He didn’t answer directly. “I’m used to the looks. I’ve gotten them all my life. The important thing is, your mother let me in. That wouldn’t have happened fifteen years ago. Don’t worry about me. I can survive just about anything.”
For some reason, that struck a nerve. She had no idea why. “You don’t think I can?”
He stared at her without a word. She’d never really been on her own. She was still living with her parents. She understood why he might think that.
“Let’s go in,” she said, leading him to the pool house. She looked back to the main house one more time. Her mother was now watching from the French doors. “How long have you been out here?”
“Awhile. You have a nice backstroke.”
Paxton opened the door, and he followed her in. She quickly grabbed some notes she’d been making from the coffee table and stuffed them in her tote bag.
“Would you like something to drink? I think all I have is whiskey.” Her mother had stocked the liquor cabinet in the pool house when she’d redecorated last year, but whiskey was the only thing left, because Paxton didn’t like it. She found herself thinking she should restock. Sebastian always had a full bar. But restocking meant going into Hickory Cottage and facing her mother’s inevitable insinuations that she might be drinking too much. Never mind that Paxton rarely drank and that it had taken an entire year to go through what little had been in her liquor cabinet in the first place.
“No, thank you,” he said as he looked around. Her mother had had the place redecorated as a crazy dysfunctional thank-you to Paxton for not moving out entirely. The place was meant to feel like a vacation home or a beach house. The colors were white and sand and gold, all the furniture was square and soft, and the carpet was textured. They weren’t choices Paxton would have made. Nothing in this place bore her signature, not like at Sebastian’s house. Whenever she dreamed of being in a home, it was never here. Sometimes it was the townhouse she’d almost bought last year. Sometimes it was a place she’d never seen before. But she always knew it was hers. This place smelled of lemons. Always. And she could never make it go away. The home she dreamed of smelled of fresh grass and doughnuts.
“So, you’re fine,” Sebastian said as he sat down on her couch. He wasn’t interested in the details of the skeleton they’d found at the Madam. He was worried about her. No one else around her had reacted like this to the news.
“Yes,” she said, trying to laugh. “Of course.”
He didn’t look like he believed her. Sometimes she didn’t think it was fair that he knew her this well.
“Well, actually,” she said, “I feel like hyperventilating.”
“Do you want to sit down?”
“No. Because I can’t hyperventilate. I want to, but I can’t. It’s all built up here, and I can’t let it out.” She patted her chest with the hand holding the towel together. “Colin is going crazy trying to form a backup plan, because that one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old oak tree is scheduled to be delivered on Tuesday, and it will have to be planted right away or we’ll lose it. Not to mention the several hundred thousand dollars it’s taken to uproot it and bring it here. But we don’t know if the police will clear the scene and let us plant it yet. And do you want to know why I turned off my phone?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Because the Women’s Society Club members keep calling, worried about being able to hold the gala at the Madam now. Several members wanted to have the gala at the country club, anyway, but they were outvoted. They’ve already called the club, scrambling to get it for the night of the gala, like they wanted to in the first place. They seem so eager to believe that this is going to make everything, all the hard work that went into the restoration, fail. The manager at the Madam even said some people have called, worried about their reservations, when it doesn’t even officially open for guests until September.” Her voice was pitching, and she stopped and took a deep breath.
Sebastian stood and walked over to her. He took her by her arms, looked calmly into her eyes, and said, “You can’t control everything, Pax. I keep trying to tell you this. You have this remarkable resistance against letting some things just happen. If you take a step back, you’ll see that when this blows over, no one will question having the gala at the Madam. Right now everyone is drinking bad wine made of sour grapes and hysteria. Let them drink it, and let them regret it in the morning. And for every person who cancels their reservation, someone will reserve a room solely because of this. There are a lot of people out there who like a taste of the macabre.”
“But this isn’t meant to be macabre!” she said. “This is supposed to be perfect.”
“Nothing is ever perfect. No matter how much you’d like for it to appear that way.”
She shook her head. She knew that. She just didn’t know how to live any other way. She’d been this way her entire life, crying if her ponytails were uneven or if she wasn’t the best in dance class. She didn’t know how to stop it, as much as she wanted to.
“Just let it go, darling,” he said, drawing his arms around her, not caring that she was wet. This, this, was why she loved him so much. “Whatever it takes, just let it go.” With her hand still clutching the towel, she couldn’t hug him back and stay covered, but she realized she liked that she could fold herself into him this way. She liked feeling small. She put her head on his shoulder and could feel his breath on her neck.
Her heart picked up speed, and she was sure he could hear it.
As the seconds passed by, she could almost feel the rope winding around them as the sheer force of her desperation and desire pulled her closer to him. She slowly let the towel drop and lifted her arms around him, grazing her chest with his. She raised her head from his shoulder and put her cheek to his, nuzzling him slightly, just a small graze. She could feel his beard stubble, but his hair was so light she’d failed to notice it before.
She was overwhelmed. That’s the only reason she could think to justify her actions, her weakness. She turned her head in an excruciatingly slow movement, and her lips found his. Her hands went to his hair, and she opened her lips. He wasn’t unwilling. That’s what surprised her the most. After a moment of surprise, he actually began to kiss her back. Her heart sang. Before she knew it, she was walking him to the couch and pushing him to sit. She straddled him, trying to kiss past the rest of his barriers, to get him into that seductive place when their eyes had met all those years ago when he was kissing someone else. If she just tried hard enough, she could make this happen. She could make him love her the way she loved him.
“Paxton …” Sebastian finally said in between her kisses. “Think this through. Is this really a good idea?”
She opened her eyes and slowly leaned back. They were both breathing heavily. His color was high, and it made him even more beautiful, that rose-red flush along his cheeks. His hands were tight on her buttocks.
What was she doing? He’d told her to let it go, but she was sure he hadn’t meant this way. And yet he was going to let her. Oh, God. How pitiful could she get?
She pulled away quickly, and found the towel and wrapped it around her again.
He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. He stayed that way, bowed over, clasping his hands in front of him, his breath still quick from their encounter. He was staring at the floor, seeming to collect his thoughts.
He finally stood. “I think I should go,” he said.
She tried to smile as she nodded that she understood.
Without another word, he left.
She wanted to move out but didn’t want to disappoint her parents. She wanted help with everything she had to do but was too proud to ask. The Blue Ridge Madam project was supposed to cement their family’s reputation, but there was a skeleton casting a pall over the project now. The Women’s Society Club’s seventy-fifth anniversary gala was supposed to be the crowning achievement of her presidency, but it was being threatened with a last-minute change of venue. And she’d wanted so badly for Sebastian to
be something he wasn’t, that just now, in a matter of minutes, she may very well have ruined the best thing that had ever happened to her.
How could someone with a life this full feel this empty?
She went to the liquor cabinet and took out the vile bottle of whiskey and poured a glass. With a deep breath and a grimace, she forced it down.
Trying to stay awake after a very long day, Willa let the humid night air blow on her as she drove home from Rachel’s party. She hadn’t intended to go to Rachel’s regular Friday-night cookout. In fact, she usually said no. Friday night was vacuuming night. Sometimes jogging night, if she felt like it or had eaten one too many cookies at the store. Wild and crazy stuff. But the sight of that skull at the Blue Ridge Madam earlier that day made her want to be around people that night. Colin had taken her back to her store after the discovery of the skeleton, and then he’d rushed back to the Madam with an apology. She hadn’t heard from him since.
She’d left the store with Rachel and had gone straight to Rachel’s house. That had been seven hours ago. She’d stayed too late. Too late for her, anyway. The cookout party was still going strong when she’d left. Rachel wasn’t your typical twenty-two-year-old, except when she got around other twenty-two-year-olds, and that was when Willa realized how much difference eight years can make in a life. She didn’t exactly miss being that age—she’d been a college dropout and drank too much and partied too hard—but she did miss that sense of living in the moment, of living only to feel.
After she’d said her goodbyes, she’d headed back down the long road leading into Walls of Water. Rachel and her boyfriend rented a tiny farmhouse near the county line. A few miles into her drive, she passed a convenience store called Gas Me Up, a place frequented by college students in the summer because it sold cheap beer and didn’t always ask for ID. The parking lot had a few cars in it and, as Willa yawned, she assumed her eyes were playing tricks on her when she thought she recognized one of them.
No, surely not.
She slowed down to make sure.
Yes, that was definitely Paxton Osgood’s white BMW roadster.
And that was definitely Paxton coming out of the store.
What on earth was she doing there? She didn’t think Paxton knew what this side of midnight looked like, much less this side of town.
Willa had slowed down so much that the car behind her honked. She pulled over to the side of the road, and the car zoomed past.
That’s when she saw their old classmate Robbie Roberts come out of the store behind Paxton.
He’d grown up to be handsome in a fading kind of way. He was cocky and could be charming when he wanted to be. But he got drunk too often, worked only long enough to collect unemployment, and was reputedly thrown out of the house by his wife on a weekly basis.
Robbie was trouble, but he was soft trouble. A lover, not a fighter.
But his two friends, the men hanging around outside the store, were definitely hard trouble.
Of all the things Willa thought she knew about Paxton Osgood, she’d been most certain that Paxton could handle herself in any situation. Paxton didn’t need anyone to protect her. She had an air about her that made people pay attention. She had a way of speaking that made people listen. And it didn’t hurt that in heels, she was probably six feet tall. She wasn’t a person someone would take on lightly or easily.
But as Willa watched what was happening, she realized that Paxton was, probably for the first time in her life, completely out of her element. It was nearly one in the morning at an all-night convenience store on a side of town that didn’t often see the likes of her, in her red sundress and strappy heels with bright red roses on them. She was standing outside of the doors now, stopped there by the men, her arms heavy with bags that looked like they contained bottles of wine and potato chips. Cheap wine and chips? Not her usual fare. Her hair, normally in a chignon as tight as a baby’s fist, was only half up. The other half was falling around her pretty, wide face. She seemed strangely unfocused and uneasy on her feet.
She was drunk.
Willa would have thought it was funny, would have enjoyed watching the drunken spectacle of someone who had made a lifetime commitment to perfection, whose simple existence made all the women around her feel less somehow, fall flat on her face … if it weren’t for the men surrounding her.
There was a strange but universal understanding among women. On some level, all women knew, they all understood, the fear of being outnumbered, of being helpless. It throbbed in their chests when they thought about the times they left stores and were followed. The knocks on their car windows as they were sitting alone at red lights, and strangers asking for rides. Having too much to drink and losing their ability to be forceful enough to just say no. Smiling at strange men coming on to them, not wanting to hurt their feelings, not wanting to make a scene. All women remembered these things, even if they had never happened to them personally. It was a part of their collective unconscious.
Willa couldn’t just sit there on the side of the road and not help. She had to do something. What, she wasn’t quite sure. But she jerked her Jeep in gear anyway, and crossed the road to the convenience store’s parking lot, thinking that nothing about this day had been normal, nothing had been boring.
And she would never, ever admit, not even to herself, that she kind of liked it.
She stopped in front of the group, the Jeep’s high beams on. She saw Paxton jerk her arm away from one of the men trying to touch her, then walk forward, only to be blocked by the other man.
Willa reached into her bag for her pepper spray and opened the door.
“Hi, Paxton,” she said. Her heart was racing, and she could feel the adrenaline surge. “What are you doing here?”
The men turned to her. Paxton’s head jerked up, and Willa saw it, her fear, primal. She was the weak animal surrounded by predators. Help me.
“Look, a mini one. We got enough for a real party now,” the man holding Paxton’s arm said. He had abuse written all over him. It had happened to him. He had delivered it. It was so much a part of his psyche that he couldn’t look at another person and not imagine what they would look like with bruises. Willa felt it, the way he looked at her neck and the thin skin along her cheekbones.
“Why don’t you let go of her? I’m pretty sure she wants to leave,” Willa said. Her hand was already throbbing from clenching the can of pepper spray. She was hyperaware of everything around her, every small sound, every change in the air.
Robbie snickered. He’d always been the boy to hang out with the rough bunch at school, not really one of them but close enough. And like most people, he’d figured close enough was better than not fitting in at all. “Come on, Willa, how often do we get a drunk prom queen around here? And she sent me a love letter in high school. She denied it and made everyone laugh at me, but she sent it to me. Admit it, Paxton.”
“Robbie, for God’s sake, I sent you that letter,” Willa said. “I was the Joker. That’s the kind of stupid thing I did back then. She didn’t have anything to do with it.”
He gave her a confused look.
Willa left them and marched to the convenience store’s door and called inside, “Call 911.”
The clerk looked up from his magazine, then looked back down, ignoring her.
“That’s my brother,” the second man said. “He ain’t calling no one.”
Willa slowly backed up. She knew she could run to her Jeep and call 911 and wait with her doors locked. But that would leave Paxton to fend for herself, and the last thing any woman wanted in this kind of situation was to look around and see all the people who could help her doing nothing. Paxton seemed to know what she was thinking. She was trying to meet her eyes, trying to keep Willa from looking away. Don’t leave me.
“Paxton, set down your bags,” Willa finally said.
“But …”
“Just do it. Let’s take a ride in my Jeep, okay?”
“I have my car.”
> “I know. But let’s go in my Jeep.” She made a small gesture with her hand, and Paxton’s eyes went to the can of pepper spray. Paxton dropped her bags to the concrete. The wine bottles smashed.
“She ain’t going nowhere,” the man holding her arm said. “Except maybe behind the building for a little fun.”
Willa took a deep breath, then lifted the can and aimed. This was her last course of action, but she didn’t hesitate. Plus, she’d spray-painted enough things in her misspent youth to have pretty good aim. She got the first man in the face. The second man moved, and she had to chase him to the door before she got him. Once she did, she lunged over and grabbed Paxton’s arm, dropping her spray in the process.
They were almost to the Jeep when Robbie stepped in front of them. The first man was coughing and rubbing his eyes, making it worse, making his anger rise. He yelled at Robbie to grab the bitches. The second man had run into the store to get the clerk, who was now coming toward the doors. Willa didn’t have anything to defend them with now.
“Was the letter really a Joker prank?” he asked.
“Yes,” Willa said.
“Oh. Sorry, Paxton.”
Paxton was holding on to Willa now with a force that was going to leave marks.
Robbie dropped to his knees and covered his face, screaming as if he, too, had been maced. Willa had no idea what he was doing until he took a break from his theatrics to say, “Go, goddamnit.”
And that’s exactly what they did.
Willa jumped behind the wheel, and Paxton fell into the passenger seat. Willa was trembling so much she had trouble putting the Jeep in reverse. After she had set up particularly big pranks at school, which had sometimes taken all night, she remembered crawling back into bed and shaking like this. It hadn’t felt bad, more like a thaw. When she finally got the Jeep in gear, Paxton nearly fell out from the speed with which Willa backed out of the parking lot. She had to grab a handful of Paxton’s dress to keep her inside.