Under Locke (41 page)

And I'm surprised to have been disappointed that it wasn't like that at all.

"I'm even more glad to hear that. I love that boy—," like Dex could still be considered a boy. Ha. "But I know how he is. I'm sorry to say he gets that shitty temper from me and his pa."

What do you say to something like that?
It's okay
? No. Absolutely not.

Thankfully she wasn't expecting an answer. "That's just about all he gets from his pa." The tight laugh
was
so bitter I definitely didn't know what to say afterward. I understood what she meant. I had an idea of what his father was like after Houston and I think Dex needed to hear that even his mom didn't see him in the same light.

"MA!" someone yelled from the shore.

Lisa, Dex's sister, stood on the beach, tossing towels at the kids around her.

"Food's ready!" she yelled again, not bothering to look up.

We both silently agreed to get out of the water. I dropped back in and swam slowly to shore alongside Dex's mom.
I was only going to have this one chance to say something. “Debra?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think Dex knows I was sick, and I haven’t exactly got around to telling him.”
So please don’t say anything
, I begged her with my eyes.

There was no hesitation in her answer. She nodded immediately. “Got it. That’s your business, honey.”

I smiled at her tightly, giving her a brief nod. “I’m going to tell him, I just haven’t yet.”

“Okay.” She tipped her chin down a millimeter. “Make sure you tell him though, whenever you’re ready. He’s never been good with surprises, just to warn you.”

Her warning felt ominous but her face was open and honest. I mumbled something to her that meant nothing and was easily forgotten.

Lisa stood off to the side, herding the group of kids toward the picnic tables over the sloped terrain. Regardless of whether the oldest Locke knew about my cancer treatment or not, I was conscious to keep my arm straight against me as I walked toward my towel, reaching up only to wring out my wet hair.

"Meet you over there," Debra said. She hadn't brought her towel down when she came up to me, so I figured she needed to grab one. Besides the remaining kids and Lisa, there was no one else on the beach. Not that I blamed anyone for avoiding the lake.

Just as I reached down to grab my towel, I happened to look over in the direction of the picnic tables to see most of the group standing around the two tables in the center.
J
ust off to the side of those standing was Dex.

He faced me, hands shoved into the front pockets of his jeans, facial expression blank.

But he stared—at me.

For what felt like the longest but was more than likely just a few seconds, I watched him back, and then I waved. He didn't wave
in return
but it didn't matter. He
stood there, completely still, watching.

Okay
. I grabbed the towel on the sand and shook it out before drying off. I got as dry as I could, pulled the dress on again and shoved my legs into my shorts. When I glanced back up, Dex wasn't there anymore. Thank God.

I rolled my wet towel under my arm and made my way slowly toward the group. There were so many people milling around, trying to get a little of everything from the buffet laid out that there was no rush to sit down. There
were
too many of us to all fit and since I was one of the youngest besides the kids, and not
really family, I figured that I should be one of the
people
that g
ot
stuck standing up to eat, or sitting
o
n the ground.

"What the fu—
I mean,
hell is this?" I heard one of the Widows ask as he stood over the table, picking at something I couldn't see.

Marie, Dex's other sister that looked like a female replica of her brother, nudged the man over. "Black bean burgers."

"Black bean burgers?" His tone was part disgust, part outrage. "Who the fu—hell eats that?"

Lord. I ha
d
n't heard that in a while.

"Iris doesn't eat meat," Marie answered him.

The Widow scoffed, moving around the table with his plate held high. I was off to the side, behind a couple I recognized from Mayhem, so I knew he couldn't see me. Or maybe he was just one of those people who didn't give a crap. "Who doesn't eat meat?" A
dumb
question, obviously. "God gave us all these teeth so that we could eat hamburgers, chicken, meat. Not no
damn
black bean burgers."

The urge to correct him of his ignorance buried itself in my throat, but I was used to it. I
was
used to people saying things that
we
ren't correct at all. Like this guy. Whatever.

But apparently, just because I kept my mouth shut didn't mean that everyone else did the same.

"How about you just shut up and eat your hamburgers and watch your cholesterol go up, Pete? She can eat whatever she wants to eat without hearin' you babble off your stupid shit."

Oh. Boy. It was Dex. Dex that I hadn't seen sitting at the fourth table.

"Language!" Marie snapped, smiling right before she turned around.

"I'm just saying." The guy I figured was named Pete had his face turn red.

"Nobody cares," Dex cut him off. "Ritz, come eat."

And then, awkwardness descended. The Pete guy finally realized that I was standing pretty much right by him but he had the decency to look a bit ashamed. Not much but something
was better than nothing
.

I flashed him a jerky smile but made my way toward the table to start putting things on my plate. Sure enough, there were three black bean burger patties piled onto a
dish
and I took one to put between hamburger buns, adding more things from the multiple dishes on the table. Egg-less potato salad, leafy lettuce, and skewered pineapple.

I started to walk around the three people still serving themselves, heading toward a patch of nearly dead grass to plop down on, but a hand reached out to grab the back of my bare knee.

"Sit right here," the low smooth tone I'd heard so much of over the last few weeks said to me.

Looking over my shoulder, Dex sat on the end of the picnic table bench, straddling it. His legs were wide, his food set on the table, and while he'd taken up more room than one man his size genuinely needed, it still wasn't enough space for two people.

"I can just sit on the
ground
." I smiled at him.

But he was watching me with those intense eyes. If watching could be considered that si
m
ple when there seemed to be a million different things going on in his head. Dex was staring and I didn't understand why. He'd looked at me in that way a few times before but this time was different. It's like he multiplied the look by a hundred. When he dropped his eyes down to my chest—which unfortunately had my dress sticking to my wet bathing suit—I had to gulp.

"I made room." He looked back up at me. "Sit."

Oh sweet mother.

He wasn't going to let it go, and I guess I must have not really wanted to sit on the
grass
because I sighed. And then set my plate down right next to his. The only way to fit without having an entire butt cheek hanging off the edge was to straddle the bench, too.

My butt pretty much snuggled safely between Dex's thighs, our quads lined up.

We were sitting way too close. If I were to slouch, my back would hit his chest. I'm positive that if I took a deep breath, I'd touch him that way too. The denim of his jeans practically hugging my bare thighs almost made me make some kind of noise.

It
was too much.

I breathed a little too deeply and my shoulder blades touched Dex's pecs. Crap.

You can do this, Ris. You can sit with a man like this. It's just Dex.

But that was the problem—it was Dex.

I swear on my life that his hips move forward just an inch. But an inch
wa
s an inch that bumped the seam of his pants, the cradle of his groin, smoothly against my rear.

I shivered.

When I looked over my shoulder as I reached for my black bean burger, his face was right there. And it was tight—so damn tight.

I smiled at him nervously, but Dex didn't smile back.

He stared at my face, his food untouched, and I had no clue what the heck was going on with him.

"Do you want me to move?" I whispered. I could see his mom looking at us from across the table. She wasn't even trying to play her gaze off.

He still said nothing.

Okay. "Charlie," I whispered again in a sing-song voice, trying to draw him out of whatever thought he was lost in.

But still, nothing.

All right. His mom kept watching us and I started to feel weird again.

I tried to get up. My butt was maybe just an inch off the bench when his warm hand landed on my outer thigh, the thumb on the inside and all four of his long fingers curled over the outside of my leg, and he pushed me back down gently.

"You're fine there." His voice was way too low.

I finally managed to nod my head and force a bite of black bean burger into my mouth to give me something else to do besides look at him, or focus on the heat of his body.

Because honestly, my stomach was doing flip-flops at our proximity. At the feel of that long, sinewy body practically cocooning mine. Sweet baby lord.

I mean, we’d been pretty close when he hugged me the other night but this was completely different.

“So, Iris, what’s your little brother up to?” Dex’s mom asked abruptly.

“He’s in the Army in Japan.”

She lifted up her eyebrows. ”Japan? That’s fancy. You been up to visit him?”

“Not yet.” Especially not when I couldn’t even reach him on the phone. “Hopefully one day soon.”

“You should, life’s short.” Debra winked.

I smiled at her and nodded. “I should start saving up for a plane ticket.”

One of the women I recognized from Mayhem tisked. “Girl, just find yourself a sugar daddy to pay for that.”

Did Dex just grunt?

“Pretty girl like you, I bet you could find a man like that,” she snapped her fingers.

Debra barked out a laugh that was eerily similar to her son’s. “Don’t listen to her. She’s always trying to talk everybody into finding sugar daddies.”

“That’s true,” Dex’s sister threw in. “But if you listen to Ma, she’ll tell you to find a good man that likes you, has good credit and a steady job.”

Debra nodded enthusiastically, pointing at two men standing up. “Yeah, and ya listened to me. See how well my advice worked out for you two?”

The Mayhem woman snorted, cutting me a look. “I still think you should find a sugar daddy.”
 

“Would you quit with that mess?” Debra huffed.

Something traced the curve of my shoulder, breaking my attention away from the women.