Page 55 of Almost Perfect
“I like country. It’s so simple.” Her voice emerged low but steady.
Yet again, I wished with everything I had that I could see her. Had I upset her?
“We don’t get all that many stations up here. This one seems to play the same twelve songs, but I’m a captive audience unless I’m listening to a podcast.”
“She’s really nice, you know? Well, actually, I guess you do know. She and her husband have come out here before, right?”
She had to mean Whit Grantham. “They have. Nice people, from what I could tell.”
She stayed quiet again, and I chased back the frustration creeping in. Not with her, but with myself. When had I lost all ability to make conversation with her? I’d done a decent job the last few weeks, but now that I had her truly all to myself, I could barely connect words and string them into sentences.
I had to try, though. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a million questions for her. “So. What about you?”
She must’ve followed my subject change, because she responded by saying, “What do I want in a partner?”
“Sure. If you even want one, I guess.” I winced because it came out just as bad as it sounded like it would. Hadn’t thought that one through.
“If I even want one?”
Crap. Yeah.Definitely came out the wrong way. Adrenaline surged as I tried to repair the moment. “I mean, I don’t, uh… well, I didn’t know if that’s something you’d be interested in. Your life’s so different, and you mentioned your last relationship was mostly for publicity. I guess it might sound ignorant, but I also didn’t want to assume since not everyone does want that.”
“Fair, I guess.”
And then nothing. She gave me nothing else for a solid twenty minutes. Not until we were sliding into the parking lot did she speak again.
“So this is different for you, then?” she asked, unbuckling.
“With you?” I had to clarify, because I’d bungled every single thing I’d said so far tonight.
“Yes. I mean, you can’t possibly be looking for all that with me, especially since you’ve just admitted to being unsure that I’d want someone. So this must be something else.”
The dome light cast her dark eyes in shadow, but I could see her chin jutting out a bit, and her full lips pressed thin. I loosed a breath, attempting to release some of the tension that’d built on the drive, even as the idea ofsomething elsewith Calla sank a hook in me.
“It is different. But I don’t know what it is.”
That felt a little like taking off my shirt in the middle of a snowstorm—cold, exposed, and strangely raw. Admitting I had no idea what I was doing gave me absolutely no joy, and not being able to set her at ease chafed just as much.
She hummed, though.
“Well, I’m certainly nothing like the women you describe, so that makes sense.” Her door cracked open. “Let’s go eat.”
TWENTY-THREE
Calla
I’d dressed to kill. And after that conversation in the car, I wanted it to work.
I’d given myself a special dispensation for tonight, buoyed by Jenna’s encouragement to enjoy my time here as much as a soul-deep need to spend time with Wyatt. But I wasn’t going to make it easy on him. Not after the last week of barely speaking to me unless Warrick was in the room. Not with the way he’d halted all progress between us and essentially disappeared right here at the end of my time in Utah.
At least, he’d asked me about tonight. I’d looked forward to it more than I should’ve.
He wouldn’t see my outfit until we were inside. I wore spike-heeled boots that put me at his eye level as we walked. There was no back entrance, so we’d be heading inside the front door. He’d sworn it was no problem, that weekdays tended to be slow in town as everyone reset and readied for the next influx of tourists, but I wasn’t concerned.
That desire to hide away had vanished in the face of the need to make him see me. To ensure he realized I was both Miss MayhemandCalla. And he could have both, at least for a while.
If he wanted.
But the biggest revelation there was forme—I was both Callaway and Mayhem. They could coexist in me. I could have the simplicity of this life and still be the woman who donned the fame and costuming and makeup. I hadn’t worked out exactlyhowto make them meet in the middle, but as I debated what to wear and how to approach tonight, I’d found a middle ground.
