Crazy (The Gibson Boys 4)

“Aw,” Sienna says. “That’s great advice, baby.”

“I know.” He grabs my shoulder and shakes it. “You probably think, ‘Man, Walker. I did that shit.’ But I guarantee you that if you had done it just like I said, she’d be back. If, you know, she likes you.”

“So I haven’t been clear enough?” I ask.

Vincent shoves off the table and walks our way. “Nah, I think he’s right. I’m not really one for females who need a lot of coddling. I don’t coddle. But I do see what he’s saying because women do need that confirmation that they’re wanted. I mean, I don’t get it, but it’s true.”

Sienna wraps an arm around Walker’s waist and leans her head on his side.

“Women need to feel like they have a purpose in the relationship,” Sienna says. “We need to be needed. We also want to be seen, and last but not least, we want to feel safe in the confines of that situation.” She looks at me and smiles. “I bet if you think about it long enough, you’ll figure out what you need to do.”

I scuff my shoes against the floor. “I just panicked. Flat-out panicked. I saw she was leaving, and I just felt like …”

Vincent looks at me. “Like everyone ends up leaving.”

I nod.

“Well, I get it. But I still think you need to do something. Don’t let this one go,” Vincent says. “If not, I’ll go find her—umph.”

I tackle him low and hard, smashing his back against the wall. If I were really trying to wrestle him, I wouldn’t gotten him a few inches lower and planted his head into the asphalt. But because I’m just fucking around, I grabbed him high.

“Stop it, you fuckheads,” Walker bellows.

Vincent reaches around and grabs my hand. I tap his back, and we call a truce.

Breaking apart, we’re panting and laughing.

“Damn, you’re quick,” he says.

“And you’re stronger than I remember.”

“Okay, enough fucking off. Back to work, Peck.” Walker kisses Sienna’s cheek. She follows him back to the spot where he dropped the cutoff saw earlier.

Vincent joins me by the truck that I’ve been working on all morning.

“You really like this chick, huh?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“So how are you gonna get her back?”

I shrug because I don’t know. I’m not sure if she’s still mine or not. She’s not mine like she used to be—the way I want her. And I want to fix it. I just can’t figure out what to do.

Vincent rifles through a coffee can of screws. “You need a grand gesture. That’s what you need.”

“How do you know?”

“The last girl I was fucking was big into those female-centric networks.” He shrugs. “I’ll learn if someone wants to teach.”

I work on the lug nuts on the tire as Vincent fucks around.

A grand gesture. What the hell is that?

Walker whistles through the bay. He holds open the door to the office, and Sienna goes inside. He motions for Vincent to come too.

“See ya later,” he says.

“Yeah.”

The garage quiets down and allows me to think. A grand gesture. Would that work? Is that something I can do to drive home my point to Dylan? Because I need one good solid try to win her back. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll have to let her go.

But it’ll work. It has to.

Thirty-One

Dylan

Last night sucked.

Come to think of it, so did yesterday and this morning and this afternoon too.

I’ve always been one of those people who doesn’t mind being alone, and I can entertain myself like nobody’s business. But Navie worked all last night and slept all day today until an hour ago when she got up and is prepping to go back to work. I’ve been alone too much. It’s taught me that Navie was kind of right: I am my own worst enemy.

The dialogue running through my head isn’t exactly kind. It’s not cheerful or positive. But … it’s real. It’s the truth.

And the truth is that I’m not a whole lot different than Molly. That’s a hard, jagged little pill to swallow.

It hit me around three a.m., the witching hour. The hour in which songs have been written about its loneliness. The hour that’s not quite today and not quite yesterday, an hour of time that exists to haunt you.

And haunt me, it did.

I might not sleep around, as I’ve heard Molly might do. I don’t stop at men’s houses that might have had a thing for me when someone else has moved in and try to play a card to get them back in my graces, as I’m pretty sure she did. I haven’t ever gone up to a woman at a bar and picked a fight or tried to intimidate someone to stay away from a guy I didn’t even like so he’d just like me.

That being said, I’m desperate for love. I have acted foolishly because I’m scared that someone isn’t going to love me back. And my behaviors probably stem from the way people have treated me growing up, and I haven’t been able to break that mental connection. Just like Molly.