He could not do this.
And he couldn’t not do it.
He was totally screwed.
“We’ll be trying jalapeño heaven,” she shared.
“You can thank me when you do.”
“I hope so.”
“You will,” he affirmed, taking his dog from the flames and reaching out for the bag to get the buns.
“I know you’re a manly mountain man, Deke,” she suddenly stated and that weird statement made him look from the buns to her. “So I’ll get this out of the way so you can be done with it. But this means a lot.” She indicated him, the fire and the night by circling her dog. “You’re right. The crap Mav is pulling will get sorted and life will go on. But right now, life sucks a little bit. And it feels nice you give a shit enough to bring some dogs, beer and marshmallows to make it better.”
Wood had been right. Nothing about Jus suggested she was a rich bitch of the variety he knew.
She wasn’t Emme either.
She was all Jus and aside from not liking mornings, there wasn’t much to her that wasn’t good.
He still was not going to go there. She had cabbage and a lot of it and he was not that man who could be down with that when he’d not only never earn as much as she had, he didn’t want to.
He was also not that man who was down with settling. He’d lived a life with significantly limited options up until he was twenty and his mother was solid enough he could take off. He needed endless options now and not many women were good to go on the back of the bike whenever he was ready to roll. Jus, he was certain, considering she was laying roots in Carnal in that house, being one of that many who wouldn’t be good to go.
But he knew a lot of people in a lot of places that meant something to him. Some of them were women, taken and not.
So they couldn’t go there.
That didn’t mean they couldn’t have something.
So as much of a dumbfuck as it made him, wanting her, knowing he wasn’t going to let himself have her, knowing she wanted him and he wasn’t going to let her have that either, he also knew she gave every sign she’d take what she could get.
So he was going to give her that.
To that end, he asked, “You wanna talk about it?”
“Buns,” she muttered.
He tossed them to her. She dug for one, they prepared their dogs and she opened up.
“Suffice it to say, my brother is a douche.”
“Got that.”
“My dad cheated on my mom with his mom when I was around six.”
“Christ,” Deke murmured.
“Mm-hmm,” she agreed and kept on, “She got pregnant. My mom was way not down with the cheating thing, the pregnancy thing was just salt in the wound, so she ended things. Dad did right by his unwanted baby mama which I think was more an effort to do right by my unborn brother. It didn’t work out and by that I mean it spectacularly didn’t work out. She was terrible to Dad. To me. To everyone. And unfortunately, although there were brief moments of glorious respite, time passed and she kept finding ways to be terrible. It’s her that’s steering Mav into doing stupid shit. My dad…he had some, uh…money.”
Deke took a bite of hot dog and just nodded to her through the flames.
That had not been lost on him and she had to know it.
She nodded back. “Luna wants her share of it.”
“How long they been divorced?” he asked.
“Think now it’s about twenty-six years,” she answered.
Deke’s chin jerked back. “Serious?”
She nodded again. “Dad remarried…yeah, again.” Her last words sounded on a sigh. “Good woman this time. I like her. Luna wants Dad’s last wife’s share. Dana was a lot younger than Dad but she wasn’t a gold digger. She really did love him and they were together for over a decade.”
“Not seein’ she’s got call to get your dad’s wife’s money,” he noted.
“She doesn’t and Dad wasn’t stupid so his wishes, I’m told, will eventually be carried out. But Mav is going for it for himself, not Luna going for it. It’s just that he’ll give it to her.”
“So what you’re sayin’ is, this is a headache you just gotta wait out.” Deke lifted his hand when she opened her mouth. “Not sayin’, Jussy, that that headache doesn’t cause pain, ’specially now when it’s not long after you lost your old man and shit’s obviously still raw. Just sayin’, you can find it in you to put that in its place, you can move out from under the emotion it’s making weigh on you.”
“I know that logically, Deke, I just don’t know how to get to that place.”