Crazy (The Gibson Boys 4)

His hands slip out of his pockets, and he watches me curiously. A sober look filters his features. He looks around the room, meandering slowly until he ends at the window. Leaning against the wall, he stares into the night.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” I say softly.

“It’s fine. It’s just that no one has really asked me that before.”

“Really? No one?” It occurs to me that maybe it’s not my place to ask. “I’m sorry if I’m overstepping my bounds here—”

“You’re not.”

He doesn’t move. His body faces away from me as he stands there with his shoulder against the wall like he has all night to talk about this.

I sit on the edge of the bed. My stomach spirals with a flutter of nerves as I try to figure out what he’s thinking.

He bites his bottom lip as his gaze drifts out the window again.

“I just …” I stammer. “I just don’t understand. Clearly, you like her—even by your own admission. So there has to be something you see in her that justifies it. Not that it has to be justifiable to like someone. You can like people just because you do.”

I suck in a hasty breath.

His lip pops free of his teeth. His face becomes completely passive. It’s like he relaxes right in front of me.

The wrinkles on his forehead smoothen as his shoulders fall, and I wonder how I didn’t realize how stressed he looked before.

“It’s hard to explain,” he says softly. “It’s … complicated.”

“I think that’s pretty normal,” I offer. “I mean, I can’t really think of a relationship that I’ve ever had that’s not been complicated. Once emotions get involved, everything sort of tangles up.”

“Yeah …”

An awkward silence settles over us. The easiness that we usually enjoy is tainted somehow by the discussion of Molly.

“I told you about Charlie,” I say. “Not everyone understood our relationship, and I was fine with that.”

“What was your relationship with him like?”

“Good,” I say, picking up another shirt. “Mostly. We were together for about eighteen months. Navie really never understood our coupledom, and my mom hated him. But she hates anyone who takes potential attention away from her, so that’s not all that crazy. But anyway, no one really got why I liked him, and I couldn’t explain it. We just had over a year of experiences built up together that felt like something substantial. And it worked for me. I saw him differently because I knew the things he’d been through and fought against and his insecurities and all that.”

I fold the shirt and set it on top of the other one.

“I’m sorry he hurt you. He’s a fool.”

My heart hurts as I think of Charlie but not in a ravaged, heartbroken kind of way. I never did have that feeling with him. It was more like a betrayal that he lied to me about going on a work trip when, in reality, he was going to see his ex. Deciding while with me if the grass was actually greener on the other side. Which it was. Ouch.

“Nah, it’s okay,” I say. “He was my first serious boyfriend, so I think it meant more to me than it did to him. He had way more experiences with his first love than he did with me. Hence, my theory that first loves are always the most powerful.”

I wait for him to give me some indication of what he’s thinking. His features remain thoughtful as he presses off the wall and stands tall. But he still doesn’t come near me.

“I think you’re right in some ways,” he says. “I think the deeper your roots go with someone, the harder it is to cut that off. Even if it is sucking poison.”

My spirits fall.

His hands go back in his pockets again as the lines resurface on his forehead. “I met Molly right before the start of first grade. Her family moved in next to mine.” He wanders around the room. “My dad was a dick back then. He drank a lot and would yell and carry on. It was more emotional manipulation of my mother than anything because Vincent used to take me to the side and tell me how big and powerful we were and how all the garbage he said wasn’t true. And I knew that. I mean, we spent so much time with Nana and Pops that I knew nothing was wrong with Vin and me. It was that something wasn’t right with Dad.”

My chest pulls with the pain of imagining a little Peck scared or worried. I take another shirt, mostly to busy my hands.

“So, one night, Dad pulled his shit. Vincent and I had climbed out of my bedroom window and climbed the big oak tree on the border of our yard and Molly’s. We stayed until we figured Dad had passed out before coming back home and climbing through the window.” He frowns. “We weren’t in there that long before a little rapping sound knocked on my window. I turned to see this little girl with pigtails.”