Nobody But You(85)

“Bite your tongue, woman. So…this have anything to do with you bumping uglies with Jacob Kincaid?”

She’d just taken an unfortunate sip of her chocolate milk and choked on it.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said. “You know that being with him is like going from the pan into the fire, right? Because if you think I can’t keep it in my pants—”

“You can’t!”

He let out a low laugh. “Okay, touché. But the last single male Kincaid, Sophie? Seriously? It’s like you want to be hurt. It’s like you want to be your dad, constantly down and depressed—”

She felt her spine snap straight. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said stiffly. “I’m nothing like my dad. And it’s not like he chooses to be sad, Lucas. It’s a chemical imbalance—”

“Sophie,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to start a fight and hurt your feelings. I’m just saying, I’m…worried about you.”

She blinked.

“I was an *,” he said. “There’s no doubt. Hell, I’m still an *. But why are you going after another *? Do you want to get hurt again? Is that it?”

She opened her mouth and then closed it. “Jacob’s not like you,” she said. “When he’s with someone, he’s with someone.”

“Okay, so maybe he’s not going to cheat on you with another woman,” Lucas said. “But he’s not going to be able to make you happy. He’s not relationship material, and that’s what you want. That’s what you’re looking for.”

No way was she going to admit to him that she’d learned that already, the hard way. “I’ll be okay,” she said.

He was quiet a moment. “I’ll have the accountant come up with an offer for the boat and get it to you tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” she said, and then paused. “Wait a minute. Did we just have a relatively decent conversation in which neither of us skewered the other?”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding as surprised as she. “Do you think it means the apocalypse is coming?”

“Maybe it means we’re growing up,” she said.

“Don’t tell anyone.”

She found a laugh and disconnected, and when she did, her laughter stuck in her throat and switched to tears. Dammit. Dammit, she still couldn’t find her happy. Because her happy was leaving with Jacob, like one of those duffel bags over his shoulder.

She turned back to the grilled cheese and gasped at the black smoke billowing out from beneath the pan. And in the next second, the sandwich burst into flames. It caught the kitchen towel next to the pan, and that also burst into flames.

“Oh, my God!” She whirled, mind blank. She ran to the sink, but only a trickle of water came out.

By this time, the fire had spread to the window shades. She raced over to the table and ducked down, reaching for the fire extinguisher that she always bumped her legs on.

It was heavy and she’d never used one before, which made her mad. She always hated the stupid chick, the one who in the movies didn’t know how to save herself. Don’t be the stupid chick! She yanked harder. “Come on, you motherfu—”

It broke free with enough momentum to take her down to her butt. She scrambled back up and wasted another precious few seconds trying to figure out how to use the extinguisher. All while the flames grew around her. Finally she pulled the pin and squeezed the lever.

And nothing happened.





Chapter 31



Jacob tossed Hud his truck keys. “She’s all yours for now.”

Hud looked down at them, swore, and then tossed them back.

“That’s the second damn time today my keys have been rejected,” Jacob noted far more casually than he felt.

“Maybe because the people doing the rejecting don’t want you to leave,” Hud said.

Jacob shook his head. He was having a hard time controlling his emotions here. Very hard. He was on a short leash and needed to get the hell out before he broke.

The two of them were standing in his driveway, next to Jacob’s truck. The cabin was locked up, and he was packed and ready to go. Hud had shown up and he’d immediately gone straight to pissed off without passing go, and had spent the past five minutes telling—yelling—about what a bad idea it was for Jacob to leave early.

“I was always going to have to go,” Jacob managed to say evenly.

“But you moved it up.”

Not by much, but yeah, he had. The fight with Sophie had reminded him that he wasn’t fit for society. He screwed things up and was clueless on how to make them better, so leaving felt like the obvious solution.

Hud was watching him. “Some of us aren’t ready.”

“Was I supposed to know that?” Jacob blew out a breath. “You’ve spoken more to me in the past five minutes than in the whole time I’ve been here.”

“Ditto.”

They stared at each other for an interminably long beat, and finally Jacob closed his eyes. “You’re making this harder than it has to be. We’ve done this before.”

“Say good-bye? Fuck no, we haven’t,” Hud said. “You left without a good-bye last time, remember?”