LATER THAT NIGHT. SAYLOR AND I are both relaxing on the couch with a glass of wine after closing down the bar together. I was only supposed to work the day shift, being my first day and all, but when one of Gus’s girls called in sick, I jumped at the chance to help out. Not only for the extra money, but more so to be a part of something. Even if it is just work.
So now, after working a double, I’m exhausted and thankful for Saylor offering me her wine and company.
We’re sitting on opposite ends of the same couch, backs resting against the arms with our feet propped up on the middle cushion. Chatting away like old friends. Something else I’ve never had before. Girls always kept their distance and guys…well, guys never wanted to be friends.
“I’m sorry about my brother,” Saylor says over the rim of her wine glass before taking a sip as our conversation lulls.
“It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before,” I mutter quietly, trying to brush it off. Not wanting my newfound friend to feel she needs to apologize for him, even if he is her brother, which let me tell you, completely floored me when she first introduced us.
“I imagine it’s not.” She says it hesitantly. Like she knows my looks are all I’ve ever had since the ripe old age of thirteen when one moment changed the course of my life for years to come. Like she knows my looks are all I’ll ever have to offer and men just like to take, take, take because of them.
I look at her, then shrug. “Where I come from…men like him are a dime a dozen.”
Staring and wanting and lusting over my long hair, too-big boobs, and even bigger butt. Never after my heart or my soul. What makes me, me.
“So you’re not leaving anyone behind?” she questions.
I scoff lightly behind my wine glass. “No one there to leave.”
Besides the mountain of mistakes I’ve made when it comes to letting men ruin me.
“Not even family?”
I shake my head. “Never had one.” Heaving a deep breath, I ready myself to let someone in. Something I don’t ever do. “I grew up in foster care. Surrounded by family after family…yet I don’t even know what one looks like, wouldn’t even know what it was like to have one.”
Saylor’s eyes turn sad and sympathetic.
Empathetic.
“My brother, he really isn’t so bad,” she tries to sell as she bends her knees and wraps her arms around them.
I scoff again, thinking she’s just saying that since he’s her brother. She must hear me because she continues on in his defense.
“He really is a good man with an even better heart. It’s just…it’s been just us two for so long, plus Gus and Nash. But we’re all each other has and because of that and the life we used to live…he’s shut himself off to forming connections. From forming anything meaningful. And he hides behind this tough-guy persona, which has him coming off as an arrogant asshole.”
I nod. Understanding more than she realizes.
And getting that she understands where I’m coming from just as much.
“Just thought you should know because I’d bet we all have more in common than we think,” she says softly. This side of Saylor is more subdued and tender compared to her brash and fiery nature at the bar.
My heart aches, thoughts of my past whirling like a tornado through my mind as we both get lost in the memories that haunt us.
All the boys and men I let use and abuse me. Making me feel like I was something special before letting me loose when they got what they wanted.
My body and nothing else.
Leaving me to pick up the piece of my heart and soul each one chipped away until I was left a pile of broken and fractured pieces I’m now trying so desperately to put back together again.
Saylor’s voice cuts through the air, breaking me from my wayward thoughts. “But ya know…I have to tell you.” She drops her legs flat to the cushion and leans in at the waist, quieting her tone when she speaks, as if she’s sharing the world’s greatest secret. “My brother has never, and I mean never, reacted that way before. No woman has ever brought him to his knees. And let me tell you, girlie, you laid him out flat.”
I roll my eyes dramatically. “I’ll bet.” My tone is nothing short of sarcastic, and while my heart pounds with disbelief, my tummy is full of fluttering butterfly wings.
That old, familiar feeling kicking in.
“I mean it, Kennedy!” she exclaims as a hand slaps to the leather below her, the little bit of wine left in her glass sloshing about. “He saw you and about fell on his face.”
Right…saw the exterior. But what about what’s underneath?
“Like I said…nothing I haven’t dealt with before.” I swallow and set my half-full wine glass to the coffee table in front of the couch, suddenly feeling uneasy from the butterflies and our talk.
“It’s more than that, girl.” Saylor’s voice is back to the tenderness of earlier. “Yes, you’re stunning. I can’t deny that any more than you can. But he felt something more. I know it. I’m his blood, his sister, and I’m telling you the look that crossed his face was nothing short of awe because of you. Not just your looks, but whatever he saw beneath it all when his eyes landed on yours.”
The butterflies ease. But my heart, oh my heart, it’s beating a rhythm I’ve never felt before.
“And as a bystander in the bar, feeling all that winding tension and sparkling chemistry…I can say without a doubt it was so much more than your pretty face.”
Tears fill my eyes, uncertainty now filling my heart. Because she’s making me want to believe in something I gave up trying to find.
My person. My home.
“Well.” I clear my throat. “As sweet as all of that sounds, my move to Sunvale wasn’t to find a man. I’ve had enough of those to last me a lifetime.” And I really have. My lonely heart seeking out way too much way too often. “This is my time to find myself, to heal the broken parts of me I was trying to mend with them.”
Tears slowly well, then roll down both of our cheeks by the time I’m done. Saylor wipes hers away.
“I promised myself no more men until I did that. Until I could stand tall on my own and not have my worth depend on the affections of their false intentions.”
She nods. Understanding. “I can get that. Admire it even. Lord knows I’ve had my fair share of frogs along the way to my Prince Charming. But fair warning, my big brother doesn’t take too kindly to being told no.”
I swallow harshly, thinking I know where this is going.
Her fingers fidget absentmindedly with a loose thread from her oversized sweatshirt. And then she smirks. “So prepare yourself for the Shaw Effect he’s sure to unleash on you. Because if I know Rhett at all—which I do—he’s going to be laying it down thick. And I can promise it’s for more than just what you have to offer on the outside.”
Seems as though my move to Sunvale may prove to be more of a test than I thought.