“That’s awful.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. I worked my fingertips into the hard tendons around his knee, following the grooves and bumping over scars. “I tried to keep my sisters from panicking while we waited for help, and then I was alone in the hospital and they were all in their own rooms and it just sucked.”
“That part was almost as bad as the accident. Losing Eli will always be the worst, but the helplessness of not being able to leave a bed to do anything about it? That was torture.”
He understood. I opened up in a way I hadn’t around anyone. “I wanted my sisters so bad. I felt like I had failed them. Then we got to the Baileys, and I didn’t have to be so strong and I felt worthless. But not for long.”
“There’s plenty to do at the Baileys’ to give you a sense of purpose.”
Again, he got it. “Mama Mae knew to throw us into ranch duties. Daddy was there with everything bourbon and whiskey. And my brothers...” I sank my teeth into my bottom lip. I’d never told anyone about my first impression of my brothers. “They, uh, were a lot like my birth parents. A little wild. They didn’t end up homeless or cart four girls all over the wilderness because they were careless or anything, but?—”
“You were homeless?” He propped himself on his elbows again.
“Yeah, I never really told anyone. Neither did Mama Mae.” The social workers had known, but four girls starting with a new family in a new school didn’t need salacious gossip following them. “We went from campsite to campsite for months. Sometimes they’d take day work and we could afford a hotel. The nights weregetting so damn cold, and I’d hear them arguing about what to do for winter. Then the storm hit and we crashed and that was that.”
“Shit.” He was still watching me as much as he could from his crooked angle. “Is that why you hate planes?”
“I think so. Being closed in like that?” I shuddered. “I don’t care for dark spaces. I’m not fond of storms, but I handle them better than Wynter.”
“Autumn and Junie?”
Another thing with Jonah that no one else had done. He asked about the rest of my family. He knew them and perhaps that was why he was different from the pompous investment banker I’d met through work connections. “We all have our thing. Junie sings, but she also runs, know what I mean?”
He nodded. I didn’t want to spell it out and feel like I was tossing my nomadic sister under the bus.
“Autumn is cautious to the point it stifles her. I guess the silver lining for Wynter is that she couldn’t stand to watch Daddy Darin die slowly from cancer, so she tracked down Myles.”
If I couldn’t find my own happily ever after, I was grateful my sisters could have them. Although it didn’t seem like Autumn or Junie was rushing to any altar like I had.
Several quiet minutes ticked by while I worked on his knee.
“The whole town seems to think they know what the accident did to me,” he said.
I thought about what he said, worked it over in my head. He’d listened and understood, and I wanted to do the same. Was I just another person who assumed I knew what Jonah had gone through?
I moved north of his knee, nudging the sheet up, praying I didn’t expose a butt cheek and turn the air between us uncomfortable. His muscles there were tight in a way the rest hadn’t been. The massage was starting to be like molding steel with the heat of my hand.
“People call you a recluse,” I said. “You don’t agree with them?”
“People are annoying.”
I grinned and continued to stroke around his lower thigh. His skin heated under my touch. “You never had patience for stupid shit. I thought that was why you couldn’t stand me.”
He rested his head back in his arms. “My brother was stupid in love with you and that was annoying enough.”
My smile died. “Yeah. I cringe when I think of how we were.” I’d been in love with the idea of love. Eli had been a good guy to explore those emotions with. “Puppy love can steal common sense.”
He half turned instead of twisting to look over his shoulder.
I was presented again with the scarred side of his face. I recalled what he used to look like. A guy who could’ve walked out of the pages of an outdoor catalogue. He could’ve modeled the clothing, but he hadn’t acted like he knew he was ruggedly attractive. That his grin was everything a young girl lived and breathed for. The scar didn’t change that beauty, but it acted like a visual block for the shallow minded. People thought the jagged scar and the network of lines it turned to under his beard detracted from his looks. Instead, it just made him a different version of a handsome man.
I’d heard the comments over the years. The older crowd wondering if there was nothing a plastic surgeoncouldn’t do. Kids pointing his looks out in public. Then there were the younger women. Those who thought the scars and the way he avoided much of town gave him a bad-boy edge. The ladies who wanted a rough ride.
How many found out what sex was like with Jonah?
“Puppy love?” he asked, dragging me back to the conversation about Jonah.
“We were teenagers. Didn’t you have that with someone? Jackie?” I kept my gaze on my task. Had I sounded jealous?
