“Jesse didn’t mean?—”
“Yes, he did.” She turns to face me, and there’s something tired in her expression. Not sad, not broken, just tired. “He meant every word. Just the way my dad meant every word. Just the way this whole town means it when they treat us as their personal entertainment.”
“You’re not entertainment to us.”
“No? Then what am I? Your dirty little secret? Your rebellion against daddy? Your Thompson trophy?”
The accusations sting because there’s enough truth in them to hurt. “You’re Callie.”
She laughs, but it’s sharp. “Right. Callie. The girl you wouldn’t have looked at twice if my last name was Smith.”
“That’s not?—”
“Isn’t it? Be honest, Wyatt. If I was just some other girl, would any of you have pursued me? Or was the fact that I’m forbidden fruit the whole appeal?”
I want to argue, but she’s not entirely wrong. The feud, the tension, the thrill of breaking rules, sure it was part of the attraction. Would we have noticed her without it? Maybe. Probably. But would we have pursued her thishard? That’s the question I can’t answer. Or don’t want to. I’m not sure which.
“See?” she says, reading my silence perfectly. “That’s what I thought.”
“It might have started that way?—”
“It started with convenient proximity and sexual frustration. Let’s not pretend it was some grand romance.”
“Hey the same could be said of you. Flaunting it in Dad’s face, that sort of thing. Besides, it was becoming something. It wasn’t just booty calls.”
“No? Were we all really good at fooling ourselves because the sex was fantastic and the drama was addicting?”
She wraps her arms around herself despite the warm afternoon. “I’ve been thinking about it all week. What we actually have versus what we pretend we have. And honestly? We have great sexual chemistry and not much else.”
“That’s not true.”
“Name one real conversation we’ve had. One that wasn’t about the feud or our families or sneaking around or sex.”
I try to think of one. There have been moments, laughing at Rita’s antics, quiet mornings with coffee, Jesse making her smile, but actual deep conversations? The kind that build relationships? We’ve been too busy navigating drama and taking off clothes.
“Exactly,” she says, reading my face. “We don’t know each other. We know each other’s bodies, sure. I know Jesse curves slightly left and you have that scar on your hip and Boone makes that sound right before he… but I don’t know your middle names. Your favorite movies. What you wanted to be when you were kids.”
“We can learn?—”
“While the whole town watches? While Madison posts photos and makes everything a competition? While our fathers try to kill each other at every opportunity?” She shakes her head. “I found out my dad’s dating Mrs. Delaney.”
I blink, processing that bomb. “The town gossip? That Mrs. Delaney?”
“Yes, that one. Which means even our private moments aren’t private. She knows everything. Probably tells her book club. ‘Did you hear Callie Thompson’s sleeping with all three McCoy boys? Pass the wine and judgment.’”
“That’s not our fault.”
“No, but it’s our reality. And I’m tired of it. Tired of being pulled in different directions. Tired of being the town scandal. Tired of good sex not being enough to make up for everything else.”
She starts to walk past me, then stops. “For what it’s worth, the sex really was fantastic. But that’s all it was.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. We were scratching an itch. Rebels without a cause getting off on breaking rules. It was fun while it lasted, but it was never going to last.”
She walks back toward the crowd, toward her father and his protective detail. I watch her go, keeping my expression neutral because showing emotion is not something I do, and I’m not gonna start now.
The ride back is tense.Jesse keeps trying to get closer to Callie’s group, Boone keeps making increasingly inappropriate jokes to lighten the mood, and I keep thinking about what she said. Were we just scratching an itch? Was the drama more important than the connection? Was there even a connection to begin with?
