“Lemme grab what I got for your dad so you can head out.”
“’Kay,” she replied. “I’ll browse.”
I chuckled, stepping back to look at her. “You don’t have enough Wax apparel?” I asked, backing away.
Every time Tori came in here, she was leaving with a bag full. Fucking loved that. She was wanting to support me and wasn’t shy about showing it.
Tori made a gasping sound. “What? Never! I can always use more surf tees and booty shorts.” She smiled big, then spun around and started moving about the shop.
Booty shorts. Jesus fucking Christ.
I shook my head, laughing inside my chest, then I turned and headed for the office.
Once in there, I grabbed the hat with the Wax logo John was eyeing up last time he was in here—we were running low so I kept one in the back. Good thing, too, since we ran out last week and the next order wasn’t set to come until the end of the month.
Tori was standing at the counter when I made it back out into the shop again, head down and eyes focused on something. Her profile was tense.
“Babe.”
She looked up, meeting my gaze, and I saw the hurt in her eyes. I stopped at the edge of the counter.
What the fuck?
“Why wouldn’t you tell them about us?” she asked, turning to face me. “How could you not say anything, Jamie? I mean, really, you literally said nothing.”
“What?” Confused, I glanced down at the opened magazine she was standing in front of. Tori had her hand on a page. It was my interview with Rail. She’d read it. Or she at least read the question I’d dodged.
“I don’t answer questions like that, Legs. I told you,” I reminded her, tossing her dad’s hat on the counter next to the stack of shirts. “I’m there to talk about surfing. That’s it. They wanna forget that and try and get personal shit out of me, they’re gonna get those kind of answers.”
“You ‘no commented.’ That’s not an answer.”
“It’s my answer.” I shrugged. “Only one they’re gonna get, too.”
Tori blinked, mouth falling open as she looked down at the magazine. “How many people read this?” she asked, meeting my eyes again. “Ballpark. What do you think? Thousands?”
“Probably.”
“And how many times have we talked about claiming each other?”
I stared at her for a breath, seeing her seriousness and not understanding it, then I harshly wiped my hand down my face, shaking my head before gearing up to argue. “Babe, look—”
“I claimed you to my parents and to five strangers in a restaurant,” she interrupted. “And to everyone on my contact list, which I haven’t cleaned up in, I don’t know, months, so I’m sure there’s people on there I don’t even talk to anymore, but it didn’t matter. I wanted everyone to know, Jamie. I wanted a restaurant full of people. And you had opportunity to claim me in the most public way, the biggest way you could ever claim me, and you don’t.”
She was upset and angry, or she was at least getting there. Over this? What the fuck?
“Quit takin’ it personal, babe,” I said, hoping to squash this. “It’s ain’t personal. I don’t answer those questions. Never have.”
“Quit taking it personal?” she echoed, sticking her hands on her hips, cocking one and hitting me with daggers.
Jesus. She wasn’t letting me squash this. Tori was going to keep going.
“Come here,” I ordered, thinking if I got her in my arms, she’d let this go.
Tori shook her head, standing firm.
“Babe, come here.” My voice was sharper. Firmer.
“No.” Her voice shook with emotion.
I took a step toward her. She took a step back.
Jesus.
“I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t do it,” she said, losing some of that fire in her eyes. “You’re the one who’s been pushing us to claim each other this entire time. That was so important to you. And I wanted that. I wanted you to claim me to everyone, Jamie. That’s what made this real. I wasn’t your little secret. You weren’t hiding me like Wes did. But now, I don’t know, it kinda feels like you are.”
I drew my arms across my chest. “Legs, straight up, even if I did answer those questions, what the fuck would I have said?” I asked, growing irritated with this. “You wouldn’t admit to shit then. We were just fuckin’. You weren’t stakin’ claim to me. So what the fuck would I have said?”
Her eyes widened. “We were just fucking? Really? When you did that interview, that’s all we were doing? There was nothing else between us? What about that night when I came to you crying? When I could’ve gone to Syd, or anybody else, what about then? I guess that meant nothing, huh.”
My brow tightened. She was blowing this way the fuck out of proportion. “Babe, ease up on the attitude. You know what I meant.”
“I don’t need to ease up on anything, thank you very much,” she snapped, tipping forward. “You’re the one saying we were just fucking and there was nothing else going on between us when, clearly, that wasn’t the case. At least not for me. So thanks for that. Glad I finally know how you felt about it.”
I felt my jaw clench. My nostrils flared as I pulled in a breath. “You know how I feel about you,” I began, voice vibrating low in my throat. “I’ve told you. I’ve always told you. Never kept nothin’ from you, even when the only fuckin’ thing you admitted to likin’ about me was my cock, babe. And still, even gettin’ that was like pullin’ teeth. I’ve been claimin’ you since the fuckin’ beginning, and now you’re gettin’ pissy over some stupid interview I did when practically every motherfucker in Dogwood Beach knows I’m in love with you? What the fuck? Are you on your period or somethin’?”