Wild Child (23 page)

“Do … you want to be a writer when you grow up?”

“I like writing,” Gwen said. “But I don’t want to be a writer. I’m not sure what I want to be.”

“Well,” Monica laughed. This girl was barely out of diapers. “You’ve got some time yet to decide.”

“I’m going to college in September.”

Monica nearly dropped the laptop bag she was putting up on the table. “Aren’t you … young?”

“I’ll be seventeen in two months. I’m …” Gwen looked down at the picnic table and used her thumb to peel off some of the splintered edge. “Smart. I guess. I skipped some grades.”

“It’s good to be smart,” Monica said, but Gwen rolled her eyes. “It is. You can take it from me, as someone who isn’t, it’s better to be smart than stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.”

“You don’t do the stupid stuff I did without being at least a little stupid.”

“But at least you’ve done stuff,” Gwen said.

“You will too,” Monica said. “I mean, hopefully much smarter stuff and far less dangerous.” This was probably not the right avenue of conversation between a pseudo-teacher and pseudo-student. “Where are you going to college?”

“My brother is making me go to Ole Miss. It’s where he went. And my dad.”

“Family tradition, that’s cool.”

Gwen rolled her eyes again and Monica, in what had to be one of the least smooth moves she’d ever executed, rested her head in her hand and fiddled with the zipper on her laptop bag and said, “So … your brother is Jackson.”

“Yeah?”

“He … ah … he seems like a nice guy.”

As soon as she said it, she wanted to hit herself in the head with her laptop.

“Nice. Sure. Everyone thinks he’s nice.”

“You don’t?”

Gwen’s silence was utterly and totally damning.

Poor Jackson
, Monica thought.

“You don’t like your brother?”

Gwen shrugged. “I don’t think he likes
me
all that much.”

Monica was swimming into seriously deep waters here and she had no idea what to say. “Sometimes it feels that way with adults,” she said. “They’re so busy telling us what to do, or what not to do, that we forget they’re doing it out of love.”

“Maybe other adults.” Gwen swung her backpack
over her shoulder and before Monica could ask any more questions, she was gone. Back into the classroom.

Monica put her head down in her arms. She’d known this was going to be a disaster—this teaching thing. She should never have agreed, no matter what filthy things Jackson provided for her.

“Monica!” She looked up to see Vanessa crossing the lawn, camera in hand. “You have a few minutes for me?”

Just when she thought things couldn’t get worse.

Jackson was going to owe her some serious sexual favors for this.

Jackson had himself fully convinced that he was coming by the Art Barn to pick up Gwen and take her home and personally escort her to pageant practice. Wanting to see Monica had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with it.

But when he walked in, just as Monica was getting ready to leave, he was floored by excited relief. Relief that he hadn’t missed her.

“Hey,” she said, those purple eyes cagey, but her lips gave her away—they curved into a happy, loose smile before she could stop them. He knew now that he could trust her lips. Her eyes were experts in camouflage, but her lips were on his side.

“Hey yourself,” he said, leaning against the kids’ now-empty cubbies. “You’re still here.”

“Vanessa wanted to interview me about my long and successful teaching career.”

Jackson winced. “How did that go?”

“Lucky for you I am an accomplished liar.”

That wasn’t the only reason he was lucky, and she seemed to read his thoughts because she looked away, a red stain on her cheeks. “How was class?” he asked.

She laughed, and he loved it. That laugh of hers was dirty and bright at the same time. Like a shot of tequila,
it woke him up. Sent his blood pounding. “Ask your sister,” she said.

“Ask me what?” Gwen approached and Jackson, as he had more and more lately, didn’t recognize her at first. It was as if her features had been slightly rearranged over the few hours since he’d seen her.

“About what an amazing teacher I am,” Monica joked.

“You’re not,” Gwen said.

It was so rude. So unlike Gwen that he actually flinched.

“Gwen,” he chastised. “Apologize.”

“Sorry you’re a shitty teacher,” she said.

“Hey!” Jackson said sharply. “Go wait in the car.”

Jackson braced himself for more fireworks, never sure what his sister was going to do at any given moment, but Gwen was just a baby hardass, and she folded under the sharp tone of his voice and meekly went out the door.

“Monica,” he said after his sister was gone. “I’m so sorry. She’s …”

“A teenager,” Monica supplied. “I remember what it was like. She’s clearly going through something right now.”

Jackson bristled. His sister was his business and Monica, though well intentioned, didn’t understand what Gwen had been through. And while he might not understand what she was going through now, he would figure it out.

He didn’t know how to say,
Stay out of this part of my life; no one comes in here
. But Monica was looking at him as though she understood. And maybe she did. They seemed to understand a lot about each other without having to say a word.

The other day, they’d walked wide circles around the parts of each other’s lives that the sex didn’t allow access
to. It had been strange, but truly the kind of strange he understood.

Intimacy was weird.

“I’m … I’m just going to go get my stuff,” she said, walking toward the darker hallway.

Jackson watched her go, wanting to say something, make some kind of plan so he could see her again back in her hotel room. It felt, decidedly, like there was unfinished business—sex business—between them, but perhaps there was just too much of themselves they were keeping private. Maybe there were too many unsaid things between them. Too many dark places the other couldn’t go. His sister, his parents. Her trust issues, her book. Her mother.

Perhaps they’d been right initially and it was all just a mistake.

“Jackson,” she said, looking back over her shoulder, caught in the dark of the doorway to the hall. “See you later?”

As far as codes went it was impossibly simple. And he was gutted with desire. Gutted with impatience and gratitude and excitement.

Not a mistake, or if it was, he didn’t care.

“Yes,” he said. Because, really, there was no other answer he wanted to give her.

As soon as he stepped out to the car, the sight of his sister in the passenger seat crushed his excitement.

He opened the door and slid in but didn’t start the engine.

“What is going on with you?” he asked, not looking at her, unable to look at her.

“Nothing. She said it, she’s not a very good teacher—”

“Do not,” he breathed, turning his head to stare at her, “treat me like an idiot. You’re being rude.”

“There’s no one here,” she said. “No one is watching you, so you can stop pretending like you care.”

“Of course I care!” he cried. “Your behavior reflects on me, Gwen!”

“Right.” Sarcasm was heavy in her voice. “Can’t have the mayor look bad.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake!
He couldn’t step right with her. Everything was a fight. Exhausted, he started the car. “You’re grounded,” he said.

“Right,” she laughed.

“I’m not kidding. Grounded. For a week. And you’ll apologize to Monica.”

She blinked at him, as astonished as he was.

He had no idea if any of that would actually do anything, but it felt good to do
something
.

Shelby pushed down her skirt and pressed away from the wall but kept her hand there, her fingers splayed against a child’s drawing of her under a rainbow, holding a fish, of all things. Her legs were weak. She braced her forehead against the wall, the push pins holding up the pictures in her office catching at her hair.

That’s it?
she thought.
I’m jeopardizing everything for sex that’s getting worse?

“Vanessa is waiting for you,” Dean said from behind her. The sound of his zipper being pulled up caused her to straighten her spine. She lifted her head. “Every time you say you’re going to film, you get distracted.” His laughter made her bristle, it was so knowing.

This has to stop. It has to. What kind of woman does this? What kind of woman keeps having sex like this? And now, where I work?

If the sex was amazing, as mind-blowing as what had happened on the side of the road, she might understand it. Might be able to rationalize it. But the sex was getting worse, as though the farther they got from the side of the road, the colder she was. The slimier he was.

Yet some desperate ache in her to find that wild woman who had kissed a stranger on the side of the road drove her to say yes to Dean when she should say no. When she
wanted
to say no.

And instead she kept doing
more
, and trying sex acts she’d only read about, all in an effort to feel something.

“I told her I’d meet her outside,” she said, though she knew Vanessa was taping Monica first.

She turned and found him smiling and honest to God, she had no idea what that smile meant. She had the sense that it was supposed to be fond, a fond smile, as if she were a pet who had performed well, but all she saw was a sort of smarminess.
Those teeth
, she thought.
Too white
.

I’m having mediocre sex with a man I don’t like. What the hell is wrong with me?

“I need to go,” she said when he didn’t step away. Didn’t let her pass.

“How about I come back again tonight?” His expression was hopeful.

Last night he’d taken her down on the floor, on her hands and knees, her skirt pushed up around her waist. In her office.

“No,” she said, because honestly, someone had to.

“I do like it when you play hard to get.” The texture of his voice implied that she amused him. That because she’d let him put his dick in her mouth he understood her. But something had happened to her in this affair, something strange. It was as if she’d splintered off into pieces. There was the woman she’d always been, watching this other piece of herself having sex with a slightly despicable man. And the woman who watched was marginally repulsed at the acts she performed, desperate to prove … what? That she wasn’t herself? That this wasn’t her life? That the years weren’t marching forward and she was more alone every single minute?

And that repulsion was spreading.
It’s over
, she told
herself.
The mental break is over. Time to get back to regular life
.

“I can’t meet you tonight,” she said. “My mother has a doctor’s appointment.” That was a lie. Her mother refused to go to the doctor, but he didn’t know that. He didn’t know anything about her, really.

“Well, we’re leaving tomorrow afternoon.”

“Which is why I need to go tape with Vanessa now,” she said.

He laughed. A little mean, that laugh. “Baby, I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, but you look like you’ve been properly fucked.”

She straightened and gave him her iciest glance. The idiot! Honest to God, she was never going to have sex with him again. Ever. That part of her that was weak and desperate and needy was getting locked away.

Fed up, she pushed past him and pulled from the bottom drawer of her desk her purse, her makeup bag, and her hairbrush.

As she walked past him toward the door, he grabbed her arm. And she was reminded, stupidly, horribly, that things with Dean always
started
exciting. Her body liked it when he touched her like that. Firm. In control. Part of her, when he did that, shrank down … waiting with pained and bated breath for whatever he was going to do next and couldn’t wait.
Could. Not. Wait
. For it to come.

Too bad it was turning out to be such a disappointment. She pulled her arm free.

“I’ll see you out there,” she said.

Face burning, she opened the door, only to run into Monica. They both stopped as if held in place by a repellant magnetic force. They couldn’t get closer, nor could they leave.

“What are you doing?” Shelby asked, because she was so off balance, so turned around, and Monica was truly the last the person she wanted to see.

Monica’s eyebrows went up at Shelby’s tone and Shelby knew she was doing this wrong, but she was doing everything wrong these days—it was as if she were a train without brakes.

“Getting my bag.” Monica lifted the laptop case in her hand. “What are
you
doing?”

Shelby nearly rolled her eyes. Honestly, with the chip on that woman’s shoulder, it was amazing she could walk. Despite what had just happened in her office, Shelby managed to say, without any compunction, “Vanessa is going to interview me outside. I just need to get ready.” She pointed at the bathroom door behind Monica and they did an awkward shuffle getting around each other in the narrow hallway.

“How did it go today? With the kids?”

“It was terrible,” Monica said.

“You know the filming is over tomorrow,” Shelby said. “The crew is leaving. And it’s Friday.”

“So, I’m fired?”

“You were never hired.”

“Right. Then one more day and I’m done.”

“I guess so.”

Shelby pushed open the door to the bathroom and at the same time, Dean stepped out of her office. He grinned at her, a dirty, knowing grin, before he realized Monica was there.

Shelby could feel herself blushing. A red tide of blood spreading from her heart, across her body. Across her face.

If Monica was even a little intuitive, she’d know exactly what was going on.

“Monica,” Dean said, a little too loudly. Shelby wondered, painfully, if the guy had any tact.

Shelby could tell Dean was looking at her and she tried, insanely, to act normal but she wasn’t entirely sure what normal was in this situation. So she stood there. Frozen,
staring at Monica. “See you out there, Shelby,” Dean said, and he was gone.