I know it’s too soon for that.
“Can’t fix her,” he adds.
I clench my back teeth, annoyed. He’s barely had two meals with her.
“She doesn’t need fixing.”
He shrugs, and I take a breath through my nose. When I was a kid, I thought I’d grow up to be exactly the same as my dad. Stern, strong, and spending my whole life working on this farm. After I went to college, after I met new people and saw more of the country, after the things I went through with Cope, I know I started to see Dad differently. Not negatively, but still . . . differently. I started to see the way he mostly kept his distance from things that were complicated, saw that he kept his curiosity pretty limited to the most local of issues.
I can recognize that he’s being protective, but any way I look at it, it chafes. If he’s being protective of me, he’s insulting her. And if he’s being protective of her, he must not think anything good about me.
An unbidden, unwelcome thought comes into my head. Tegan at the breakfast table, telling me Jess has been hurt enough for a whole lifetime.
I really did prefer the sap-brain to this.
Then again, I can’t forget that my brain has been doing more than reliving last night in the hours since I brought Jess back to the house. In fact, I spent a good deal of time making plans that are all about how to make sure she doesn’t get hurt, and while I’m not going to stand here and tell my dad about them, it still makes me feel better to remember them.
Tulsa today, and Salem arriving there tomorrow. I’ve already texted her to say we need to talk when she arrives, and when she does, I’m going to tell her I need to take a step back. I’ll say I’m too involved with Jess to go forward on the story, but I’ll keep the details vague. I’ll offer to be chauffeur, meal-planner, hotel-organizer, whatever; I’ll insist on paying my own way, paying back whatever my share has been so far.
I’ll say I’m too close to be responsible for getting Jess—or anyone—to talk about anything for this story.
I’ll hope she doesn’t fire me.
But if she does?
If she does, I’ll find a way to stick with Jess and Tegan for the rest of this, however it goes. I’ll follow them all in a separate car, if I have to.
I’ll be the security guard Jess once suspected I was. I’ll protect them both.
And I’ll still find some other way to get Cope’s story told, after all this is over.
My dad’s got that thousand-yard stare again, so maybe he’s gearing up to say something else. But when the front door opens and Jess and Tegan come out—followed by Beth and the girls—he moves his gaze to me again. I don’t expect any big goodbye because that’s not brick-wall style.
But he does pat me roughly on my shoulder and say, “Take care of yourself, bud,” before walking toward Jess and Tegan.
I hear him say a short, gruff, “It was nice to meet you,” and I try not to let it bother me that he’s said it as though he never expects to see either of them again.
Instead I focus on Jess: her hair still damp at the ends, her cheeks dewy pink. I like to think her lips are a little swollen from our kisses, but probably the sap in my brain is making me imagine things. When Beth and the girls surround her and Tegan in a round of chaotic, enthusiastic hugs, she looks so surprised that I want to cancel all the plans and keep her here for longer. Convince my dad about her. Surround her with my sister’s and my nieces’ messy affection. Take her out to that flower field for as many nights as she’d let me.
But when she meets my eyes over Beth’s shoulder and smiles softly, the trust and determination in her eyes also tells me it’ll be okay for us to get on the road and keep going with this.
That things are different for her now.
And it’s funny, what I realize then.
I brought Jess here to give her a break from this story Salem’s been chasing; I brought her here and was honest about what Salem wanted me to get from her. I brought her here and I must’ve known deep down that I would’ve blown up my whole job for her.
I did all that, and now, for the first time since I met her, I think she might finally be ready to be a part of figuring out what happened to her mother.
And that’s what Salem wanted all along.
* * *
JESSinsists on driving.
“I’ll take the first leg,” she said to me, holding out her hand for the keys, and then she gave me a meaningful look, a look that said she remembered what I’d confessed to her late last night—after she’d let me taste her for the first time, begging me first to be gentle, then begging me not to be—about the collective effects of that old plaid couch and the imperfectly padded truck bed on my back and my knees.
I wouldn’t have told her except that, when we’d set our feet back on the firm field ground, my body had basically made a sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies. Jess looked at me with wide eyes and still-rumpled hair, and half of me was embarrassed, but the other half of me felt strangely thrilled by the privacy of it. The intimacy of it.
