“Did they catch who did it?” I asked, my hand twitching to reach out and pull her into me.
“Yes.” She tilted her head so she cracked first one side of her neck, then the other, making my heart skip a beat. “They turned themselves in. That was also the week that we found out my mother was sick. She was dead within a year.”
I would’ve asked what she died of, because I was insanely curious like that, but before I could ask, my phone rang.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s my mom.”
The woman at my side grinned at the face I made. “Answer it.”
I did.
“Hey, Ma,” I said as I answered my phone. “What’s up?”
“What’s up is that I have a birthday coming up this weekend, and I want to see you,” my mother informed me. “You’ll be coming over to Benton this weekend and staying a few days, right?”
I hadn’t planned on it.
I planned on sending her a fruit basket or something.
I licked my lips. “I have a new thing with someone. I don’t really want to leave her behind. If you’re okay with me bringing…”
The ‘new thing’ comment had Crockett widening her eyes and scooting away.
Or trying to. I caught her ankle before she could so much as twitch.
“You have a new thing with someone,” she said, interrupting me. “Like a new girlfriend kind of thing?”
I grinned at the lack of tone in her voice, at all.
“It’s not Juniper,” I promised, squeezing the ankle a little harder when Crockett tried to rip it from my grasp.
My mom breathed out a sigh of relief. “The way you just put that made me think that you didn’t want me to say no, so you weren’t going to tell me her name until I’d already agreed. I got a little nervous.”
To say that Juniper wasn’t my mother’s favorite person would be an understatement.
Not that I could really blame my mother.
She and Juniper had gotten along famously until Juniper had decided that I wasn’t worth what she was having to go through.
I had a feeling, though, my mother would love Crockett more.
“Her name is Crockett,” I said. “And no, we don’t need multiple rooms.”
Crockett’s mouth all but fell open in surprise as she heard my words.
“I like that name. It’s great.” My mother sighed. “Bring a cake. You know your daddy always disappoints me in the cake department.”
At that, we hung up after saying our goodbyes, and I was left with a really confused woman on my hands that was looking at me like I’d just surprised her.
CHAPTER 12
You can’t have a million-dollar dream with a minimum-wage work ethic.
-Murphy to Crockett
CROCKETT
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
Instead of addressing the huge elephant in the room—I.e. his words that he’d just said to his mother about me being his—I chose to come up with some bullshit excuse.
That bullshit excuse worked, though, when he immediately let my ankle go and then helped me stand up before leading me to the bathroom.
The bathroom was just as nice as the rest of the pool house.
Nicer, in fact.
If I could move in wherever I wanted, I’d move into Six and Lynn’s pool house.
It was the perfect size, had a great kitchen despite the smallness of the rest of the building, and the bathroom was to die for.
There was a very big glass-enclosed shower in the middle of the bathroom.
On one side was a double vanity with a makeup counter in the middle of them, and on the other side was what had to be the toilet as well as a closet of some sort.
“Wow,” I said as I stared at the glass shower stall. “This is amazing.”
“This is a waste of space,” he said. “They could’ve put it in the corner and gotten way more out of this space.”
My lips twitched. “Such a man.”
His eyes turned to me lazily.
“That a bad thing?” he asked.
And suddenly, all the things that I was trying to tell myself when it came to that man—he was bad news being one of them—flew out the window.
Because I didn’t care if he was bad news.
I liked the man that Zach Caruso was.
A lot.
“What’s that look for?” he asked as he stared at me.
I licked my lips and looked away. “That stuff you just told your mom. Why did you lie to her?”
When he didn’t answer for a long period of time, I couldn’t stop myself from turning to face him. He was looking at me so intently that I felt my heart stutter in my chest.
“What?” I asked.
“I didn’t lie to her,” he said simply. “I’ve lied to myself, though.”
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear the rest.
Not with the way he was looking so intently at me.
But, alas, I wasn’t a coward.
“What?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve spent the better part of six months trying to stay away from you,” he told me. “The first day that I got out of prison and saw you? I wanted to claim you right then and there. But all I could think about was how you didn’t need a man like me. You deserved better.”
I hesitated to ask my next question.
“What changed?” I whispered.
He moved in so that he was only inches away from my face. His lips so close, if I hadn’t just puked for half an hour, I might very well close the distance and press mine to his.
“I decided that I didn’t care anymore,” he told me. “I decided that I would make you forget that I’m a bad person.”
CHAPTER 13
I wasn’t raised like you. My mama whooped me. She even killed me one time.
-Text from Zach to Crockett
CROCKETT
I decided I can make you forget that I’m a bad person.
His words had my head spinning, and my heart pounding away.
I licked my lips. “You’re not a bad person, Zach.”
“See?” he rasped, his eyes wary and his face slightly blank. The only thing that I could make out was his slight worry over my welfare. “You just don’t freakin’ get it.”
I had no clue what he was talking about.
Furthermore, I wasn’t sure that I wanted him to convince me of anything.
I wanted to stay blissfully unaware of everything that he thought was wrong with him, because I didn’t want him to convince me to stay away.
Though, the more time that I spent with him, the more I realized that his perceived ‘faults’ weren’t faults at all so much as just a constant ‘I’m not good enough for her’ attitude.
I stood up, my stomach only giving a slight roll, and stared at him closely.
“I get it perfectly,” I said softly. “I get that you think that you aren’t good enough for me.”
He said nothing, so I kept going.
“I get that you think that by doing anything with me, dating or otherwise, you think you’re going to ruin my life,” I continued.
His eyes narrowed, but I could see agreement there.