Finders Keepers

I guessed teasing Mrs. Gibson about getting after making her grandchild dreams come true probably would have been humor wasted right then. Josie wiped the pie filling off the edge of the knife with her finger and slid her finger into her mouth. Hot damn. That was not helping the dizzy sensation.

“We were just catching up. Sorry.” Josie shrugged.

“You two have known each other since kindergarten. How much ‘catching up’ do you need?”

“A lot.”

“Are you caught up now? Or should I leave and check back later?” Mrs. Gibson could hang with the most sarcastic of us. If I wasn’t sure she’d grow horns and breathe fire if she found out how I felt about her daughter, we probably would have gotten along okay.

“What do you think, Garth? We all caught up now?” Josie’s face had a hint of a smile.

“I think we covered the important parts. The rest we can fill in as we go. We’ve got time. We can just take it slow. Nice . . . and . . . slow.” I wagged my eyebrows at her. Josie responded with her standard reply when I was a pain in the ass—an eye roll.

“Good for you both. Glad you could catch up. We weren’t really looking forward to cherry pie anyways.” Mrs. Gibson cringed when she inspected the massacred pie again. “Please tell me you didn’t do the same thing to the Masons’ pie.”

“Nope. It’s still on top of the fridge. Safe and sound.”

Not when I got a hold of it.

“Good. Why don’t you grab it, carefully, and head over to the Masons’ with Colt? I’ll take care of the mess.” Mrs. Gibson wasn’t looking at the ice cream. Nope, she was looking straight at me.

Josie looked from her mom, to me, to the pie, and repeated. “Okay.” Wiping her hands on a towel, she grabbed the pie off the fridge.

While Mrs. Gibson beamed and hurried into the dining room with a, “I’ll let Colt know,” a serious frown and a case of what-the-hell hit me. “Did I hear wrong, or did you just say you were going over to Colt’s?” I followed Josie around the kitchen as she grabbed a few things.

“No, your ears are working just fine,” she replied calmly.

“Okay, then did I just miss something earlier? Something about us talking about giving us a chance?”

Josie smiled at me, but I couldn’t return it. I was not in a smiling mood. “No, you didn’t miss anything. We talked about giving us a chance, and I don’t know if anything’s changed for you in five minutes, but I’m still planning on giving us a run.”

“Then why are you going to Colt’s?”

The skin between her eyebrows creased. “Did you miss us talking about taking this whole thing slow? Nice . . . and . . . slow?”

I settled my hands on my hips. When she looked about thirty seconds from heading out the front door with Colt Mason wasn’t the time to be making jokes. “No, I didn’t miss that. What does us taking it slow have to do with you leaving with Colt?”

“Plenty.”

I wrapped my hand around her arm as she covered the pie in plastic wrap. “Explain.” As far as relationships went, I had no experience. I’d never had a real girlfriend, but I’d had plenty of girls who were “friends.” Josie was the expert in the relationship department.

Josie glanced at my hand on her arm. “Trust.”

“The one-word answers are giving me nothing. Trust? What does trust have to do with Colt?”

“Nothing, but right now, trust has everything to do with you.” She stuck her finger into my chest.

Shit, of course when the one-word bomb from Josie was Trust, it would have been dropped with me in mind. “Explain.” My new favorite word.

“I’m giving you a chance to prove you have or are willing to learn what it takes to be in a relationship. Paramount in any relationship is trust.” She grabbed the pie and turned for the dining room. “This is your opportunity to show you have trust in me.”

“I thought I was the one proving you could trust me.” I was, after all, the man who’d betrayed enough people in my life to make a person doubt I could ever be trusted again.

“It’s a two-way street.” Josie smiled at me before heading for the dining room.

I dodged in front of her. “I’d prefer this to be a one-way street.”

“I know you would. But this isn’t about what’s best for you. This is about what’s best for us.”

She moved around me. I slid in front of her again. It was impossible to let her go. “No, Joze.”

She could throw a fit, she could slam that pie into my face, she could give me in the silent treatment for a month, but I wouldn’t let her leave in Colt’s truck and head over to Colt’s house where I knew he was already planning to take her to Colt’s bed. She took a breath and looked at me. She was as calm as I was flustered.

“Garth, this whole slow and steady thing is a trial period. I need to know that if you don’t have it, you’re willing to do what it takes to learn how to be in a supportive, loving, trusting relationship that doesn’t center around jealousy and control. I’m here to help you figure it out, but you have to want to figure it out.” Her hand formed around my waist, and she stepped against me. “Think of this as the first hurdle in a series of them.”

“What’s at the finish line?”

“I guess we’ll have to get there to find out.” When she moved around me again, I let her go. God knows I didn’t want to so badly my body almost quivered, but I did it. That was a victory on its own.

Not even two minutes later, I heard Colt’s truck fire to life. If trust felt like that every time I had to prove it to her, I didn’t doubt it would be the death of me.

Chapter Nine

JOSIE HAD GOTTEN home an hour ago. I felt like a third parent when I checked the clock as that sorry excuse for a truck rumbled up the driveway. After helping Mr. and Mrs. Gibson clean up after dinner—something both of them seemed confused by—I’d taken a shower and crawled into bed. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was incapable of sleeping with Josie out where she was. I probably should have just run circles around the guest room. That would have been a better distraction from my thoughts than just lying quiet and motionless in bed.

I was close to throwing off the covers and starting my first lap when Colt’s truck pulled up. Speaking of clocks, it was only ninety seconds before Josie came through the front door. A minute and a half wasn’t long enough to get anywhere close to hot and heavy inside of Colt’s truck, so I exhaled my second relieved breath of the night after Josie left. Being the parents they were, Mr. and Mrs. Gibson were still waiting up. After a couple minutes, I heard a series of goodnights as footsteps headed down the hall and one set up the stairs.

I wanted to see Josie. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to hold her like I had last night. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted so much right then. I don’t know if I’d ever “wanted” so much in my life.

Josie’s bedroom door closed long before I finally felt sleepy. All of that adrenaline took a while to wear off, but once it did, I felt more like I was drifting into a coma instead of sleep. That was when my bedroom door whispered open so noiselessly I was surprised I noticed it. When I saw who slipped inside, I wasn’t so surprised I noticed it. Welcome back, adrenaline. It’s been a while. I sat up in bed, rubbing my eyes, and watched Josie approach in a different but similar pair of “pajamas.”

“It’s not a dream,” she whispered, smiling at me. I must have looked confused. “That look on your face? It looks like you’re trying to decide if this is real or a dream.”

“The past twenty-four hours have felt like a dream. I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore.” Josie sat on the edge of the bed, and the moment caught up with me. I could almost imagine a shotgun racking. “What are you doing in here?”

“I can’t sleep.” She clasped her hands and shrugged.

“Do you want me to make you a warm cup of milk or something?” I wasn’t sure how Josie went about falling asleep when she had a hard time getting there, but I was certain she didn’t use the same methods I usually did: a woman or a bottle of whiskey. Most nights, both.

“Thanks, but no. I wish a warm cup of milk would work. I’d actually be able to get more than a few hours of sleep every night.” She was trying not to look at me—probably because I was half nak*d and we were beside each other on the same bed. I lowered the blankets a few inches to make it that much harder for her.

“Are you an insomniac or something?” I grinned when she finally lost the battle and glanced at me. Not at my face either.

“I think I get a whole half an hour more sleep than a true insomniac, but I’m as close to being one as I want to get.”

“Have you always had that problem?” I didn’t like knowing something I couldn’t fix was bothering Josie. If a genie magically appeared and granted me one wish, I’d have insomnia made into human form so I could give it a serious ass-kicking.

“No. I used to sleep so hard I could snooze through a fire alarm.” She shifted so she was facing me more.

“So when did you and sleep decide to become long lost friends?”

She studied her hands in her lap. “A couple of years ago.”

I didn’t need her to clarify the month, day, or hour. Because I knew. I knew what event and person was responsible for Josie’s insomnia. I wanted to kick my own ass? How was that even possible? I didn’t know, but if there was a way, I would figure it out. “Ah, hell, Joze. I’m a piece of shit. I don’t know why you’re even talking to me. I’ve screwed up so many things for you.”

“Well . . . actually . . .” She bit her lip, acting almost shy. Josie did shy about as often as I did humble.

“Well actually what?” I asked eagerly. I’d do anything.

“Last night was the first night in two years I fell asleep and stayed asleep for close to six hours.”

When she looked at me again, I got it. I mean, I didn’t get it exactly, but I knew how to help. I might not have understood why Josie could sleep with me beside her, but I didn’t need to know why to fix the problem. Scooting over, I threw open the blankets and patted the mattress. “Come on over. I warmed a spot up for you already.”

She didn’t need a second invitation. Josie had wiggled and wormed her way under the covers before I realized that, for the second night in a row, I was sharing a bed with Josie Gibson. If the young boy version of me could have expected that, growing up would have been a few shades brighter. “What are your parents going to think? Or do?”

“They’re not going to think or do anything because they’re going to wake up tomorrow none the wiser.”

“You are one devious vixen, Joze.” Once she was curled up, I draped my arm over her and slid up beside her.

“Are you still in your jeans?” Her hand grabbed the waist of my jeans and gave it a tug. “Do you ever take these things off?”