hair again. “I forgot about church. Shit. I don’t think I brought anything decent for me or Sawyer to wear.”
“Nana won’t care. She’ll just be glad to have you there.”
“That’s true. She’s made it very, very clear over the past twenty-four hours that she’s happy to have us here.”
“I’m sure she is. She doesn’t get to see you or Blaire enough. Speaking of Blaire, she’s coming home for a visit too I heard.”
“I haven’t seen her in forever.” He kicks at the ground, his smile faltering. “How’s Nana? Really?”
“What do you mean?”
His shoulders rise and fall as a storm brews inside his eyes. “I mean, she looks good. She is good, right?”
Concern is stretched over his face as he awaits my response. Guilt too—the regret of a grandson who hasn’t been around a lot.
“She’s okay,” I say. “We take good care of her. Have a system. I do her medicines, and Machlan takes her for her hair appointment and shopping. Walker fixes shit. Lance pays her bills. Sienna, Mariah, and Hadley help with housework as much as she’ll let them. You know how she is.” I shrug. “But … she’s getting old. You know that.”
Just saying that out loud pummels me. I never thought about a life without Nana. And then she had a heart attack and seeing her in that hospital bed struck a chord inside me that I haven’t been able to shake.
She was so pale. So … lifeless. I watched her lay there with those monitors beeping, the only thing that let me know she was alive and prayed. I told God I’d do whatever he asked of me if he just let Nana be all right.
Crazy: Gibson Boys Book #4 Page 13