I finish then we get in the truck with me behind the wheel.

For almost the entire ride, Riley rests her goddamned hand on the center console. I keep mine on the wheel.

I don’t know why I’m angry.

I hope it’s not because of the long-forgotten things Riley is making me feel, and how the only way to quench them seems to be the one thing I can’t do.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Riley

AFTER A FEW MILES, IT becomes apparent that Brandon isn’t going to take my hand even though I’ve planted it on the center console. Maybe because he seems annoyed at my misplaced silent treatment, but more likely because we don’t know each other at all.

And yet, somehow, I feel like I do know Brandon.

I grew up without a mother. I can only imagine what it was like for him, growing up in foster homes. I want to ask about it, but that feels too personal. I feel like I’ve known this man all my life for some stupid (Dad would say “foolish”) reason, but I haven’t. To him, I’m the boss’s ditzy daughter, and I’d do well to keep that in mind.

How could he take me seriously? He’s lived in a way I never have. He’s had to struggle and overcome his whole life. Something in me lights up at the idea — not from attraction (though there is that), but because I honestly admire it. How much have I had to struggle? Other than getting past Mom’s sickness and death, what’s been hard in my life? Even since before I started getting boobs, Daddy’s Little Rich Girl got everything she wanted. And oh, yes, Dad tried to make me understand the value of a dollar, but I could never forget the net was there. Until college, I of course always lived at home. Even when I had jobs, I had a copy of Dad’s credit card, and even without it I just needed to ask for something to get it. There was never any sense of peril. I’ve never known the cliff’s edge.

But Brandon? I can’t picture living as he must have.

He couldn’t count on love. I wonder if he’s ever felt love? I wonder if he’s had a girlfriend serious enough to have given it to him. Maybe not. He seems so guarded. I mean, look at that beard. It’s not the beard of a man who’s simply chosen facial hair. Brandon strikes me as a guy who’s hiding something. A man with a secret. And if you can’t reveal your secrets, how can you let anyone in enough to love you?

So, no love.

No real home, at least until he was an adult, and presumably started living alone.

He has his “sister,” Bridget, but I have no idea what she’s like. If they were foster siblings, that really just means they were two kids who found themselves thrust into the same prison. Like cellmates. What must that be like? And there’s something else he said, too: He referred to “both times” he lived with Bridget. Did that mean they didn’t move together? One or both of them left their shared home, and they ended up in two different places? How did they maintain their relationship, for whatever it was worth? And what kind of cruelty must that have been: a family deciding they didn’t want one or the other, or Brandon and Bridget demanding to leave?

I want to shiver. Life wasn’t like that for me.

I almost want to wrap my hands around my waist for a parody of warmth, but Brandon’s been eyeing my arm on the console for long enough that now I feel I have to keep it where it is, lest I reveal my reason for leaving it there in the first place.

A reason that makes me feel like an idiot, now that I think about it.

I’m trying hard to be a mature woman, and I left school feeling like one. But did I just lead a man who works for my father into an emotional trap in the woods then get pissed off for no reason — other than that I (not him) was suddenly claimed by an emotional flood I wasn’t ready to deal with, even though I brought on myself? Did I pout afterward, acting like a little brat for a reason he’d obviously not be able to understand or guess? And to top it all off, did I honestly try to make peace by offering my hand for him to take?

Oh God, did I really, honestly expect this man I met yesterday to hold my hand on our drive back to the office?

Despite my need to keep that hand where it is to allay suspicions of my true motives, I finally snatch it back. I don’t care how it looks. Because I suddenly feel so, so incredibly stupid.

What if he had taken my hand? What then?

And really, what kind of a fifth-grade thing is hand holding in the first place? If I’d wanted to mix business and pleasure, a damaged woman would do things differently from a teenager. I’m twenty-two fucking years old, for crying out loud. If I wanted do this, maybe I should have just jumped on him back at the site. That would show him who was boss, even if it popped my cover about who wanted whom.

I hold my hands in my lap, stuffing everything down. None of this is making me feel less stupid. I feel like someone who’s said something dumb, made it worse with a stilted explanation, then continued to make it worse by explaining the awkward explanation.

Relax. He doesn’t know what idiotic crap is going on in your head. 

And besides, this has nothing to do with Brandon. This job happened to take you near the creek. The creek made you think of Mom. Feeling bad about Mom always makes you weak, and he just so happened to be the nearest person at the time — the closest port in the storm. 

After a few minutes and a several deep breaths, I decide my poker face is composed enough to risk a glance. He won’t see the flush I feel in my cheeks. And he sure as hell won’t feel the other flushes that have crept into other parts of my body. But still, even imagining myself less transparent than I was at the site, I feel like a boy with an erection in class. The way I’ve come undone is probably plain as day.

He’ll look over and laugh.

Or maybe he’ll pity me.

Brandon will take his eyes off the road for long enough to return my no-big-deal-and-sorry-about-what-happened-back-there smile and see how conflicted this is all making me. And he’ll want to say something like, “It’s okay; it happens to everyone.” Or “It’ll be okay.” And maybe he’ll tell me he likes me as a friend and that I seem like a nice girl who will one day meet a nice boy, and I’ll look like an idiot as I backpedal, trying to explain that this has nothing to do with him.

This has to do with me.

This has to do with coming home, trying to be someone different. Trying to be more. To show my father that I’m capable of being Riley, not just Mason’s daughter.

This has to do with my understandable emotional confusion, back home after so much time away.

I probably miss school. I lived there for four years, after all.

I probably miss my friends. I probably miss Candace.

I probably don’t know how to feel, being back under my father’s roof and preparing to move out truly on my own, to get my own place and live there, alone.

I probably miss my mom, because I always do.

I flash my make-peace smile to Brandon, but he doesn’t really return it. He doesn’t laugh at me. He doesn’t pity me. He doesn’t patronize me and my childish feelings.

It’s fine.

If he’s decided to be an asshole, this will be so much easier.