Wild Child (30 page)

Simone’s eyes flashed over Jackson’s shoulders toward Monica, and he got so angry so fast that for a moment, he was worried what he might do to this woman on Monica’s behalf.

But Monica was back in full form, and she needed no one to fight her battles for her.

“Get out of here, Mom,” she said. “You’re not welcome at this party.”

“Well, you’ve certainly made yourself at home here, haven’t you?” Simone asked. “Talk about a twist I wasn’t expecting.”

He felt Monica ramping up behind him, and the only way to stop a good, old-fashioned screaming match in front of camera crews and most of the population of Bishop was to get Simone out of here.

Braving her aura, he stepped closer until Simone turned
her purple eyes to him. Physically, those eyes were so much like Monica’s. The color, the shape, the fringe of black lashes. But Simone’s were empty of all the things Jackson had grown to admire in Monica’s eyes—the fire and heart. The intelligence and wit. The deep-seated pain that this woman had inflicted upon her.

“You want to talk to your daughter, now is not the time,” he whispered. “Go, or I’ll get my police chief to escort you out.”

She blinked, the shark flinching for a moment.

“Aren’t you clever,” Simone said and then nodded at her cameraman, who swung the camera off his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Simone and her crowd left, taking with them the oppressive tension that had filled the garage, and everyone behind Jackson started to buzz again, but a pin had been stuck in this town’s victory. And he couldn’t stand for that.

“Let’s go over to The Pour House, second round is on me!” he cried, and people rolled past him out the door. Smiles were back on their faces but he could tell they were rattled, focused on Simone Appleby and not their victory.

“Weird day, huh?” Sean asked on his way out the door. “You want to give me your credit card for that round?”

“You know where I live,” he said, then turned back around to see Monica surrounded by an almost empty room. Shelby stood next to her at a respectful distance, a surprising ally if not a friend.

Reba sat looking up at Monica, all the hair on her body twitching.

Shelby and Jackson shared a brief look and Shelby walked out the door too, pausing first to squeeze Monica’s arm. Monica seemed startled at first to find someone
next to her, but then smiled—unconvincingly, but she gave it a shot.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” Monica said, when they were alone. “She totally … totally ruined the party.”

“No. It’s fine. The party is just getting started, I’m sure.”

It was awful seeing Monica so beaten. So outside of herself. It was like seeing Sean when his mother died—all the fire in him had been banked. Lost. And now Monica sat in this empty garage looking like she’d been kicked in the stomach.

“I’m going to walk you home.”

“No, no, you should go … go celebrate.”

Oh, those eyes, they just killed him. The truth was, he
should
go celebrate, because he wasn’t the man she thought he was. He wasn’t the man
anyone
thought he was.

Avoiding her, as he had for the last few days, was undoubtedly the right thing to do in the long run. The safe thing. Because the closer they got to each other, the worse it would be when this was over. What had started as sex had turned into something well beyond his control.

But he couldn’t look in her eyes and leave her like this.

“I’d rather walk you home,” he told her with a smile, and he found it to be unalterably true.

It was shock. It had to be shock. This numb feeling, as though her feet were in ice and her head was floating off her body. It felt … like she’d been caught without her shell. All her doors had been thrown wide, her windows open. She’d been vulnerable and … happy. Standing in the corner of the garage, holding Jackson’s hand, watching the show and everyone celebrating, and feeling a part of that. Feeling that she had something to do with
it. And to have Simone walk into a moment so sweet, so pure, and destroy it with her blackness—Monica had been unprepared.

Once they got to her hotel room, she couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t stand the room, the memories, the fact that her mother was somewhere in this town waiting for her. That she’d come here to ambush her. To force Monica to bend and twist and change so that Simone would get her way.

Monica tossed her key on the desk and walked over to the window, cranking it open, letting in a hot breeze that didn’t make the room feel any bigger.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen your mom?”

“Years. Three. Maybe four years.”

“You okay?” Jackson asked quietly.

“Okay?” she cried. It was as if he’d pressed play on the internal monologue building in her head and heart. “No. No. I’m not okay. I’m
never
okay when she’s around. I should have known. I should have known she would do something like this.”

“How could you have known?”

“She called,” she said, realizing she hadn’t told him this. They’d shared so much, and yet somehow not much at all. “After that night at The Pour House, I came back here and she’d called the hotel. Tracked me down. She asked me not to write the book. Told me it would ruin my life.”

His eyes opened wide.

“But I think what she meant was that if I tried to write this book,
she
would ruin my life.” She stared at the curtains, the sheers, fluttering in the sticky breeze. There was only one thing to do. “I’m going to leave.”

She grabbed her suitcase from the closet and flung it open on the bed.

“Leave?”

“I have enough to get the work done. I don’t need to stay here, and it would serve her right.”

“You’re going to run away again?” Something in his voice infuriated her.

“Run away?” she asked. “From what? I wasn’t going to stay here. This wasn’t going to be my home. I don’t have one of those, Jackson. I was here for a job. That’s it.”

He flinched and she knew how she sounded, how she’d reduced him and what they’d shared—the same way he’d reduced her the other day. For something that was supposed to be easy, they kept screwing it up.

“I’m not talking about Bishop, Monica. I’m not even talking about me. I’m talking about your mom. You’re going to run away from your mom again? You’re thirty years old—how many times do you think you can do that?”

“As many as it takes.”

“You’re tougher than that. Smarter than that.”

No!
she wanted to cry.
I am exactly this stupid. Exactly this weak
. But his eyes saw right through her.

“You don’t know me,” she said, railing against him. Against the truth in his words. “And you don’t know my mom. If I stay, she stays. How is that going to go over?”

“Well, I imagine right now Brian Andersen is making them pay a pretty hefty price to film here, so I’m okay with it.”

“What about the Okra Festival? If she’s here, she’ll ruin it. She ruins everything.”

“It’s two weeks away. We can deal with that then.”

Jackson reached over and touched her arm, which, because she was angry and wound up, she pulled away. “You called me a coward, remember?” he asked. “When I wouldn’t talk to my sister?”

“Are you calling me a coward?”

“I’m saying you have a whole lot of unresolved issues
with her that I think, for your own peace of mind, you should resolve. What if she finds you someplace you don’t want to leave? Are you going to let her chase you around all your life?”

She wanted to say yes; she wanted to hold on to this grudge, this anger. She wanted every protective shell she’d ever crafted to keep her safe and warm. But the truth was a very sharp spear, and it cut through all her bullshit.

When she collapsed onto the bed, her suitcase toppled to the floor. Jackson sat next to her and she groaned, embarrassed by her inability to keep her shit together.

“Go ahead, Monica,” he breathed in her ear. “Go ahead.”

He put his arm around her, his big hand cupping her shoulder, his fingers touching the skin of her arm beneath her shirtsleeve. The solid warmth of him made it worse, and her face crumpled in an effort to keep from crying.

Silently, he kissed her forehead, pulling her close. And Monica, her face averted, broke into tears.

Loud, messy, awful tears, and Jackson didn’t say anything. He didn’t shush her or calm her or in any way try to comfort away the storm that raged in her heart and head.

These new memories that had resurfaced while she was here, talking to people about that night Simone shot JJ, had made a mess of her. Of her strength and her anger toward her mom. They turned everything she knew by heart on its head. And she hated that.

Jackson seemed to understand, and he just let her rage until the rage was gone. All gone. And then she sat there, limp, next to him, held upright by his big hands. His strength.

Another first
, she thought.

Orgasms, flowers, friendship, and now this. Jackson was her conquistador, the first foreign man on all her untouched shores, and he didn’t even know it.

“Thanks,” she whispered, using the hem of her shirt to wipe at her eyes.

“Thank
you
,” he said, and she laughed, all snotty and messy.

“For what?”

“For this morning, during the show. Standing beside me.”

She glanced up at him, somehow both embarrassed and emboldened by it all. Weird how vulnerability was addicting. It was so freeing not to pretend all the damn time. “You looked like you needed a friend.”

“I needed you, and you were the only person in the room who knew that. Thank you.”

“I’ve been avoiding you the last few days,” she confessed.

“I know. I … I’ve been avoiding you, too.”

She leaned away from him, from the intimacy and this budding … need of him.

“Maybe we should … stop, you know?” She gestured limply toward the bed.

“I don’t want to stop. I want to be with you, however long it lasts.”

In her lap her hands were knotted together, the knuckles like white flowers. A bouquet of bones.

I want to be with you
.

Was there anything more lovely?

“I want to be with you, too,” she said and his hand covered her knuckles.

“You’re a bit of a mess, you know that, right?”

“Must be why we get along so well.”

He laughed, his thumb stroking her cheek. “You’re right.” Their broken edges seemed to fit together in a way they didn’t fit with anyone else.

Tired of talking, of thinking, she kissed him. It was familiar, that kiss, but at the same time unknown, as if
beyond a familiar room there was a new wing and she was just stepping into it.

“Thank you,” she said against his lips, thinking of the way he’d handled her mother, how he’d backed her up, how he’d walked her home, talked her off the ledge, and let her cry with her pride intact.

“For what?”

“For being you.” Slowly she climbed up onto his lap, her legs straddling his hips. He put his hands on her ass, pulling her closer, and the heat between them built.

There was something about this man that turned her inside out, that made her … not herself. Or a different version of herself. And she was somehow grateful and horrified at the same time. But when he lifted her shirt over her head and looked at her with such adoring lust, it just felt so right.

Whoever she was, whoever he was—they worked together.

And she would take it while she could get it.

Wednesday morning, Monica had an appointment to speak to Mrs. Blakely, her mother’s sixth-grade teacher. She wanted to cancel the meeting because the outside world felt vaguely dangerous, as though her mother would pounce on her at any moment.

But instead she decided to practice a little fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence and headed out early to grab some breakfast before meeting Mrs. Blakely at the library, where she was a volunteer.

At Cora’s, the mood was still high from yesterday’s news. Cora had a free coffee special, and plenty of people were lingering at the counter. Monica even saw some strangers. An older couple sat at a booth by a window, taking pictures.

“Who are all these people?” Monica asked when she ordered.

“Folks from Memphis, mostly,” Cora said. “Came down because they saw the show.”

“Congrats, Cora—I didn’t get a chance to say anything yesterday, but you should be so proud of yourself.”

“I am. I am real proud.” Clouds passed over Cora’s eyes and Monica wondered if she was thinking about her father. Not wanting to bring up any bad thoughts on a day that should be just about celebrating the hard work the woman had done, Monica ordered what had become her usual, and when it was time to pay, insisted on paying.

Jackson had more than made up for the fight they’d had.

Monica sat in a far corner booth with her muffin and coffee and opened up her notebook to go over her questions for her mom’s sixth-grade teacher.

“Can I sit down?”

Monica froze at the sound of her mother’s voice. She’d been prepared for this, in a deep internal place. But that didn’t quite stop the panic from taking root in her lungs and heart.

“Where’s your camera crew?” Monica asked, surprised to see her mother alone, carrying a small teapot and mug. Nearly everyone in the restaurant was watching them; some were trying to hide their interest, while others blatantly stared.

“Yesterday I paid huge fees in permits to apparently be unable to film just about everywhere in town. Including here.”

Monica smiled, and Simone mistakenly took that as invitation enough to sit. As soon as the teapot hit the table, Monica began gathering her things. The instinct to flee her mother’s presence was deeply ingrained.

“I have to go,” Monica said. “I’m actually interviewing your sixth-grade teacher today.”

Simone’s face made a powerful and stunning transformation, and for one long heartbeat she actually looked her age. It was so astonishing that Monica stared for a moment, her notes forgotten.

“Then you
are
working on the book.”

“Sent the first three chapters to my editor yesterday.”

Simone slowly filled her teacup, and the pale brown liquid steamed into the air between them. Monica didn’t know her mother drank tea.