Chapter 8
Brynn
As I sat there devouring my chicken wings, my eyes danced along Diesel’s face. He really had changed a lot. He still had that brooding stare and that shit-eating grin, but everything else was different. He was taller. Broader. Stacked with muscle that required the twenty chicken wings he had ordered just so he wasn’t eaten under the table by a woman. His skin was tanned and his hair grew thick on his head. His stubble was prevalent, but shaped up. Like he was debating on growing a beard but hadn’t come to a solid conclusion yet.
“You should do it,” I said.
“Do what?” Diesel asked.
“Grow a beard. You’d look good in one.”
His eyes danced between mine before he reached for his beer.
“I’d forgotten how good you were at reading people,” he said.
“You remembered my favorite flavor but not the one trait that pissed you off more than anything?” I asked.
He sat back into his chair and crossed his arms.
“Let’s say I picked up your fun little party trick as a way to make sure nothing like what happened to you ever happened again.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
His eyes began to dance around my body and I braced myself for impact.
“Your outfit is tight against your body but worn. Which means you wanted to impress me, but not give me the notion that you were coming to agree with anything I said. Your hair is pulled up and a bit dusty, which tells me you drove here with your windows rolled down. Which probably means you were blasting music and singing at the top of your lungs, judging by the slight hoarseness of your voice.”
My lips parted in shock as he continued.
“When you walked up to me, however, you had mud caked on the bottoms of your boots. It hasn’t rained in Redding for days. In fact, it hadn’t rained anywhere within a twenty mile radius of us for some time now, since the State of California has been in a drought. Which means you found yourself at the creek. Meaning, you found yourself at your thinking rock. That tells me you’ve been thinking just as much about this as I have. But the fact that you haven’t told me what you have been thinking about means you had the same idea as me before we even set up the date.”
“And how do you figure?” I asked.
“When I called this afternoon and you answered, I said we needed to talk. You said ‘we do’, but not like a question. As a statement. You’d made up your mind about this exact same plan on that little thinking rock you hiked to in those boots probably this morning, and I simply called at an opportune time.”
I was speechless at his analysis. He had gotten everything right.
“Your father wasn’t busy, was he?” Diesel asked. “He went with you to the creek?”
After I had shed enough tears remembering what happened, I got out my bed and headed to the creek that was near our house. It wasn’t far, but my father had insisted that he come along with me. He had thrown me the phone when he saw it was Diesel calling.
My eyes held his as I slowly nodded. I watch the grin slid from his face.
“It was my way of keeping you alive, Brynn. I hated the way you could read me. The way you ripped my mysterious facade away like it was nothing. So, I studied human behavior. Read up on human psychology. Devoured every single goddamn book I could get my hands on about it. Because it was the only way I knew to keep you alive.”
Emotion choked off my voice as my eyes fell to my uneaten chicken wings. Suddenly, I was no longer in the mood to eat.
“I thought about you every day,” I said breathlessly.
I fought back the tears that formed in my eyes.
“Every night, when I closed my eyes, I saw you. Felt you. Kissed you. I kept pushing forward on the days where it all felt hopeless because I thought maybe one day--”
I wiped at my gaze before I rose back up to meet his stare.
I wondered if this could actually work. If this fake fiancé thing would really give everyone what they wanted. It was no shocking reveal that I had loved Diesel in the past. I never admitted it to anyone, though I’d come close to telling him one time. We were in the shed out back behind the Black Hornets lodge. My father had told me to go retrieve something and Diesel followed closely on my heels in the dark. He filled me with his fingers and stroked me with his tongue, and had my father not interrupted us with coming to find me I would’ve said it.
I would’ve told Diesel I loved him.
He was right. About everything. Where I’d been. When I’d been there. What I had been thinking about. But why I was thinking it was wrong. He thought in terms of giving everyone what they wanted, but I still dwelled in a fantasy world. In a place where there was the slightest chance Diesel loved me back then, and still loved me now. Could he love me? Could it be possible that this was how Diesel and I ended back up in one another’s arms.
Had Diesel ever loved me?
“Brynn?” he asked.
His low notes pulled me from my trance and I reached for my beer to clear my throat.
“I don’t enjoy traditional diamonds,” I said. “I prefer gems, actually. They’re colorful and sparkly, and don’t come with the hefty price tag.”
His face fell stoic before he nodded his head.
“So, we’re going to give this a go,” he said.
“We are. We won’t get married simply because my father says we will, but we’ll make it appear as if things have worked out for the time being. My father will push for a wedding soon. Trust me. But I’ll stall him and keep telling him that if he’s going to force me to get married the least he can do is give me a wedding on my terms. That’ll get him to back off, give us some room to keep up the ruse, then once things work out with whatever the hell’s going on around here, we can have an epic fight and be done with it.”
Diesel nodded, but he didn’t say anything.
“Or I could fake my death again. One of the two.”
“That’s not funny,” he said.
“It’s a little funny,” I said with a grin.
“I buried you once, Brynn. I’m not doing it again.”
That was as close to an ‘I love you’ as I would ever get from Diesel. I hung onto the moment. Memorized the way his eyes pierced my gaze. Committed to memory where we were and what we were eating and what he was wearing. His tight white shirt covered in his leather cut that didn’t quite pull around his chest. Faded, worn blue jeans and thick black boots that stomped whenever he walked.
I took in all of it. Every single part of it. Because I knew I’d never get the real thing from him.
“In that case, I think this is necessary then,” Diesel said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box before he set in on the table.
“What the fuck is that?” I asked.
But all he did was grin at me.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “You couldn’t have possibly known.”
“Really though? Not possible at all?”
“We just talked about this. I just agreed to it. I just told you what kind of ring I wanted through all of this.”
“I knew you in high school, Brynn. You never stopped wearing jade and those fake pearls of yours.”
“You didn’t,” I said.
“Open it.”
My hand reached out for the box and I cracked it open. And tears rushed my vision the second I took in the beautiful ring. The dainty white gold band boasted a jade gemstone. The band of the ring on each side boasted of four miniaturized deep-sea pearls, sparkling with their milky beauty underneath the dim light of the wing-and-bar restaurant we sat in. Tears rushed my eyes. It was the most beautiful thing any person had ever given to me.
And the entire premise behind it was fake.
“Brynn,” Diesel said with a grin. “Will you be my temporary fiancé?”
I tried not to let the pain of his question show upon my face. I plucked the ring from the velvety box and slid it onto my finger. A perfect fucking fit. I closed my eyes as a smile slid across my face and I envisioned the engagement I’d played out in my mind so many times as a child. Every time Diesel’s tongue tangled itself up in mine, images of him proposing to me after high school burst onto the forefront of my mind.
I’d practically memorized his entire speech.
But none of that mattered now.
“Yes,” I said as playfully as I could. “I’ll be your temporary fiancé.”
I forced myself to finish dinner and Diesel gladly paid. He escorted me out with his hand on the small of my back, selling the deal in front of those in the restaurant. His hand felt warm. Hot against my back. He guided me out to my car and opened my door, then helped me in before shutting it beside me. I struck up my car and my music began to blast. A sound that made me jump and scream before slapping my hand against my lips. Diesel’s shoulders shook with his laughter as I reached for the volume knob, turning it down as Diesel’s laughter ramped up.
“You still listen to Matchbox Twenty?” he asked.
“I’ll never stop,” I said with a smile.
I pulled out of the parking lot and watched Diesel watch me. His eyes stayed locked onto my car until I disappeared over the hump of the road, making my way back to my father’s house. I had a twenty minute drive ahead of me to get back to my house. To get back to telling my father that Diesel and I had agreed to get married. I even had a ring to sell him on the whole story. Then, my part of the charade would start. I’d have to get my father to hold off on a ceremony until all of these pieces were wrapped up.
And until then, I could unleash the tears I kept at bay throughout my dinner with Diesel. What I wouldn’t give for his proposal to be real. What I wouldn’t give for him to actually want to date me again. There was no use in lying to myself any longer. No use in trying to sell my mind on a lie my heart had already confirmed as nothing more than a fallacy.
I still loved Diesel.
And it seemed as if he had never loved me.