22
Jackson
“You need to stay away from my daughter!” Loretta Harris hissed, storming into the auto shop late one Tuesday afternoon. “She is not one of those women you use for your sick sex-capades!”
I looked up at her as a heavy sigh rolled across my lips, then went back to working on the car in front of me.
Did she just say sex-capades?
I had a new favorite word.
“Unless you got a car with you, I reckon you should leave,” I muttered, grabbing a wrench from my toolbox.
She click-clacked over in her high heels and placed her hands on her hips. “I mean it, you-you-you animal. Keep your hands off Grace or else!”
“Or else?” I cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t take well to threats,” I warned her.
“Well, I don’t take well to people coming for my family,” she countered.
“No one’s coming for your family, your highness,” I mocked. “So, if you would please leave...”
“What’s your deal with her anyway, huh? Are you just trying to get back at me for something?”
I pressed my hands against the car, rising to meet her stare. Her eyes matched her daughter’s, yet hers were filled with hate. “What in the hell would I have to get back at you for?”
“When you came to me as a kid, asking for my help.”
I snapped my band. Deep breaths. “I ain’t got time for this.” I rubbed my palms against my jeans and turned to walk away. “Let yourself out.”
“You need to stay away from my daughter, or you’ll regret it,” she ordered once more, making me tense up.
“Once again,” I growled, snapping my band, “I don’t do well with threats.”
“It’s not a threat; it’s a promise. If you keep crossing paths with Grace, I’ll make you suffer.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “How is that any different than what you and yours have done to me for so many years?”
“Listen—”
“No, you listen,” I howled, moving in closer to her. “You don’t come into my shop barking demands at me. You don’t tell me what to do or how to do it, all right? This is my life, and you don’t get to control it. I know you’re used to having your minions do everything you want them to do, but I’m not your show pony, all right, woman? When you tell me to jump, I don’t say how high, so how about you take your empty threats and get the hell out of my sight?”
“I wished you would’ve stayed gone all those years ago when you went to rehab,” she told me.
“You should’ve prayed harder to that god of yours.”
Her bottom lip trembled, which was the biggest sign of weakness Loretta Harris ever let herself show. Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a checkbook. “How much?”
“What?”
“How much do you want? I’ll pay you any amount to stay away from Gracelyn Mae.”
“Is that how you always get your way? With a check?” I huffed. “I don’t want your money.”
“How much?” she badgered, pulling out an ink pen. “I’ll pay you for all of your land, too, if it means keeping you and your lowlife of your father out of my town.”
“The last thing you want to do is talk about my father,” I hissed. Even though I hated him, a Harris had no right to spit on his name. “Get out.”
“Jackson—”
“Out.”
“But you have to stay away from her!” she cried, her body starting to shake. I’d never seen her like that. She seemed terrified.
“What are you so afraid of?” I questioned, narrowing my eyes. “Are you afraid you won’t be able to control her like you used to?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about but just stay away. I swear to you, Jackson, if you don’t, I will ruin your life.”
“What life?” I asked her. Nothing about my existence resembled any kind of life. “Now, this is the last time I’m gonna say it. Get the hell outta my shop.”
She began to walk away, and I called after her once more. “It must be killing you, huh? Being unable to control her.” She raised an eyebrow, and I continued. “But maybe instead of attacking me, you should go after the asshole who broke her heart and got her best friend pregnant. Your loyalties are facing the wrong direction.”
With simply perfect timing, Dad walked into the shop to see Loretta standing there. He held a bottle of whiskey in his grasp, and I cringed as he spoke. “What the hell are you doing on my property?” he barked.
“Just leaving,” she snapped back. “I cannot wait until the day you leave this town. You and your son are nothing but trouble.”
“Fuck off,” Dad shouted as he threw the bottle in our direction. It shattered dramatically against the wall.
“Jesus, Dad!” I barked. “Are you fucking crazy?”
“Are you? Letting this woman into our shop,” he grumbled, stumbling left and right.
“It seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Loretta remarked. “When you’re ready to sell this place, give me a call. In the meantime, stay away from my daughter.” She stormed off, leaving me to deal with the mess that was my life.
“Bitch,” Dad muttered, before looking my way. “I need you to get groceries,” he ordered before turning to walk back to his place. “And more whiskey.”
* * *
I hated the grocery store because there were always people inside strolling around like they had no damn better place to be. As I turned down the aisle to go grab some peanut butter, I paused when I saw Grace and felt my chest tighten.
I should’ve looked away, but I didn’t…I couldn’t.
She walked around nervously as people stopped her to speak at almost every turn. It was almost as if they didn’t see her discomfort, or they saw it and just didn’t care about her feelings.
She spoke with complete poise, hugging each person tightly and giving them the biggest smiles known to mankind, but those weren’t the traits I noticed. I took note of her body language and the way her movements told her truths. Her shoulders rounded forward, her fingers tapped rapidly against her shopping cart, and her big smile was more forced than I’d ever known a smile could be.
When she’d hug one person goodbye, another set of nosy townspeople would stop her. The questions they asked her were so insulting and invasive, but Grace handled them very well—better than I would’ve.
She lived up to her name and the royal role she played.
After she left their side, I’d hear the individuals’ nasty remarks, judgments, and lies.
It took everything inside me not to attack each person in that store. Maybe my father and I deserved the rude remarks. Maybe we made ourselves so dark and mean that the ugliness from the town was earned, but Grace?
She hadn’t done a thing wrong.
I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t know how to start conversations, especially with her, but still, I wanted to try.
“I’m shocked to see you’re not buying any eggs,” I said, walking up behind her in the frozen food aisle. Then I realized what a cheesy and corny comment that was for me to make. Just do better, Jackson.
She nearly jumped out of her skin as she turned to face me with a tub of ice cream in her hands. “Jesus, Jackson, you scared me.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to.”
She smiled, and I was pleased it wasn’t her forced smile.
Why was I pleased?
I shouldn’t have cared.
But still…she smiled, and I took note of it.
“No, not your fault. It’s good to see you. I was actually thinking about you today. I saw you reading This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab a few weeks back so I picked up a copy. It was so, so amazing.”
“Wait until you read the second book in the series, The Dark Duet. It’s one of my favorites.”
“It kind of shocks me that you love young adult so much,” she confessed. “I just didn’t picture that as your type of read.”
“What did you picture?�
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“I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Horror.”
She smiled, I smirked, and then we stood awkwardly in silence.
“Oh!” She cleared her throat and rocked back and forth on her heels a little. “I forgot to tell you—I learned how I like my eggs.”
“Oh? And how is that?”
“In cake form.”
I laughed.
“Gah, I like when you do things like that,” she told me.
“Do what?”
“Laugh, smile, smirk—anything but frown.”
I didn’t reply, but I liked how she made me laugh, smile, and smirk.
“Your mom stopped by the shop to have a little chat with me,” I told her, and she instantly cringed.
“Oh gosh, I have no clue what she said to you, but since I know my mother, I’m guessing I owe you an apology.”
“It’s fine. She’s just a bit protective of you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Did she threaten you?”
“Only four or five times.”
“Wow, sounds like she took it easy on you,” she joked.
“Maybe with old age, she’s becoming a softy,” I replied.
Just then, a person walked by and made a crude remark about the two of us being seen together. I watched as Grace tensed up a bit.
“I’ve heard people talking about you, about your relationship with your husband,” I remarked.
She nodded. “Outing my cheating husband didn’t bring me the best attention. My mama ripped me a new one, claiming I acted in such a disgraceful manner. Now the nosy people are just loud and looking for more dirt. I didn’t really think it through, I guess. I was just…I don’t know, living in the moment.”
“Sometimes you have to do that.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t help that I was recently caught leaving your place, and now they think you and I are…” Her words faded away and her cheeks reddened. “Doing what we’re doing.”
“Does it bother you? Them knowing?” I asked.
“Not because it’s about us. It just bothers me that people have no tact at all. Now they have made up the idea in their minds that Finn and I were both unfaithful to one another, and they love to talk about it. They act like I can’t hear their nasty comments when I walk away, but I can.”
“Yeah, you always do.”
“You know what’s worse, though? When they have the nerve to say it straight to my face. Just earlier today, a woman said to me, ‘You know, honey, maybe God would bless you with a child if you went back to your husband and stopped sleeping with bad seeds.’ Can you believe that? Right to my face, even after I made it clear that Finn got Autumn pregnant! But all she heard was that I was sleeping with you, and she ran with that.”
“I hate people,” I blurted out, feeling anger building inside me for her.
How could someone say that to her?
How could people be so cruel?
Then I thought of all the nasty things I’d said to her when she first came into town. I was no better than the rest of them.
“It’s fine, really. I’ll get over it. I mean, it could be worse—I could be them, after all.” She smiled, and it was beautiful. “They call you the fixer, you know.”
“The what?”
“The fixer, and it’s not just because you fix cars.”
I cocked an eyebrow. That particular nickname hadn’t made its way back to me. “Please, tell me more.”
“The rumor is that after women sleep with you, they fix the issues in their lives, be it relationships, or job issues, or self-esteem. It’s like your sexual prowess has the ability to fix any and every problem known to mankind.”
“Not all superheroes wear capes.” I smirked. “I’m just out here trying to make Chester the best town it can be, one vagina at a time.”
“Well, I’ll tell you this, if we keep up the wango tango, my life should be fixed in a few weeks at the latest.” She grinned, biting her bottom lip.
God, she was breathtaking, and she didn’t even know it.
“I’ll wango your tango for the next week straight to help you out.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she warned.
“Trust me, princess,” I whispered, leaning in close, “I always keep my promises.”
I loved the way her body reacted when I moved in closer. Then I remembered where we were, and I knew that touching her, even if ever so lightly, was a no-go.
She bit her bottom lip and looked up toward a few people staring our way. It was as if we were everyone’s favorite reality show. “I bet you they’re having a field day with us just talking right now.”
“I can go,” I said quickly, not wanting to add to her torture.
“No, no. I mean, we’re already sleeping together, right? Plus, I’m tired of always changing my life to try to fit into others’ expectations.”
“Another Grace discovery?” I asked.
“Turns out it’s kind of fun learning who you are. If they want to gossip, they can, but I’m not going to stop talking to you or be ashamed when I know we’re just two grown-ups doing grown-up things. Might as well give the people more of a story to make up.”
“Careful,” I warned, “once you start hanging out with the black sheep of the town, your wool starts shifting to a darker shade.”
“My wool has already been changing. I’ll take my chances talking to you. Is this what it’s been like for you, though? Do you always get their harsh looks?”
“Yeah, but you get used to it. It only truly bothers me a few times.”
“When’s that?”
“When they talk about my father, or even worse, my mother.”
She gave me those gentle eyes, and I had to fight to keep from losing myself in them.
“I think I owe you an apology,” she said, looking right at me. “Before we even met, I had these ideas of the person you were. I was afraid of you because of the rumors people around town spread. I heard these horror stories about you and your father, and I just feel awful that I believed them.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I told her. “No apologies needed. I’m sure some of the stuff you’ve heard is true. Plus, I’m sure you remember our first few meetings—I can be an asshole.”
“Yes, but a nice asshole,” she remarked.
“That’s not a thing.”
“It’s definitely a thing.”
“I judged you, too. I had this awful idea of who you were before I knew you.”
“Why did you hate me so much?” she asked.
That was easy enough to answer. “Because I was taught to do exactly that.”
“Well, do you still hate me?”
“No,” I said. “Are you still afraid of me?”
“No,” she replied.
“Well, that’s unfortunate. I was really hoping to keep up my monster persona around these parts.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, gesturing to the left where a group of girls were whispering. “I’m sure there are plenty who still think you’re the spawn of Satan.”
“Good. I can’t lose my street cred,” I remarked, and she laughed.
I liked it most when she laughed.
“Well, if you want to maintain your street cred, you should stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Smiling.”
I turned my lips down into a dramatic frown. Before I could say anything else, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a grown man recording my interaction with Grace on his cell phone, and I listened to him call her a “church girl whore”.
She heard it, too, and must’ve seen me tense up. “Let it go, Jackson,” she whispered.
Apparently she’d forgotten our roles in this town.
She was the town’s good girl.
Me?
I was the monster.
Without second thought, I walked over to him, snatched the phone out of his hands, and snapped it in half. Then I dropped the pieces into his cart and stared him dead in the eye
s. “Do something,” I threatened, crossing my arms. “I dare you.”
His eyes widened with fear, and he swiftly pushed his cart away.
I walked back over to Grace, and she stood there stunned. “I didn’t know phones could snap in half.”
“Yeah, me either,” I replied honestly.
“I know I should scold you for what you just did, but truthfully, that made me feel really good inside.”
It made me feel good inside, too.
“It’s a strange thing, though,” she told me.
“What is?”
“When my Prince Charming is the rest of the world’s Beast.”
23
Grace
Each day that passed felt like a dream intermixed with nightmares. I saw both Autumn and Finn almost every time I left the house, and when I didn’t see them, they still crossed my mind. My thoughts were trying their best to destroy me, but novels and Jackson both served as great distractions.
Even when the world was dark, words in books existed. Therefore, I knew there would always be light around me even on the darkest of days. I often wondered if that was why Jackson read, too—for a few moments of light.
When I arrived at The Silent Bookshop, Jackson was sitting in his corner, and when he looked up, he smiled right away, revealing that left dimple. I hoped that was a new regular thing—him smiling my way.
I smiled back and walked to my corner. When I got there, I saw a book sitting on my table with a Post-it note on it. The novel was The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, and the note read:
I think you might like this, Princess.
-Oscar
My fingers ran over the cover, and I sat down and read for what felt like hours. The way the words pulled me in and didn’t want to let me go made my heart beat faster and faster. You knew a book was amazing when you missed the transition from the sun shining to the sky fading to black. I sat back there until the store was about to close, and then I walked to the front counter where Josie’s mom, Betty, was working.
She looked just like her daughter with those same loving eyes, and she signed my way as she said, “You’ve been here for quite a while—I’m guessing it’s a good read.”
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