Wild Child (36 page)

Oh, if only she’d said that when it really mattered! She thought of all the years she’d imagined her mother begging to have her back.

And here it was, just after she’d stopped caring.

It was as if the ropes that had been holding her in the same place all these years were cut at once and Monica was set free, set loose from the anger. The memories, the child she’d been. Even the woman she’d been just days ago.

She drifted away from all that weight dragging her down.

She took a deep breath, gasping at the pleasure of being free of all that pain and anger. And then gasping again at the unexpected ache of it.

“I’m not leaving,” Simone said.

“Then I guess I’ll see you around.” That was all Monica could give her.

She walked out the door, Reba trailing behind her. Outside the screen door, the summer night was quiet. It was after midnight, and even the bugs were asleep. There was nothing but black velvet silence out there.

“I’ll walk you home.” The screen door opened behind her and Charles came out, wearing a dressing robe and boots.

“No.” She smiled, because he looked so ridiculous and it was—at its heart—a nice thing to do. And she could recognize that now. She felt chagrined for her earlier anger. Turtle Man, honestly. “Thank you. I’ll be fine.”

“It’s late.”

“I’m a big girl.”

“At least to the end of the street.” He started walking past her, and she had nothing to do but start walking herself.

“I won’t apologize for Simone,” he said.

“I don’t expect you to. I don’t expect anything from you, Charles.”

“I know. But I do want to say this. We learn how to be happy from our parents. We learn how to treasure it and
work for it, how to sacrifice for it. We learn how precious happiness is from the example our parents set.”

“Simone didn’t set much of an example,” she said, feeling sad for both of them.

“I know. She didn’t learn from her father, who probably didn’t learn from his parents. But … you could break that cycle. If you wanted.”

“I don’t have any children. I’m in no danger of passing on my family’s shitty legacy.”

“But you could be happy,” he said, his voice soft in the night. His boots kicked gravel and somewhere along the ditches, bushes rustled. Reba growled in her throat.

“You’re not making my mother happy?” she asked. “Shame on you.”

“Some days are better than others, but I love her. And she loves me, and she tries. But happiness … happiness isn’t her natural state. There are days, and she’d tell you this herself, she is just too scared to try.”

Monica found herself smiling, a surprise. “I understand that all too well.”

“Then you know it doesn’t take any courage to expect the worst. But to try …” He whistled, as if there were just no words for how hard it was to try to be happy.

Isn’t that the truth
, she thought.

She stopped at the edge of the road, the streetlights of the square just up ahead. “I’m okay from here,” she said.

“I hope so,” he answered and vanished back into the shadows, leaving her to walk toward the light by herself.

Chapter 23

At dawn Jackson was on the front porch of his house. Waiting. Phone in hand, condoms by his side. Fear and anger a snarling, snapping beast at his back.

Gwen hadn’t come home last night.

She hadn’t returned his texts.

His only comfort was that if she were lying dead in a ditch, he’d have heard about it by now.

When he saw her again … he shook his head, unable to even finish that sentence.

He braced his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands, but at the sound of the front gate creaking open he lifted his head, like a dog catching a scent.

“Gwen?”

But it was Monica, holding paper coffee cups and a bag from Cora’s. The pink of her shirt, of her lips, glowed in the half-light. “No,” she said with a smile. She looked about as rough as he felt, wan with dark circles under her eyes. Somehow, though, she managed to be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And he found himself so susceptible to that right now, he wanted to put his head in her lap and let her tell him everything would be okay. “Just me. Where’s Gwen?”

“She didn’t come home last night.”

“Oh my God.” As she walked up the stone path toward him, the smell of fritters and coffee and … 
her
pulled the trigger on the worst of his volatile emotions and he remembered the condoms beside him on the stairs. “Do you know where she is?” she asked.

“With Jay.” He grabbed the condoms. “What do you know about this?”

“She gave those to you?” Monica asked as she set down the coffee cups and grease-stained pastry bag.

“No. I took them from her shorts.”

“Jackson—” That she dared to sound reproving made him furious.

“Don’t. You. Dare lecture me on morality when it comes to teenagers. I’m not running around giving them condoms.”

“You think that’s what I was doing? Running around just handing out free condoms?”

“It sure as hell looks like it.”

“Your sister came to me, Jackson. Talking about having sex. What should I have done?”

“Told her to come talk to me.”

Calm, she watched him.

“What?” he demanded. “You have nothing to say?”

“Why would she come to you, Jackson? You don’t talk to her. You don’t talk to anyone.”

“This isn’t about me, Monica. It’s about you getting involved in something that’s none of your business.” She kept pushing herself out of the corner she was supposed to be in. She bled into the edges of the town, his relationship with his sister, his plans for his life after Bishop.

“In the interest of full disclosure, she mentioned you caught her drinking, and I gave her my cell phone number and told her it would be better for her to call me for a ride than get into the car with someone who had been drinking.”

The top of his head felt like it had been blown off; he could only gape at her.

“I was only trying to help,” she said. “But you’re right. I should have told you.”

“This is how you help?” he snapped. “You learned this on that island of yours?”

She blinked at his viciousness but he couldn’t curb it. His whole life had started to fall apart the minute she blew into town like a hurricane, blowing apart the boundaries, the lines, the paths he needed.

“This isn’t your business,” he breathed, shaking the condoms in her face. “None of this is your business.”

Her lips went white at the edges, the small muscles flinching just like they had so long ago at The Pour House.
I am hurting her. And I don’t know how to stop
.

“What
is
my business, Jackson?” She stuck her chin out, as if asking for his best shot, and he didn’t think twice. He gave it to her.

“I think what happened in my office yesterday answers that question.”

The memory of her tipped over his desk, his hand holding her down, rippled through him, shaming him. That he brought it up like this—blaming her for it—made him even sicker.

She closed her eyes for a moment, as if gathering herself for another round. But when she opened them, there was a ghost of a smile on her beautiful lips and he was disarmed.

“This … this isn’t going the way I thought it would.” She stepped closer, looking up at his eyes, her body a breath away from his. And despite everything between them, he wanted to touch her. He curled his fists against the urge. Awareness that there was something different in the air didn’t sit well with him at the moment. He was raw. And his instinct was to circle the wagons, push her away.

“I came here to be brave,” she said. “I came here to try for happiness. I came to tell you I love you. I love you, Jackson.”

For a moment the words didn’t sink in. They didn’t
mean anything. They were gibberish spoken in a foreign language.

“I … What?”

“I love you. I didn’t want it or expect it, but I love you.”

He opened his mouth—but there were no words he could apply to what ached in his bones.
I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t know what to say or do. I can’t see myself out of this
.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said, as if she knew just what the storm was inside of him. “I just … I just wanted to say it. I’ve never said it before.”

The front gate screeched open and there was Gwen, running up the front walk. The relief was painful, as though all his blood was falling through his body to his feet, leaving him numb and light-headed. “Jackson, I’m sorry,” she panted. “I fell asleep in Jay’s basement—”

“Go to your room.” He couldn’t even look at her, so he spat the words at her shoes.

She jerked to a halt, her eyes darting from him to Monica, and he wanted to scream at his sister not to look at Monica. That
he
was in charge. He was her family.

He held up the condoms.

“Did you tell him?” Gwen asked Monica, daring to act as if she were the affronted party.

“No. He … found them.”

“Found …” Gwen’s eyes swung to him. “You went through my room?”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“I’m not a little kid and you have no right—”

“I’m in charge!” he cried. “I didn’t ask for this, Gwen. But you’re here and I’m here and Mom and Dad aren’t. I don’t know what you want from me! What more am I supposed to do for you?”

“What have you done for me?” she spat.

“I gave up my life!” The second the words were out he knew it was a mistake. He didn’t have to see her pain-filled
face, her angry eyes. He didn’t have to hear Monica’s gasp of censure.

“You should just leave now,” Gwen said, stepping away from the hand he reached out to her. “Go, get on with your awesome life. I don’t need you. I
never
needed you. You were just too stupid to see it!” She stomped up the stairs and ran into the house. Into her room.

He watched her go, his bones aching.

I never needed you. You were just too stupid to see it
.

God, if only he’d been that stupid, but he’d known she didn’t need him, not really, all along. All along.

Just as she probably knew how much he resented her for being the reason he had to give up his life.

“She didn’t mean that,” Monica whispered, trying to make it better. Trying to make it right. “Just like—”

“Like I didn’t mean it?” He looked up at her, his anger fading to grief. “We meant it, Monica. Those are the things we’ve always known and have just never been able to say.”

Her lips went hard. “Then shame on you.”

A tidal wave of exhaustion and resentment rolled over him. “I can’t do this all at once,” he whispered. “I can’t … the show, the Okra Festival, Gwen.” He looked at her. “You.”

She nodded as if she’d expected that. As if she’d come here knowing she would be hurt, knowing disaster would befall her, and he couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

“We’re all connected, Jackson. All these people in your life who love you and who you try to hold at arm’s length. We’re connected and we’re messy. And we can’t live in the little compartments you want us to stay in. And I know you might not let me in, I know that might be too hard for you. I don’t fit into the idea you had for your life, and that’s too bad—mostly for you, because I could have been the best thing that ever happened to
you. But I pray, Jackson, I pray you let your sister in, before you end up all alone. Before
she
ends up all alone.”

She took a coffee, left the other for him, and walked away, her head held high, her shoulders back, as if she were free. As if there was nothing tying her down anymore.

He wanted to call her back, ask her how she did it. How she found the courage to be so open to the world. To make mistakes and let mistakes be made. To let pain happen. Disappointment.

His whole life was a sandbag effort to keep those things out. Away. Accepting that devastation, welcoming it even, sticking out her chin and asking for it … it was the bravest, craziest thing he’d ever seen.

The next forty-eight hours stretched in front of him with the potential for disaster at an all-time high, and he didn’t know how to handle it with her at his side.

Or with her
not
at his side.

But he didn’t know how to love her, either. The chaos of her, of love—it was terrifying. And he was shit at it.

The girl inside was proof of that.

The clouds burned off by nine a.m. and the day was brilliant with sunshine. And Jackson’s cell phone was ringing nonstop. His in-box was full, and he was being texted and tweeted and tortured.

“Why the hell aren’t you out here?” Sean asked on the phone. “I’m setting up these booths for the street fair all by myself.”

“I’m on my way,” he assured Sean and ran up the stairs to pound on Gwen’s door. Bubba was a snoring sentinel guarding it.

“Go away!” Her voice was muffled.

“Look, I’ve got … I’ve got a lot of things going on today but you and I aren’t over, Gwen.”

Silence answered him.

“I’ll be back to take you to the pageant tonight, but until then, you don’t leave this house. Do you understand me?”

The door opened. Gwen, stony in her anger, stared at him.

“I’m going to Shelby’s before the pageant,” she said. “Monica is doing my hair and makeup.”

Even the sound of her name stabbed at him. Called up some assurance buried in his gut that he was wrong. He was making mistakes, irrevocable and regrettable.

“Fine. I’ll take you there. But we have—” The door slammed in his face. “We have unfinished business, Gwen.”

The day roared by fueled by coffee and exhaustion and stress. The work was never-ending and he took a personal stake in all of it. He felt the weight of every single decision.

“Don’t you have more important things to do than this?” Sean asked as they hung parade signs that would direct traffic in the morning.

“Everything is important,” Jackson said, biting off the tape he used to hang a sign on a streetlamp.

“That’s your problem,” Sean said.

“Oh Christ. Not you, too.”

“You know, the rest of the world figures out what’s important. Not every single thing has to be code blue.”