He wiped his mouth again, head ducked, and looked up at her through his lashes, guilty now. It was easy to forget sometimes, when he wasn’t looking at you, how very blue his eyes were. If he was in a fact a player, it was all his pretty face’s fault.
“It’s…” He made a face. “It’s just kinda weird. I have – a girlfriend.” Lots of hesitation there; an uncertainty. “And she’s kinda wild. Free spirit, you know?”
She nodded. “Club life. I get it.”
“No, it’s not…” He chewed at his lip a moment. “I mean, wild stuff does go on. We’re not a bible study group.”
“Shocking.”
“Shut up,” he said, blushing again, but he sat back in his chair, less tense. “It’s like…okay. So. I can’t believe I’m talking about this.” He scrubbed at his face with both palms. “In the club, there are girls who–”
“Have casual sex with the bikers. The Lean Bitches.”
He stared at her.
“It’s like you think I’m a regular civilian or something. In high school, I was at a Dartmoor party with Ava, and Aidan was literally getting a blow job in the middle of the common room. Iget it, okay?”
But he shook his head. “I’m not…” Another sigh, this one belly-deep and exhausted. In the span of a second, his face fell, and she saw the lines that hadn’t been there when they were younger. Some from sun, she knew, but there were frown lines, too. A deep, defeated sort of sadness etched into his skin. His gaze dropped to the table, and his fingers fiddled with his wadded-up napkin. His voice came out low, and flat – so much so that she felt instantly bad for poking at what was, she now saw, a sore spot.
“When I first joined, when I was a prospect, and just starting to hang around the club – yeah, I admit that the girls were…” A muscle twitched in his cheek. “I’d never seen anything like that before. In college, there were some wild parties, but at the clubhouse it was just…it was so casual. It wasn’t this big, scandalous thing, you know? Sex? It was just something you could have, and everything was on the table, and it was okay.” His face was beet red, but his expression was still troubled – and determined. She had the sense he felt like he needed to say this.
She was willing to listen. God knew she’d vented plenty in her life.
“I always thought, when I was a kid, that I’d get married. Find a nice girl, and we’d go on dates, and we’d get hitched, and have kids. The whole white picket fence thing. But then I came back home, and everyone else had moved on. Everyone I went to high school with was off at college, or already settling down, and I was just…floating.”
Like she was now. She understood all too well.
“Then I was prospecting, and dating is a whole other thing when you’re a part of the club. You don’t just bump into someone at the grocery store and ask her out for a fancy dinner. It’s like…” He lifted his gaze to meet hers, finally, imploring, and it had her chest clenching in sympathetic sadness. This boy wasdepressed, and she wondered if anyone else had noticed it.
“The couples I know: Maggie and Ghost. Ava and Mercy. Even Aidan and Sam…that’s not, like, ‘hey, we met on eHarmony’ or some shit. Hell, Emmie was pretty muchforcedto marry Walsh. It worked out okay, but…”
“I get it,” she said, and saw relief flicker across his face. “I had front-row seats to the Ava and Mercy show back in the day. That was some epic, world-ending, soap opera stuff.”
He nodded, and looked like he almost smiled. “Most people don’t want to be associated with the club. Not civilians, anyway. It’s too dangerous, and too messy.”
She could see how a girl from a calm, law-abiding family would struggle with so many aspects of the club. She nodded.
“Jasmine – she’s my…” He didn’t saygirlfriendagain. There was pain there, appearing in the faint grooves that bracketed his mouth. “She was in a bad place, when we first got together. And she’s doing a lot better now – she’s doing great. Getting her GED. Ghost is giving her the manager position at Bell Bar. She’s great,” he repeated, voice fading.
“But you’re not.”
He took a quick breath, like he was startled. “Um. Well.” He glanced back at the table. “Not really, I don’t guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, and the movement looked more like his cut didn’t fit than the casual, dismissive gesture it should have. “It is what it is. Everybody goes through times when they’re not happy. Right?” His brows lifted on the last, not quite daring to hope.
She thought of her own current state of mind. There was nothing wrong with her, physically. She had a roof over her head, and loving parents, and a best friend, and this place was her home; it was comfy in all the well-worn, best-known ways that Chicago hadn’t quite been. She didn’t wish she was still with Jason…but she missed him. Sometimes. Lots of times. Mainly at night, when she stared up at the dark ceiling and listed all the ways she could have handled things differently. She felt like a failure. Maybe if she’d been more affectionate, or spent less time at work, or if they’d tried going to counseling…
“Right,” she agreed, throat tight.
He glanced away, absently toward the window. “Anyway.”
It was awkward now. She didn’t know if Carter had the energy or the savvy to fix that.
“So what happens now?” she asked.
His brows went up, and he looked back toward her almost cautiously.
