I sighed and reached for the radio, cutting it off and leaving us with mind-jarring silence.
I wanted to be angry at him for what he’d said to me, to feel something other than the overwhelming urge to hold him and kiss him. To pretend like nothing had happened and neither of us had been ripped open for the vultures to feed off.
His head snapped up and around to where I stood. “What the hell? Cut that back on.”
“Why, so you can drown out the world?” I fisted my hands on my hips, his menacing stare would not intimidate me. Drunk or not, he wasn’t his father or Caleb.
Jordan pointed a socket wrench at me. “Mind your business, Casey.” He tugged off the busted carbon fiber fender and tossed it into a corner as if it had personally offended him. Then went to work on the cherry picker’s chains that held the motor up out of the car.
I stepped over the tossed wreckage and leaned against the frame of the car. “Why are you taking the motor out?”
He reached for the half empty bottle of liquor and took a long swig before answering. “Frame’s bent, gonna hafta replace the front end, the rest is sound, but I gotta pull the motor before I get started on it.” His words weren’t slurred, but they were close to it.
“Need a hand?” It wouldn’t be the first time I’d helped him work on a car.
“Nope, got two.” That came out clearly enough. I held back my flinch at the razor-sharp edge in his words.
When he sat the bottle down I reached for it and took a pull myself. It burned like fire and tasted of hell’s rancid boil. If I was going to fight for love, I’d need fortification.
Jordan sneered when I made a face. I hadn’t expected that unhappy curl of his lips to feel like a knife in my chest, but it did.
“Don’t look at me that way.” I scowled before mocking him. “I’m not some big tough guy.”
“No, you aren’t.” He snatched the bottle from me. “You should go.”
I didn’t go, I’d expected that response. I ignored the little voice inside that told me he was right, I had no business being here. Then I remembered the look on my brother’s face, the words my mother had told me, and took a fortifying breath.
“I’m not going anywhere right now, Slater.” I sneered as his last name rolled off my tongue. Two could play this game.
“You weren’t invited.”
“So? The door was open. Aiden’s worried about you.”
He snorted and started moving chains around on the motor. The effect of the alcohol was evident in his eyes, it left them reddish and glassy, and in the thick way his tongue formed words. The only place it wasn’t obvious was in the sure and effortless way his arms moved around the engine with the chains. “Aiden can piss off.”
“I’m worried about you.” I was all out of bravado.
His only response was the clanging of the chains and the occasional grunt of effort. I forced myself to not let my eyes wander, to focus on Jordan. I used that focus to remember why I loved him, why I’d always loved him. Even if the man before me tried his best to act as if he didn’t deserve that love.
“You’re drunk.” I pointed out quietly when he finally fumbled and dropped a chain that clattered and rang down to the concrete.
“Hello, Captain Obvious. That’s the whole point of the bottle.” He hitched a thumb toward the whiskey.
“You don’t get drunk.”
“Well, tonight I am.” He glared at me as he pulled the chains tight with a resounding clang.
“Jordan—”
“What do you want from me, Raelynn? Say whatever it is you have to say to appease whatever guilt your brother stuck you with and get the fuck outta here. I already said what I needed to say to you.”
I took the force of the words with a cringe. Instead of cowering as I’d done with my sister and with Devin, I allowed my frustration and anger that had built up talk for me.
“You already said what you needed to say? You mean when you told me we were a mistake? I was a mistake?” He didn’t look at me, but his shoulders stiffened as he turned away. “If I was a mistake, Jordan, why did you go to Breanna? Why did you tell her what you did?”
Silence.
Desperate for a response, any response, I took the bottle and slung it across the garage where it shattered against the concrete wall. It was Jordan’s turn to flinch. Not that it stopped me. I was on a roll. “Guilt? You know all about that, right? That’s why you’re in here tearing apart the car you wrecked. Drunk so you don’t have to think about why that fender is garbage and why the frame’s bent, so you don’t have to remember he’s gone. So drunk you don’t have to remember I’m gone.” He turned and glared angrily at me, but didn’t say anything. Then there it was, a flicker of something worth fighting for. In those dark eyes, hidden beneath
the brim of that old black ball cap. I kept fighting. “You’ve been drunk the entire time? Run me off so
that you don’t have to look at me? You don’t feel guilty about that?”
I knew I was on point when he couldn’t look at me any longer. “Is it me you blame, Jordan, or yourself?”
Whatever steam I’d built up faded away when he turned back to me, whiskey soaked tears shimmering in his eyes, but not spilling. No, never spilling. “Get out of here, Raelynn.”
I gave my head an emphatic shake. “I love you, Jordan Slater. I’ve loved you since I was six years old. I’ll love you until the very last breath I take. You can try to run me off, you can push away everyone who cares about you. But, we’ll never stop giving a shit, we’ll never stop feeling the way we feel about you. There won’t be a day when I don’t love you.”
He turned his back to me. “And if I don’t feel the same way about you?”