“He said you were his best friend.”
Her throat tightened up and she tilted her head back in the wind, the breeze cooling her burning eyes.
And that’s all I’ll ever be.
“What’s going on, Mia?” Oliver asked. “I’ve never asked. I figured whatever relationship you two had worked for you—but something is wrong. It’s all over your faces.”
It was hard, but she didn’t look away or flinch.
The tension inflated inside her like a balloon, and she couldn’t get a deep breath. But she didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.
“You don’t let anyone in, do you?” he finally asked.
Just Jack, she thought, and that didn’t end so well.
“Don’t be dramatic, Oliver,” she said.
“I’m not. I’m simply putting my underused and underappreciated highly sensitive people skills to work.”
She laughed, the tension escaping, the relief so great she couldn’t stop laughing.
“That’s more like it,” he said, grabbing two more glasses of wine from a passing waiter. “Now let’s have a party.”
By the time Jack found them, Mia was doubled over with laughter listening to Oliver’s story about Jack eating bugs as the guest of honor in a family’s home way out in the bush.
“He was picking legs out of his teeth for two hours!” Oliver said and Mia screamed, imagining it.
“Oliver is exaggerating.” Jack’s familiar low voice sent goose bumps down her arms and over her chest. Her laughter died in her throat, the tension back in force.
Her stomach was never going to be the same.
“Don’t listen to him, Mia. On my honor,” Oliver said, putting his hand over his heart. “Every word is the truth.”
Jack sighed and leaned against the balcony railing next to Mia, and static leaped between them, small currents zipping along her skin, letting her know just how close he was.
And how far away.
“This night is miserable,” he said, tilting his head back.
“Because you don’t hang out with the right people,” Oliver said, winking at Mia. “Did you make anyone mad in there?”
“Probably,” she said.
Jack looked at her. “How much have you had to drink?”
“Are you going to scold me?” she asked.
“No.” He raised his hand and one of the waiters on the spot appeared. “I’m going to join you.”
“I better do some damage control,” Oliver said. “You two have fun.”
The silence left in Oliver’s wake was thick and heavy, and she wanted to collapse under the weight. The sheer size of all the things they weren’t saying.
“You remember fun?” he asked, and she knew he was looking at her; her skin felt raw under his gaze.
She nodded.
“I think the last time I had fun was your high school graduation.”
“Come on, isn’t the desert fun?”
“Fun?” He laughed, but it wasn’t joyful. “No, it is hard work and a bureaucratic nightmare.”
She wasn’t all that surprised to hear it. His emails had been increasingly rant-related.
“But your high school graduation?” His eyes twinkled. “Remember?”
She would never forget. “You drove all night from Cal Poly only to get me out of bed and drag me to the roof of the high school.”
And at dawn he’d driven her home and left—back to college—without once talking to his family. Without even stepping foot on the ranch.
“Oh, like I had to drag you,” Jack said with a laugh, and her body shook at the sound. “You jumped into my truck. And, if I remember correctly, you led the way up to the roof.”
“Only because you’d shown me.”
“That was probably a mistake. I spent a lot of sleepless nights in college, sure you’d fallen or hurt yourself.”
“I never went up on those roofs without you,” she said.
“Really?” he asked, looking down at her in surprise.
Jack had had this thing, growing up; whenever he got a chance to get into town, he would sneak around Wassau, finding his way up onto the roofs of every public building. The high school, the grocery store, the two churches.
He could walk from Second Street down Main Street without ever stepping on the sidewalk.
When she started following him around like a lost dog and he realized he couldn’t shake her, he took her up on the roofs with him.
A whole other world existed up there. He had little forts with sleeping bags and food, flashlights and books. Sometimes, he’d told her, he slept on those roofs.
His home away from home.
He’d had a thing for adventure, even then.
She’d just had a thing for him.
But once he was gone, the roofs were just roofs.
“I can’t believe you never got caught,” she said.
“Mom found out,” he said, his smile fading.
“Really?” she breathed. “I never knew that.”
He nodded. “The second night I did it,” he said. “I was fifteen and Dad took me into town while he had a beer at Al’s. I fell off the grocery store, came home with my clothes all torn up.”
“What did your mother do?”
Because torn clothes and climbing buildings wasn’t something Victoria would let pass, and Victoria had been fond of punishment. Jack shot her a dubious look, which hid more pain than she could imagine. “What she always did.”