Page 95
What if.
I still have so many questions that I know will nag at me. Those issues will have to be worked through, but even if I haven’t told Sly, I think I’ve already forgiven him for hurting me.
When he takes off his dirty shirt, I’m not ashamed to eye-fuck the hell out of him. With each subtle movement he makes, those hard muscles ripple. My teeth dig into my bottom lip with a bite of pain while I keep watching my own private show that’s only missing the soapy suds and sponge from his car washing display.
I can’t keep myself from dwelling on what forgiving him means. I want him, not just here and tonight. I’m coming to terms with something bigger—that I want him longer than that.
While I try to cope with both rational and horny Josie’s potentially conflicting trains of thought, he finally yanks off his shoe. It takes more force than he was braced for, and he whacks his head on the aforementioned low-hanging cabinet. A nervous giggle squeaks out from me, and I’m instantly mortified when he looks over at me.
“Is this funny to you?” he asks, raising a brow. I know by the subtle curl of his lips that he’s teasing me, but I still feel guilty because I laughed at him hitting his head. “And now you’re basking in my misfortune?”
I shake my head adamantly, thankful that he’s already wearing an amused grin. “No, not at all. I just… I don’t know. I—”
It’s too late, though, because the awkwardness has set in, and my only reaction is to laugh again. This time, he joins me, and a gruff rumble of a laugh works its way up his chest.
Maybe laughing is the only real answer to the circumstances we find ourselves in. Sitting in the tight confines of my van in the California desert is making that clear. There’s no hiding the absurdity of the past few weeks that’s finally coming to the surface. We can’t ignore it anymore. It doesn’t matter that we were cursed by my parents, cursed by our hometown, and then lucky enough to find some peace before being cursed again with no clear path forward. Yes, that’s us—cursed by fate and nothing left to do but laugh about it.
Each laugh feels like the weight that I’ve been carrying for years has finally been shed from my back. I lose track of how long this goes on as we both laugh our broken hearts out, and I feel a tear run down my cheek. Maybe if we laugh hard enough, we’ll be able to see what’s left from years of damage and how those hearts can be pieced back together.
“Then why can’t either of us stop?” he asks, trying to catch his breath from his own fit of laughter.
“I don’t know,” I say, wiping a stray tear off my cheek.
Slowly, I gather myself and take a deep breath. I feel the relief of so much of that burden—that anger—I’ve been carrying for so long all but gone.
He flashes a sheepish smile before he turns his attention back to his leg, pulling the liner off. Judging by the way he keeps peeking at me out of the corner of his eye, I get the impression that he doesn’t let many people see this part of his life. My mind goes back to the crushing pain I feel in my chest every time I imagine what he went through.
“How often do you have to do that?” I tip my chin toward his leg as he cleans it off.
“Do what?”
“Clean your residual—”
He groans. “This isn’t a doctor’s office. You can just call it my stump.” He grabs a clean towel and dries it off. “And the answer is a lot.”
“Are there better or worse times?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Depends on how active I am, if it’s hot and humid… Any more questions?”
He looks at me and grins, his question clearly meant as a joke because I’m prodding him about the reality of his life. The question that’s been nagging me ever since he told me why he ended things between us works its way to the front of my consciousness. While I know this isn’t what he meant, I can’t help myself from asking.
“Why did you never come?”
His brows furrow. “What? Come where?”
My legs stop swinging, and I wring my hands together anxiously. I already wish I hadn’t asked this question. Not because it’s awkward, but because I’m afraid of what his answer might be.
“Why didn’t you come and try to find me? I understand why you ended things, and I forgive you for that…” I see the immediate relief in his eyes as I finally utter the forgiveness out loud. I can see the breath he lets out, the weight he’s also been carrying for a decade, crumbling and falling off his back. Just like him, I swallow hard and unburden myself from the last vestige of that anger and sadness I was holding onto before I finish my question. “But why did you never try to find me? Why didn’t you ever try to call, or come get me back? Why—”
His smile falters, and any sense of that earlier relief he felt disappears. He drops the towel he was using and scrubs his hand over his short hair. For the briefest second, I picture his fingers running through the tousled hair he used to keep, much like Sutton still has. That quickly fades as I see the pained expression that spreads across his face, erasing those dimples.
“Josie. I—” His voice is a shell of its normal, deep, commanding tone, a broken plea.
He closes his eyes, and his jaw clenches so hard I worry he might crack a molar. I watch his chest inflate as he inhales and slowly lets it out.
“It’s no excuse.” He shakes his head and sighs. “But I tried for so long to convince myself that what I did was right. Clearly, it never worked, because every day since you left Sterling Springs, I despised myself. I hated so many of the people in town, and I—” He palms his face before looking back at me. “I was miserable for years. It took me so long to even go back into some of the businesses in town, like Maribel’s, because of how people, like her brother, treated you. I was a stupid, clueless, immature boy, but by the time I figured out how fucking stupid I was, that’s when this happened.”
His eyes drop, and mine follow. My entire body tenses when he looks down at the leg he just finished cleaning. I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say. Maybe in some parts of my mind, I had thought that was a remote possibility, but hearing it out loud hurts even more. Not for me, but for him. I know how proud, and determined, and stubborn he was—and clearly, still is.
