“I thought they’d made you one of them,” he said. “Obviously they consider you a friend.”
“They do, and it’s incredible to have their support, but they have all that history together. I’ll never have that. With no siblings and my parents living in the Midwest, I don’t have one single person around here who knows my whole history and can talk about shared experiences from the past. Having that is such a blessing.” She hesitated, then added, “Not that there aren’t some parts of my past I’d just as soon forget. And some, I fear, that will never leave me.”
Eager not to dwell on the child she’d never know, she studied him. “What about you? Who knows your whole life story?”
“My life story’s not that interesting,” he said. “And there’s a whole lot of it that’s best left in the past. Now, then, how about a quick dinner at Rosalina’s before the game crowd pours in? Seems to me pizza or pasta are great comfort foods. I’m pretty sure it’s the aroma of all that garlic that does it.”
She gave him a knowing look. “You’re not getting off the hook that easily, J.C. The second you hedge about your past, you only make me more curious. However, since I am starving and pizza sounds great, we’ll postpone my inquisition until after dinner.”
He grinned at her. “If I play my cards right, you will have much more intriguing things to focus on by then.”
She chuckled. “Okay, that could work, too.”
* * *
Laura had to admit she’d given very little thought to Misty, tomorrow’s rally or even J.C.’s secretive past during the course of the evening. J.C. had done an excellent job of distracting her. Time and again, in fact.
But now, stretched out next to him in his king-size bed, she yawned and propped herself up on one elbow. “Okay, my turn,” she said lightly.
He gave her an amused look. “Seems to me you’ve had a few turns already, but okay,” he said, reaching for her.
“Not that,” she said, playfully slapping away his hand before it could start working its magic once more. “I want to hear about you. Just one thing I don’t know will do for now, but it better be good. You won’t get away with telling me you hate broccoli or love mystery novels.”
“Boy, you’re setting the bar awfully high. I usually don’t talk about the important stuff until the fifth or sixth date at least.”
“Fifth? Sixth? Date? Chance meeting? Who’s really been counting what’s official and what’s not?” she asked blithely. “Talk to me.”
J.C. rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. For several minutes, she thought he might not speak at all, that she’d overplayed her hand.
“You know the biggest secret in my past,” he said eventually.
“About your wife sleeping with your boss,” she said. “I know that shaped your attitude toward women and relationships, but it didn’t define who you are, J.C. Not entirely, anyway. I don’t think anybody is shaped by just one event.” Since he obviously wasn’t volunteering information, she decided to probe for what she really wanted to know. “What were your parents like?”
“They were—are—basically good people. We don’t have a lot of contact anymore.”
Laura frowned at the admission. “Why is that?”
“We just don’t. People grow apart, at least we have.”
“Are your parents still living in the town where you grew up?”
He shook his head, his expression guarded as if he feared she might keep digging until she hit on some truth he didn’t want to reveal. That only encouraged her to press on.
“Where are they?”
“My mother eventually left home, permanently, I mean. She left more than once chasing after some man or another before that. I thought I’d explained about the cheating. Anyway, she traveled all over, but she eventually moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, to be closer to her sister. My father’s in Tampa.”
Laura frowned. “But you didn’t grow up in either Florida or North Carolina, did you?”
“No. I was raised in Charleston.”
She struggled to put the pieces together from the tidbits he was revealing. “Are you not close to your mom because she left your family?”
“That’s part of it, I suppose. I saw what her leaving that last time did to my dad. It broke his spirit. The going and coming home had been terrible enough, but knowing it was final, that she was never coming back?” He shook his head. “He was never the same after that.”
“Which makes you stronger than your father,” Laura said. “Losing your wife didn’t break you.”
“No, it just left me bitter and determined to avoid all future entanglements,” he said wryly, then glanced at her. “Until you. Somehow I couldn’t resist you. I’m still trying to figure that out. How’d you sneak past all those well-honed defenses of mine?”
“Maybe the why and how don’t matter,” Laura said. “Sometimes fate just steps in.”
“Maybe, but fate has a way of being unreliable. It can take things away just as quickly as it brings them into your life,” he said, an edge of cynicism in his voice that suggested he still didn’t entirely trust what was going on between them.
“Do you still think I’m going to abandon you?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It’s always a possibility.”
Laura felt the pain behind that admission. She wondered how much time it would take before he believed in her, in them. Or, because of his mother’s treatment of his father, would he always have this nagging doubt that would hang over their relationship and keep it from flourishing?
* * *
Misty stared at the words she’d written earlier and wondered what on earth she’d been thinking when she’d agreed to speak at tomorrow’s rally. How was she supposed to stand in front of all those people and reveal the shame she’d felt at the terrible things Annabelle had posted online about her? Getting through it had been hard enough. Reliving it in public might be more than she could do.
Her mom, Ms. Reed and even her dad had agreed, though, that talking about it might give her some kind of catharsis or something. As much as she trusted all of them, she
