“So,” I say. “Are you going to tell me what you’ve been up to lately?”
Her eyes narrow, the smallest smirk tugging at her mouth like she knows exactly why I’m asking. Of course she knows.She had been keeping me at an arm’s length distance all last week, not avoiding me but slipping away every time I got close.
“Why?” she teases. “Are you trying to keep tabs on me, Jesse?”
“Maybe.” I smile. “So? What did you get up to?”
She exhales like she’s been waiting to talk to someone. “Last weekend I went to stay with my sister. Helped out with my niece, Marigold. I watched her for a couple of hours so Cara and Ryan could go on a date night.”
I smile at that. “She’s lucky to have a sister like you, Mads. I’m glad you have her too.”
Her cheeks flush a pale pink, and her gaze falls to our hands, still clasped together and resting on her thigh. My thumb makes lazy circles against her soft skin. I notice the softening in her eyes—it’s subtle, but it makes me feel like I’ve been handed something delicate, like she’s finally letting herself open up to me.
She looks at me, and I can tell she has a question on her mind.
“What is it?” I ask her.
“I was just wondering…do you ever talk to your dad? You or your brothers? You never really mention him.”
The question knocks me off balance, I didn’t see it coming. I look back at the road. Our hands are still linked, but the slow stroke of my thumb over her skin has frozen.
“No,” I say, hating that I’m lying to her. “None of us talk to him. We haven’t in years.”
“None of you?”
“None of us,” I lie again. “We cut him off. It was hard, but it had to be done.”
Madeline stays quiet, listening, waiting for me to say more. I keep going because I have to give her something real to cover the parts I can’t tell her.
“My dad…he drinks a lot. He’s not the kind of drunk who gets funny or mellow. He gets mean. He gets loud and cruel and unpredictable. Being around him was bad for us all.”
“Was it hard? To just sever your relationship with him?”
It takes me a second to answer her. I know that she has her own struggles with her parents, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s trying to understand my family better or her own. The thought makes my chest tighten. Walking away may seem like a solution, but it’s a really hard choice to make. I would never want to push her toward that. I know all too well what it feels like to not have a mother or a father in my life. Unlike my brothers, I haven’t cut my dad out of my life entirely, but we don’t have a real relationship either.
“It wasn’t easy,” I admit. “And it wasn’t something I ever wanted to do. But sometimes you hit a point where staying hurts more than leaving.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her swallow.
“And hey,” I add. “Everyone’s situation is different. What we did…that was right for us, but it doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone.”
She nods slowly. “I’m glad you have your brothers,” she says softly.
I clear my throat, trying to lighten the heaviness settling between us. “Yeah. They keep me in check.”
“I can imagine,” she laughs. “You four must get in some trouble when you aren’t being supervised. I mean, I’ve seen you in action, Jesse. You get a lot of attention. Especially from the opposite sex.”
“I hate that our paths had to first cross that way. I’m not the type of guy you think I am, Madeline. I know you got a bad impression of me that night we met, but I hope you’ve seen that’s not me. I couldn’t even see straight after meeting you. Nothing was ever going to happen with that girl at the brewery. If I thought for even a microsecond that night that there was achance of getting you to see me again, I wouldn’t have even looked at her.”
“But she was into you, and she made that extremely clear.”
“Mads,” I say, letting a hint of a grin pull at my mouth. “Are you jealous?”
“No!” she answers immediately, but she can’t hide the pink that’s crept into her cheeks.
I laugh under my breath. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.” She’s staring straight ahead like she’s afraid to glance in my direction.
