All Fall Down Read online

  Unless Josiah could see right through her, see that she was not the same as other people, no matter how she tried.

  Josiah pulled back and rapped the counter with his knuckles. “Anyway. I just stopped in to see how you were doing. I’ve had some people asking about you.”

  The question popped out before she could stop it. “Who?”

  He took his cup and plate again. Two steps back from the counter. Still smiling. He rattled off a few familiar names, mostly women Sunny hadn’t seen in years. Then, “Patch, too.”

  That was when the bell jingled and Tyler came into the shop. He made a beeline for Sunny without even giving Josiah a second glance. “Hey. Are you ready to go?”

  “I have to wait for—” But there was Wendy, breezing through from the back with an apology for being late. When Sunny looked at Tyler again, Josiah had taken his drink and food to a corner table and was reading a newspaper.

  He didn’t look up when they walked past him.

  “This isn’t the way home.” The tug of the seat belt against Sunny’s throat was like a hand, fingers squeezing. She didn’t want to sound scared or twist in her seat. Face of stone. She was suddenly unreasonably terrified.

  Tyler beat out a pattern on the steering wheel with his fingers. Sunny didn’t know the song playing on the radio, but it had very suggestive lyrics. She couldn’t ask him to turn it off. She wondered if he even noticed or cared. Probably neither.

  He glanced at her. “I know. It’s a long cut.”

  She knew about shortcuts, not long. The three previous times they’d gone out together in a group, he’d brought her right home. “Tyler…thank you for dinner and the movie, but I really have to get home.”

  “What’s the rush?” He used his turn signal, eased into the next lane, took a road she didn’t know.

  She didn’t recognize the streets he was taking, but she could tell they were getting farther from the center of town and into a more rural area. Lots of trees on either side of the car, but no signs of anything she recognized as being close to Chris and Liesel’s house.

  “It’s just…my dad’s wife. She’s been home alone with the kids all day, and she probably needs a break.” Sunny thought of the twisted-down turn of Liesel’s mouth lately, how infrequently she smiled and how quick she was to snap.

  Tyler looked over at her with a frown. “You okay?”

  Sunny shook her head. Her hair fell forward over her shoulders. She wished she’d put it in the braid she was used to. Unbound, it was heavy and hot and got in the way.

  “Hey. I’m sorry.” Tyler pulled slowly to the side, into one of the unmarked side roads off the main one. He didn’t go very far, but the trees rose up around them and covered the car with shadows. He turned off the ignition and twisted in his seat to look at her. His arm stretched out as he put his hand on the back of her seat, fingers close enough to brush her shoulder if he twitched them.

  “Tyler…”

  “Sunny, I really like you.”

  She shook her head again. Heart thumped. She didn’t look at him, afraid of what she might show him in her eyes. He’d see she wasn’t like the other girls who came into the shop and laughed and joked. He’d see she was afraid, and that was stupid, because Tyler was a nice, normal guy.

  “Don’t…you like me? Even a little?”

  Was that the twitch of his fingertips on her shoulder? Touching her hair? Sunny sat up straighter, and her seat belt tried to strangle her. She pulled it, but the stiff fabric had already cut a line into her throat.

  “I like you, Tyler.”

  “You won’t even look at me.”

  Stone. Look like stone. Don’t show him you’re afraid, that you’re freaked out, that you might want to cry.

  Tyler’s smile was hesitant. “Are your parents really all that strict?”

  “No. It’s not that.”

  “So call home. Tell them I’m taking you out for ice cream. I can still have you home in a couple hours.”

  He leaned in to kiss her before she could do more than put a hand between them. Her fingers curled in the soft fabric of his T-shirt. Beneath them, his chest was hard.

  She wanted to sink into it the way the girl in the movie had melted into her boyfriend’s embrace. All open mouths, tongues, hands roaming. Soft sighs, low moans. The scene in the movie had fascinated her at how little like real life the lovemaking had seemed.

  “What’s wrong?” Tyler asked.

  He kissed her again, and she did her best to kiss him back, but his mouth was too hot and wet, his tongue went too deeply into her mouth. She wanted to kiss him because she liked Tyler a lot. She knew what happened when you didn’t kiss back.

  Still, when his hands slid up her body to just below her breasts, every muscle went stiff. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the movie scene, but could not. All she could see, in fact, was Josiah’s face.

  “I can’t.” Sunny pushed at him. “I really need to get home. Liesel’s been with the kids all day, and Peace gets cranky at bedtime if I’m not there to tuck her in. And I promised Happy I wouldn’t be out too late.”

  His brow furrowed. “Huh? Peace and Happy?”

  “The kids,” Sunny said patiently. “Happy’s four. Peace is almost three. And Bliss will be a year old in a few months.”

  “I don’t get it…why does it have to be you?”

  “Because,” Sunny said, “they’re my children.”

  Tyler recoiled, just a little. Then laughed. “Huh? Wait. You’re kidding me, right?”

  “No.” The stone of her expression wanted to crack, but she didn’t let it. “Please take me home now.”

  “But wait. Wait a minute. You have three kids?”

  “Yes!” she said, exasperated. “That’s why I have to get home.”

  “But…you’re my age!”

  There were many things about her past that Sunny was ashamed of. Many that she’d accepted she would always be sorry for. But her children were neither shameful nor something to regret.

  “I know.”

  “But I thought… I figured…” Tyler waved a hand at her clothes. “You said your parents were so strict and stuff. I mean, I figured you were some goody-goody or something.”

  Sunny looked out her window. No idea where she was. No idea how to get where she needed to go. Powerless.

  She hated feeling powerless.

  “I thought you knew. I thought everyone knew.”

  “Hey.” His soft touch tried to turn her toward him, but Sunny wouldn’t turn. Tyler let her go. “Sure, I heard things, but…I’m sorry, Sunny. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “You don’t know anything about me, Tyler.”

  “Can’t I learn?”

  She looked at him. “Maybe. But right now I have to get home. Okay? Can you just take me?”

  He nodded, turned the key, eased out onto the main road again. Sunny leaned forward to change the radio station from what he’d been playing to the soft-rock channel she preferred. Tyler chuckled.

  “My mom listens to this station.”

  “That other music is lewd.”

  Tyler was quiet for half a minute. Now Sunny knew where they were. They’d come out from a side road onto the main rural highway heading south. In just a few minutes, the entrance to Chris and Liesel’s development would be on the left. She relaxed muscles she hadn’t realized she was holding quite so tensely.

  “Sunny…I really would like to get to know you.”

  She let him drive her back to Chris’s house without any more conversation. When Tyler pulled into her driveway, she was already unbuckled and grabbing her purse. If the door had been unlocked she’d have been out of the car before he could say another word, but instead her fingers sli