Page 30 of Shy Girl
I shoved aside those questions.
“I suppose we all change,” she mused quietly.
While the stars popped out overhead and the water tickled my toes. I wondered if Jayson was looking for me yet. Would he be stressed? What would he think if he found me here with Victoria, of all people?
Why did she ask me to come?
Her easygoing greeting, even the calm conversation, hadn’t disarmed me at all. While I didn’t think of her as a wild woman bent on hunting down a man, I couldn’t discount that sometimes the most frightening monsters had the brightest smiles. Still, this whole trip suddenly made less sense and I didn’t know how to reorient.
Seconds after the thoughts filtered back out of my mind, Victoria let out a long breath. “You’re here with Jayson?” she asked. In her wavering voice was a hint of vulnerability that had to be at least a little authentic.
“Yes.”
“Ah.”
The word was swept into the ocean breeze, and I let the silence lay between us because I didn’t know what to say. Only the milling sound of the growing dinner crowd filtered through, with an occasional loud laugh thrown in for emphasis.
“He’s spoken about me to you, I would imagine,” she murmured.
“A f-few things, yes.”
She glanced at me from the corner of her smoky eyes, but whether it was regarding the stutter or what I said, I wasn’t sure.
“That I was a monster, perhaps?”
The surprise in my tone was sincere. “N-no.”
She chuckled, as if amused, but the lightness had fallen out of her tone. “What has he told you?”
“He s-said you had a f-falling out and the r-relationship died before it b-began, that’s all.”
The gentle summation of their odd experience felt incomplete and filled with holes, like Swiss cheese. Neither Jayson nor Victoria weremonsters, yet I didn’t want her to have a reason to make him into one. If I relayed all the details he’d told me, I had no doubt she’d use it against him somehow.
Victoria’s expression didn’t change as she absorbed what I said, her jaw highlighted by the lights behind us.
“Falling out,” she murmured. “How . . . interesting.”
I straightened. Time to end this on a good note or before it dove too deep. Besides, I was honest enough with myself to admit that I didn’t want to know if she was fishing for information. Maybe she came to decide if I was competition or not, and then she’d make her move when she had the truth.
That would be utterly unbearable.
“D-do you n-need something from me?” I asked. “I d-didn’t tell him where I was going and I don’t want him to be worried.”
“He is the kind sort, isn’t he?”
I nodded.
“An introduction was all.” She turned to me with that warm smile yet again. Facing me fully, and only an arm’s length away, she was more stunning than ever. Starlight seemed to add an aura of mystery to her dark eyes. Her expression softened a little, smudged with concern. “And . . . perhaps a gentle warning for your sake.”
“W-warning?”
“One that I wished someone had given me when Jayson and I . . . when we crossed paths. We may have only been together for a week or so but, my goodness, did it feel so much longer than that.”
All my attention focused on the effort to maintain an impartial expression. My eyebrows lifted slightly in a sign of encouragement, and she took it.
“Jayson is a wonderful person. At least, that's my assumption. I can’t say that I know him well after things didn't work out between us.”
“When you told him he wouldn't make enough money for you to be happy?”
