In the Weeds (Lovelight #2)(51)

She holds my stare and waits. I pack those thoughts away.

“I don’t—” I break off and consider not finishing my sentence. But she prods me with her toes and I sigh. “I don’t like going into town.”

“I’ve gathered that.” Another sip. “You go grocery shopping in the middle of the night.”

Not the … middle of the night. I usually wait until half an hour before the shop closes, when I know they’ve restocked the strawberry jam and the fudge cookies. The store is almost always empty and I don’t have to talk to anyone over cans of soup.

Social anxiety. Sound sensitivity. Fancy terms for my general discomfort around other people. My parents sent me to a therapist when I was ten years old, overwhelmed by all the noise around me. The worst of it was in school, when I couldn’t get the damn noise to … stop. All the chatter around me felt like the worst sort of buzz under my skin, settling into a deep ache that pounded like a metronome through every inch of my body.

I couldn’t focus. I could barely speak. It was miserable.

“Beckett?”

Evelyn touches the top of my knee lightly, guiding my attention back from the table to her open and eager face. It’s the part I like best about her, I think, her curiosity and kindness. Her desire to help where she can, however she can.

When she says something, she really means it.

She frowns at me and I wish I could swipe at it with my thumb. Make everything a little bit easier for her. Be half as good at this as she is. A shiver slides down the smooth line of her neck and I reach forward to adjust the blanket higher. I think I’ve got a heated blanket around here somewhere. An extra quilt or two in my room.

My knuckles brush her throat and she shivers again, a little shimmy of her shoulders and a clench of her jaw.

“Still cold?”

She shakes her head, a dazed smile kicking up the corner of her mouth. I feel her gaze like a touch on my skin, dancing down my cheek and cupping at my jaw. “I’m okay,” she finally says. She wiggles down further in her blankets. “Is it people?”

I hum, distracted again by her hands around the mug. Her nails are a pale pink. The same color as sand on a beach. A perfectly ripe peach, sitting pretty on a tree branch. “What?”

“You’re not exactly a talker, Beck,” she grins at me. “Case in point.”

I huff a laugh and tuck the edges of the blankets tighter around her. “I don’t know how to explain it,” I tell her slowly. “I’ve always had trouble talking to people. I try to avoid large groups if I can.”

I’m most comfortable with people I know. Outside, if I can be. Something about seeing the sky above me loosens something deep in my chest and makes everything … easier. I don’t think so hard about what I have to say. I don’t trip over my own thoughts.

“The first time we met,” she begins, her eyes squinted in thought, remembering. “You came right up to me and asked me what I was drinking.”

The first time ever, I think, that I approached a woman at a bar instead of letting someone come to me. It had felt necessary that I talk to her. A tug, a pull—whatever you want to call it. I saw her sitting there and I wanted to be sitting right next to her.

“The bar we met in was empty. Do you remember?”

She nods. “There was a baseball game on the TV in the corner. I stopped in because I smelled the french fries from the street.” She grins. “The ones that you stole half of.”

I did steal half of them, after I was two shots of tequila deep and her hand found my thigh under the table. “I chose that bar because it was the least crowded place on the street.” Then I saw Evelyn and I didn’t want to go anywhere else. “Plus, everything gets quiet when I look at you.”

She gives me one slow blink, lashes fluttering. Her eyes dance between mine, bottom lip caught by her teeth. “Would it help?”

I rub the edge of the blanket again, the worn blue gray material soft under my touch. “Would what help?”

She tilts her head to the side and reaches over me to set her mug on the side table. Her hair brushes my forearm and I’m the one shivering.

“If I came with you,” she says. I swallow hard and become fascinated with the legs of the coffee table. “Would it help to have a friend with you? At trivia?”

I don’t want to be her friend. I want to be the exact opposite. I want to be the people we were when we were away from everyone else. I almost say it, biting down on the inside of my cheek to keep the thought to myself.

“I don’t know,” I answer slowly. Probably not. I’m most comfortable with my family and even then, it’s a challenge for me to sit somewhere with so much sound around me. Trivia night is an … event. It almost always ends with Dane carting people to the drunk tank at the station. Last time, he had to put Becky Gardener in the back of his cruiser for launching a plate of chicken tenders across the room.

“I’ll go with you,” she says, just as slowly. “If you wanted to try.”





CHAPTER TWELVE





EVELYN





I grunt as I reach for the handle of the bakehouse door, seventeen layers of clothes thick and warm around me. Beckett had glared at me as he forced a sweatshirt over my head in the kitchen this morning—an old green, faded thing with a giant badger across the chest.