Chase Me If You Can(68)
“When I was little, I used to hide in my closet when their fights got bad, dreaming of a way to escape,” he continues. “Things never got violent, but the things my dad would say. To her, about her, about me…I used to wish I could just fly away. I made the appointment mostly as a way to piss him off. He hates tattoos. Some horseshit about real men not needing to disfigure themselves. But then I saw the birds and thought that if I was going to give the old man a big middle finger, I should do it in a way that meant something to me.”
“What did he say when he saw?”
Wes laughs bitterly, his chest vibrating under me. “That I was turning out to be the disgrace he always knew I would be.”
I jerk my head up. Anyone who grew up with loving parents would be baffled by the calm arrangement of Wes’s features despite sharing the painful memory, but it’s a look I know well—a look that says it’s not worth being upset about when it was just one of a thousand cuts from the people who were supposed to protect us.
I don’t say I’m sorry. It feels too meaningless. Instead, I tell him I understand the only way I know how.
“I was nine the first time Mom forgot Eric’s birthday. She was out on one of her dates, and it was so late that the only thing open was the gas station, but I couldn’t let him go to school without cupcakes on his birthday. So when he asked me if she was still going to make them, I lied, sent him to bed, and used some of the money a neighbor gave me for shoveling her driveway to buy a box mix.” I shake my head at the memory with a humorless laugh. “Those poor kids were probably picking eggshells out of their teeth for days, but Eric had cupcakes.”
“He had a sister who gave a shit,” Wes says quietly, toying with the end of my braid. “Worth some crunchy cupcakes.”
We spend the next hour swapping childhood war stories. I tell Wes about helping my brothers with their homework and forging my mom’s signature on permission slips she forgot to sign. Driving her home from bars long before I got my license. Getting a job at fifteen that paid cash under the table since I wasn’t really old enough and using that money to buy my first camera.
I giggle when he tells me about the times his mom would bring him down into the kitchen and try to teach him to cook when his father was away on business, but my heart breaks when he talks about cold, formal holidays. I made the best of the holidays with my brothers the years my mom was too wrapped up in her own life to remember she had kids who still believed in Santa. Though I wouldn’t call it merry, it was better than the icy silence Wes describes.
After a while, we fall quiet. We’re both sweaty, the breeze doing little to cool us under the heat of the sun, but it’s a long time before I climb back into my own seat.
And when Wes reaches for my hand that night at a tiny bar crammed full of our friends, I think maybe we could find the things we never had in each other.
* * *
After a couple of cocktails and one not-so-subtle kiss at the bar the night before, confirmation that Wes and I are together quickly spreads beyond our inner circle. The looks and whispers of Finally and It’s about time aren’t exactly quiet when we show up at the gas station du jour to wait for storms to form.
While Wes heads inside to refresh our water supply, I cross the parking lot to where Tracy is sprawled across a picnic table bench sunning herself. Matt is with her, tapping away at his phone with a frown.
Tracy flips her sunglasses up, squints for a couple of long seconds, and then offers a sly grin. “You look awfully relaxed, Sloane. I wonder why that could be.”
“Don’t start,” I warn her. “Not one word from either of you.”
Matt holds up his hands and shakes his head with exaggerated dismay. “I’m just saying, if you could have waited until the end of the season, I wouldn’t be out a hundred bucks.”
Tracy grins and waggles her fingers at her fiancé. “Don’t be a sore loser.”
Matt shakes his head. “You know we share a bank account, right?” Then he turns to me and adds, “Seriously, watching the two of you circle each other the last couple of years has been painful. I’m glad you figured your shit out.”
I blink. “Circle each other?”
“Like two hot lions,” Tracy confirms, nudging her shoulder into mine. “That man has been looking at you like you’re a tasty snack forever. You seriously didn’t notice? Because you look back.”
“Everyone looks at Wes.” I glance back over my shoulder by habit, easily picking him out where he’s joined some chasers I don’t know well, his head tipped back and his shoulders shaking with laughter. Our eyes catch and hold for a few seconds, his expression shifting to molten heat before someone taps his shoulder and he reluctantly turns away.
“Not like that.” Tracy snorts. “Just be sure to invite us to the wedding.”
“We aren’t…We haven’t…It’s only been like two weeks!” I squeak, throwing up my hands. “I don’t even know what’s going to happen when I go back to Colorado. The whole thing could fall apart.”
“Nah. Hot phone sex,” Tracy says without hesitation at the same time our friend Andrea wanders over with her sister Ashley in tow. They’re more Tracy’s friends than mine, but I give them a friendly wave.
“Who’s having phone sex?” Ashley asks with a little too much interest in her grin. “Hey, Sloane. Haven’t seen you much this season.” Her attention slides across the parking lot to where Wes is holding court. “Saw you were chasing with Talbot. How’d that happen?”