Page 81 of Make You Mine

“Bet your bottom dollar that,tomorrow,” I sang, “there’ll be sun!”

He tickled me until I was giggling too much to sing.

Scott called again while we waited. Once again, I let it go to voicemail and then ignored his angry follow-up texts. I’d gotten at least a hundred of them in the past day. They were all the same: demanding that I remove the purchase dispute from my credit card, asking why I was being so unreasonable, calling me a selfish person for torpedoing the business we had worked so hard to build.

He never called me names. Scott wasn’t the type who needed to. His manipulative nature, insisting thatIwas the one at fault, was much worse than calling me a bitch. But I was finally seeing through it. The texts that once would have crippled me with guilt registered only as amusing evidence that our breakup was for the best.

We went back to picking up trash half an hour later, which was a lot more annoying while stomping through rain puddles on the side of the road. We worked in silence for a while.

“Is that what the other tattoo is?” I suddenly asked.

Jayce frowned but didn’t look up from his work. “Do what now?”

“The 3194 is for your sister’s birthday.” I leaned over and poked the tattoo farther up on the bicep. “What’s significant about 8233? Is it one of your parents’ birthdays?”

He scratched at his beard. “So like, August second, nineteen thirty-three? Your math’s a little off, Peaches. My parents weren’t that old.”

“Grandparents, then?” I wondered out loud. “Or some other notable anniversary?”

He pointed at me with his stick. “Someday, if you get a few drinks in me, maybe I’ll tell you.”

“I only have a few days left in Eastland.”

“Then I guess you’ll never know.” He narrowed his eyes. “Too bad. It’s a good secret.”

“Aww, man!”

We were glossing over the uncomfortable truth: that my time here was nearing an end. Which meant our fun little “it’s totally a fling and nothing more” relationship was also nearing its conclusion.

But Jayce didn’t seem bothered by it, so maybe he was telling the truth that it meant nothing to him. Some meaningless sex to pass the time.

Jayce paid for my dinner that night at the diner. It was the same arrangement as before: we sat in separate booths, back-to-back, and whispered to each other while eating. Together and separate at the same time, which was an amusing microcosm for our not-relationship as a whole. Mindy muttered under her breath about how we were both damn fools as she delivered our food. Deep down, I knew she was right.

But I also didn’t care.

The next two nights were like the previous: sneaking away with Jayce, screwing until we were too tired to move, and falling asleep in his arms. Then came the night before my final day of community service. We continued our routine as if nothing was different: he picked me up from the motel, I fondled him through his jeans while crouched down in his truck, and then he ravaged me with his animal-like passion in his barn.

There was something different in his kisses that night. The way he cradled my face while driving into me on the bed, and the look deep in his cobalt eyes. Like he wanted to make sure he didn’t forget tonight.

I wrapped my legs around him, holding him inside me as deep as I could. I wanted to make sure he didn’t forget tonight, either.

Looking back on it, I neverwouldforget that night. Not because it was my last night with Jayce.

Because it was the night I learned the truth.

41

Charlotte

“How long did you work as a welder?” I asked in that perfect moment after sex, when the bed was a tangle of sheets and legs.

“Seven years.”

“Do you miss it?”

Jayce snorted. “I thought I did, at first. After having a nine-to-five job for most of a decade, I didn’t know what to do with myself when I woke up in the morning. But I don’t think it was the job itself I missed. It was the steady paycheck. There’s somethin’ to be said for consistency, ya know?”

I let out a long, emotional sigh. “You’re talking to someone who was self-employed. I’d kill for a consistent paycheck.”

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