Page 25 of About Yesterday (Foothills #5)
That witchy laugh was going to undo him, the best sound he’d heard all day, and he couldn’t resist. Trace snorted as she calmed enough to talk again. “She did not say that.”
“She didn’t have to. I know the look.” Hands still in his pockets, he glanced down at his apparel smugly. “Why would I pick out jeans that make my ass look this good, without a woman telling me? And my sneakers aren’t pristinely white and practical, so someone else must have chosen them for me.”
“What makes her think I’m at risk for falling prey to the charms of a bad boy looking to corrupt me?”
“No fucking clue. I didn’t correct her that you spend your days thinking about blowjobs.”
Trace reached for him again, this time she hooked her hand around his forearm, pulling until he moved his hand out of his pocket and she slid down to lace her fingers with his, gently pulling him out of his room.
“Oh boy. Well, if I start flirting with a ruffian or something, I’m counting on you to protect me. ”
He laughed and tugged back at her hand, grabbed his wallet, and they headed toward the stairs.
She went down the first step first, released his hand, turned around, rested her hand on the rail and looked up at him.
“What?” he asked.
She glanced back down the stairs, and said, “Never mind.”
At a safe distance apart, they headed downstairs and shouted quick goodbyes to Jeremy and Ellen, who very kindly did not come out for more odd pep talks.
Trace handed him her keys. “You drive there, I’ll drive back so you can have a few drinks and relax.”
He opened her door first—the keyless entry wasn’t working—then hopped in the driver’s side. “No offense, but in your quest to feel… updated, have you considered getting a new car?”
She snorted as she buckled, tugging at the seatbelt twice before it cooperated. “He may be boring, but Floyd still runs reliably, and there are times where practicality must win.”
He turned the key, and the engine engaged without much of a fuss. The odometer was creeping toward three hundred thousand miles. “I’ll say. How is this thing still running?”
“This car is so boring it won’t even die on me. It won’t do anything to give me an excuse to get something new.”
As he pushed on the gas pedal, it moved, but sluggishly. “I really can’t argue with that. All the clothes I owned before coming home were for work, my furniture was ancient, and I haven’t owned a car in years.”
“It took you two months to even get a haircut.”
He backed around and turned toward the road. The rain had let up some and was now one of those gentle mists that warmed what would otherwise be a crisp evening. “What were you going to say? On the stairs?”
“Oh,” she said as she scooted the hem of her skirt down, then reached across to crank the heat on full blast. “I wondered if you would be freaking out right now. I know you weren’t looking forward to going. Is it the crowd, or the company, or what?”
“Chaos. Unpredictability. Noise. All of it. I’m completely freaking out. You can’t tell?” he asked, glancing over at her and winking playfully.
She stared at him like he was a ghost, shaking her head vaguely.
There was no way to explain it, that he’d trained until he didn’t even recognize his name as his own. That he had been through so much worse, time and again. If even Trace couldn’t see through it, he knew he’d nailed it.
In a thick, slow as syrup southern accent, expression lax and dopey grin engaged, he said, “Naw, come-on darlin’, ya can’t be worryun’ lahk this awl thuh tahm.”
She leaned back in her seat, and her amused bewilderment egged him on.
Quickly switching to a ripe cockney, posture adjusted, he said, “‘Ere’s a lump of ice. S’all bout fittin’ in.” Again, he switched, this time to a nasal Boston, all fast and all attitude. “Can’t fuckin’ fall apaht if you get stawpped by a statie.”
“I’d forgotten about your knack for accents. The drama club begged you to join them. So you just, what, have multiple personas?” she teased.
“Pretty much. That’s, uh, a big part of how I landed my job.”
“Being good at accents?”
“Well, that helped. I was about to come home from a deployment, ready to say fuck-off to the Army, when the FOB got hit. Shitstorm from hell. I did my thing, got the job done, only bent the rules a little, but my squad made it out unscathed, and I grabbed this contractor on the way out.” He left out the gruesome bits, how cold he’d been, how the guy had been impressed by his skills, of course, but it had been Cole’s ruthlessness that had sealed it.
“And he offered you the job?”
“He offered me an interview that went pretty well.”
He expected Trace to gush, impressed and all that. Maybe to ask about his job, about the crazy shit he’d done. Or even to ask for another of his disguises.
Nope. Brow low, she folded her arms over her chest and looked straight ahead. “Foothills is going to bore you within six months.”
He flicked on the blinker that clicked at twice the speed it was supposed to, the light not fully illuminating.
“I like Foothills. I lived here longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere.
” Without slowing like he should, he gripped his hands firm on the wheel and took the corner too fast, his calm slipping as her words hit him like a sucker punch.
Tone sharp, she shook her head as she said, “You counted the days until you could leave. Even on the times you came to visit, you were itching to leave.”
Cheeks tight, jaw clamped shut, his foot hard on the pedal, he growled, “This is where I want to be.” He tapped the breaks as he swerved around a turning car, flooring it the second it was out of the way. Swallowing hard, he tried to calm his attitude.
Filled with judgment, her exhale rattled loudly.
He risked glancing over at her. Did she really think so little of him? He opened his mouth to defend himself, to pretend he would be content to whittle and eat cookies for the rest of his life.
Quickly, she schooled her expression and stared ahead.
His stomach rolled on itself. Ahab’s came into view, and he cranked the wheel hard into the parking lot, spinning the wheel and backing fast into the nearest parking spot.
She didn’t say a word, didn’t look at him, arms folded over her chest, and showed zero sign of anything.
“Trace?” he asked, his breath sharp in his throat.
“What?”
Hands still gripped on the wheel, he bit the edge of his cheek. “Tell me I’m a fucking idiot for getting defensive. Yell at me for driving like an asshole.”
In a rare, spitting tone, she breathed sharply before raising her voice. “I’m not mad, I’m… I’m…”
“What? What is it Trace? Just fucking talk to me. If I said or did something to piss you off or make you think I’m fucking around—“
Her growl thickened, her cheeks reddening as she let it out, rapid fire.
“The second you’re recovered enough, you’re out of here.
Because that’s what you do. My dad’s going to cry alone in his office again, my mom’s going to bake enough cookies for the entire town, foolishly hoping you’ll catch the smell from a few thousand miles away. ”
“And what about you? Going to hide behind your ponytail and pastels and blame me for it?”
“You flipped off this town and this life so fast, not even glancing in the rearview. I fell apart when Haley left before high school, but then I met Finn and had—“
“Reliable codependence?”
“I had a partner. Someone I could go to when I was scared or happy or whatever. And then I had you, and you were…” She glanced at him, only a moment, and shrugged as she looked away.
“And then I had none of you. So forgive me for not trusting that the prodigal son has returned and is suddenly going to build a nice house and get a gentle job and live a quiet life when you’ve never shown any interest before,” she snorted, glaring out the window.
“So it’s my fault that you only date safe guys? Nice guys who bore the life out of you, but at least they won’t leave you behind?“ He slammed his head back against the headrest.
“You know what?” she roared and turned to face him finally. “Yes. It is your fault.”
“That’s bullshit.” Air rushed into his lungs and wouldn’t leave, wondering how things might have been different if he had come back sooner.
“You dumped Finn instead of telling him that you needed more, because you were scared. That had nothing to do with me. If he’d stuck around, you’d have married him. ”
Lips pursed in a tight fury, a dragon-like huff lifted and dropped her chest, and she shook her head with a refusal to give any credence to what he’d said.
“He didn’t stick around. Neither did you.
I dumped my boyfriend of four fucking years— twice —because he wasn’t what I needed him to be.
Go ahead and call that playing it safe, but—“
Breath stifling in his chest, he closed his eyes. “It took guts,” he fired back. “Which I envy.”
“Sure.”
“Seriously. You don’t think that maybe I couldn’t wait to get out of town because I didn’t have the balls to see what would happen if I stopped to smell the roses?
And what if I foolishly let slip how I feel about you, and risk losing you and Jeremy and Ellen and everything that matters to me in Foothills? ”
“So you spent the next ten years pretending that we were a thing in your overactive imagination, because you didn’t have the guts to even try falling for someone else? Or even consider telling me how you felt, even after you knew that Finn and I were over?”
“I have fucked plenty of other women and have an active fantasy life that doesn’t always involve you,” he growled, closing his eyes and rewinding.
“What I mean is, I have had girlfriends, and I have been in love with someone who wasn’t you.
But yes, when I was lonely or… or fucking dying, yes, I thought about you . ”