He took his eyes off the road for moment, and his gaze clashed with hers. He realized the double meaning in what he had just said. And he felt the impact of it way down low in his gut. Down even lower. He had never been so affected by a woman in his life. There was just something about her. And there always had been. Despite her vibe, she really did care what other people thought. She worried about it. Because she felt different?
Was that all it was? Did he feel that maybe he understood Jessie Jane and she understood him because they were both odd birds?
He had never considered that. But then, he did his very best to wear his disenfranchisement like a second skin. To act as if he didn’t give a shit what anybody thought about him. When in reality, he felt sidelined by his family, and he had embraced the label of outlaw because at least then he was alienating them on purpose. There was something that scratched the back of his brain, something to do with Jessie. Some quality he recognized. He couldn’t exactly nail it down, he only knew that it was closer to who he was than he had ever anticipated. But that wasn’t the only reason he was attracted to her. The other reasons were visible and obvious, particularly right now, when she was looking more polished and done up than he had ever seen her. Particularly now, when she was close to him in his truck, and he could smell her perfume. Or maybe it wasn’t even perfume. Maybe it was just soap and her skin. Either way, her scent attacked his senses in a way he couldn’t call unpleasant.
“You know what it’s like to grow up in a home that looks totally different from all the ones around you,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” he said. “I do. When you don’t have a mom and dad.”
“Or a front yard,” she said.
“You have a giant piece of property.”
“Sure. But it’s more carnival than home.”
“Did you ever even try to have anyone over?”
She shook her head. “No. Never. Did you?”
“Dalton. He’s one of those people that doesn’t … I don’t know. His family moved here from out of town, and he’s never much seemed to care. Who my parents were or what the house was like, you know?”
“I just never met a Dalton. The Wilders and the Hancocks—our families could’ve been allies, but we weren’t.”
That made him feel guilty. It shouldn’t. It wasn’t his fault … Except, he hadn’t done anything to fix the enmity between their families when they were kids. But why would he?
Kids inherited prejudices from their parents, and didn’t really question them until they were given a reason to. But it did stick inhis gut that the Wilder family had experienced hardship in town because of their name, and the Hancocks had too, and rather than banding together, they had put up barriers. It was a helluva thing. Not necessarily a good thing.
He had made a friend; she never had. Well, not when she was younger.
“You got invited places, though. When you were older.”
“Yes. I did. Thank you for the concern.”
“Good. I just … don’t like the thought of you being totally by yourself.”
“Thank you. I didn’t think there would ever come a day when Flynn Wilder was worried about my social calendar. Obviously, I’m fine.”
“Yeah. Well. You definitely figured it out.”
“Something.”
They didn’t speak the rest of the way into town, and when they pulled up to the front of the restaurant, he parked against the curb and got out. He held his finger up when she started to undo her seat belt, indicating that he wanted her to wait. When she acted as if she was going to try to race him, he moved quickly to the door and opened it before she could. “Don’t be a brat,” he said.
She looked shocked and offended. “I’m not a brat.”
“You’re a brat,” he said, leaning in. Why was he playing this game? He was torturing himself. Torturing her. Her eyes dropped to his mouth. Her cheeks turned pink, but she didn’t tell him to move. Didn’t say that she wasn’t attracted to him.
“For what it’s worth,” he added, “I don’t hold anything against your family. That was an Austin Wilder special.”
“I know. I don’t really blame him. Not really. You were never mean to me. I mean, your family never was. We weren’t friendly, that’s for sure, but we weren’t mortal enemies either. At least you didn’t run around calling me Contagion.”
She got out of the truck then and he closed the door behind her. “Contagion?”
“Don’t you remember that? I guess not. You were probably in middle school. I had lice. And I got sent home. So some of the boys called me that for a while.”
“Shit,” he said. He didn’t like that at all. He had never really thought of her as a human being with frailties. That was his fault. He’d been shortsighted. He’d thought of her as an emblem of something rather than a human being. People hadn’t been mean to him in school because they had always known that Austin or Carson would beat them up. And once he got older, he would’ve done it.
“Why didn’t West beat the shit out of them?” he asked.
