She does, but Dad and his family were always quick to correct her that I looked like a Beckett.
“Do you look like your parents?” Gloria asks.
“A little.”
“Not really,” I interject. “Except her eyes are similar to her mom’s, and when she focusses really hard, she looks a little like her dad. Her brother and sister have some similarities, but even those are pretty damn thin.”
Raegan stares at me like she’s surprised by my assessment.
Gloria smiles, it’s smug like she knows a secret as she flips another page, more pictures of me naked, these ones of me in a bath, my stomach round. “He was a happy baby,” Gloria says, flipping several pages to reveal pictures from times I have memories of. I’m six, on vacation to Disneyland. My arms loaded with stuffed animals and toys that my parents bought each time they fought and offered a new gift to repay their guilt. A close up of me sitting on Mom’s lap, laughing—a candid shot—one of my favorites because although I remember the fights that broke out like thunderstorms, hitting everything in the house and leaving everyone with a darkness, there were plenty of light moments. Moments when the sun was our guide, and Mom and I would spend entire afternoons together, building forts in the living room and racing around the backyard.
“Do you remember this?” Gloria asks, pointing at a picture of me in a canoe, a paddle in my hands. “You said you were going to go out and see the whales. You were determined.”
Rae closes her eyes, finishing the rest of her wine in one drink.
15
Raegan
Lincoln’s truck is freezing as I settle into the seat, his jacket around my shoulders as I try to right the skirt of my dress so it doesn’t get closed in the door, the scent of his cologne making me dizzy.
Lincoln climbs into the driver’s side, starting the truck and hitting a sequence of buttons and dials to turn up the heat. “You should have waited and let me get the truck warmed.”
I shake my head. “I’m fine.” My muscles ache, but I won’t admit that because there’s no way I was going to stay inside alone. Too many were watching me with curiosity, waiting for a moment to step in and ask their questions about who I am and how I fit. Admitting I don’t was guaranteed to be an uncomfortable conversation.
We wait for two cars in front of us to back up, silence ballooning as my ears ring from the new quietness, a stark contrast to the music and conversation inside.
“Was it what you expected?” He loosens his tie, freeing the top button of his dress shirt, making me stare too long.
“I didn’t have any expectations. I know little about your past and your family.”
“But, you know me.”
“Sometimes, I think I do.”
He frees another button, then moves to his wrists—bone and skin and muscle that somehow look erotic as he rolls up his shirtsleeve. “You do,” he insists.
“Why are you doing this again?”
His eyes balance on mine, his fingers paused from where they’re rolling his other sleeve. “Doing what?”
“Playing mind games. Why did you order me this dress? Why are you still telling me things like I know you and that you know me? And staring at my mouth like you’re about to kiss me? I can’t do this. I can’t keep being around you because you’re drowning me.”
He twists so he’s facing me, invading the cab of the truck though he doesn’t lean forward. “That’s because I’ve never known how to be your friend. The more I learned about you, the greater my interest became, so it was easier just to avoid you.”
“Then, avoid me.”
His opened palm slams against the steering wheel. “I can’t.”
Tears burn in my eyes, realizing the level of toxic this is guaranteed to spill into my life—how this conversation is promised to haunt my thoughts and dreams for weeks—months—to come. How long I’m going to debate all the words I should be saying, the questions I should be asking.
Anger steadies my voice. “You already made your decision, and so have I. I’m done. I don’t want to stay on this merry-go-round anymore. I can’t.”
“We’ve already said this. Been here, but this doesn’t shake off. Now, I try to be away from you, and I find myself making excuses to see you because I can’t think of anything else.”
“We’re no better than Candace and Paxton, hurting each other and then coming back together because we’re both afraid to move on.”
Lincoln shakes his head in tight jerks, his jaw flexing. “We’re nothing like them. Fear isn’t what keeps pushing me back to you. Fear is what keeps me pulling away.”
My thoughts and heart feel too big, filled with too many emotions that have erupted into a civil war where both sides are guaranteed to lose. “Until tomorrow, when you’re back to having a hundred women fawn over you and next week’s game is your number one priority.”
“You want this. I know you want me, too.”
As badly as I want to deny this, I don’t because he’s right. I’ve been trying to forget that for nearly three years, but it doesn’t negate the fact. But, this wasn’t enough two weeks ago or a month ago or even yesterday, and I have zero doubts it won’t be again tomorrow or in two weeks or a month. “I just need some space right now.”
“Raegan,” he says my name, drawing my gaze back to his, recognizing the torrent of words he keeps locked away.
Before he can say anything, I shake my head. “I just want to go home.”
Lincoln doesn’t race home like he had the night he drove me home after mini-golf when anger and lust made the air thick and impenetrable. Instead, he follows the speed limit, silent questions volleying between us as we both avoid looking at the other as the silence spreads like a virus, infecting each memory of the night so that I’m regretting ever having agreed to come.
When he pulls up to my house, the windows are dark, only the porch light is on. I lean forward, removing his jacket.
“Keep it,” he says.
“No, I’m fine.”
He waves my words off. “I’ll get it later.”
“It’s your tux.”
His eyes narrow. “Why do you always argue?”
Indignation leaves me glaring at him, an entire arsenal of anger equipping my words.
He rubs his jaw, releasing a short breath. “Please.” He meets my glare, a white flag. “Take it. It’s freezing outside. You can give it to Paxton the next time you see him.”
His words echo in that hallway carved into my heart, the one I’ve worked dutifully to avoid, and makes me regret all of my angry words and claims of not wanting him. I want to plead with him to forget everything about tonight except the feelings he has for me. Then, the front door opens, and my dad appears, still dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, keys in his hand, and my breath falls out in a shaky and shallow puff.
“What?” Lincoln asks, his brow drawn as concern paints his voice.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’m sorry to leave the night like this. I just don’t know how to do this anymore.” Tears make my eyes feel as weighted as my heart as I take in his rumpled tie and exposed skin, filing this memory away in a locked space where I vow to remember the perfection of Lincoln Beckett.