Between the Seams (5 page)

“I told you, I listen to a little bit of everything, just mostly Texas country.”

“Who is this?”

“Imagine Dragons.” She shrugged. “I like their sound.”

“It’s interesting.”

She pulled away from him. “You don’t like it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

His voice was slightly teasing, and she finally chanced a look up at him. Their gazes met, and Jo felt like she’d been punched in the gut.

“Don’t feel sorry for me, Chase.”

He twirled a lock of her hair around his index finger, his brow furrowed in thought, before he met her gaze again. “I don’t feel sorry for you, Jo. I feel bad for the girl you were, and I wish you would have just told me that stuff was going on instead of pushing me away.”

She drew a deep breath, and had apparently drunk just enough wine to loosen her tongue, because the next thing out of her mouth was an unplanned, “That wasn’t what did it. Not really. I overheard my mom on the phone one day. She was hitting on someone—very explicitly telling whoever it was what she wanted to do to him. I’d suspected she cheated on my dad, and when I heard her…I was disgusted and embarrassed, and thought I might be sick because that was my
mom
saying those things, but I couldn’t move. It was like I was frozen in the hallway. And then she said your dad’s name, and I really did almost get sick then. She got kind of mad, and then sweet again, and hung up. I knew your dad loved your mom and wouldn’t ever cheat on her, but at the time I felt like it was somehow my fault, that if you and I hadn’t been friends maybe she never would have hit on him. I was embarrassed and sick and disgusted with my mom and very, very stupidly pushed you away in an attempt to protect you and your family from my mother.”

She chanced a glance up at Chase’s face, only to find his expression incredibly difficult to read. Wine. She needed more wine. There was none. She blindly groped for his beer.

“I’m not sure which one of us needs that more right now.”

Jo almost choked in relief. He was speaking. Thank God, he was speaking.

“All this time, I thought it was me.”

“You?” she asked stupidly.

“The scars. You saw the scars. Not long after that you stopped talking to me.”

She reached up and cupped his cheek. “Oh, Chase. No. It was my stupid mom and me being a dumb, scared teenager. That day I saw the scars? I wanted you to kiss me so bad my teeth hurt. It was my stupid, stupid mother.”

~~*~~

Jo’s words, her hand on his cheek, the tears glistening in her eyes and answers—thank God finally, some more answers—gripped Chase and had his brain spinning.

He ached. Ached for the girl she’d been and the boy he’d been, caught up in and victims of stupid adult decisions and teenage angst. Ached for what they could have been and the time they’d lost. Ached for her.

He just…ached.

So he did the only thing he could think to do, the only thing that made any sense in the swirling morass in his head. He kissed her.

For the second time that day.

It was meant as comfort. For him. For her. He really wasn’t sure.

Just…comfort.

He’d meant to gently brush her lips with his own, just once or twice.

For comfort.

But he ached.

And comfort quickly turned into something more than comfort as her tongue tangled with his and he could feel her shuddered breath beneath his palms. He’d purposely kept distance between them in the boat earlier, needing to know and yet not ready to fully know just how deep his attraction still ran. Now, though, there was no distance. Their bodies were pressed against each other on the small glider, and he could feel the skin of her calf brushing against his knee.

He ached.

She sighed. A breathy, ragged sound as her fingers dug into his shoulders. He could feel her breasts pressing against his chest. The softness of her hair between his fingers on one hand, and softness of the curve of her thigh under his other hand.

He
ached
dammit.

Chase vaguely heard the sound of voices inside the house. Jo apparently did too, as she slowly backed away. Not wanting to lose her just yet, he chased her mouth again with his, caught her lips in one more far too brief kiss.

Jenn and Owen’s voices intruded again, closer now. Chase shifted in the seat, and he noticed that Jo did, too, and that her cheeks were slightly flushed. But she didn’t look like she was going to cry anymore. Thank God for that.

Sensing they were on borrowed time, he dropped a quick kiss on Jo’s forehead. She looked up at him, and he could see the relief, embarrassment and confusion mingling together on her face, knew she probably saw similar emotions on his.

And he ached.

~~*~~

Chapter Five

Jo woke the next morning with a pounding headache and a slightly queasy stomach. She shielded her eyes against the bright sunlight filtering in from her bedroom window and groaned.

How much wine had she had to drink last night?

She started to count, ended up at three glasses. God, she was a lightweight.

Then she remembered her conversation with Chase.

And almost threw up.

She breathed in through her nose. In. Out.

In.

Out.

Slow and steady like she advised her teens when they came to her panicky about test results. Of all kinds. Didn’t seem to matter if it was a math test or a pregnancy test—that simple four-letter word seemed to invoke panic like no other.

Had she really drunkenly spilled her guts to Chase last night? Her stomach churned in a resounding yes.

Fuck.

Jo sat up slowly and reached for the bottle of water on her night stand, opened it and drank slowly. Thinking back, she realized that part of the problem was that she probably hadn’t had enough water yesterday prior to drinking that favorite red moscato. Normally, three glasses spaced decently far apart would maybe make her tipsy, but not drunk.

Well, in all fairness she hadn’t really been drunk. Rather, she’d been in that place between tipsy and drunk where she was fully aware of everything she was saying but her tongue was just a little too loose to stop. Her thoughts had jumbled and jostled and pushed to get out, and they had.

She’d been tired of holding all that in, and Chase deserved the truth. Hell, she deserved the telling of the truth.

Jo finished the water and crawled out of bed, padded to the bathroom and took a long, hot shower before getting dressed. She joined Gran in the kitchen.

“There’s a plate warming for you in the oven.”

Jo glanced at the time. Eight-thirty. Her grandmother hadn’t been up and out of bed too long either, then. She bussed a kiss on the older woman’s cheek.

“You didn’t have to do that, Gran.”

Gran shook out her newspaper. “Eggs, bacon and biscuits with gravy. I put a few bottles of Gatorade in the fridge for you, too. Might be cool by now.”

Jo turned slowly, carefully placing her breakfast plate on the small eat-in breakfast table. “I’m not sure if I should be embarrassed or thankful.”
No use beating around the bush.

A hearty chuckle shook her grandmother’s body. “Just be thankful, young lady. I was young once, too. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying yourself every now and then.”

Jo opened the Gatorade she’d snagged from the fridge, deciding to be thankful to her grandmother as the cool liquid wet her parched mouth. She sat, chewed thoughtfully on her eggs and swallowed. “You do know it’s only every now and then, right, Gran?”

Gran didn’t even bother looking up from her newspaper this time. “Of course I do, Jolene Dolly. You’re a good girl, always have been. A couple drinks every now and then ain’t gonna hurt nobody.”

Jo groaned. “Please don’t call me that, Gran.”

“It’s your name.”

“It’s awful is what it is. And it’s not my name anymore.”

Gran dropped the newspaper to the table. “It’s not?”

“I thought I’d told you? When I changed my last name to yours, I changed my middle name to Sommers. I didn’t really want their last name anymore, but, I don’t know, I couldn’t quite let go of it completely I guess.”

Gran picked her paper back up. “Like I said, you’re a good girl, Jolene. Now eat up and get hydrated. It’ll help the headache.”

“How do you know I have a headache, Gran?” Jo teased.

“Because you’re my granddaughter, that’s how.”

Jo smiled and ate up.

~~*~~

Later that afternoon, while Gran was doing her PT homework in the living room, Jo changed into workout clothes, popped her earbuds in, and headed out to the garage for her own version of physical therapy.

She queued up her workout playlist and slipped her phone back into the tight pocket inside her workout shorts. She moved her kettle bells to the center of the garage before grabbing her dumb bells and setting them beside the kettle bells, wishing she’d been able to bring her entire rack with her but thankful she’d finally been able to get in a workout.

She’d been here…ugh, two weeks. Two weeks without exercising.

No wonder she was getting emotional—she needed some endorphins. Stat.

Jo warmed up, moving fluidly from stretch to stretch. She paused to drink some water before picking up her dumb bells and beginning her normal routine. Somewhere between upper body and lower body, her earbuds started slipping out and refused to stay in. Frustrated, she ripped them out of her phone, which she sat next to her water, volume turned up all the way.

She’d just finished Russian kettle bell swings and was in the process of moving into a set of goblet squats, Eminem’s “The Monster” blaring from her phone, when she heard Chase’s voice behind her.

“You really do listen a variety of stuff, don’t you?”

She almost dropped fifty pounds of cast iron on her foot.

Almost.

Instead, she turned around, the kettle bell dangling in her hands, and asked, “Don’t you know better than to startle someone in the middle of a workout?”

“Hey, I waited until you were done with the swings. I was pretty sure Gran wouldn’t appreciate having a hole in her wall.”

“The Monster” gave way to “Gunpowder and Lead,” and Jo suddenly felt angry. “Why are you here, Chase?”

He shrugged, obviously uncomfortable. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Determined to finish her workout, Jo dropped into a deep squat. “And why--” Up. “Wouldn’t I--” Down. “Be--” Up. “Okay?” Down.

He raked a hand through his hair and looked over her shoulder before turning his gaze back to her. She waited for him to respond.

Up.

Down.

Breathe.

Up.

Down.

Breathe.

“I got the impression you hadn’t planned on all of that coming out last night. Not like it did. And not last night.”

Up.

Down.

Breathe, Jolene
.

Up.

Down.

Breathe.

“You would be correct.”

Up.

Down.

Breathe.

Why did he have to be so fucking gorgeous?

Jo’s heart was racing, and she wasn’t sure if it was from the workout or him or both.

He was ruining her workout.

Maybe.

The eye candy was nice.

Being watched so intently, however, was unnerving.

She finished her squats in silence, concentrating on counting each rep. As Jo set the kettle bell down on the floor and grabbed her water, she almost laughed out loud as the lyrics of Sugarcult’s “Pretty Girl” pummeled her ears.

Leave it to iTunes to have impeccable timing. She almost skipped the song, but then realized Chase probably wouldn’t see the irony in an angry song about a girl falling in love playing at this precise moment, and instead drank her water.

“I haven’t heard Sugarcult since I was in college.”

She almost choked on her water. “You know this song?”

Chase shrugged, the fabric of his t-shirt stretching across his shoulders. Thank God this one was looser than the one he’d been wearing yesterday. That one had fit like a second skin. This one at least kept her from drooling quite as much.

“I did go to school at UT and play baseball. There’s a really wide variety of stuff played in the locker room.”

“Not to mention all those walkup songs.”

He grinned. “Those, too. One time we paid the PA guy to switch out Shawn O’Malley’s usual walkup song with Sir Mixalot.”

Jo snorted. “What was his usual walkup song?”

“Garth Brooks’ ‘Ain’t Going Down’.”

“Seriously?”

“As a heart attack.”

“That’s classic.” Her anger was apparently fading.

“Yeah, he was pretty mad about it. But then he jacked a grand slam out of the ballpark. He wasn’t so mad anymore.”

“Until he realized he was stuck with it.”

“We baseball guys are a superstitious bunch.”

Jo chuckled and set her water aside. She grabbed her phone and turned down the volume slightly.

“I’m sorry I interrupted your workout.”

“It’s okay. Squats are the next to last thing I do anyway.”

He shuffled his feet. “Do you want me to leave?”

She considered him for a few seconds before dropping to the floor and picking up the kettle bell she’d previously abandoned. “You can stay if you want.”

“Pretty Girl” drew to an end, and as she heard the opening strains of Alex Clare’s “Too Close,” Jo began her Turkish Get Ups and wondered why she had so many angry songs about love.

~~*~~

Chase tried not to watch Jo as she went through the motions of her final set, but it was incredibly difficult not to.

Incredibly.

She was wearing a pair of those short, tight workout shorts that seemed to be so popular among women these days—booty shorts, he privately called them—and a light blue sports bra that really did nothing to diminish her breasts.

They were kind of glorious.

He noticed the dumbbells sitting off to the side, and almost did a double take. Those weren’t the dainty pink dumbbells he was used to seeing women use, but rather honest-to-God, serious dumbbells. He looked closer and saw the 75 etched into each one and almost swallowed his tongue.

She really did lift.

Curious, he looked at the kettle bells she’d set beside the dumbbells. Thirty-five pounds each. Looked at Jo and the bell clutched in her hands. Fifty pounds.

“You were just doing fifty-pound swings?”

She lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t speak until the song switched over. Matchbox twenty’s “Busted.” This was one he definitely knew.

“This was my walk out song my freshman year of college.”

She set the kettle bell aside, pushed up off the floor and grabbed a fresh bottle of water. “I know.”

“You know? How?”

She drank, and he had the feeling she was buying time more than quenching her thirst. Finally, she spoke. “I may or may not have gone to a few games.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “But you never said anything.”

“Embarrassed teenager?”

“Right. So how many is a few?”

She took another gulp of water. This time he knew she was stalling.

“How many, Jo?”

“Does it matter?”

He shrugged. “Not really, I’m just curious.”
Yes, it matters, dammit.

“Every game Texas played at Baylor. And a few down in Austin when Baylor played there.”

“Every one?”

She nodded. Slowly. Barely.

“Even the one that went to twelve innings and lasted ‘til midnight?”

“You were amazing that game.”

He had been amazing that night. The bullpen was drained when they put him in at the bottom of the inning, game tied at one run each. He pitched a shut-out ninth inning. And then a shut-out tenth, eleventh and twelfth, after Maldonado had jacked one out of left field in the top of the twelfth. He’d gone in at the bottom of the twelfth, finally in a place to close the game.

He threw six strikes in a row. The third batter came up, popped up to short on the first pitch he saw, and that had been the ballgame.

It was one of his favorite memories, and she’d been there.

“So who’d you cheer for?” Why he asked, he didn’t know. He wasn’t one of those men who needed to have his ego stroked by a beautiful woman. For some reason, though, he wanted to hear that she’d pulled for him despite everything that had happened.

How fucked up was that?

“I have to admit that there were times when I was a terrible Baylor fan. I always cheered for the Bears, unless we were playing Texas.”

“So you cheered for the Longhorns while going to Baylor?” That was an interesting little fact he wasn’t quite sure what to do with.

“I think it’s probably more appropriate to say I cheered for you—that way it didn’t feel quite like cheating on my school.”

He laughed. “No one ever questioned where your loyalties were?”

She shook her head. “I always went to those games by myself so that I wouldn’t get that question.”

“So you were secretly in love with me and went to all of my baseball games in Waco. What other secrets are you hiding?” he teased, which caused her to sputter.

“Not to bruise your ego, Roberts, but I wasn’t secretly in love with you.” Something flashed in her eyes, making him think that maybe she wasn’t telling the complete truth, but he decided to let it go for now.

“Ouch.”

She poked him in the chest. “It’s not like you were secretly in love with me, either.”

Chase felt his stomach tighten, and the words were out before he could snatch them back. “Are you so sure about that?”

So much for letting it go for now.

Jo froze, her eyes round, an almost panicky expression on her face. It would have been comical had his gut not been churning with his own anxiety.

“You…you never said anything.”

His voice was surprisingly calm when he said, “I could say the same thing to you, Jo.”

She drew in a sharp breath. Yup, she’d definitely been skirting the truth. “I guess I deserved that.”

“Kind of. But I didn’t mean for it to sound so harsh. Just, that, both of us were stupid teenagers.”

“And this is why I tell my kids to actually talk to their problems,” she muttered.

“Talk to their problems? Not about them?”

“Oh, about them, too. The thing with teenagers, though—and I know this from far too much personal experience, remember—is that their problems tend to be people more than anything else. Parents. Teachers. Boyfriends. Girlfriends. Friends. Crushes and unrequited love. Every now and then I get through to one or two of them, and they actually follow my advice and talk to the person. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t, but they always feel better for having at least tried.”

“They’re lucky to have you.”

She smiled. “Thanks. Speaking of occupations…we’ve talked a lot about mine. What do you do these days?”

He shrugged, uncomfortable with the focus of the conversation swinging back to him. “Commercial real estate, wild game ranch management.”