Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)(40)

“Uh-huh. I’ll believe it when I see it. Which reminds me, what’s your house like? I should probably know.”

“Small. One-bedroom and a room for plants.”

“For plants?”

“I like plants,” he said. “Do you like plants?”

“I mean, yeah. As long as it’s not me taking care of them. I’ve killed a cactus.”

“Did you overwater it?”

“I didn’t water it at all. I forgot it existed. My kitchen windowsill is more uninhabitable than a desert, apparently.”

He looked amused.

We drove for a few more minutes and pulled into a nice neighborhood. Lieutenant Dan got up and put his face between us to look out the windshield like he knew where he was.

“Do you come to your parents’ house a lot?” I asked, petting the dog.

“We’re a close family. I go there, they come over.”

He rubbed his forehead and I eyed him. “Are you okay?”

He let out a breath. “Just getting a little headache. Grinding my teeth.”

Then he did a sudden double take out the windshield. He pulled the truck over immediately and put it in park.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I have to get something.” He pulled some rubber gloves and a trash bag from the glove box.

“Uh…what do you have to get?” I asked, looking around the street he’d stopped on. It was residential. Nothing of note.

“I’ll be right back.”

He got out, and I turned to watch him come around the rear of the truck. I stared perplexed as he crouched and started looking at a raccoon carcass in the gutter. He was lifting the arms and turning it over. Then he put it into his trash bag.

I rolled down my window. “Uh, they have people who take care of that?”

“It’s fresh, it’s a good one,” he called.

“Okay? And that’s important why?”

He tossed it in the bed of the truck and came back around to the driver’s side and got back in, peeling off his gloves. “Sorry. I needed to get that for my dad.”

I stared at him. “You needed to bring your dad an unalive raccoon,” I deadpanned.

He put on his seat belt. “My dad’s a taxidermist. He’s been looking for a good raccoon to mount.”

I blinked at him. “And you couldn’t have led with that so I wasn’t afraid I was on a drive with a serial killer?”

He glanced at me and just now seemed to notice the look on my face. “I’m sorry. That was weird.” He looked a little embarrassed. “I should have explained it before I got out. Sorry. I just…I’m nervous and when I’m nervous I…I sometimes miss steps.”

He had his hat-in-hand, puppy-dog look again. That vulnerable expression like he’d done something wrong.

I felt my face soften. “Don’t be nervous. We’ve got this. It’s going to be fine.”

He looked at me like he didn’t believe me.

“It will. And don’t worry about the raccoon thing. To be honest, this isn’t even the creepiest thing I’ve ever had happen on a date. You’re all good.”

He laughed despite himself. Then he went a little serious again and looked away from me. “I don’t want you to think that I do this often.”

“Roadkill?”

He came back to me. “No. Lie to my family.”

I pivoted in my seat to look at him straight on. “Jacob, you do not need to tell me what kind of person you are. I know.”

He gazed at me a long moment. That quiet, thoughtful look he gave me sometimes, and I realized that behind that expression was probably the wheels of his brain, working overtime. Trying to assess the situation, worrying, overthinking like I knew Benny always did. His anxiety pinging around. A clawing internal panic nobody else could see.

But I could see it. Because I’d seen it in my brother his whole life.

I think that’s why Benny’s diagnosis was so hard on my brother. He wasn’t just living what was happening. He was living what might happen. An infinite number of what-ifs, fueled by his anxiety, each one experienced like they were going on simultaneously, eating away at him, terrifying him, tormenting him. And once he started down that path, it was so hard to stop the progression. It was a self-perpetuating cycle of emotional destruction.

One that Jacob’s selfless gesture had knocked off its trajectory.

Jacob had given Benny a reason to stop the inside screaming and look at just one way forward instead of all the possible worst-case scenarios his brain could conjure. He’d given him hope. And in doing that, he gave his restless mind peace.

And I could see, in this one quiet moment in this truck, that the screaming was going on inside of Jacob. He didn’t have to say a word for me to know it. He was worried what was going to happen with his family today. He was worried what I thought of him. He was dealing with the fact that his ex was marrying his brother, and he was probably afraid we’d get caught in this lie.

I decided right then and there that my job was going to be to quiet it all down. I would be a buffer. An emotional support person. I would throw myself over him like a bulletproof vest. Wrap him up in my protection.

“Look, everything is going to be okay,” I said. “We’re ready. My cheekbones are contoured. We’ve got wine and the dead thing…”