“I’m not hurt, but I’m not okay, Mercer.” He walks toward me, still holding out a hand. His face is stoic, serious. I change my tune. “I’m okay. I’m okay.” I repeat it one more time.
Mercer tilts his head, inquisitively. “You said you’re not okay in the same breath you said you were okay.”
This is the sign, right? I’m so sick of bottling it up. I’m running with it. “I’m not in a quilting club,” I blurt.
Mercer widens his eyes, swallows hard and says, “Okay. You don’t need to know how to quilt anyway. Can’t machines do that these days?” They can, but that’s beside the point. He closes the distance between us, stepping into the mud puddle carefully. He takes my mud-caked hand in his and pulls me away from my car. Mercer uses his thumb to remove mud from my lip. His touch ignites an ache deep inside me. The signs keep coming.
“I graduated from beauty school. Beauty school. I want to do hair. That’s been my dream my entire life. My parents think I’ve been in a quilting club all this time. Oh my goodness, I’ve been lying for so long I don’t know where my truths are anymore.” The tears come.
Bentley is on the phone; I hear him calling someone to get my car towed. “Don’t call the cops, Bent! There’s an open bottle of wine in my car.” I suck in a deep breath. “I’m a fugitive. A wild fugitive who doesn’t belong here. I don’t belong.” My breaths come quicker and I inhale the thick smell of the dirt coating my body.
“Calm down, Clover.” He puts his hand on my neck, and another on my arm. I think it’s an intimate gesture, I won’t do anything to stop. Not now, but his fingers are moving slowly, with a precision. “That feels okay. Are you sure your neck doesn’t hurt? Did you hit your head?” His hands slide up my neck to my head, thumbs pressed behind my ears.
“I’m telling you my whole life is a lie and you’re givin’ me an exam?”
He smirks. “Back at Dizzy Rocket, you were saying you weren’t the same woman. I think what you meant was you’re a shake away from the looney bin. Clover, take a deep breath.”
“I’m not looney. I’m just a liar! You know my cousin, Goldie?” My tone is a near screech.
Mercer nods his head as he moves his hand and manipulates my wrist, asking if I feel any pain. “She owns that super chic salon in Cape Cod? You knew that, right?” At the mention of Cape Cod, his attention piques. “It doesn’t hurt,” I add.
“Yeah, I know which one you mean. I’d forgotten Goldie owns that place, I guess.”
“She offered me a booth there when I’m ready. That’s the sign I’ve been waiting for, Mercer. I finally have my license and I’ve had enough practice. I’m ready to move to Cape Cod and do hair at Goldie’s.”
“Wow. Okay,” he replies, dropping his hands to rest by his sides. “You wouldn’t want to do hair here? With your parents? Your friends? Cape Cod is a long way from Greenton.”
I shake my head furiously. “Of course not. I’ve been planning this whole different life waiting for the right time to get out of here. Winnie has taken over much of the shelter and management duties. I’ll still foot that bill, because let’s be honest, I’ll never need for money, but I need for a life of my own.” Winnie is my right-hand woman. She runs the day to day happenings, and I’ve groomed her to take over completely. I pay her a good salary and she makes sure the legacy I began keeps the same values I founded it on. I hold up one finger in front of Mercer. “Pause that thought, I need to talk to Bentley.” I hear Bent chatting up his friend on the phone.
Barefoot and covered in mud, I march toward him. “Ms. Wellsley, you look like a muddy Carrie. Are you here to kill me? I’m sorry for every time I called you a bitch. Don’t take vengeance on me. Please.”
I sigh, holding out my hand. “Give me your cell.” He complies immediately. “Where are you guys heading now?” I ask Bentley before addressing the person on the phone.
“Jimmy’s hunting camp off route three twenty-six,” he says, voice shaky. “To drink and do man shit.”
To the person on the other end of the line, I ask, “You have a tow truck?”
The man replies in the affirmative. I describe where my car is and tell him to tow it to Jimmy’s hunting camp instead of to a body shop. I’m going to take care of this all by myself. My parents won’t even know a thing.
Mercer is standing behind me; I feel his body heat—his presence. I turn to face him, and he’s bare-chested, holding out his plaid shirt. “You’re not getting into the cab of Bent’s truck covered in mud. My shirt will be long enough to cover everything.” He gestures to my body with his free hand.
“But now you’re not covered,” I shriek.
He shakes his head. “I wasn’t sure if you were okay, but listening to you boss those boys around I see you’re in perfect Clover form. Take the shirt. My abs are the least of your worries, darlin’. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”His abs are the most of my confounded worries!
I snatch the shirt, with a huff, and go to the passenger side of Bentley’s truck to unzip my dress. It weighs five pounds more now that’s it’s soaked and caked with mud. It’s completely destroyed and there’s no way I can drop it off at the dry cleaners like this. Such a shame, I think. What’s not a shame is having Mercer’s scent wrapping around my body. It’s almost as if he’s marking me as his, and I can’t deny I like the way it feels.
I’m still shaken, but I have to take care of business. I walk back to my car, grab my purse on the floorboard, the bottle of wine that blessedly survived, and try to pop the trunk. It doesn’t open.
“We need to get out of here before someone drives by and sees your car. Or you, wearing my shirt.” Mercer sets his hand on my shoulder.
“Daddy says you’re basically a superhero. Get this trunk open, please. I need the black bag and wheeled suitcase.”
The headlights on Bentley’s truck are blazing our way, so I can see his grin. “A superhero, huh? A shirtless one? That mean yes for a date?”
“Depends if you get my belongings out or not, I guess.”
“Consider yourself taken then, ma’am.”
