Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger (16 page)

“Lucky for my brother.”

“What is
that
supposed to mean?”

“He scored big-time, didn’t he? Got to run off with the girl he’d always had the hots for,
and
screw me over at the same time. You played right into his hand.”

“Are you saying he wasn’t telling me the truth?” I asked, and at that moment I could have believed whatever he said to me.

“I don’t even
know
exactly what he said to you. All I know is that he stopped the wedding and told you something that ended seven years of you and me together. Then you guys got in a car together and drove off to California.”

Wow, he didn’t even know where we’d gone.

Those two really
didn’t
talk.

If Facebook had been around at the time, I would have been checking in all over town, probably, drunkenly trying to stick it to Burke in whatever lame way I could. But it wasn’t and I hadn’t, so apparently this secret remained buried.

And I saw no reason to resurrect it.

“I notice you’re avoiding the question of your
marriage
,” I obfuscated. “Who was it?” I was sure he was going to say Sarah Lynn. Absolutely sure. As if somehow Burke Morrison and Sarah Lynn had gotten married and all of the town had missed it or failed to talk about it, even though other tidbits, like Jennifer Kearny’s gall bladder removal had practically made it to the front page of the local
Gazette
.

If he said Sarah Lynn, or any name I knew, I would have to go get one of the ceremonial pistols off the wall of the library and hope to god it had a bullet in it, or at least enough gunpowder residue to make some sort of impact. Was that even possible? Probably not. In all likelihood, Burke would report something surprising and upsetting and I’d go into the library, take a pistol down, hold it to my temple and pull the trigger for an anticlimactic click, and then have to simply clock myself with it and wake up on the sofa with a bag of Dottie’s frozen peas on my head.

At the very least, I could give myself credit for thinking ahead and bracing myself, as strongly as possible, for whatever he was going to say.

“No one you know,” he said.

“So she has no name?” I couldn’t help being snarky. None of this was my
right
to know, so I didn’t know why I was being so ugly about it, but I couldn’t shut up. “Or is that her name? Was she foreign?
Nooneyouknow
. I don’t know—that’s not Italian, right?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “So who was it?”

Now I needed to know. This was out there, it existed whether I wanted it to or not, and I couldn’t make it not true simply by not thinking about it. At this point, I couldn’t imagine going home with only the memory of his
no one you know
to comfort me. Technically he could have said that about Sarah Lynn, because I didn’t really even know
her
, I just disliked her on sight and on principle.

So this could well be someone I was familiar with—whether anyone else would characterize that as
knowing
her or not—thus, the potential for further anguish was alive and well as far as I was concerned.

Though, to be honest, the potential for anguish was
always
alive and well where Burke was concerned, which was why I’d worked so damn hard to get him out of my head for so long.

Now I couldn’t let it go. I was a dog on a meaty bone.

“Perry Watkins.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Perry Watkins.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

He laughed. “I told you that.”

“You married someone named
Perry
? Are you serious? Isn’t that a guy’s name?”

He shook his head. “Not in this case, no.”

“Where did you meet her? How long did you know her? How long were you married?”

I saw his smile flash. “I thought you didn’t care.”

“I don’t,” I lied. “What did she look like?”

“Small, dark-haired, dark-eyed. You’d say she looked like Audrey Hepburn and I’d disagree and we’d probably have an argument about it, but there’s your point of reference.”

I almost laughed. We
never
agreed on celebrity look-alikes. That was a weird thing about us. We would be able to knock heads over whether or not someone looked like Jon Bon Jovi or Dave Chappelle. But I was both touched and saddened by the fact that he knew me well enough to know who I’d think she looked like.

On the other hand, I didn’t like that she was an adorable little bright-eyed pixie with a waist the circumference of string cheese and a big white smile, which was how I was picturing her now.

But this was all crazy. It wasn’t my right to care about this at all. “Well, you’ve always had good taste.”

“If bad sense.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s not a mistake I’ll be making again,” he said, hooking his thumbs on his belt loops. “Getting married, I mean.”

And, yes, I had left him at the altar. Yes, I had rejected him. Yes, the choice had been mine and I’d chosen not to be with him.

I knew all of that.

So why did it bug me to hear him say that?

It had to be some strange, leftover impulse deep inside. Some part of me that hadn’t gotten the news that the relationship had run its course and long since passed.

“That’s what you say now,” I said anyway, I suppose trying to goose him into some openness.

“Nope. I’m a lone wolf. A pack of one.” He was always quoting movies, I think because he knew it drove me crazy. “I don’t need anyone else.”

And there it was again, that pang of hurt that he didn’t want me, even though I’d been the one to end it.

“Whatever,” I said. Childish.

He laughed. “Why does that bug you?”

“It doesn’t. I have no stake in what you do.”

“That’s right. Someday you’ll find a decent guy and go with him.”

“I don’t want
any
one,” I said, parroting him even though I hadn’t set out to. “I’m a lone wolf too.”

“You’re no wolf.” He put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me close. He hesitated only for a split second before kissing me. Mouth open, tongue warm and familiar against mine. Funny how something like that comes back to you. We’d done this a million times in our lifetimes and it never, ever got old. For all the times I might have been annoyed with him or straight-up livid with him or tired or sick, there had never been one time I didn’t feel like kissing him. There had never been a time when his mouth on mine didn’t send a thrill straight from my heart right down to my core.

Immediately I wanted him. I wanted more. I wanted everything. And I mean
immediately
. There was no stopping to think, to assess, to consider the pros and cons. It was probably
all
cons, but in this moment I didn’t care because that’s what his kiss did to me.

It was a chemical reaction.

I cupped his face with my hands, skidding my thumbs across his high cheekbones, like I’d done countless times before. The shadow of his beard was a little rough against my skin. I could remember coming home, red-faced and raw and happy after making out with him for hours in the back of his old Chevy.

Everything about this was wonderfully familiar, like a favorite dessert, even while everything in my head was screaming for me to stop. It was madness, this complete lack of control. Before tonight, the last time I’d seen him was, literally, stomping out of the church in a filthy wedding dress with gum on my ass. That had been his last view of me.

Now, after a couple of hours of sniping back and forth like children, over issues we either should have solved years ago or never revisited at all, I was wrapped up in his arms, lips locked, standing on the driveway to a property I’d once thought I would never see again.

In a way it was like time travel.

He slid his hand down my back and dipped his fingertips under the waistband of my jeans. I felt him smile against my mouth.

“Going commando?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” I tilted my head and kissed his cheek, his jawline, and tangled my fingers in his hair.

“Since when?”

“Yesterday.”

“This isn’t like you.”

“That’s the idea.”

His mouth found mine again and I opened to him eagerly, but said, “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Why are we doing this?”

“I don’t know.” He ran his hands up my back again and pulled me closer. Not that
closer
was really possible. Tighter.

And I felt so
safe
. For just a moment, here in the arms of the wolf himself, I felt completely safe.

But I forced myself to draw back. “I’ve got to go.”

He looked at me for a moment, then took a step back. “Probably a good idea.”

“Is this the part where I say it was good to see you again and then I spend the rest of the night kicking myself for saying something so small and ridiculous?”

He nodded. “That’s exactly where we are in the script.”

“Okay, then. It was good to see you again. And kind of bad. Actually kind of awful.”

That smile. “Ditto.”

“This”—I gestured vaguely between us—“what just happened cannot happen again. Nothing good can come of that.”

“I hear you.”

“You need to do more than hear me, Burke, you need to
agree
with me and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

He sucked air in through his teeth. “I don’t know, if you come at me, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop you.”

I rolled my eyes but had to smile. “Somehow you’ll just have to find a way to fight me off.”

“And if it’s the opposite, if I approach you, you have my full permission to beat me off as well.”

“Very funny.”

“Thanks.”

“Look, we’ve always had this chemical attraction.
Apparently
that still exists even though there are many,
many
reasons, we both know, that we are a bad combination.”

He shrugged.

What did
that
mean?

Wait, it didn’t matter what it meant. I didn’t want to care what it meant. There was no room in my heart or my head to revisit Burke Morrison.

“So I’m going to go now,” I said. “And that’s not going to happen again. Agreed?”

He paused, then nodded. “Agreed.”

“Good. So. Good night.”

And with that, I left. And with every foot, every yard, every mile that subsequently fell between us, I—or maybe some deep gut instinct—tried to tell myself to stay away, stay away, stay away …

Stay
away
from Burke Morrison.

Chapter 11

Late July, Fifteen Years Ago

Quinn knew she shouldn’t have tried pot.

She had always been completely straight and narrow. When people started lighting up at a party, she’d go to another room, or go home, or whatever, it just wasn’t her
thing
.

But it was midsummer before her senior year and she was supposed to be having the time of her life, and instead Burke had upset her by saying … something, she actually couldn’t remember
exactly
what his wording was, but it was to the effect that he was going to “keep my options open” when he started college in the fall.

As soon as she’d gotten upset, he’d taken it back, of course, but by then he’d already said it. He couldn’t
un
say it.

So she went with Karen and Rami to a party at Rami’s friend’s house down some endless dirt road, way outside of town. No parents, no close neighbors, the music was throbbing, the keg was spilling over, and after about five beers when a cute guy asked Quinn if she wanted to get stoned, she thought,
Fuck Burke
, and went into a darkened back den of the house with the guy. He lit a bong, took a hit, and handed it to her.

She had no idea how to use it.

So he laughed and told her, and for about fifteen minutes they passed it back and forth. At first she felt nothing, beyond the harsh rush of smoke in her lungs, but she kind of enjoyed the process of passing it back and forth, like they were playing a game.

She’d always heard that you don’t really get high the first time you smoke. That the chemical needs to build up in your brain or something, so it might mellow you out a little, or make you hungry, but it wouldn’t blast you.

So she was completely unprepared for the room to start spinning.

“Good stuff, huh?” the guy—she thought he said his name was
Nard
—said.

“I … don’t…” She swallowed and blinked hard. “Yeah,” she said, suddenly aware that she needed to get out of the smoky room and into fresh air. Alone. “Thanks.” She got up unsteadily and made her way to the door, feeling like she was in a spinning room in a carnival funhouse.

Except there was
nothing
fun about it.

Why did people do this?

She went outside and made her way to Rami. Even in her state, she could tell that Rami, who had driven that night, was hammered.

“We’re going to stay here, okay?” Rami slurred. “Can’t drive. If something happened, my parents would
kill
me.”

Quinn made an effort to focus on her. She was disappointed that they weren’t leaving, but there was no way she wanted to get in a crash on the way home. That had happened to too many people they knew.

“I think I’m going to try to get home,” Quinn told her. “Another way.”

“Huh?”

“I’m calling Burke.”

“That
asshole
. Screw him! Just stay here. I think Nard likes you! Go with him instead!”

Just the mention of his name gave Quinn a surge of nausea.

“What’s wrong?” Rami looked concerned, though she herself was teetering. “Are you okay?”

There was no way she could admit to Rami what she’d done. She couldn’t admit it to anyone. The thought of telling Burke the truth was terrifying, he would be so mad. But what if she needed to go to the hospital or something? What if the pot had been laced with something? This wasn’t a reaction she’d ever heard of, so
something
else seemed to be going on.

“Fine,” Quinn muttered, “just going to go find a phone.” She went back into the house, hoping she wouldn’t run into Nard. (Was that
really
his name?) She found a phone on the wall in the kitchen, glanced at the digital clock on the stove, which seemed to say it was 11:41
P.M
. though the 1’s and 4’s kind of blurred together. As bad as it was to have to call Burke’s house phone so late, she hoped it wasn’t 4:00
A.M
. instead of 11:00
P.M
.