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And Jolie. She gazes at me like she wants to know. Like she needs to know. And I feel like I want someone to know. No. Not someone.Her.A person who has cared about me since before I became famous. Before I became a hundred-thousand-dollar news story.
“Chloe was ambitious and had her own thing going on. She wasn’t needy but seemed to support me when I was pretty lonely. It was hard after so many years in a small town, then going to Golden Sierra with my best friend, then all of a sudden, I’m in one of the most transient places in the world with no one.”
“You had your team.”
“Yeah.” It’s hard to say out loud to Jolie that a bunch of jock straps aren’t exactly the same thing as female company.
She considers what I said, circling the rim of her pint glass, thinking. When she raises her gaze, I can’t read it but I know she’s more serious than she’s ever been.
“We always end up with the wrong person when we don’t like something about ourselves.”
I’m taken aback by the depth and intimacy of her words and move closer, intrigued. Opposing emotions swirl inside, I’m exposed and seen all at the same time. No man wants to admit weakness. No man wants to be told they are anything less than confident. But I’m too old to pretend I’m invincible now. And it never got me anywhere anyway. There’sno use pretending with Jolie. We were both homegrown in the same dirt.
My words still come out laced with a bit of denial. “Are you saying I got with Chloe because I didn’t like myself?”
Her eyes search mine. “Maybe. I saw the change at prom. There was something new inside you that night that wasn’t there before. Something sad. Unsure. Far away and way too close at the same time.”
I thought I was the one who could stare into Jolie and see most everything, but now she’s boring right through. Soul-deep. Because that night? It shifted my universe. It still continues to be the stain on my existence. And Jolie saw it?
Jolie runs her fingers through her hair, shifting it off her neck like she’s getting hot. We probably both are. The bourbon. This conversation.
She lets her hair tumble back down, and a few strands fall over her breasts. “Chloe? She was the pretty thing you thought would hide the ugly inside.” She shuffles a little closer, leans into me with her hand on my thigh, bracing herself, preparing to drop a secret in my ear. “If I was pretty enough back then I could have told you”—she gets closer, not a sliver of space is between us now, her breath hot and moist on my earlobe—“there isn’t one goddamn ugly thing about you.”
This woman just murmured raw facts through spicy alcohol whispers like she’s just tasted a truth serum. Like I’ve just tasted it, too. Because she’s right. Chloe was a cover. A shelter from the prom night discovery that my family wasn’t what I thought it was.
When Jolie finally eases herself back, she’s never looked more confident in herself, and if I didn’t already know Jolie Hunter grew up into a goddess, the power in her eyes right now would have convinced me. She’s sure of what she justsaid. And so am I. But I’m not prepared to talk about all that. Hell, I’ll never be prepared.
I’m stiff. Speechless. She flutters her gaze to our shot glasses, and we pick them up to drink again. She wipes the corner of her lip with her fingertip and puts her knee up casually on the booth. Her legs are splayed open, and I’m drawn to the seam of her jeans tracing down between her middle. Her other knee rests on my thigh.
She leans on her elbow, and the action somehow shifts her another inch closer. Her beautiful hair pools on the table. “Well? Am I right?”
I brush her hair off her shoulder and instantly wonder why I didn’t keep my hands to myself, but the brown liquor whispersit’s all fine. Better than fine. Something inside tells me this is why I came back to Starlight Canyon—for the soles of my feet to connect with something real again.
The moment is meaningful, but my senses are getting less sharp.Should we be talking like this?I shouldn’t let her lips ever come that close to my ear again. So I lighten the mood. “When did you become so wise, Joey Hunter?”
Her laugh is deep, throaty, and to everything waist down, sensual. “Oh, Pup, I went through shit, too. I probably ended up with Eric for the same type of reason you were with Chloe.”
Logan never had a nice word to say about Eric Larose. And now that Jolie brings up her ex, also a pro hockey player I’ve heard about over the years, everything fed back to me was the complete opposite of Jolie’s character.
He’s painted as hockey’s party animal. A city-hopping, bling-wearing, pap-hunting fame-chaser. Then again, maybe people said the same about me. When you get a chance to make a few million from an underwear ad, you do it.
“You were with Eric for a long time.” I don’t want to talk about her ex but I force myself. To remind the increasing charge of electricity as I sit here with my lifelong friend that it is just that—friendship.
“On and off.” She peers at me from under her eyebrows. “Mostly off. Even when we were on. If you know what I mean.”
I think I know what she means and I don’t like it. “His reputation is warranted?”
She shrugs.
My blood simmers close to a boil. Did Eric mistreat her? I rub my thumb in circles around the delicate bone of her wrist. “You should tell me what happened.”
“Right.” She scoffs. “I won’t tell you for the same reason I’ll never tell Logan.”
She’s already said enough to put me in the sin bin next time we play the Huskies.
“Anyway.” She gazes out into the empty expanse of the bar. “I thought we were going to focus on the present.”
She sips her beer and doesn’t take her eyes off me while she drinks. When she pulls away the glass, she has a tiny Chimayo mustache.
