by Emma Scott
“They would,” she said, her own voice cracking. “They’d hate how you’re risking your life for a man—”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“And going where?” she said quickly. “To New York City? For how long?”
“I don’t know yet. A week, maybe more. And when I come back, it won’t be to Blue Ridge. I’m going to get my own place. Go back to art school.”
“So you’ll come back to Richmond?”
My gaze slid to Jimmy. Who lived in Boones Mill.
“I don’t know all the details, yet,” I said. “I’m going with the flow. But whenever I come back, I’m going straight to a judge and rescinding your goddamn power of attorney.”
“That’s not important. You’re—”
“It is to me. I want my life back. And I’m taking it.”
“Thea…”
“Go marry Roger,” I said. “Be happy, Deel.”
“Wait—”
I hung up and dropped the phone in my bag. I wiped my eyes. “It’s amazing how you can feel anger and frustration and love for the same person, all at the same time. That’s how family works, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Jimmy said with a grim smile. “Keep checking in with her.”
“She threatened to have you arrested.”
“She’s worried about you.” He raised a brow. “She’s angry and frustrated and loves you, all at the same time.”
I shook my head, marveling. “You’re amazing, James Whelan. Maybe the last of the truly good men.”
His phone in my lap rang with Delia’s number.
“She’s persistent, I’ll give her that,” I said, offering him the phone. “You want?”
“She got my number from Alonzo, probably. And yeah, I’ll talk to her.” He hit a button and put it to his ear. “Ms. Hughes.”
He’s so polite and chivalrous. I wonder if his grandpa Jack taught him how to treat women.
Jim got an earful from my sister for a good minute, watching the road as he listened.
“It’s not up to me, Ms. Hughes,” he said, finally. “It’s up to Thea.”
“Amen,” I muttered.
“We won’t,” Jimmy said into the phone. “I promise.”
He listened for another ten seconds then pulled the phone away. “I think she hung up on me.”
“Typical. What did you promise her?”
“That we wouldn’t vanish.”
“Fine, but I’m not going to tell her where we’re staying in New York. Let her try to find us. What else did she say?”
“Various threats about what she’d do to me if anything happened to you. Death. Dismemberment. Castration.”
“She watches Game of Thrones too.”
We shared a smile, but the unease of Delia’s threats settled into my gut like carsickness, until he indicated a sign for a roadside diner a few miles outside of Baltimore. Then I was ravenous for a burger and fries and a chocolate milkshake.
“This good?”
“Works for me.”
Jimmy took the exit and parked the truck in the diner lot. He started to get out, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Delia can’t really have you arrested, can she?”
“Don’t know. Maybe if you were incapacitated?”
“And I’m not. I can speak for myself if she tries something. But I don’t want to get you in trouble. You already lost your job for me.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Why risk it?”
Is it because you’re as crazy about me as I am about you?
Jimmy shrugged slightly, glanced down at my fingers on his skin. “You wanted this. You deserve it. I wanted to make it happen.”
I lowered my gaze, traced a scar on his knuckle with my fingertip. “What else do you want, Jimmy?”
His dark eyes met mine and he swallowed hard. I felt the need in him under my hand. I saw it burning in his eyes. I heard it in the words he’d just swallowed down, and my heart pounded, waiting.
“I want to eat,” he said finally. “I’m starved.”
He pulled from my touch and climbed out of the truck.
“Ouch,” I said to the empty cab.
Maybe I was all wrong about Jimmy. Maybe he didn’t feel for me what I felt for him. Maybe he truly only wanted to do this for me, like some kind of field trip.
After he kissed me the way he did? I thought, going back to that beautiful morning. Impossible.
But I was suddenly too afraid to push it. Like waiting for biopsy results—maybe just better to live in blissful ignorance. Except it wasn’t blissful. It was torture.
I’ll just have do things the old-fashioned way and seduce him.
Jimmy came around and opened my door, sending a waft of summer humidity to wrap around me. I lifted my hair off my shoulders as we headed to the restaurant, feeling Jimmy’s gaze sweep the curve of my neck and my breasts.
“See something you like?” I teased.
He looked away and held open the door to the diner for me. The hostess at the front greeted us.
“Two? Right this way.”
She seated us at a wide table that made me feel like Jimmy and I were separated by a mile of sticky Formica.
“Cozy,” I said, as we slid into our seats on opposite sides.
A tired-looking waitress came by. “Drinks?”
“Chocolate milkshake, please,” I said. “Extra cherries.”
She turned to Jimmy. “For you, sugar?”
“A Coke.”
I opened the menu. “God, I want one of everything,” I said. “It’s been forever since I’ve eaten a burger and fries. I mean, I know that’s not true, but I feel like my entire life is a menu and I’m starving. For food, music, art, for experiences, for sex…”
Jimmy shifted in his chair and toyed madly with his fork.
“Can’t help it,” I said. “I’ve missed so much.”
The waitress returned with his soda and my shake. I took a long, deep pull from the straw and moaned as cold chocolate deliciousness poured into my mouth.
“Oh my God, brain freeze,” I said with a laugh. “But so worth it.”
I plucked a cherry and sucked the whipped cream off before biting it from the stem. Across the table, Jimmy stared, eyes dark under furrowed brows, fists clenched on the table.
“What?” I said.
“N-Nothing.”
I leaned over the table. “Your kind eyes don’t look so kind right now. You look as if you have some thoughts about what else I might be able to do with my tongue.”
Jimmy shifted in his seat. “You’re not making it difficult.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, but—”
“But what?”
When he didn’t answer, I tossed my cherry stem on the table and sat back with a frustrated sigh.
“No bullshit, James. What’s going on? Why haven’t you tried to kiss me when we were practically sucking each other’s faces off in the parking lot yesterday morning.” I leaned forward again. “Even if the answer breaks my heart, I’d rather live with that pain than none at all. So I’m going to ask. Do you care for me, Jimmy?”
“Yeah, I do,” he said, meeting my gaze. “But I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“So you mentioned,” I said with a wince. “Why?”
“I have to be careful.”
“Because you don’t trust me to know what I want?”
“Something like that.”
My eyes flared open. “And here I thought you weren’t like them. You were the only one—”
“Thea,” he said, his voice harder than I’d heard him take with me. I fell silent.
“I knew you before the procedure for longer than I have after,” he said. “For all those weeks, we talked and listened to music and every conversation we built was torn down again by the amnesia. Over and over again. A part of me is scared shitless you’ll suddenly…”
“Go away again?”
He nodded. “I never want to cro
ss a line with you. Which is why I shouldn’t have kissed you at Blue Ridge. I should’ve waited until we were outside of those gates.”
“We are now,” I said, my hand wanting to slide across the table and take his. “We’re here now. Together.”
“But we’re not here for me,” he said. “We’re here for you. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to get something out of you.”
“I don’t think that,” I said. “But we are here for you. You’re a good man. You deserve some happiness too. Don’t you?”
He shrugged, lifting the weight of his loveless life on his strong shoulders. No self-pity, just a heartbreaking gesture of resignation.
The waitress arrived, her arms laden with burgers and two baskets of fries.
“Here we are.” She set them down. “Anything else?”
“We’re fine, thanks,” I said. I ignored the heavenly scent of greasy food curling under my nose and kept looking at Jimmy, who stared back. I’d never seen him so hard and intimidating. A stone wall built up year by year, to protect a child who had nothing and no one.
“You want to know if I think I deserve happiness?” he said to my expectant gaze. “No, I don’t. Life doesn’t work that way. The world doesn’t owe me anything, and I stopped asking a long time ago. End of story.”
A short silence fell. Neither of us spoke or moved to touch our food.
“I think that’s exactly how life works,” I said gently, conscious I was talking to a man for whom life had provided only the barest of essentials. “I think everyone deserves happiness. It’s out there, waiting to come to us, but we have to be open to receiving it. We have to know we deserve it, in order to give it a chance.”
“Simple as that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s that simple and yet, sometimes that hard to do.”
He jerked his chin at my food. “Eat,” he said, a faint smile on his lips. “It’ll get cold.”
My appetite was gone. It was more important to make him see I knew what I wanted. To shout that I trusted him with every fiber of my being, and he could trust me. But James Whelan took nothing for himself, even when he deserved everything. Quite possibly, the idea of being loved was so foreign to him, he wouldn’t know it if it slapped him in the face.
Or if it were sitting right across from him.
We ate in silence, the air between us tight with possibilities. A humming live wire connected us. Its tension strained tighter and tighter, waiting for something to break it.
I watched Jimmy take a bite of his burger. A dollop of mustard stuck to the corner of his mouth.
Without hesitation, I crawled up onto the table, clattered over silverware, and nearly knocked over a water glass. Jimmy stared, his eyes wide to see me on my hands and knees on the tabletop, my face inches from his. His shock mellowed into want, a heat emanating from his skin.
“You have some mustard on your face,” I whispered. “Let me.”
I bent my head toward his and licked his lips in a long, slow swipe. My mouth lingered on his, wanting his kiss so badly. Hungrier for it than any food.
“Got it.” I climbed backward into my seat, vaguely mindful of other patrons watching and whispering. I sipped my cold shake, casual as hell on the outside while inwardly, I was on fire for him.
I’m yours, Jimmy, I thought. Come and get me.
Chapter 28
Jim
Thea on all fours, her necklace swinging between us and her breasts pushing out of her bra from under her shirt. Her tongue on my mouth.
This is going to get me arrested. I’m going to take her right here in the restaurant.
She climbed back into her seat, and I took a long pull of the cold soda when I really needed an icy shower to cool my blood.
It seemed so easy; to have her. To be with her. But having something this perfect and good didn’t happen to me. Like being dirt-poor for years and suddenly having a bucket of gold dumped in my lap. I didn’t know what to do with it all.
You’re going to fuck it up, is what you’re going to do, Doris offered.
I paid the bill while Thea used the restroom. I came out into the sticky heat to find she’d slipped past me and was now leaning against the truck.
“Only a few hours left to go,” I said. “Should be in Manhattan at dusk.”
“And then what?” she said. “I wish you would tell me what you’re thinking. After you kissed me yesterday morning, I thought…” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
She pushed herself off the driver’s door and walked around to her side.
I climbed in on my side and started the truck. I said nothing but let Thea be upset with me. Getting her to New York City was the priority. Everything else could wait.
Thea put her music back on, humming along or singing while I drove us across Pennsylvania. She napped for the last few hours and woke as the sun was sinking in a cloudy gray sky. We hit the Lincoln Tunnel and went north for ten blocks, to Midtown Manhattan in crawling traffic.
Thea craned out the windows, taking in the sights, her smile stunning in its happiness.
“Oh my God, there it is,” she said, jostling my arm and pointing. “The Empire State Building.”
“You want to go there now?”
“No, I’m going to save that for last.” She grinned. “It’s getting dark. I want to see Times Square.”
Of course, she does. All that light and color.
I found a parking spot a few blocks away. The air felt heavy with rain—a summer storm looming. We walked with the crowds of tourists in humidity that felt different from the green heat of the South. New York smelled like heated metal and concrete. Hot dogs and falafel. Garbage and perfume. Thea inhaled it with the same exhilaration she had on our walks on the Blue Ridge grounds.
We stood at the corner of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and I understood Thea’s need to be here. New York teemed with life in a way I’d never experienced. People strode past, arguing, laughing, talking into their phones in different languages. Hawking wares, swearing, or meandering like tourists, taking photos of the glowing billboards surrounding us on all sides.
For a small-town kid like me, it was a lot to take, but Thea stood in the center of that bustling sidewalk, her eyes drinking it all in, the color and light playing over her face. Her smile was radiant, and I wished Delia could see how happy her sister was at this moment.
Thea glanced up at me, her smile never wavering, only softening.
“Isn’t it amazing?”
I nodded. She turned her gaze back to the lights, but I just watched her; drank her in because she was all the light and color I could ever want.
She must’ve felt my eyes on her; she turned to me again, delicate brows furrowed.
“What is it?” she asked. “Tell me everything. Even if it’s hard.”
“Nothing good lasts,” I said. “That’s been a truth of my life. Being with you? Here? It’s too fucking good.”
“Nothing ever lasts, good or bad,” she said, her eyes alit with a thousand different colors. “That’s why we have to live as much as we can, as hard as we can, every moment.”
Every fucking moment.
My arms slipped around her waist and I pulled her close. Her hands slid up my chest and clasped behind my neck.
“Are you going to kiss me now?” she asked. “Please say yes. I’m saying yes, Jimmy.”
Because I’m a choice she’s making.
I bent my head to her until our lips brushed and then I kissed her. No fences or rules or hesitation. I kissed her with my entire heart that had been so fucking vacant until Thea.
Her mouth opened for me with a little sigh, almost like relief. I drank it down and when she moaned softly; I took that too. Inhaled it. Sucking gently because the need to have this piece of happiness was all-consuming. I’d been starving for it my entire life.
The first raindrops began to fall, lightly at first, then harder.
“Oh shit,” Thea said with a breathless laugh.
Lightning crashed, and the sky tore open. The downpour scattered the tourists and sent them running for store awnings while the native New Yorkers calmly opened umbrellas or pulled up hoods on jackets, unfazed.
I ducked into my jacket and shielded Thea with it as we made a mad dash back to the truck. We were drenched by the time we climbed in, Thea’s shirt clinging to her every curve.
“We’ve only been in New York for a few minutes, and I already love it,” she said, her eyes luminous in the dimness. “It doesn’t give a shit that we were trying to have a moment.”
“Not remotely,” I said. “Where to?”
“A close hotel,” Thea said, leaning to kiss my ear. “As close as humanly possible.”
I drove the truck to the closest hotel, the Hilton Times Square, grateful my jeans and the dark concealed how badly I wanted her.
Thea bit her lip as we pulled into the valet. “The parking is as much as the room.”
“I have it covered,” I said. “Let’s do the first night here. We’ll figure the rest out later.”
She grinned. “No script?”
“None.”
We climbed out of the truck, her with her backpack and me with the small duffel I’d packed after I’d received Rita’s text. Thea’s eyes widened as she watched me pull my guitar case from behind the front seat too.
“Are you trying to kill me, Jimmy?”
I shrugged, feeling self-conscious. “I don’t know. You keep asking me to sing. I felt like the odds were good you’d ask me again on this trip.”
“A billion to one, for.” She grinned. “But I have money too,” she added as I tipped the guy at the valet. “You’re not paying for everything. I’ll get the room.”
I didn’t like the idea of Thea spending a dime on me, but this was her trip and part of it was paying her own way after years of dependence on everyone else.
“Do you have something high up with a view?” Thea asked the desk clerk.
“We’re pretty booked…” He tapped his keyboard. “A-ha. You’re in luck. I have a standard room on the thirty-third, two queens, non-smoking.”
“Queen-sized,” she said, heaving a dramatic sigh. “I suppose we can make do.”