Never Been Kissed (7 page)

“You’re not eating your chili.” Sean pointed to the bowl in front of Bill.

“Because it’s gross.”

“Bullshit.”

“Why aren’t you eating the chili?” Bill raised the white eyebrow that marched like one big caterpillar across his face.

Because it’s gross,
Sean thought.

“Why don’t you play poker?” Sean shot back.

“I’ve got better things to spend my money on,” Bill grumbled, taking a sip of his fourth dollar draft.

Maybe that was the problem. No one had money to waste on poker. The town was still climbing its way out of the recession.

“Why don’t you ask those assholes why they’re not playing poker?” Bill jerked his thumb back toward the corner where two full tables of the film crew sat under fake Tiffany lamps. They were in town taping the reality show
What Simone Wants.

The star of the show, Simone Appleby, had grown up in Bishop and perpetrated the one truly scandalous crime in the town’s history when she shot her abusive husband in the chest, killed him in the alley right behind The Pour House.

Simone was filming the last season of her reality show back in her hometown in an effort to help the local economy.

And as part of that local economy, Sean was real grateful. Because without them it would just be Bill and his cronies at the bar.

“Because they’re busy looking at their phones.”

As a rule, the cast and crew of the show, when they came in, sat at the two big tables in the corner, complained about his wine selection, begrudgingly drank vodka instead—like he was forcing it down their throats—and all silently played with their phones.

They were so quiet. It was surreal.

It made Sean feel like he had to whisper. Like his bar was a library.

According to Bill and his sometimes drinking buddies, the film crew were assholes. Sean wasn’t convinced; they were polite, quiet, practically filled the place on weekends, and didn’t even notice when he raised the price of well drinks.

But one of them, a tall guy named Darryl who did something with sound on the show, sometimes drank too much and talked too loud and said things about small towns, and the people who lived in them, that Bill and his boys didn’t like. Sean didn’t care for it much either, but he’d seen worse behavior.

When Darryl got mouthy, his friends in the crew quickly gathered him up, threw money on the table, and left.

“I don’t think they’re the poker types,” Sean said. Unless they were playing it on their phones. With one another.

Oh my God,
he thought,
that’s probably what they’re doing.

The
Jaws
theme on his own phone suddenly broke through “Stand By Your Man” on the jukebox and Sean quickly grabbed it from under the bar.

Brody.

Brody was calling.

It had been three months since he’d heard from his brother. Three months of wondering if Brody had gotten hurt. Or maybe was dead. Of if he’d given up on Sean and Dad—what remained of their family—altogether.

He took a second to calm himself down, to level out his heart rate, his suddenly huffy breathing. Searching for that place in his head that he’d created for these rare moments.

Cool,
he told himself.
Just … be cool.

Smiling, because he couldn’t help it, because it was his
brother
and apparently he was okay, he engaged the phone. “Hey, Secret Agent Man.”

There was a long pause and Sean closed his eyes. His relationship with his brother was one long routine. A habit. Their connection was years of shtick. Sean teased him, Brody rebuffed him. Brody attempted to crack jokes, Sean tried not to fall on his knees in gratitude. On those rare times Brody came home for longer than
twenty-four hours, Sean created a thousand jobs, small tasks that only Brody could do in an effort to keep his brother close, to keep him around longer. Sean let himself be needy and Brody worked until whatever alarm was set in his brain told him to leave. And then he would, usually without a word.

It was sad and weird. But it was all Sean had.

“I’m not a secret agent, Sean. I’m a bodyguard.”

“You say potato—” Sean said. He turned away from Bill and the silent phone-players and leaned against the bar. “What’s up, brother?”

Sean put his finger down on the wire drain where the glasses dried. There were a hundred small circles and one by one he pressed each of his fingers down on them, until the skin around his fingernail turned pink and then white and started to sting.

He pressed harder.

“I’m coming to town.”

Sean lifted his hand and walked back toward his office, noticing Brody didn’t call Bishop home. Never home.

“Yeah? When?” Sean asked, settling down deep in that cool space in his brain so he didn’t sound too excited.

“I’ll be there in about an hour.”

Sean glanced at the clock. Midnight.

“All right,” Sean said. “I can close the bar down early. My spare room is—”

“I’m not staying with you.”

It stung. Of course it stung. But Sean was used to it.

“Can you clear out the room above the bar?”

“You want to stay in the apartment?” Sean asked. That was weird even for Brody. It was cluttered and dirty and the last person to stay there had been Simone Appleby right before she shot her husband.

Most people wouldn’t stay there if you paid them.

“It’s … complicated.”

“It usually is with you.” The words slipped out, covered in irritation. And Sean bit his lip, swearing at himself. “But I’ll get the place cleared out. You need anything else?”

“No … thanks, Sean.”

Where other brothers had a place between them filled with love and shared memories and mutual respect, between Sean and Brody there was only a scale. Large. Dominant. And utterly, painfully, out of balance.

Sean struggled all the time to even the scales, he piled on these small moments where he didn’t ask things like “Where the hell have you been and are you such an asshole that you can’t even call?”

The way he let himself be rebuffed over and over by Brody.

Those things were so insignificant, so small a weight that it didn’t even come close to balancing the scales.

Brody pulled into the parking space behind the bar. The headlights lit up the yellow brick wall, the blue Dumpster, the black metal staircase up to the apartment.

Home. Sort of.

He turned off the car and the sudden silence pounded.

When he came to Bishop, when that unnamable loneliness brought him home, he stayed with his brother. Which guaranteed he wouldn’t stay long. Not that Sean wasn’t great. He was. Brody imagined he was everything a brother should be.

But living in someone else’s space like that was for different men. Different people.

In the back, Ashley didn’t move. Except for the small lift and fall of her shoulders, she hadn’t even twitched since they’d gotten in the car at the Memphis airport.

His knee aching, he climbed out of the SUV he’d rented and opened the back door.

As carefully as he could he lifted and pulled her from the backseat and into his arms. She weighed nothing. Terrifyingly nothing. Like her skin was full of feathers. Her bones made of air.

At some point he’d go to Cora’s and buy some food. All the fattening southern food Cora was growing famous for.

But first Brody planned on sleeping for a day straight. At this moment, so close to the end of this surreal trip around the world, across the country, and somehow unbelievably into his past, he felt the weight of his legs.
His arms and eyelids. He had been over twenty-four hours without sleep. And the chemical cocktail of adrenaline and worry was draining out of his body, leaving him exhausted.

He hadn’t been this tired since Afghanistan.

The creak and bang of the back door of the bar opening spun him around. It was Sean of course, standing in a slice of light from the open door. The sound of the bar, of music and the hum of voices, spilled out around him, surrounding him. Gilding him.

Sean had his mother’s red hair and freckles, and looking at him was sort of bittersweet, even after all this time.

“Hey, I thought I heard a car,” Sean said, with a wide smile, and he stepped away from the door and the light. “Let me help with your bags.…” The smile dropped from his face.

“Is that a woman?” Sean asked.

“Yeah.”

“Is she … alive?”

Brody smiled. “Of course.”

“What … ah … did you do?”

“I knocked her out and dragged her here, where I’m planning on chaining her to the wall in the apartment above your bar.”

Christ, he was punchy. He could see it in Sean’s eyes. That sudden bafflement quickly erased by joy, pleasure. Like a dog who realized someone he thought might hit him was actually going to throw a ball instead.

Brody looked away, uncomfortable with all that bald affection. It was like sunlight bouncing off snow—blinding.

“It’s hard to know with you, Brody,” Sean said. “But I suppose if that’s your thing, I’ll try not to turn you in to the cops.”

“She’s a friend,” Brody said. “Who just needs a quiet place to get herself together.”

“And an apartment above a bar is the most logical place?”

“An apartment above a bar that doesn’t do a whole lot of business is.”

“Ouch, man. It’s busier than last time you were here.”

Brody doubted it but he smiled and took the first step up to the apartment. He liked the joking around, but it never lasted long. Sean always wanted to turn serious, talk about the bar and Ed. His own life and its problems, like Brody should have an opinion. A desire for involvement. And that always put Brody deeply off balance. “You need some help?” Sean asked.

“No. I’ve got her.” He pulled the feather and air weight of her closer. An effective barrier between him and his brother’s desire for more brotherhood.

“I put some basics in the fridge. And clean sheets on the bed.”

“Great. Thank you, Sean.”

Brody climbed the stairs, deeper into the shadows, but he could feel his brother’s eyes on him from where he stood in that pool of light.

“You know,” Sean said, suddenly very serious. “We’re going to have to talk about this.” He pointed at the woman in Brody’s arms. “And Dad. We have to talk about Dad.”

“Tomorrow,” Brody said. “Noon.”

After a second Sean nodded and went back into the bar and Brody climbed up the rest of the stairs to the apartment.

Where am I?

She awoke with a start and a cry in a dark, hot room. Her heart pounded with fear. With adrenaline. Anger.

Yeri!

But this was not Africa. Not Somalia. She was in a bed and the smells were all wrong.

God, she had to go to the bathroom.

She had to go to the bathroom so bad, it made her whole body hurt. Or made it hurt more because she remembered in a rush why her body really hurt.

I’ve been beaten. Stabbed.

Hands shaking, she pushed the sheets off her body and tried to stand up, but only knocked a lamp on the small table next to the bed into the wall.

Where am I?
Now she was scared. Scared and hurt and she had to pee.

“Ashley?”

Brody. It all came back to her. She’d asked him to take her somewhere, hide her, where her family couldn’t find her. He stood in the doorway, watching her carefully, his dark eyes seeing everything. Seeing too much.

Oh,
she thought,
I clearly didn’t think this through.
What seemed like the perfect way to escape her family, to give herself time to heal and get her head together, left her alone and in the care of Brody Baxter.

I don’t even know where I am!

“Brody,” she said, her voice warped and cracked. “What … what time is it?”

“Nearly dawn. You okay?”

No. Decidedly no.

“Can I help you to the bathroom?”

Oh God.

Her eyelids fluttered shut, overwhelmed by horror and her poor decision-making. She should have gone to a hotel. She could have hired a nurse. A stranger.

“Ash? Let me help you—”

“No!” She snapped. “I don’t need your help going to the bathroom!”

Her snarling words fell into a well of Brody-silence. She was embarrassed and worried and considering the
way her emotions were ping-ponging around the room a little frightened of herself.

Out of nowhere, tears filled her eyes again.

Good God, Ash. Get it together.

“Ashley.” It was just a breath, barely a whisper, and he was pushing open the door, his pity and sympathy softening the sharp lines of his face. “Let me help you.”

He wore jeans and nothing else. All that dark, smooth skin revealed. It was the most of his body she’d ever seen and it was shocking to see it now. She couldn’t look away from the muscle along his hip, sliding into the edge of his jeans, pulled low by the weight of his hands in his pockets. There were burn scars along his rib cage, pink taut tissue, barely visible, but there.

How unfair that he was only more handsome as a thirty-four-year-old than he’d been as a twenty-four-year-old. Unfair that he was more interesting and more competent, more naked and still utterly distant.

When she was so broken and needy and tired and had to pee and couldn’t get there on her own.

She pushed herself up from the bed, surprised that it took all her strength. But of course there he was. His hands, wide and warm, helping her sit up and then stand. She shifted away from his touch, because she was angry that she needed it, wanted it. Because in this her lowest moment, she wanted to be stroked and touched and held against that naked chest and told that she would be okay.

But there was no one in her life to do it.

No one but him.

And he’d been paid.

“I can do it myself,” she muttered, because she had to say something. Lie if nothing else. She attempted another smile to show him she wasn’t angry. Wasn’t irrationally upset by his near-nudity. His presence.

He was silent. Of course. Walking like a gorgeous ghost beside her as she shuffled to the bathroom. His
hands were loose at his sides but she knew he would catch her if she so much as wobbled.