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“I didn't know you could fix cars.”
That voice, pretty as twinkling Christmas lights and as fatal to me as a spear through the heart, can only belong to one woman. And it sets me alight with a mess of emotion so entangled it's hard to decipher what I feel at all.
Anger is the most obvious, simmering just below the surface, almost but not quite stifling whatever else is underneath, like the pain. Fuck, am I in pain. Until I saw her getting out of her car four nights ago, I thought I was past what she did to me. But if the smarting in my soul is anything to go by, then evidently I am not. So, I cling to the rage because it's easier that way, letting it drench me completely before sucking in a deep breath and readying myself to see her.
I slide on the creeper out from underneath the car, catching a glimpse of flaming-red hair in my periphery and ignoring the way it makes my breath catch. Without a word, I grab an old rag off a shelf on the wall and turn to Thea with a raised brow.
She stands in the doorway that connects the waiting room to the main area of the shop with her hip cocked against the wall. In a cream boucle dress and knee-high boots, she's the epitome of swinging sixties glamor. Her hair bounces in the kind of natural-looking waves that can only be achieved with a curling iron and all three hundred and fifty-eight of her freckles are hidden under layers of concealer.
But her perfect curls and outfit and all the pointless fucking makeup she's wearing isn't enough to cover her apprehension. Her nerves. Herfear.And it makes me want to smile, knowing she feels like this just being in my presence without me even having said a word.
Good.
Let her fucking squirm.
Maybe I'm an asshole, or maybe I'm just a guy who's had his heart broken and is mad about it, but I keep on watching her in silence, all the while knowing how uncomfortable it makes her.
She shifts on her heeled boots, her eyebrow twitching ever so slightly the way it always has when she's nervous, but she refuses to look away from me. So, for an indiscernible amount of time, we just stare at each other.
Her green eyes look endlessly into my brown ones. Leaves in spring against bark on trees, contradictory yet complementary. The same way her softness used to smooth over my sharp edges.
But I refuse to think about that or Thea and me being anything other than two utterly separate beings. Because it doesn't matter that we once were perfect opposites who just simply fit together. That's not who we are anymore. It's not who we've been for a long time.
“So…the cars,” she prompts, walking farther into the shop and running her small hand over the hood of a vintage Cadillac. “You fix them now?”
“The evidence would certainly suggest so.”
She rolls her eyes. “Funny.”
I say nothing in response and secretly rejoice in her discomfort. The subtle flare of her nostrils, the crinkling around her eyes, the way her knuckles whiten at her sides brings me satisfaction of the sickest kind. I want her to be uncomfortable and awkward and fucking miserable. I like it.
“You really not gonna talk to me?”
“I'm talking now, aren't I?”
A sigh. Another roll of her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
It's almost impossible not to laugh when she stamps her foot in frustration. “You don't have to make this so difficult.”
Smirking, I round the car and slowly stride toward her. She lowers her gaze to my hands as I approach, refusing to look up at me until I'm standing right in front of her, our noses almost brushing. “Tell me, Thea. Why would I make it easy for you? I owe you fucking nothing.”
Her shoulders fall momentarily before she remembers herself and stands tall once again. “Yeah,” she mutters, “Leighton said the same thing.”
“You spoke to Leighton?”
Her lips twitch with victory as her eyes sparkle with the realization that she knows something I don't. “Wouldn't you like to know?”
I'll kill Leighton if she's told Thea I sent the flowers. I don't care how feisty or scrappy that girl is. She was supposed to leave the bouquet on the Sparkes family’s front porch without a card, ring the doorbell and disappear before someone came to open it.
Under no condition was Thea to know it was me.
“She told you, didn't she?” I grit out between clenched teeth.
Her dark eyelashes flutter and she sucks a plush lip into her mouth, thinking. I hate the way my gaze traces the movement, but there's no force in the world that could stop me. Not when I can smell her perfume. Not when she's standing so close that I could bend down to taste the same lip for myself if I only let a piece of my control slip.
Finally, Thea nods.
