Trouble (Dogwood Lane #3)(58)

He grins. “What brings you by on this fine evening?”

I mosey around the room, taking in his space. “Oh, just bored.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

A couch is shoved into the center of the room. It’s a blue-patterned corduroy, and I flop down on it.

“You should really cover this,” I tell him.

“Let’s just say I didn’t expect to get this messy.” He sets the roller down in a tray of paint. He grabs a towel off the back of a covered rocking chair and wipes his face with it. “This is why I leave the painting to professionals.”

“Were you just so inspired by me that you had to redo your house? That’s adorable, Penn,” I joke.

“It was really a way to lure you over here.” He winks as he walks across the room and sits on a limestone fireplace ledge. “So, what’s happening?”

I point at his face. “You missed a spot.”

“Just one?” He chuckles, wiping the white blob off the tip of his nose. “Did I get it?”

“I think you got all you’re gonna get.”

His hand falls slowly to his side, a soberness trickling across his face.

“Good thing I’m practiced in accepting that, huh?” he asks.

My throat squeezes shut as his eyes find mine. They stay locked together for a split second—long enough for me to know for sure that he was talking about me.

Finally, he looks away. “Nah, I’ve been thinking about painting for a long time. Just decided to bite the bullet and get it over with. I was tired of knowing it had to be done.”

Boy, do I understand that.

“I never feel that way about painting or creating,” I say. “I do feel that way, though, about human interaction.”

He laughs. “Depending on the human, I do too.”

His chuckle peters away, and a silence descends on us. I know he’s wondering why I’m here.

An energy jolts through my veins as I try to get the courage to tell him. I want to word vomit and run. Just spew, “Hey, we slept together a bunch of years ago and I’ve known it from the minute I saw you but didn’t tell you and now I feel like an asshole so we’re cool, right?”

I force a swallow and eke out a nervous grin. “Penn . . . ,” I say but am stopped when his phone rings through the room.

He gets up and finds it next to the paint can. I watch him look at the screen. He silences it.

“It was Alexis,” he says.

“Oh.”

His shoulders move in a circle as if he’s working out a knot. He crosses the room and sits on the limestone again.

“I haven’t talked to her since that night at Mucker’s.”

“Penn—”

“No,” he says, waving me off. “I know you probably don’t care, and that’s fine. I just wanted to say that for whatever reason and I did and now we can move on.” He works the towel between his hands as he looks at the floor. “I probably just made this super weird, didn’t I?”

“Actually,” I say, forcing a swallow, “I was going to make it weird. So, I’m glad you did it first.”

His head snaps to mine. A look of concern splashes over his eyes as the towel stills. “What do you mean?”

I don’t know.

Suddenly, I’m not sure what I’m doing.

My mind races, wondering why I thought this was a good idea and pointing out that even if I level with him, all it is going to get me is knowing I did the right thing. Why stir the pot when the pot was fine to start with?

I look into his eyes.

My heart beats so loud that I can’t hear him speak. I see his mouth move and watch his jaw tighten in suspicion. It’s not a look of anger, but one of worry. Like he’s worried about me. Not about what I’m going to say or how it will affect him, but how it will affect me.

I want to cry.

“What’s going on, Ave?” he asks softly.

I take a deep, shaky breath. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you.”

“Nice.”

I smile. “You’ve really been an open book with me. I don’t think you do that a lot, do you?”

“Nah. People know what’s happened in my life because they’ve been around for it. But I don’t talk about it. It’s none of their business.”

“But you told me.”

He flinches at the observation. It’s as if it’s never occurred to him that telling me intimate details about his life was an anomaly. He works it over in his mind before tossing the towel on the floor.

“I guess it just came out,” he says.

“Well, it occurred to me tonight that I haven’t really told you anything about me.”

“No. You haven’t.”

“I know.”

“Why not?”

I move around until I’m as comfortable as I can be. I have so many things to say and I don’t know where to really start but starting with “we had sex” seems rougher than my family. So I go there.

“My mother is Jasmine Perry,” I say point-blank.

“Okay.”

I wait for the name to sink in. For the slow blink. For the gush about how wonderful her movies are and if she’s as amazing in real life as she is on-screen and if I really know James Hollyfield, the biggest actor in Hollywood who my mom is (correctly) rumored to have had an affair with.