Something to Prove

by Kimberly Lang

  Shock, outrage, a touch of insult . . . The reactions played across her face. “No?”

  “Don’t get all offended. Believe me when I say I want to, but I’m not sure we should get this thing rocking too much. It seems sturdy enough, but it’s probably best not to risk it.”

  She frowned. “Hmm. It does seem like a good way to get tetanus, too. It’s certainly rusty enough. Boy, the wisdom that comes with age puts a real damper on the idea of reliving your youth.”

  It didn’t make sense, nor did it speak highly of his maturity levels, but the thought of Helena bringing him to a place where she’d had sex as a teenager just didn’t sit right. Aside from the ick factor, his feelings also smacked of jealousy, which he really didn’t like admitting.

  “You know, we’d come out here—me, Tate, Paulie, Sid, Jack Wilson sometimes—to drink and hang out. It was like our own private clubhouse. At the same time, I always thought it was a very romantic spot, and I would have these silly daydreams about bringing a boy out here for a picnic under the stars.”

  “But you never did?”

  She snorted. “None of the guys I dated were really the romantic-picnic sort. So . . .”

  “I’m flattered I made the cut.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself too much. Your competition isn’t exactly stiff. Look at the guys I dated.”

  He searched the back of his brain, and the results did—without any egotism needed—put him at the top of the list. “Well . . .”

  “Exactly,” she said. “I swear, if there was a loser in a twenty-mile radius of Magnolia Beach, I could find him. I had pretty low standards back then.”

  “Why?”

  “Because none of the high-quality boys from ‘good’ families were interested in me. Aim low and you don’t get disappointed, you know.”

  “You should have aimed higher. You probably could have had your pick.”

  She took a drink and shook her head. “No way.”

  “You might have been bad and scary, but the boys would have tripped all over themselves to get to you if you’d given them the tiniest bit of encouragement.”

  “Oh please.”

  “It’s true.” Helena shot him a look, so he added, “Did you ever try?”

  She thought for a moment. “Guess not. I just assumed. My self-esteem wasn’t real high back then.”

  Funny how she lacked self-esteem when everyone else thought she was überconfident. Funny how I work with teenagers and am just now figuring that out about her. “So what about that guy you ran off with?”

  “Charlie? Oh, now, he was a doozie. He fed me a bunch of lies, but they were exactly what I wanted to hear.” She leaned back and stacked her hands behind her head. “Things had gotten really tense here, with everyone always expecting me to screw up or do something terrible. I was unhappy and looking for a way out of town. I wouldn’t admit that to anyone, though. Charlie told me all about the houseboat he had on Lake Lanier, the cool apartment in Atlanta, and all the great parties he went to. It sounded amazing. Completely different from the life I had and exactly the life I wanted. I thought I’d landed in a fairy tale and the prince had come to take me away.” She sighed.

  He had to admit that would be attractive to most any small-town girl. “But wasn’t he working as a hand on one of the charter boats?”

  She laughed. “Yes, and the wisdom of my age now tells me that detail was a big warning sign. But at the time, I believed him when he said he was just doing something he’d always wanted to do. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I was twenty years old, living in a Podunk town, with nothing but more of the same on the horizon. Logic didn’t figure into the decision much. I wanted to believe, so I did.”

  “And?”

  “And, it only took about three days for me to find out it was all BS, but by then I was already in Rome, Georgia, with no car, no money. . . . I left him a month later.”

  “Why didn’t you just come home?”

  “Pride, of course.” She chuckled. “It’s a dangerous thing. And that was all I really had left. I wasn’t going to slink back home in shame, looking like a fool. I decided then that I wouldn’t come back to Magnolia Beach until I could come back under my own terms with my head held high.”

  “And how has that worked out for you?”

  “I think it worked out pretty well. I’ve built myself a good life, started my own business. I’ve got no reason to be ashamed of who I am now.”

  “You’re right.” When she smiled at him, he added, “So why do you act as though you are?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re certainly still worried about what people think.”

  “Old habits die hard,” she confessed. “And let’s face it, I’m still cleaning up the debris of who I was then. It’s not just the trouble I caused, either, although that would have been bad enough. I could have been kinder to people. I always had a bit of an attitude, I fully admit that, but I could’ve been less defensive and angry and reactionary.”

  “But it’s understandable, considering what you went through with your mother.”

  An eyebrow went up. “Please don’t try to psychoanalyze me.”

  “You’re saying that didn’t screw you up?”

  “I’m saying that I don’t need an amateur armchair psychologist. I’m well aware of my issues and problems and their manifestations, but that’s in my past.”

  “From what I see, it’s still in your present.”

  Helena’s spine stiffened. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You still seem very concerned with what people think of you.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t care.”

  “You keep saying that, but it’s not ringing true. You keep saying that I’ll somehow suffer fallout from being with you, but it’s only because of what people say and think about you. I think you care very much and it makes you mad.”

  Instead of answering to that, she deflected the statement. “I think you’re thinking too much about this.”

  “Well, I’m not the only one. Tate says—”

  Helena’s eyes widened. “Tate? You and Tate are talking about me?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, realizing his mistake in admitting that a second too late. “He worries about you.”

  “Tate needs to worry about the impact of his own hellish childhood and butt the hell out of my issues,” she snapped.

  “At least you admit you do have issues.”

  That made her mad. “I’m not having this conversation.” Helena pushed to her feet and grabbed the rope attached to the trapdoor, pulling it closed with a bang and nearly bashing him in the head with it in the process.

  Grabbing her pack, she was halfway down the ladder before he could blink. “Where are you—”

  “I’m leaving. I didn’t sign up for Psych 101 with Mayor Tanner, and I refuse to participate.” From the bottom of the ladder, she looked up at him. “Now, unless you’re sure you can find your way out of here on your own, you’d be smart to follow. Silently,” she warned.

  Jesus. “Helena, wait.” Even jumping the last few feet off the ladder, Helena was outside before Ryan’s feet hit the ground. He ducked out the door and jogged to catch up with her. Damn, she could move fast when she wanted to. Finally, he managed to grab her arm. “What is the problem?”

  “I’m tired of fighting with you.”

  “I wasn’t trying to pick a fight.”

  “Well, you succeeded nonetheless.” She shook off his hand and started walking again, almost making it to her car before he caught her.

  “How? I’m just trying to understand you. Why is that bad?”

  “Then understand this. All I want is acceptance. A simple ‘live and let live.’ Not understanding or tolerance or even forgiveness. Just acceptance. I thought you had that much figu
red out about me. I am who I am, and that’s because of who I was.”

  “So I can’t even be curious about what makes you tick?”

  “Only if it goes both ways.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  This conversation had gone way off course. “What?”

  “Fair’s fair, right? Riddle me this, then,” she challenged. “Why, when you’ve had every advantage possible in life handed to you, have you never left the pissant little town you grew up in? What are you afraid of? Is life outside Magnolia Beach’s town limits too scary, or is the pond out there just too big for the little fishy?”

  Helena knew how to go right for the jugular with uncanny accuracy. “Whoa, there. Let’s not . . .”

  “Aw,” she mocked, “it’s not fun when people go poking into your psyche uninvited, is it?”

  “I wasn’t trying to poke. I’m not going to deny that I’m interested in what makes you tick, but that’s only because I happen to care about you.” He shouted it to keep from shaking her.

  Helena pulled back as if he’d slapped her. After a confused second, she asked, all the heat gone from her voice, “How can you possibly care about me? You barely know me.”

  It seemed he’d hit her in a sensitive place without even trying. That made him feel a little better about his declaration. And since he had already made the big step, he had no reason to pull the punch now. He shrugged. “But the fact remains that I do.”

  Helena was silent for a long while, and it made him very nervous. “That’s probably a big mistake.”

  “I’m willing to take that chance.” It felt like he’d thrown down a gauntlet with that statement, and in a way, he probably had. The words just hung there in the air between them, and he realized he was very worried about what she might say next.

  * * *

  She was standing in the middle of the Nevilles’ back forty, in the middle of the night, with a good chance someone might pop off a shot in their direction at any moment, with Ryan Tanner confessing he cared about her just minutes after she’d yelled at him for butting casually into her psyche like he had some kind of right to do so. And to top it all off, Ryan was staring her down in a way that made her terribly antsy and uncomfortable.

  Because he said he cared about her.

  And while she couldn’t quite believe that—they were little more than friends with benefits, after all—the fact that he thought he might was a big problem. But it wasn’t the biggest.

  The biggest problem was that she might believe it. And if she did, she might end up returning the sentiment.

  And she simply couldn’t let herself care for him. That was just a disaster waiting to happen. He might be blithely ignoring what was being said about them—about him—but she couldn’t. For his sake, she had to care about that. He had no idea what was waiting for those who stepped outside the lines. Her earlier conversation with Shelby came back to her. She’d pushed it aside, not wanting to think about it, but if Ryan cared about her—or thought he did—then Shelby might have a point. It was one thing to have a fling and go your separate ways, but if this became more for him . . .

  No wonder Shelby was running interference.

  The only reason all this worried her was because it meant she was already starting to care about him, and that was just a bad idea no matter how she looked at it. When this thing ran its course, she didn’t want to end up hurt.

  This was just insane. A recipe for disaster. And since she was the new-and-improved Helena Wheeler, she wouldn’t leave that kind of debris behind again. She got in the car, and after a moment, Ryan got in the passenger side. She could feel him watching her as she pulled out, but it was easier now that she didn’t have to look directly at him. But he wasn’t saying anything, letting his words just hang there ominously as if he were waiting for her to make up her mind about what she wanted to say. As she turned onto his street, she raked up her courage to say what needed to be said. “You know, now might be a good time to end this. Before anyone gets hurt.”

  “What?” She could tell he hadn’t been expecting that.

  In his driveway, she shifted into park and faced him, forcing a polite smile and an even tone. “It’s been fun, and I do really appreciate everything—the dinners, the conversations, the work on Grannie’s house, all of it. But since this can’t go anywhere anyway, why stir so much up? It’ll just be harder for you in the long run. And for me, too. The simple fact is that I’ll have to make more trips to Magnolia Beach in the future, and there’s no sense setting those up for failure.”

  It sounded both reasonable and mature to her ears, but Ryan didn’t look like he was buying it. “So is this really about me? Or you?”

  She could answer that truthfully. “Both. I’m a big believer in quitting while I’m ahead.”

  “You forget I’m a football coach. Quitting while you’re ahead is a good way to end up losing in the end.”

  “I’m not the one with something to lose. You are. You’re the one who has to live here.”

  “You keep saying that, but you touched on something earlier without making the most important connection of all. I am a big fish in the tiny Magnolia Beach pond. With that comes the luxury of not having to explain myself or worry too much about what other people think.”

  “That’s a little arrogant.” Unsurprising, but arrogant.

  “Yes, but it’s also the truth. Why do you think I came back to Magnolia Beach? It’s not that life was too scary out there. It’s that I didn’t like feeling unimportant. Call it arrogance or a character flaw of some sort, but I chose to come home so I could take advantage of what I have here. I’m not going to deny I like the benefits.”

  Could she blame him? She’d probably like Magnolia Beach, too, if everyone liked and respected her. He wanted to come home to quit feeling unimportant. She wanted to leave for exactly the same reason.

  “But you can’t reap all those benefits if people lose respect for you. You need their support. I know you have all kinds of great ideas for Magnolia Beach, and I know you were getting pushback even before I came to town. If you piss these people off, or give them any reason to question you, they’ll fight you just because they can. Trust me, I know.”

  “I doubt that.” She shook her head, meaning to interrupt him, but he put his hand on her arm before she could. His voice softened. “I like you, Helena. And I think, contrary to your protestations, that you like me, too. So what’s the problem?”

  “You know the problem.” She couldn’t keep the sigh out of her voice. Damn, she was tired. Tired of fighting the world. Tired of trying.

  “No problem is unfixable. It just takes time and a little effort.” He smiled at her, and that smile nearly had her folding like a cheap card table.

  “I don’t have the luxury of time, and I don’t want to put in any more effort. Which is why I really do think it’s better to just end this now. That way, we can still part friends.”

  “Friends? I think we’re more than just friends.”

  Stand strong. “I’m sorry if I’ve misled you somehow.” At least the lie sounded better than it felt saying it. It’s for the best.

  The look on Ryan’s face morphed into something inscrutable, and she had no idea what he might be thinking. Then he nodded once and got out without speaking.

  It was odd and somehow deflating. She didn’t know what to make of either feeling.

  But she did know it sucked.

  Which meant it had been the right thing to do.

  Chapter 16

  The next few days passed mostly uneventfully, which was good. Grannie was showing real signs of improvement and getting stronger every day, and Helena began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. She still had help coming in from Grannie’s friends, even though it was less necessary now than in the early days, and she was almost caught up on work again. She’d even taken on some new clients to replace the
ones she’d lost.

  Of course, she had a lot more time on her hands now to work. Celibacy certainly freed up large blocks of her schedule.

  It made her antsy, though. She’d seen Ryan a couple of times in town, but he hadn’t done more than nod in her general direction. On the one hand, that was exactly what was supposed to happen, but on the other . . . No one wanted to be so easily forgotten.

  The more it bothered her, the more she knew she’d made the right decision. The achy feeling in her stomach would pass as soon as she got Ryan out of her system. It didn’t help, though, that every time she took a break, she’d look for a text from him. And on top of that, the evenings seemed longer and more boring now that she wasn’t trying to see him.

  It was enough to make her keep the cooler on the porch filled with alcohol. Too bad it’s too early in the day to start drinking. She shook off the self-pity and focused on the banner she was designing for Lannie Hanley’s flower shop’s Web page. Lannie was the third hometown client she’d picked up, and while they were small jobs, it made Grannie very happy to see her working with local businesses.

  She jumped when her phone beeped as a text came in. Tate. Speaking of things that require alcohol . . .

  U still mad?

  She’d called Tate the day after that night at the lighthouse, planning to chew him a new one for butting in where he didn’t belong and discussing her with Ryan. Her anger, though, had opened a pressure valve for Tate, and the conversation had devolved rapidly into a shouting match over who belonged in whose business, who had hurt whom more, and God only knew what else. The bad thing about fighting with someone you knew that well was that all kinds of stuff could be dug up and flung around, and you both knew where to aim for the hardest hits. All the things Tate had been holding in for years came out, and it had gotten ugly.

  Intellectually, she knew it would be good in the long run to have all those things said, and that their friendship would be stronger going forward with all the old hurts healed, but it had been really hard at the time to hear them.

  But this was Tate, and that alone made it impossible to stay mad.