Page 40 of Wicked & Wildflower

I take a deep exhale after that long winded explanation. It almost feels as if I was fighting extra hard to justify why I’m not okay with Everett seeing other people, but I push that thought away.

He drops his menu to the table and lifts his head, brown eyes blazing through me so deeply, I think I feel them searing my skin. “I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you.”

The intensity in his face makes me not want to question him, so I decide to take his word for it for now. “Okay,” I drawl. “Can you keep giving Lou surf lessons?”

“Of course,” he says immediately.

“She wants to play soccer too. Would you come to games every once in a while?”

“I’ll come to all of them.” He looks over the menu again.

“Alright. And what do you need me to do?”

He pauses for a moment, chewing on his lip. “You only need this arrangement around cameras, but I kind of need it…everywhere. I need the people around town, the ones who’ve been here years and know my parents—the businesses—to see I’ve settled down. I need them to believe that when they take their car into my shop, or they come to Heathen’s to buy a new board, that they’re supporting a family business. We’ve always been known as that, and I think I’ve ruined it.” His jaw tightens, and his eyes drop. Guilt coats his words. “It turns out people don’t want to support a twenty-something bachelor who treats the world like his own personal playground and doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself as much as they want to support a man who’s working to provide for his family.”

“I can’t imagine anyone thinking that of you, Everett.”

“According to my father,” he scoffs, “andmy brother, that’s exactly what people around here think of me.”

“Leo said that to you?”

“Not in those words, exactly,” he murmurs. “But yeah, especially now that he’s settling down himself. It’s like the same expectations are extended to me. When he was single and fucking around with socialites, it made him a god around here, so I don’t think people cared so much about what I was doing. Now, suddenly, he’s engaged, and the world has flipped on its axis.”

“That’s not fair of him to put those kinds of expectations on you just because his life has changed.”

Everett shrugs. “I don’t know if they’re expectations, I just think there always has to be a gossip mill working overtime around here. He carried that weight for years. Except, even when he was at the center of it, everything was kind of okay. He could fuck around and act like a bachelor because he was also setting records, getting rich, and appearing on magazine covers. All the single women in town secretly hoped they could change him, and all the older people in town secretly hoped he’d fall for their daughters. Everyone has always wanted their piece of Leo Graham. There were limits they’d go to on what they’d say and how they’d treat him.” He bites his lip. “It’s not fair for him to take on that kind of pressure. I’m glad it died down now that he’s engaged, but it just means that attention has turned on me, and I don’t get the same allowances he did.”

“I’m sorry you have that pressure now.” I find myself reaching across the table and covering his hand with mine. “I’ll do what I can to help alleviate that. I’ll even let you buy me lunch, I guess.”

A small smile ticks up at his mouth. “Thanks, Wildflower.”

I smile back as the waitress arrives at our table and takes our orders. We talk about everything and nothing as we wait for our food. He tells me about his sister living in New York and the way she self-published her first few books while she was in college before having one take off online. That led to her landing an agent and a publishing deal at the age of twenty-one.

“So, yeah. Record-setting, future legend surfer for a brother, international best selling author for a sister. Two one-in-a-million kids in one family…and then me.” He chuckles at the sentiment, but it’s not real. He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“What you do is important, Everett. You have not one, but two successful businesses, and you’re not even thirty. You providefor your community and support your family. You should be proud.” He only shrugs in response. “Your parents seem really proud of you, if that makes a difference.”

“I know.” He nods. “They’re great, and I’m lucky. They don’t compare us. I know enough about Darby’s life to know that you two didn’t have that. I’m sorry.”

“You’re right. I think…” I sigh. “I think that’s why I’d rather it be my sister and I against the world than continue relying on people who manipulate us, who are only concerned about how our existence benefits them.” I’ve never said this to anyone before. I don’t know why I let my thoughts spill from my head when Everett’s around. “I just want my daughter to have better than I did. That’s the only thing that matters to me.”

“She already has better. She has you, but it doesn’t have to be you against the world anymore, Dal.” He pushes his empty plate aside and places his hand over mine on the table like I did earlier. “You’ve got people here who want to support you. No ulterior motives. No manipulation. I know it’s a foreign thing for you, so I get that it’s hard to accept, but we truly just care.”

“I don’t trust anyone,” I find myself whispering. My voice nearly cracks as I add, “I don’t understand why anyone would ever want to be around me, support me—love me—if they didn’t have to. I don’t understand why anyone would choose it.”

I watch his brown eyes ripple with devastation as he soaks that sentence in, and it’s that exact moment that our waitress returns with the check. I pull my hand back from Everett’s and quietly blink back tears as he pays. Once he finishes, he stands from the booth and extends a hand toward me. I take it silently as he leads me outside the restaurant, though instead of turning toward the surf shop, he takes me down onto the pier.

Sea breeze coats my face as birds chirp in the sky above us. The sun is high, piercing the white caps in glittering gold. “I know the best compliment I can give you is that you’re a great mother,”he says, finally breaking our silence. Everett isn’t looking at me; he’s looking out at the horizon as we pause at the railing. “I see how much you love her, how much you sacrifice for her. I see the way your face lights up when she says your name, when she smiles at you. I think you’re patient, supportive, and loving. You’re nurturing, but you also teach her right from wrong, how to set boundaries and when she’s crossing them too.” He turns to me. “You’re a good fucking mom, Dahlia. But you don’t need to be all alone in order tobea good mom. I just hope you figure that out eventually.”

I look down at the water, watching waves break and crash against the wooden beams of the pier. “I hope I figure it out too.” I lift my head to meet his gaze. “I hope you realize that you have a lot to offer, and that you have value regardless of what your siblings—or anyone else—do with their lives. I hope you figure out your worth.”

He smiles softly. “Yeah, me too.”

17

Wicked

Let’s Never Do That Again

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