Beard Science (Winston Brothers Book 3) (19 page)

Cletus’s eyes narrowed on me, his scrutiny becoming a piercing thing. “You don’t believe me.”

“It’s not that. It’s . . .” I struggled, “I don’t wish to be boastful or prideful.”

Cletus sneered. “You are the opposite of boastful, and your humbleness verges on infuriating.”

“Gee, thanks.” I rolled my eyes.

“Look, all I’m saying is that if a person is great at something, she shouldn’t have to pretend she's not, and she shouldn’t have to downplay her hard work. There's nothing wrong with humility or modesty, Jenn. But—for heaven's sake—take credit for being a badass.”

I pressed my lips together, but this time it was an attempt to hide my smile. “Okay, thank you.”

“Do you accept that you are a badass?”

“Fine. Yes.”

“Then say it.”

“Cletus—”

“Say, ‘Cletus, you are ceaselessly correct in all things, especially about the fact that I’m a badass.’”

“I will not,” I laughed, shaking my head.

“Hmm . . .” He wasn’t smiling. In fact he appeared to be irritated. Abruptly, he asked, “If your daddy likes Billy so much, why doesn’t
he
date him?”

I struggled again, trying to keep up with the rapid subject change, but quickly managed, “I think he would if he could, but he can’t. He’s married. And my father is a strict monogamist.” I kept my voice light, hoping to see another of Cletus’s smiles.

He didn’t smile. In fact, he frowned, deeper and more severe than before, his eyes focused someplace over my head as he unceremoniously announced, “My father had three families.”

I stiffened and felt my eyes widen; but I caught my mouth before it fell open. “Pardon me?”

His eyes cut back to mine briefly, then fell to the rocks at our feet. “He had three families that I know of. My momma was his only legal wife. Darrell married Drew’s sister while he was still married to my mother. Her name was Christine.” His eyes flickered over me again before he added, “They didn’t have any children before she died.”

A moment passed while I absorbed this information. I felt lost in the conversation, not knowing why or how we’d come to the subject, or why he was sharing it with me.

Finally, I offered lamely, “I . . . I had no idea.”

“Not many people do. In fact,” he studied me again for a long moment, his expression growing contemplative, “none of my family knows about the other one, Darrell’s third family.”

“How did you find out?” Wind stirred and lifted my troublesome lock of hair, flinging it across my eyes; I pushed it out of the way.

Cletus tilted his head back and forth, as though considering how best to respond. “It’s complicated. But basically, I found him—my half-sibling—accidentally when I got tested and typed for the national bone marrow registry. I was a match, but it was a mistake.” He shook his head, looking frustrated, and swallowed some thickness in his throat. “Darrell’s son lived in Texas.”

“Texas?”

“That’s right. Texas. My momma always told us that, way back, our father’s people were Native Americans. We’re Yuchi, a small Native American tribe native to this these lands.” He gestured to the area around us. “Most were killed by Cherokee in a dispute orchestrated by a corrupt white fur trader, very few survived. That’s its own strange story for another time. Anyway, those who survived were either absorbed into the nearby Cherokee tribe or sent to be slaves on plantations. My direct ancestor married a French trader and, there you go.”

“How about that.” I wanted to hear the entire history, about the corrupt fur trader, but decided that conversation could wait given the giant information missile he’d just detonated.

“Anyway. Darrell’s other woman, the woman he married—not legally, but even so—her name is Susan. She’s half-Cherokee, somehow involved with the Cherokee casinos. That’s how they met. At a casino. She didn’t know about us. She didn’t know we existed. She had no idea Darrell was already married with
seven
kids. So when I showed up, asking about her son and his ancestry, I gave her a shock.”

“This is crazy.”

“I thought, when I first found about my half-brother—about our match—that we were related through some distant Yuchi ancestor, since most with lineage to Yuchi are part of the Cherokee Nation.” He huffed a laugh. “Ironically, our ancestor was much more recent.”

I stared at Cletus for a beat, absorbing this information. “Why haven’t you told your brothers and Ashley? Don’t you think they’d want to know?”

Cletus’s eyes drifted to some spot over my shoulder and dimmed, grew distant. “He died.”

My hands flew to my mouth. “Oh my God.”

“He died of cancer about five years ago. Our brother died when he was twenty-four. I never met him. His momma remarried after Darrell left them without a word some twenty-five years ago. She had three more sons, by a good man. None of them were a match.”

“Oh, Cletus.” Unthinkingly, I reached for him, wrapped myself around his body, and pulled him into a tight hug. “I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t reply, his arms unresponsive by his sides. But I didn’t care. The man needed a hug. I’m a firm believer that if a person needs a hug, you give that person a hug. So many times I’ve been in a situation where I needed a hug, and instead had to settle for a good cry on a pillow at the end of the day.

And I knew I’d made the right decision when he repeated on a whisper, “I was a match.”

I buried my face against his chest, squeezing him as hard as I could until he finally lifted his arms and wrapped them around my shoulders. We stood together, embracing, while the sparrows lifted their voices once again. The sounds of the nearby stream filled our ears.

Cletus was warm. The light was soft. And absurdly, the cadence of the water made me think of tears.

***

If I’d had
any lingering doubts, they were now permanently dispelled. Darrell Winston was a reprehensible human being.

I couldn’t imagine what Cletus felt, how angry he must’ve been with his father. Nor could I comprehend how Susan felt, finding out two years too late that her son had a bone marrow match, and that match was a half-brother.

“The truth can be like people that way,” Cletus said, lifting an eyebrow at me.

I blinked at him, confused. “Pardon?”

I was sitting at the edge of the clear water stream, pristine enough to drink. Multicolored pebbles dotted the shallow riverbed. I’d taken off my shoes and dipped my toes in, and actually enjoyed the cold. Cletus stood off to one side, leaning against a tree.

“The truth can be like people,” he repeated.

“How so?”

“Sometimes,” the side of his mouth tugged upward with a humorless smile, “it’s real ugly.”

I sighed, knowing he was right. The truth about his half-brother was ugly.

“Take your father for instance.” Cletus’s tone was meticulously conversational, but I detected an undercurrent of frenzied resolve.

I stiffened my spine and squinted, suspicious of his intentions. I wasn’t quite ready to talk about my father. “What about him?”

“He’s real ugly.”

My mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. The man is ugly,” Cletus proclaimed with a grumpy single head nod. “And I’m not just talking about his exterior.”

“Cletus Byron Winston, you are being rude.” I might have my own less than glowing thoughts about my father, but he was
my
father.

He opened his mouth to respond, then snapped it shut and did a double take, his eyes narrowing on me. “First of all, how do you know my middle name?”

“Your momma used to use it when you were naughty, when you boys would help her shelve books in the library. ‘Cletus Byron! Stop stuffing Astrophysics Monthly down your pants!’”

Cletus grinned. Then he chuckled. His eyes lost some of their zealous focus as he pushed away from the tree and strolled closer. “Oh yeah. She did, didn’t she?”

“I felt sorry for Billy, though.” I scooched to one side as he sat down. “His name always confused everyone, like your momma was trying to talk to Shakespeare’s ghost. ‘William Shakespeare, would you please stop Beauford from pulling down his pants in front of the girls?’”

Cletus laughed harder, leaning backward and holding his stomach. “I remember that. How old was Beau?”

“He was ten. He was trying to show us his new Tarzan underwear. I don’t think he meant any harm.”

“He sure did love that underwear.” Cletus nodded and he scratched his beard. “I’m going to have to find him some Tarzan underwear in adult size.”

“So you can torture him about it?”

He pretended to be shocked by my accusation. “Certainly not. I don’t torture my siblings.”

“Yeah, right.” I gave him my side-eye. “You forget, I’m a people watcher. I know you sell embarrassing pictures of them on stock photo sites. Jethro was griping about it after church over the summer. If it’s not torture, what do you call it then?”

He lifted his chin proudly. “I offer invaluable character building opportunities. I help them reach their true potential through suffering.”

“Oh, please.” This made me snort-laugh and I pushed his shoulder with my fingertips.

And he laughed too, which was fun. It was nice to laugh with someone in real life instead of via a letter sent once a month. And it was more than nice to laugh with Cletus.

I liked the sound of his laugh with its rumbly and artless sound. When he smiled or laughed in earnest, his dark lashes had the effect of making his eyes appear brighter and his grin lit up his whole face.

The first time I’d heard him laugh he’d been helping his momma at the library. I’d been fourteen and I think he’d been around twenty at the time, maybe a little older. His mother—who was always kind to everyone—had said something funny, and the sound of his rejoining laughter caught me off guard. I hadn’t expected him to do it. I’d never seen him be anything other than stern, angry, or stoic prior to that point.

Lively eyes that captivated me with their cleverness, pretty lashes, and a mouth full of straight white teeth framed by an exceedingly pleasing mouth. I’d started noticing him everywhere after that and I’d listened for his laugh, though—after watching him for a while—I decided it was best to keep my distance.

Nevertheless, his smiles, true happy smiles, were rare. Before blackmailing him, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d heard his laughter.

“What are you thinking about?” My hair had fallen across my face again. He tucked it behind my ear, his fingers and eyes lingering on my neck.

“Just that, uh . . .” I searched for an appropriate story to tell, an alternate truth to,
Well, Cletus, since you asked, I was just thinking about how epically tremendous your smile is and how nice your fingers feel on my skin.

Unable to meet his steady gaze, I shifted my attention to the stream and cursed myself for being a terrible liar. Actually, allow me to clarify that: I’m great at lying to myself. I’m super crummy at lying to others.

His hand dropped. Another silence followed; this one was weightier, and I couldn’t figure out why. All I knew was I could feel his eyes on me and they felt heavy.

But then, out of nowhere, Cletus said, “I guess we’re going to have to practice.”

“Pardon me?”

“Practice kissing. Like what you did with Billy.”

I reeled back as my head whipped to the side, our eyes colliding. I couldn’t believe my ears. “You think . . . you want me to practice kissing with Billy?”

“No. No. Absolutely not.” Again, Cletus’s gaze flickered over me. “I mean you and me. I’ll help you practice.”

The heart flip returned, but this time it was more forceful than before. And it brought some friends—the tummy cartwheel, the throat cinch, and the chest ache.

What. The. Hell . . .?

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I rasped, forced to clear my throat, astonishment making my lungs burn.

“Why?” He shrugged, like it was no big deal.

Meanwhile, my hands were sweating. I was sweating everywhere. Even my feet in the cold stream were sweating.

“Because . . . because . . . because—” I glanced at the canopy above us, then the other side of the riverbed, the dirt next to me, the tree trunk to my left. Basically, I looked everywhere but at Cletus. “Because I’m blackmailing you and it doesn’t feel right. Like, I’m forcing you to kiss me.”

“But you’d practice with Billy?”

“Yes. He’d be doing it to help, not because of something I’m holding over his head.” I felt the urge to place some distance between us, so I stood and grabbed my shoes. I perched myself on a large rock and pulled on my socks.

“What if I promised I wasn’t doing it because of the blackmail?” Cletus tried to catch my eye so I lowered my chin to my chest as he added, “I want to help.”

I shook my head, unable to speak. I didn’t want to kiss Cletus.

Sometimes Cletus was open with me. But sometimes he was distant. I never knew from one moment to the next what mood he’d be in, just like I never knew what color his eyes would be.

I didn’t want to kiss him and then spend time with him after, pretending like everything was fine. I didn’t want to kiss him and then be invisible to him again when our deal was at an end. Because I would remember. I already felt too much.