Page 32 of Slow Burn
He nodded and left, but Jocelyn’s nerves remained, buzzing under her skin. She rubbed her palms against her thighs as if she could erase the tension. This was a mistake. A horrible idea. Right?
Across the room, a few curious glances lingered on them. Jocelyn told herself not to care, but heat still climbed her neck, spreading up to paint her cheeks. Natasha seemed unaffected, her discomfort rooted not in the crowd but in Jocelyn’s presence.
“Is sing-o night your usual activity of choice?” Jocelyn asked, trying to fill the silence that stretched between them.
Natasha gave a soft laugh. “Not usually, but I don’t mind it. It’s kinda fun.”
Jocelyn glanced around the room again. All of the gawkers had moved on with their meals. “It is, isn’t it?”
“You played against Cole,” Natasha said, spinning his used sing-o sheet under her pointer finger.
“I issued a challenge. He accepted.”
Natasha let out a low whistle. “Lord, he does like a challenge.”
A weird twinge of jealousy stole through her at the thought that Natasha knew him—and he knew her—in ways Jocelyn didn’t. She scolded herself for caring on either front.
“Glad you got him to cut loose a little. He stays wound up tight most of the time.”
“Does he?” Jocelyn mused. Wound up wasn’t exactly the phrase she’d use. Intense was more in line with her experience. Even now, she felt his gaze burning across the room, charged with energy.
“A lot of it has to do with John,” Natasha continued, her neatly manicured fingers tearing tiny pieces off the corner of the sing-o sheet. “He figures—and folks around here don’t let him forget it—that he’s gotta prove he belongs in this town, live up to his daddy’s name.”
Jocelyn’s brows knit low as she glanced toward Cole again. He was talking to someone at the bar now, his fingers drumming lightly over the surface like he needed to burn some of that pent-up energy.
“His daddy’s name,” Jocelyn repeated dryly, giving her half-sister a wry smile.
Natasha returned it. “The hero who saved a little girl.”
Jocelyn clicked her tongue, looking down at her hands on the table. It was still strange to hear it put that way, like she was a newspaper headline, a human interest story. But it was her childhood that had gone up in smoke.
“I remember driving by your house,” Natasha said softly, expression cautious. “We drove by that way a lot. One day the house was there. The next day, it was gone.”
Oh, how those words smarted. Jocelyn took one long toke of oxygen, desperate to keep the conversation moving. “I stopped over there a couple times. It’s still weird that there’s nothing there.”
Her sister’s expression softened. “I’ve seen it so many times now, just empty like that. It’s sad. But it’s become almost normal.”
Another zing of pain pin-balled through Jocelyn’s heart. There was nothing normal about it, but she knew that wasn’t what Natasha meant. She redirected the pain—and the anger—and when she looked away, she caught Cole’s appraising eye for a moment, like he knew they were talking about tough things.
Wouldn’t have been a stretch, no matter the topic.
“Why does Cole think he has to prove anything to anyone?” she asked, turning back.
She’d heard enough of his history to know he’d floundered, but why that had any bearing on his life now, or his reputation in this town, she couldn’t fathom. But she wasn’t a stranger to the label a parent’s name placed on their child.
Natasha’s smile was grim. “He was the town hell-raiser for a long while.”
Jocelyn snorted. Ellen Hauser had said as much plenty of times in her letters, though she never did go into detail.
“What kind of hell? We talking tee-peeing the principal’s house? Or selling drugs to elementary school kids?”
Natasha laughed at the wide spectrum of options. “Somewhere in between? I was too young to catch the details, but I remember he got himself arrested more than once.”
Jocelyn’s jaw dropped. That was definitely not anything Ellen had shared with her, though it made sense the woman’s kind heart wouldn’t want to paint her son in such a negative light.
“For what?”
“Petty theft, far as I remember. Don’t think he ever sold drugs, though folks like to talk about how he dabbled in tryin’ some. But that’s mostly just the mothers—you know how they are.”
