“You said it gets you laid,” she said, regretting throwing that word out into the middle of the table.
“Yeah. Because there’s something sexy about a rebel. You should know.”
His green eyes were hot, and a spark ignited in response at the center of her chest. She supposed she did know that, even if she had never acted on it. Because men were attracted to her. And there was the whole thing about getting to be with her—all lies, but lies she never bothered to correct.
“Yeah. I suppose so. But don’t you feel it keeps people from …” She stopped herself. Because she wasn’t sure she wanted to have this conversation at all.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She was breaking her own cardinal rule. Making it too obvious she was putting up a wall. She knew better than that. This was the point where you should just acquiesce and give in. This was the point where protesting too much made you look silly.
“It’s not nothing.”
She took a breath, trying to dislodge the frozen, pressured feeling at the center of her chest. “When people only know the reputation, they don’t really know you, right?” It was such a disingenuous thing for her to say, because she had built her reputation by design. But then, she had to wonder if he did too. If to an extent he leaned in to all that outlaw stuff so that people just saw the legend and not the person.
She didn’t want to admit that’s what she did. But if there was one person who would understand without her explaining, it was probably him. The whole conversation was risky. But so was letting him touch her hand. So was being here with him. Hell, it had been a risky game from the moment she had approached him, because there wasn’t nothing between them. It had always been something. Always.
“I suppose that’s true,” he said. “But I’ve had to live so many different ways. There was getting by in my father’s house, which meant being self-sufficient. It meant not being precious about things, not caring too much. My father was fun, but he didn’t take care of things. Didn’t take care of us, not really. He was wedded to alcohol and one-night stands, and that was way more important to him than being a father. Then at my mother’s house, there was a new language to learn. Being civil. Table manners and all that. I was a little more myself with my grandfather, I suppose, because he seemed interested in who I was. But then you go out to a bar, and some girl wants to know all about those outlaw Wilders, and I know how to play that up too.”
She only had the one mask. She wore it everywhere. She didn’t do what he was talking about: changing with the wind, learning to blend in depending on the venue. “Are they all pieces of yourself?”
“I guess they become pieces of you,” he said. “Because all ofthose people are part of my life. I mean, I definitely play up some of it. My half brother Mike is about eleven months younger than me. When my mom decided to make something different of her life, she really went for it. And it always felt like he was her real son. I could never compete with him. Not when he was being raised in the civilized environment one hundred percent of the time. So I made him envy me. I think he still does. Because he’s trapped in a nine-to-five, in this relentless grind, sort of hand-shackled by his own relentless need for approval. There’s a certain point where if you can’t assimilate, it’s almost more fun to make the ones that can wish they were you.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. I guess that’s one way of coping.”
“Is that what you do, Jessie? All those silly girls that were so mean to you … Do you think they envy you? Because they’re not brave. Because they care so much about what other people think, and you walk around doing what you want, when you want, saying whatever you want.”
He was so close to the bone. To the truth of it all. “Yes. And no. You know what’s funny about the two of us, Flynn Wilder? We probably know more about human nature than most people. Every good con man does.”
“Is that what you think I am?”
“It’s in your blood. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it either. People like us, it’s only fair that we get a little bit of a cheat code, don’t you think? Some way that we can navigate our lives. We didn’t choose them.” She looked at the back wall. “What I’ve noticed is that people are almost paralyzed by their desperate need to be liked, to fit in. Paradoxically, the minute I stopped acting like I cared about that, people liked me a whole lot more. They can smell fear, and they could smell desperation. But if you act as if you don’t need their approval, as if you don’t need them to like you, well then, they want to know why. They want to know what makes you so special. And maybe the secret is that there’s nothing special. Nothing at all. But they don’t know that.”
“I think there’s something special,” he said, his voice rough.
She just sat there, frozen, feeling he had demolished a wall inside her, and she didn’t know how she would ever get it back up. She didn’t know how she would ever get herself together. How she would ever hide herself from him again.
But then, thank God, their appetizers were cleared, and their pasta was brought out.
“He’s checking you out,” Flynn said, gesturing back toward their waiter.
She hadn’t even noticed the waiter. Much less whether or not he was checking her out.
“Oh?”
“It’s a great dress.”
“Thank you. But you know men will check out basically anything. I don’t get any satisfaction from that.”
She wondered if that was true. Because she definitely got a little something out of it. Especially …
The reason she never stopped the rumors about herself was that the idea of men tying themselves in knots and lying about sleeping with her was sort of an ego fix. That they would lie, that there were bragging rights associated with it. And she didn’t even have to risk herself to get it.
Maybe there was something wrong with her.
But then she kind of already knew she was messed up.
She took a bite of her pasta, and for a moment she couldn’t think of anything but how good it was. “This is amazing,” she moaned as the creamy carbonara sauce overtook her.
