“Yeah, that sounds like the likes of me all right,” Glory muttered. “Disorderly and disturbing,” she said darkly, pulling her arm back again. “And charging me sure sounds like the likes of you.”
He sighed. “C’mon, Glory. Dammit. Put that rock down. Don’t throw that thing.”
The irony was that she had assembled a little pile of rocks, which were neatly lined up next to her, and he suspected that when she’d finished throwing that collection, she’d be done. If that didn’t sum up Glory, he didn’t know what did.
She turned around and she lowered her throwing arm, but she didn’t let go of the rock just yet.
He’d never known her to do anything violent, per se, to anyone else unless it was in defense of someone she loved. Or herself, of course, he thought, remembering that she’d bitten old Leather Vest.
But she was in a mood tonight he could truthfully say he’d never witnessed. It was a dark, ironic mood.
“Okay, I’m gonna ask you something I never thought I’d ask anyone. Why are you throwing rocks at a billboard, Glory?”
She didn’t answer for a moment. “Felt mean. Felt like throwing something. Thought I might like to throw something at their smug . . . fluffy . . . faces.”
She spun and hurled that rock like a minor league pitcher. BAM.
It didn’t really answer his question.
“I see,” he said carefully. “Alcohol improve your aim any?”
He saw her mouth twitch up at the corner. Albeit sardonically. “Not so’s I’ve noticed. Can’t throw hard enough to make a hole in that thing, anyway, though I’d love to. I’ve been aiming for that middle guy’s glasses. You know I’ve got good aim.”
“I do know that.”
“Remember that time I got the window out of that abandoned house three miles up Whiskey Creek in one throw?”
“Still kick your butt at horseshoes, though.”
“As if,” she muttered. She hurled the rock in her hand, missed, and bent down to pick up another one.
“Hey, I thought I heard you were going out with that Hollywood guy tonight.”
He hadn’t actually heard that. He was fishing. And he knew full well that was not a professional question, and it was off topic. But she might just be drunk enough to answer it, and he didn’t get to where he was today without knowing an opening when he saw it.
“Franco?” she said so airily and affectionately Eli’s back molars immediately ground together. He was amazed he didn’t emit sparks. “Nope. Not tonight. Gave me his card, though. Wants to take me to dinner.”
She hurled another one and missed entirely. “Crap,” she said softly. And picked up another rock. “What about you and Blondie McBlonderson, Eli? You got a thing going there?”
He gave a short, stunned laugh. But he was suddenly encouraged. “Bethany?”
“Yeah. If you say so. You like her?”
He hesitated. “Yeah,” he said truthfully.
Glory didn’t reply. But she’d frozen with the rock in her hand, like an Olympic shot-putter.
“Hey, Glory? Why don’t you take a break and sit down beside me for a second?”
She turned to look at him assessingly. Rock still clutched.
“Just as friends. Not gonna cuff you.”
He pushed the cruiser’s passenger side door open. Tipped his head toward his shoulder beckoningly.
She narrowed her eyes at him, assessing the truth of this.
And she set the rock down neatly in the pile as if that was where it belonged and climbed into his car, pulling the door shut behind her.
They sat there quietly for a moment.
It was suddenly just them and the night. And the crickets starting up.
And if he’d been asked for his definition of heaven right then and there, damned if he wouldn’t say Glory, and the night, and the crickets starting up.
“Comfy seat,” she murmured finally, sounding surprised. She fumbled around next to it, then adjusted it and leaned way way back, making herself at home.
He adjusted his in the same way.
Now they were both leaning back and staring at The Baby Owls billboard as if it was a drive-in movie. There was a splotch on the middle guys’ glasses that hadn’t been there before. She did have good aim.
“Want to tell me the reason you felt mean enough to throw rocks at a billboard? I know you’ve had a rough week. Enough to make anyone want to throw things.”
She didn’t answer for quite some time.
“You must think throwing rocks at a billboard is ridiculous,” she said finally.
“Well, yeah. But I might change my mind when I hear your reason.”
She quirked her mouth. And sighed. “Mostly . . . it’s something Eden Harwood said.” She said it with a hint of bleakness he’d never before heard in her voice, which made his heart feel wrung like a washrag.
This was about the last thing he’d expected her to say. Primarily because Eden Harwood and Glory Greenleaf, while both perfectly lovely women, were as different as two women could get, and he didn’t think they spoke to each other at all.
“Something Eden Harwood said to you? Or about you?”
“Yeah.”
“Want to start from the beginning?”
She tucked a wayward hair behind her ear, and took a deep breath. “Well, I asked Glenn if I could open for The Baby Owls.” She glanced at him swiftly.
“Damn. That’s a great idea.” He realized he had his fingers crossed for her, worried about the second half of her sentence.
“But their manager told Glenn something like ‘who the fuck is Glory Greenbean?’ So in other words, nope.”
He was instantly incensed on her behalf. “Guy sounds like an asshole.” That could explain her choice of targets tonight.
She almost smiled at that. “Glenn thinks so. So I was a little bummed about that. And when I got off work at the Misty Cat for the day and was walking down Main Street, I stopped to pet the little black-and-white cat outside the flower shop—”
“Peace and Love?”
“Yeah, Peace and Love. And you know little Annelise Harwood, right? She’s just a doll, that little girl, isn’t she?” She turned questioning eyes up at Eli. All at once his thoughts careened off track, and he could imagine a little girl with Glory’s eyes and cheekbones and his chin dimple running up to him when he came home at night.
“Mmmhmm,” he said faintly, shocked.
“Well, she came out of the flower shop, and we started talking. She sang me a song she wrote about a boy—it was a great song, Eli, heartfelt and super funny—and I told her that if she came into the Misty Cat I’d sit with her and we could put chords to it. I taught myself and I could teach her. Don’t you think?” She sounded almost defiant.
“Sure. Of course you could,” he said, a little startled.
“And then Eden came outside to see who Annelise was talking to. And you know, I’ve known Eden Harwood for practically my whole life. But you should have seen how she . . . how she looked at me. I guess she thought I would spray Greenleaf over Annelise like I’m some kind of skunk.”
She was trying to be flippant. But her voice cracked on the last word.
Eli closed his eyes. That crack in her voice might as well have been the sound of his own heart breaking.
“And she said . . . she said . . . She doesn’t want her daughter hanging around with the ‘likes of me.’ The ‘likes of me.’ That’s funny, isn’t it? Like there’s a whole army of me invading the town like the zombies on The Walking Dead. The likes of me. The likes of me.” She gave a short, dark laugh. “I might be a little drunk.”
And he couldn’t say a word. He was speechless from just imagining how that must have hurt.
“She’s one to talk, right, Eli? Getting knocked up and no one knows who the daddy is and she won’t say. I for one would never judge a person for that. Look at my own sister, Michelle. But everyone knows the Harwoods. ‘Good people.’ That’s what they all say. People divide you up li
ke that, don’t they, early on? Good people and bad people. And that’s all you get to be, forever. Unless you leave Hellcat Canyon. And if you can’t leave, then you’re kinda fucked.”
He sat with this a moment, thinking it through. She wasn’t, unfortunately, completely wrong.
“You want my opinion?” he said finally.
“Sure,” she said dryly. “Lay it on me, Eli.”
“Okay,” he began. “Maybe Eden’s extra protective of her little girl because she’s a single mom. She’s got a lot to lose now. I think I have a sense for what it was like for my mom when my dad died and there was just me and my sister and her. Your mom probably felt the same way when your dad died, when he was gone. We don’t know what kind of hurts are in Eden’s past because she isn’t telling. And maybe she feels like she was a bad girl. Like she made her mistakes. None of us gets a roadmap when we’re born. Maybe it all feels precarious to her, and . . . I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess I’m mostly saying I’m sorry she hurt you, Glory, and I wish she hadn’t.”
Glory was clearly mulling this. And then she sighed.
“I can kind of see it,” she said finally, softly. “I might have done the same thing, if Annelise was my little girl. It’s just Eden got me on a bad day in a bad week. But hell, maybe she’s right. Maybe I’m just a late bloomer and the badness will come out later, after husband number six or jail term three.”
“You better get started on both. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
She snorted.
“You want to know what I think, Glory? None of that will ever happen to you. Ever. You’ve been surrounded your whole life by people who indulged every impulse they ever had, whether it was good or bad or smart or stupid. They don’t stop to think about how consequences ripple out, like when a rock is chucked into the Whiskey Creek. Or how it might affect you. But you . . . you think things through.”
That was risky. She had a huge blind spot when it came to her family, but he just couldn’t seem to give up trying to show her what was in it.
She’d frozen as if he’d caught her in the act of something.
And then all at once something occurred to him. “Wait . . . that’s why you’re still here, isn’t it? Who needs the money?”
He was furious on her behalf but he did a brilliant job of not showing it.
She didn’t answer for a moment. “I gave the money I saved to Mom. She needed help with the mortgage. Because . . .”
He groaned and closed his eyes. Fucking Jonah. Jonah must have been paying the mortgage. How could someone they both loved, and who loved them, do something like that?
“Good God, Glory,” he said weakly.
If he’d known that would happen to her, would he have done it any other way?
He couldn’t speak. He probably didn’t know the answer.
“Hey, Eli?” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“What do you think of the likes of me?” She sounded half teasing, half tentative. “Do you think I’m a bad girl?”
“Are you asking me a serious question?”
“Kinda. No. I mean. Yes. Okay, yes I am. I’m asking you a serious question. Though I might be a little drunk,” she half warned, half explained, again, in the manner of drunk people since time immemorial.
“Hmmm . . . What do I think of the likes of you . . . I think someone had to be the linchpin in your family and you decided that person was going to be you. But you took that on and you held it together and that is who you are. And I think, sometimes, you like it when people think you’re bad. Because that way they can’t get to you. The way roses like to think they’re badass for growing thorns, when really . . . they’re fragile. But they’re always worth risking a little bloodshed. And they can’t hurt you if you know how to handle them. Or . . . or . . . where to touch them.”
She’d gone so still it was as though she’d stopped breathing. And then she turned to him.
And her expression about yanked his heart right out of his chest like a lasso.
He surreptitiously drew in a long, long breath to replace the one she’d just stolen.
Suddenly, swiftly, gracefully, she slid into his lap, straddling him, and looped her arms around his neck.
Not quite what he’d expected.
“It’s possible I didn’t think this through,” she murmured. After a moment.
During which he didn’t take a single breath.
The blood his brain needed for forming words rapidly defected to his nether regions and his hands were now sliding up beneath her shirt of their own accord, because what sane man wouldn’t do that?
Oh God.
The place where their groins met was about a thousand degrees. His brain might as well be pudding. Everything else on him was hard and getting harder by the second.
And for a moment they just breathed. And he could feel, almost could taste her breath, and then his lips brushed against hers, and the soft give of them almost did him in.
Someone moaned softly.
Maybe they both did.
Oh, dear God. He swallowed and tipped his forehead against hers.
“Glory . . . I’m on duty and I’m an off . . . off . . . icer . . . of the law . . .”
He stopped his hands from traveling upward any farther than her waist with a control that felt wildly unnatural, bordering on the absurd. The silk of her skin was the most decadent thing his senses had ever known.
She shifted a little again, quite deliberately. Lust drove a spike right down through him. He heard the catch in her throat, too. He wanted to shove his hands down into the tempting gap in the waistband of her jeans and cup her cool smooth ass and grind her against him, his mouth on hers, until they both came explosively and loudly, like rabid, sex-starved teenagers. He suspected it would take mere seconds, even through their clothes, the way he was feeling now.
Sweat actually began to bead his temples.
“That’s not your gun, Eli,” she whispered.
An inordinate amount of time seemed to pass before he could get a sound out.
“Nope.” His voice was about two octaves lower and his answer was more a gasp than a word.
And for a few seconds they didn’t say a thing.
He had what he’d always wanted: Glory in his arms. But what kind of man would he be if he took advantage of her right now, when she was drunk and hurting?
A smart one! his penis informed him.
His brain and his very soul knew, damn them anyway, better.
“Glory.” His voice was a rasp. He cleared it. His breathing was ragged, but he got the words out. “You’ve had a shitty day and you’re hurting and you want to feel better and God knows sex will accomplish that and God knows I want that, too. But I just . . . I know you’ll hate me and yourself for it tomorrow. These aren’t the right reasons.”
He could feel her stop breathing because his hands were still on her.
Her eyes narrowed assessingly.
And then she spoke. “I think you’re scared.” She all but hissed it.
He froze. It was the last thing he expected to hear, about the worst thing anyone could say to him, and the best way to light his temper on fire.
Glory knew how to fight dirty.
“Watch it, Glory.” His tone was all even, flat warning.
As far as she was concerned he’d just layered more hurt and rejection over her hurt and rejection.
“You’re scared. Of losing control. Of being baaaaad,” she mocked. “Of people thinking you might be bad. You do all that thinking so you don’t have to ever take a chance. I mean, you’ve got your laws, officer, to tell you what to do and what not to do. What else do you need? Chicken.”
“Glory, you don’t know what the hell—”
In a single abrupt movement she flung herself off his lap and shouldered the door of his car open and all but toppled from the car. She staggered a bit to get her footing, her arms pinwheeling, and it might have been funny if he hadn’t been so furious. She
stalked off into the dark walking backward.
“Don’t you dare follow me, deputy sheriff,” she growled.
Glory would make her way home safely. Her temper would singe everything in her path.
But he was going to follow her surreptitiously anyway, just to make sure.
“Wouldn’t dream of it! Tell Mr. Hollywood I said hi!” he shouted after her.
“HE HAS A NAME.”
“What is it? JACK Q. ASS?” he yelled after her.
“Yeah, and the ‘Q’ stands for CUTE!” she bellowed with a stomp of her foot and a melodramatic flail of her arms.
“Jesus, what are you, nine years old?”
Which was basically the pot calling the kettle black at this point.
He heard her blackly mutter something in reply he probably didn’t want to hear.
“Fuck fuck FUCK.” His words reverberated all through his empty car and the third FUCK about shredded his throat from the volume as he pulled his door shut.
He’d gone from feeling hypnotized by lust to feeling blackly livid and faintly ridiculous, sitting here alone in the car with a huge erection. He’d get the emotional bends at this rate.
He flung himself back in his seat and gave a dark, ironic laugh.
She was so damn smart, and boy did she know him, in all his strengths and vulnerabilities: his reasons for shutting down hot front-seat sex weren’t all noble. She’d closed in on a truth he’d prefer to hide even from himself, because he didn’t know how to master it.
He was afraid . . . of not being enough for her. And of having her and then losing her to someone like Francone, and frankly . . . he didn’t know how he’d get over that.
But how could he ever tell her something like that?
And he’d probably just driven her into Francone’s arms.
This was his punishment for carving their initials on the damn Eternity Oak all those years ago. See, Glory? He wished he could shout after her. This is what happens when you don’t think things through. This ceaseless existential torment. The never-satisfied boner. A yearning that felt like your insides were being steadily stretched on a rack.
He felt like he’d said some of the right things. But he could never seem to say the right thing.
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