Sins & Needles(38)
I leaned against it and didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until I heard Camden’s jeep roar away.
Then I yelped.
Uncle Jim suddenly appeared in front of me.
“Jesus, you scared the shit out of me!” I gasped, hand to my pounding heart.
He folded his arms across his denim shirt and lowered his head in paternal impatience. “Where on earth were you last night?”
“I told you, I was out. Applying for jobs,” I said, straightening out my tank top and avoiding his eyes. It’s not that I couldn’t lie to his face—I could lie to anyone’s face—but I didn’t want to see the disapproval.
“Without your car?”
“Er, yes,” I said, moving past him. I put my purse on the counter and opened the fridge. There was still only mustard.
“Ellie, I don’t care if you’re with that McQueen boy or not,” he explained with a sigh. “I really don’t. I know you know how to take care of yourself. You’re one of the toughest women I know.”
I rolled my eyes and was glad only the jar of mustard could see it. I didn’t feel so tough anymore now that the “McQueen boy” had admittedly gotten under my skin.
He went on. “I was just worried. I thought…maybe something had happened to you.”
I shut the fridge and leaned back against it to face him, blowing a strand of hair out of my face.
“I’m fine. See? And you just said I was the toughest woman you know.”
“I said you were one of them. And…I’m not worried about you and the Sheriff’s son. I’m worried about you. People from your past. About the kind of trouble you get in.”
I cocked my head. “People from my past? Like who?”
He waved his hand in the air dismissively. “Oh, no one. I don’t know who the people from your past are. I just know you have a past and that people’s pasts like to catch up with them.”
I had to admit, he was making me a bit nervous. It’s not that I wasn’t often thinking the exact same thing. When you lived your life scamming people, stealing from them and making enemies, you tended to have a giant case of paranoia and anxiety in your personal baggage. It’s part of the reason I got hooked on Ativan, but then my brain got too fuzzy and I lost a lot of my wits. I needed them.
But I couldn’t be afraid of everything all the time. I had always taken the right precautions. I did certain types of cons under certain types of names and certain types of personas. I had a revolving collection of realistic wigs, colored contacts, and self-tanning lotion. I knew tricks with makeup to make my nose look wider or slimmer; I could change my whole look just by manipulating my brows. No one knew Ellie Watt. Except for the people in this town, people like Camden, no one knew me. Even Javier didn’t know the real me; he knew me as a bronzed, blonde bombshell called Eden White. And yes, I chose to look, and sound, like a porn star on purpose.
“I’m fine, really,” I told him, wishing I sounded more confident. “Ellie Watt is a safe bet with a clean record.”
He furrowed his brow before walking over to the coffee pot. “Yeah, well I sure hope she keeps it that way. For both of our sakes.”
***
Later that day, I was walking around Joshua Tree National Park and planning the exact thing Uncle Jim was afraid of: trouble. To be fair, I’d only get in trouble, only tarnish my name if I got caught. And I wasn’t planning on getting caught. I wasn’t as impulsive as I used to be. I took chances but only when the odds were good. The odds here were in my favor. Camden liked me. He trusted me. He’d never believe I was the one ripping him off.
I couldn’t believe I was actually going through with the whole thing either. That had to count for something.
It was hot as fuck up at Joshua Tree and two in the afternoon was probably the worst time to go for a hike, but something about the surroundings soothed me. The sky was impossibly blue, like paint pigment. I’d seen a similar color inked on Camden’s arm. The boulders were smooth and round, like Camden’s shoulders. The scrubby cacti and sagebrush reminded me of the stubble on his chin. And the imposing Joshua trees, the way they rose up out of the earth…well anyway. Suffice it to say, even though I came here to get some fresh air and clear my mind, my thoughts kept coming back to Camden.
Get through tonight and then you’re gone, I told myself, kicking away a small tumbleweed. I had to keep telling myself that or I’d begin to lose my nerve. This was the whole problem with the “knowing your mark” thing. It made things easier and harder at the same time.
Even though I kept thinking back to our love-making, to the beautiful things he said to me, to the way he knew the person I had been and didn’t seem to care, it was fruitless to even humor the idea of making something out of us. Camden might have known me as a scared little turncoat in high school, but he didn’t know me as a criminal. He didn’t know the things I’d done and he could never know. What was I supposed to do then? Shack up with him and live a lie? I had done that with Javier and barely got out of that alive.