Chapter 18
She was resilient; she just didn’t know it. Or didn’t realize the extent of it.
“I wasn’t always,” she said. “Like I told you—”
“I didn’t know you then. Yeah, you said.” He smiled. “But I have a feeling I’d think the same even if I did.” He scanned her face—those eyes that were still a little red from the tears she had shed, the windswept hair, the creases of life that showed on her face. Jordan tried to downplay the fact that his heart was pounding erratically in his chest for fear that what she made him feel would reflect on him and scare her off. It was the most comfortable that she had been with him, and he wanted more of it. More of her.
Just being next to her amplified everything. Usually, the opposite happened to him—the closer he got, the less he felt; the more he came to know, the less he found to like. But not with her.
She made herself seem—maybe even thought of herself as—a simple, small-town school teacher. But she was so much more. To him. He found himself looking up to her, admiring her, wanting that elusive, unscathed quality in her, that genuineness, that agenda-less goodness, to rub off on him. He wanted to be more like her.
He wanted her.
But, for that, she would have to get closer to him, to know more about him, and he was pretty sure that the opposite would happen to her—the closer she would get, the less she would like him; the more she knew, the less she would think of him.
Maybe not if she had known him years ago, when he had been different, more like her. But it was true what he had told her in his kitchen—politics changed people more than people changed politics.
He hoped to reach a point where he could look her in the eyes, tell her everything, and add with confidence, “You didn’t know me then,” certain that he had succeeded in leaving the stench in the past. But he wasn’t there yet. So, he kept his mouth shut.