by Penny Reid
“What happened?” Jethro asked, bringing my attention back to him. To my surprise, the ever-present smirky smile had been replaced with a sober stare. “She’s been crying all day. What happened?”
Ugh. His words were a sucker punch, and I momentarily lost my breath. “Is she okay?”
Jethro shrugged, and he seemed to be gritting his teeth. “You tell me.”
I closed my eyes, leaning back in the booth. “It was stupid. I should apologize.” The words felt and sounded hollow, likely due to the fact that I didn’t believe them.
It wasn’t stupid. I didn’t wish to apologize. She’d made it clear I had no say or vote when it came to her safety, or her life, or any of her decisions, and that too, had felt like a sucker punch.
“Please elaborate on ‘stupid,’” Cletus said.
I opened my eyes and stared at my beer. My eyes were too tired to focus, so I rubbed them with my fists. “It was never going to work out, and I was stupid to think it would.”
“Why was it ‘never going to work out’? Do you have access to a prophesy on the subject? Did a soothsayer approach you on the ides of July?” Cletus asked.
I chuckled, but the sound lacked humor. “No, Cletus. It’s like . . .”
“What?” Jethro tapped the table, bringing my attention back to him and his sober stare. “What is it like?”
“It’s like, she’s too easy.”
The Winston brothers frowned in unison, then looked at each other, then looked at me. But it was Cletus who spoke. “Did you just call Raquel Ezra ‘easy’?”
“Not like that. I mean, being around her feels easy, effortless.”
Cletus stroked his long, bushy beard. “I fail to comprehend the problem. Are you saying that Ms. Ezra is too accommodating of your personality failings and therefore you feel she isn’t worth knowing? That seems like what the kids these days would call ‘problematic.’”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You called her ‘easy.’” Cletus gave me a meaningful look.
“What I’m saying is, being with her feels natural. She never asks for too much from me.” I went to drink from my beer but found the bottle empty. “Like I don’t have to watch my words, I don’t have to change anything about myself, I don’t need to make room for her or think about what I say before I say it. There’s no compromise, no give and take. She’s easy to be with. We click. We have fun.”
“And you don’t trust easy?” Jethro guessed, no judgment in his tone. He twisted in his seat to gesture toward Patty at the bar for another round.
“No. I guess I don’t. Everything I have worth having, everything that’s lasted, I’ve worked hard for. I’m not—” I had to clear my throat before continuing with the admission “—I’m not naturally good at anything.”
“Elaborate on that,” Cletus said, looking truly interested.
“Just, everything. In high school I was a C-plus/B-minus student, and I studied all the time. All the time. I practiced the oboe every day from freshman year to senior year and still sucked at it. I’m just getting passable now.”
“You still play?” Cletus perked up.
“Course I do.”
“Huh. How come I didn’t know this?” Cletus seemed to be inspecting me closer. “You should play at the jam session some time.”
“Uh, no. I’m not that good, and I don’t think an oboe would fit in.”
“Never know unless you try,” Jethro said under his breath.
“But I’m careful about what I try, Jethro. There’s no use trying unless I’m committed to seeing it all the way through. I don’t—can’t—try unless I know I have the time to dedicate, to invest. Whatever it is, it’s going to take years before it pays off, and even then, I still only get to about a B minus in skill.”
Jethro stared at me for a long moment, his smirky smile returning in full force. “Jackson James, do you feel sorry for yourself?”
“No. Not at all. I just know what I am and what I lack.”
“Then what the hell is wrong with you? You have an amazing woman who is in love with you. She’s in love with you, and you’re sitting here with us, whining about being a B-minus student. What is wrong with this picture?”
I also leaned forward, a sudden spike of anger making me speak before pondering my words. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me, Jethro. I walk in last night and find the door open and unlocked and the alarm off. And then I find Rae on the floor of the bathroom, crying because she thought Sienna was one of her stalkers—like the guy who broke into her old house in LA with rope and zip ties, an ex-con she barely escaped from who had an arrest record three miles long, most of which stemmed from domestic abuse and sexual assault.”
Jethro leaned back, and it appeared I now had his full attention.
“And these last months have been nothing but death at work. So many overdoses, a kidnap victim found dead in the park, and today a three-car pileup with a teenager gone before her time. Do you know how many crime scenes I’ve been to where I find a victim crying on a bathroom floor? Hiding from their attacker? Do you know all the paths innocents take to get there? Do you have any idea what went through my mind when I saw Rae last night?”
“I reckon I have some idea,” he said quietly.
“Then do you know what she told me when I asked her to consider going back to LA, for her own safety?”
He shook his head.
“She told me I had no say. She told me I was overreacting. She told me her life was hers, and my life was mine. She makes her own decisions, she does not need me or anyone else making them with or for her.” I lowered my gaze to the table and found someone had placed a new beer in front of me. I grabbed it and drank it, thirstier than I’d been ten minutes ago.
“And that made you mad?” Jethro guessed. “Rae doesn’t want you ordering her around and so you left?”
I got the sense he didn’t quite believe his words—that I’d ordered her around—but rather was trying to play devil’s advocate, help me see her side.
As such, my temper cooled, and I worked to pull in a deep breath. “No. I left because it was time to go to work. But I meant what I said, it’s not going to work out between us. Rae doesn’t want a say in my life either.” I let Jethro see the starkness I felt about this subject. “She wants easy and fun, not hard work and not compromise, not connection. I was raised to believe a relationship is a partnership. Love means taking a person’s wishes into account when you make decisions. I want to take her wishes into account, I want to change my life to make room for her. But I’m not going to push her to make room for me. I can’t make her want to have a say in my life.”
“Hmm.” Jethro covered his hand with his mouth, studying me. “You make good points.”
“He does,” Cletus agreed. “You see now why we’re best friends?”
“I do. But Jackson—” Jethro frowned at his bottle and picked the label “—what have you done to make room for Rae? How have you changed your life for her?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Humor me,” Jethro said, drawing my stare.
I saw he was serious, so I said, “I’ve been looking into the requirements for transferring or applying to LA County as a deputy sheriff.”
“What?” Cletus’s question was sharp. “You’re leaving Green Valley?”
Jethro ignored his brother’s outburst. “Did you tell her this?”
I shook my head. “What’s the point? Like I said, I’m not going to force her to make room for me. She has to want it.”
He paused, seemed to consider my question, then asked, “Do you love her?”
I didn’t hesitate. “I do.”
“Then you have to tell her all this.” Jethro leaned forward, his stare intent. “You have to spell it out, just like you did with me and Cletus. You have to lay it all out and ask her to make room for you. You’re right, you can’t force it, or demand it, but you can ask. And tell her how you’re making plans to ma
ke room for her.”
I considered what the oldest Winston brother suggested, but before I could make up my mind one way or the other, Cletus drummed his fingers on the table to get my attention. “Let me see if I have this straight, being with Rae is easy. You feel like you don’t even need to work for the grade.”
“That’s an odd way of putting it, but yeah. Continuing with the same analogy, being with her is like taking a college course with no papers and no exams, where the entire grade is based on participation. But, like I said, I want—”
“You want the hard stuff, the papers and the exams, yes, yes. We are aware. But let me finish this thought. Time spent with Rae is easy, and therefore it’s not a grade worth earning?” Cletus asked.
“More like, it’s not a grade I feel like I can trust to . . .”
“To?” Jethro prompted.
“To stay on my transcript. If I don’t work for something, how can it be mine? How can I deserve it?”
A glimmer of respect shone in Jethro’s gaze. “I get that,” he said, and I sensed he told the truth.
“Then allow me to pose the following question—” Cletus turned to the side and said to his brother “—and bear with me, Jethro.” Facing me again, he said, “Did you work for Ashley?”
“What do you mean?”
“When y’all were teenagers, was she a struggle?”
“No. Being around her was—” I snapped my mouth shut before I could say the word, gritting my teeth. In typical Cletus fashion, he’d led me down the road before I’d realized we were going anywhere.
It didn’t matter because he finished the thought. “Easy, right? And she didn’t return the depth of your affections.”
“That’s right. She—uh—didn’t think of me the same way I thought of her.” Man, this was not a subject I wished to discuss with Ashley’s brothers, even all these years later.
“Hmm.” Cletus was back to stroking his beard.
“Rae isn’t Ashley,” I snapped.
Cletus pointed to himself. “I know that. But do you? Do you really understand that Ms. Ezra is not Ashley? That you’re not doomed to make the same mistakes over and over?”
I said nothing, my throat full of rocks.
He wasn’t finished talking. “There are similarities, to be sure. Ashley and Ms. Ezra are both regarded as beauties, though they look markedly different. They’re also both blessed with natural talent—A-plus talent, if you will—in their respective fields. Now, this next part isn’t me being mean, though it may sound like it at first.”
Bracing myself, I said, “Fine. Go on.”
“To the casual observer, someone like Ash or Rae being with someone like you might not make much sense.” Cletus stared off into the distance. “You’re a sheriff’s deputy in a big Tennessee county with a bunch of small towns that can’t afford their own police department. You’re not wealthy. You’re not learned. You’re not impressive. You don’t eat meat. You’re not showy or flashy. Your face isn’t perfectly symmetrical—”
“This is you not being mean?”
“Let me finish.”
“Fine. Continue,” I grunted, wishing I’d never made overtures to be Cletus Winston’s friend.
“I postulate that falling in love and making it last is like anything else in life that feels overwhelming when you’re at the beginning of it. Saving for a down payment on a house. Writing a book. Getting one of those PhDs.”
I lifted an eyebrow to show him I didn’t get his point.
“Talk to Ms. Ezra. Do the work. Tell her your plans and your hopes. It might feel impossible now, but it won’t always.” The side of Cletus’s mouth hitched with a rare smile. “My point is one I feel you already know: everything always feels impossible, until it’s inevitable.”
Chapter 27
*Jackson*
“A strong man doesn’t have to be dominant toward a woman. He doesn’t match his strength against a woman weak with love for him. He matches it against the world.”
Marilyn Monroe
I asked Cletus to drop me off at my parents’ house. Maybe it was the three beers when my system was used to zero, but I needed to talk to my father. Right now.
Rather than walk in, which was my usual practice, I knocked. I didn’t know if Jess and her family were still in town. My sister wasn’t great at communicating her plans. When my father opened the door on his own, he held a kitchen towel and appeared pleased to see me.
“Come in,” he said, walking toward the back of the house and expecting me to follow. “I’m almost finished. You can help me dry.”
I followed him through the house. It was quiet, which meant Jess had already left. Or maybe they were visiting Duane’s side of the family. I dismissed that thought right away; if they’d been over at the Winston homestead, I doubted Jethro and Cletus would’ve taken me out for beers if they could've been hanging out with their brother.
Regardless, Jess and her family weren’t here. My mother was probably in her office, preparing supplies and lesson plans for the start of school. Only a month remained before school was back in session, and she approached each year as a teaching assistant with the same gusto and planning as she had prior to her semiretirement.
Unsurprisingly, my dad led me to the kitchen, tossing me the towel. I caught it.
“Come over here and dry these.” He gestured to a pile of bowls. “Your sister made pie for the Winstons, but she left some here too. We can have another slice after we’re done, but don’t tell your mother.”
“Jess is over at Sienna and Jethro’s?”
“That’s right. They left around four. Why?”
I frowned. “It’s just that . . .” If Duane, Jess, and Liam were visiting and available, why were Cletus and Jethro out with me?
“Jackson?”
“Never mind.” Shaking myself, and tucking that mystery away for later, I walked over to the big pile of bowls and got to work.
“How’s Rae? Did she have a good time last night?” he asked, scrubbing out the sink. My father had a checklist for cleaning the kitchen, one he and my mother had made years ago. She’d complained that he didn’t clean the kitchen right, so they’d sat down and made a checklist. He’d wanted to do it right for her, so he’d changed. He’d made room. He’d invested.
That’s what I needed to do.
When it came right down to it, I didn’t know if I could ask Rae to make room for me, to invest. Truth was, I didn’t want to ask. I wanted her to want to invest without me asking. Asking felt too much like pushing. But maybe I could show her I was making room for her. Maybe I could lead by example, and then she’d make room for me.
“I don’t think I’m running for sheriff,” I said, ripping the bandaid off, and facing my father. I braced for his reaction.
His movements stilled. He paused. Then he turned to me. “You’re not running for sheriff.”
“No.” I folded the towel and set it on the small butcher block kitchen island, walking backward until I hit the counter. I leaned against it. “I’m going to move out to Los Angeles, if Rae wants me there.”
His eyes narrowed, like he was working to process this information. “You’re moving out to Los Angeles.”
Well, now I know where I get my tendency to repeat recently spoken statements.
Ready for his disappointment, and maybe even his disapproval, I said, “Yes, and, if Rae wants me to move to LA, I’m going to apply to join the County Sheriff's Department out there.”
My father frowned, his eyes dropping to the floor and studying the tiles he and I had laid there fifteen years ago. “You don’t want to run for sheriff?”
“No, I do. I really do.” My voice sounded ragged, so I cleared my throat before continuing. “But I need to show Rae that I’m going to fight for her, for us. That I’m invested in our future and that I want to make room for her in my life.” So she’ll make room for me in hers.
“By giving up on your dreams?”
Here we go. “Dad.”
“No. I get it.” He lifted a hand, a slight, curious smile on his face. “I do. Just, let me get this straight. Do you want to move to Los Angeles?”
“Yes. Because that’s where Rae will be.”
“But if she weren’t, would you?”
I stared at him, eventually providing an answer that wasn’t a surprise to either of us. “No. I wouldn’t.”
“You want to stay here, and run for office, and take care of the folks in this county. However, you think if you don’t do something big—like move to Los Angeles and give up your life here—that you’re going to lose Rae?”
“Yeah.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets, not sure how I felt about any of this. “That about sums it up.”
“All right. And if you weren’t afraid of losing Rae, if you could stay here and be sheriff and you wouldn’t lose her, would you stay? That’s a slightly different question from the ones I’ve already asked.”
I gave him a smile I’m sure looked as feeble as I felt. “Well, that’s not really an option is it?”
“I’m not sure if it is an option, and I’m not the one you should be asking. Have you asked Rae if it’s an option? Have you asked her what she wants? You can’t know the answer to a question you haven’t asked.”
“Jessica said something similar to me recently.”
“Jess is pretty smart. Takes after your mom that way.” He smiled, his eyes dropping to the burn mark on the butcher block. But then his smile faded, and he crossed his arms, leaning his hip against the sink. “I know you’re here to tell me, not ask me for advice, but I'm going to give it to you anyway, and here it is—” he lifted his eyes and held mine “—don’t make any decision out of fear, if you can help it. Especially not a decision that impacts your future like this.”
I nodded, feeling numb.
“If you’re with somebody, and you’re afraid you’re going to lose them, talk to them. Tell her you’re afraid. Admitting a vulnerability to someone you love and who loves you in return usually brings you closer, it doesn’t push you apart.”