A Perfect Mess (20 page)

“You can make a story out of anything.”

“Yeah, I can.” He tossed the apple up and caught it, his eyes going distant. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“What?” That meant something really important to him. He slipped the apple with the flaw into the bag and closed it with a twist tie.

“You know that saying, kids are like their parents, like father, like son.”

I watched his face, saw the way his jaw hardened against some unpleasant memory, saw the anger in his dark eyes and the vulnerability that lay beneath it, and my heart ached for him. “Your father liked telling stories?”

“Yeah, only the kind he told landed him in jail. If he stuck around long enough to be arrested.”

“He was a con artist.”

“Yes. He left town because of it. Only made matters worse for my ma and us. But he didn’t care.”

“You’ve never heard from him?”

“Nope.”

“I’m sorry, Booker. I didn’t know my father. He died when I was just a baby.”

“From what?”

“I don’t know. My mother never told me, and I was too afraid of her to ask any questions.” I had to swallow hard to continue. “The day she died, I felt like everything I once had was gone. All my history was erased, my very existence, even, and that made me feel like I was fading away, too. That’s when I just sat down with my school books still in the backpack hanging from my shoulder, my Barbie lunch box with the meticulously rinsed and stacked plasticware still inside. Terror and panic twisting together into a new, horrible emotion that paralyzed me.”

I stopped pushing the cart and faced him. “I didn’t move from that spot for two days. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t even go to the bathroom. I think I might have just died there in that position if Aunt Lottie hadn’t found me. They said I was in shock, but I knew differently. It wasn’t shock because my mother had died. All I’d felt for her was fear, and that fear was just replaced with more fear. I was all alone.”

“Jesus, Aubree.”

In the grocery store, he put his arms around me and that moment became an important memory. It was the day I told Booker about something I’d never told anyone in my life. Was that growth? Was that maturity? I didn’t really know. Or care. It just felt freaking awesome.

“You are so brave,” he whispered.

I didn’t feel brave. Like that apple, I had bruises that were just beneath my skin. I felt compelled to open up to him because he’d shown me he was the type of person who could see beyond that flaw in an apple. Maybe he could see beyond my flaws, too. I could only hope he felt the same way about me after I told him the bleacher story. I knew I would have to tell him soon.

“What is your aunt’s favorite food?”

I blinked and looked up at him.

He just smiled his wicked and wily Booker smile.

“What are you up to?”

“Anyone who’s been in the hospital deserves their favorite thing. What is hers?”

“Caviar. She refuses to buy it because it’s so expensive.”

He tilted his head. “Let’s get some.”

“She didn’t authorize me to get some.”

“Ha! See? Not on the list.”

“Shut up.” He was right. I was just such a stickler for the rules. God, I wanted to make love with this man. That thought came barreling out of nowhere. I hadn’t even been thinking about Booker in a sexual way. Just thinking about him in a rascally way, about how he always bucked authority. I think I was admiring that in him. I was so rigid, and he was just so laid back.

“I’ll pay for it.”

“Okay. I know better than to go up against a word-master. I’m going to go get something from the deli. You go pick out the caviar.”

He nodded and headed off with the cart.

I watched him go, feeling a bit guilty. Even though I had opened up about my mother, there were still too many secrets between us. I don’t know what secrets he was harboring, but they were there in those dreamy eyes. Could we really bare our souls to each other without losing something precious? The thought weighed heavily. I didn’t know how he would react to what I had seen that day from behind the bleachers. To what I’d learned, and to what I hadn’t done.

But for some reason, I didn’t think it would be good.

Chapter Ten

Booker

“Booker?”

“Brax. What’re you doin’?

He huffed. “I’m shopping for your damn party because
you
were too busy. Something about a manuscript you had to get done, if I recollect correctly. So what are you doing here?”

“Um.” The word-master drew a complete blank.

“What do you have in this basket?
Asparagus
?” His brows rose.

“Hey, I like fresh asparagus.”

“You don’t even know what it is.” He rummaged around in the basket. “What else you got in here?” He lifted out a bottle and squinted at it. “Says here this is ‘
fresh pomegranate and lemon verbena scent revive body wash with exfoliating crystals’.”

I knew I was busted. But I’d go down fighting. “Yeah, I like to be…revived.”

His eyes narrowed and he sighed. “You don’t even know what exfoliating crystals are.”

“You don’t either.”

“That’s beside the point.” His face cleared and his jaw dropped. “You’re shopping with
that hot chick you’ve had a hard-on for since high school…”

“Her name is Aubree.”

“Whatever. Here I’m busting my ass for your party and you’re out making time.”

“You sound like my put-upon and outraged wife.”

He looked like he was going to sock me in the jaw right there in the market. I tried not to laugh. I truly did, but it slipped out.

His look was grim, his eyes filled with a burning anger.

“I got news for you, Brax. You don’t want me to shop for this party. The minute I even suggested it, you laughed. I don’t know the first thing about food. You do. You’re a freaking genius with food.”

“Don’t butter me up,” he growled.

I talked right over him. “So, since I knew you were being passive-aggressive about the food, I made up an excuse so you wouldn’t roll your eyes and huff and feel put upon.”

“You make me sound like an old hen.”

“Can you say, ‘cluck, cluck’?”

His mouth tightened. “I’m not passive-aggressive.”

“Okay, then you’re just an asshole. I’m not shopping with Aubree. I’m shopping for her aunt.”

“Either way, sounds like Aubree already has the whip out, pussy.”

“Now you’re really being an asshole.”

“Do you want to take this outside? I’ll kick your ass and then you can go home and
revive
yourself with your freaking exfoliating crystals.”

“That wouldn’t be good for scrapes and bruises,” River Pearl said.

Brax stiffened and turned towards her. “We don’t need your advice, sweet thang.”

“Well, neither of you has any idea what exfoliating crystals are. I mean, you’re guys.”

The absurdity of this conversation wasn’t lost on me, but now I understood why Brax was on edge. And that blonde reason was standing right next to him talking about something only a girl would know about. Um. Scratch that. River Pearl wasn’t a girl. She was a drop-dead gorgeous knockout. The only girl in school besides Aubree and Holy Mary Verity he hadn’t sweet-talked, and that toasted his bagels, but good. Aubree? She was too smart to fall for his charm, and he wasn’t going to go after a girl I wanted. That was the brother code. Holy Mary Verity was so off limits. Preacher father, yeah, not messing with that. But, River Pearl? She was my brother’s wet dream. She was a challenge and the one who got away. She was also a match for my brother. Now that tickled me pink.

“Do you know what they are, Braxton?”

My brother closed his eyes at her sultry voice. She smirked.

“No.”

She switched her attention to me. “What are you doing with girly body wash, Booker? I mean, it’s okay to want to be clean and all, but lemon verbena? If you’d like, I can take you both to Bath and Body Works and getcha some really good stuff. Then we can go to see Skylar Bransom at the Blue Coyote spa and have our fingernails and toenails all done up and glamorous. I think pink would be divine for you, Brax. No, hot pink, because you’re so sassy.”

“Ha fucking ha,” Brax said. “I’ll expect you at your place this afternoon to help me.” He looked at me with threat in his eyes.

“I’ll be there.”

Without a word to River Pearl, he very rudely stalked away.

River Pearl watched him like a she-wolf staking her claim on the alpha. She was tough enough to take on the leader of the pack.

“Don’t mind him. He’s a sore loser.”

“He’s something, all right,” she said, leaning slightly to the right, pulling her expensive sunglasses down to the bridge of her nose and watching my brother until he disappeared around the end of the aisle. “Both coming and going.”

I almost swallowed my tongue.

She looked at me innocently. I’ve never seen anyone do that so well. I wondered if she ever looked embarrassed. Hellcat came to mind, no, make that Princess Hellcat. “So, the body wash? You got a girlfriend?”

“No. Um. I’m here with Aubree. She needed a few things for her aunt.”

“Oh, she’s here. Cool, where?” She touched my arm. She was so unaffected by our reputation, both in high school and now out. It was something I always admired about her. “Such good news about her aunt waking up. My mother baked a mac and cheese meatloaf casserole. I was going to bring it by later.”

“Deli.”

“I’ll mosey over there and talk to her. I shouldn’t piss your brother off. I really do need to talk to him, but it’s so much fun.”

She stopped next to me and gave me a quick elbow nudge. “You sure Aubree isn’t…your girlfriend?” She winked at me. “Catch you later, Book.”

I nodded as she left, my heart suddenly tight in my chest. Aubree, my girlfriend?
No, don’t even embrace that kind of craziness.
Remember, forever kind of girl and I was…I wasn’t the one for her. River Pearl smelled as if she used something in a pink flowered bottle with exfoliating crystals. And she had some crystals of her own, some big, brass ones.

When I came around the end of the aisle to the gourmet section of the market, Langston was there. I stopped short. He was bent over looking at the bilini, thin, wheat-like wafers that were often eaten with caviar.

“Aren’t you in the wrong aisle, white trash?” he sneered.

I ignored him. Found the caviar and picked up two tins. It would be fun to see if Aubree liked it. I knew I sure did. When I was wooed by a publishing house shortly after my first book came out and went viral, I had it with a meal and asked what it was. After that, I made sure I got educated about fish eggs.

“Are you done, or are you having problems reading the package?” I asked just to see what would happen.

He swung at me and I ducked and came around behind him and put my sneaker to his ass, giving him a shove. He stumbled forward and right into the shelving for the caviar. The shelves came down in a crashing rumble.

“What’s going on here, boys?”

My head snapped around to the sheriff. He was eyeing Langston sprawled out in the aisle with about a thousand bucks of caviar scattered around him.

I smiled lazily. “He tripped.”

Langston looked at me, his mouth tight and mean, retribution in his eyes. “Yeah, sheriff. I tripped.”

I smirked at him and broadcast back,
bring it
.

Langston got up as one of the store employees started to right the shelves. He grabbed a can of the good stuff and a package of bilini. Probably been sent to the store as an errand boy for his father. Because Langston had no taste.

He backed up as the sheriff eyed us both.

“See you around, Outlaw.” There was nothing but threat in his voice.

Not if I saw him first.

After he was gone, the sheriff came up to me. “Watch out where you taunt him, son. This is a place of business.”