Rough Edge

by Landish, Lauren

  “Oh, uh . . . maybe.” It’s all I’ll promise now. And that’s mostly because I felt Brody’s hand squeeze my thigh supportively. Or encouragingly? Or in warning? I don’t know, but it’d felt nice there.

  Shayanne doesn’t take no for an answer. She doesn’t take maybe for one, either. “Next Saturday night. Hank’s. Brody’ll pick you up. Wear boots if you got ’em for the dancing.”

  I cut my eyes to Brody. “You said you don’t dance.”

  The smirk he gives me says ‘oh, I dance’, and I realize he only said that to get out of dancing with Emily. Well, maybe that and the fact that the music wasn’t exactly danceable at Two Roses. Mosh pit bouncing off one another like pissed-off pinballs, sure. Dancing, no.

  Oh, the music.

  “What kind of music?” I grin widely. “Please don’t say country.” I’m kidding, mostly, but not a single smile cracks.

  Bobby beats everyone else to the punch. “No carrot cake for you if you talk smack about country music. It’s the best genre known to man. And I don’t just say that because I contribute to the industry.” He places his hand over his heart, and I swear he’s serious, but there’s such a current of humor through the Barn Door Boys that I can’t be sure how straight he’s being with me. “What do you listen to if not the best music ever created?”

  “Rock. Seventies, from my dad. Eighties and nineties, from my sergeant. And everything since just because I like it. The louder, the better.”

  “Loud is right,” Brody deadpans. “It’s more screaming than music too.”

  Everyone cringes as if I pulled out my phone to start my latest Spotify playlist.

  Brody sighs heavily and confesses, “You don’t have to come, but I’d like for you to. Unless you don’t want to hang out with these guys . . .” He mouths assholes behind his hand, hiding the curse.

  I should run through town, over the mountain, and back to my garage. Work all night alone with whatever decade of rock music I want playing loud enough to shut up the chatter in my head.

  What I shouldn’t do is sit here and get to know these people. What I shouldn’t do is agree to a night out with them. What I shouldn’t do is look forward to seeing Cowboy in his country element, busting out his moves to impress me.

  But that’s what I do, anyway, knowing it’s a piss-poor decision that’s got the potential to get someone hurt. Mostly, me. Maybe Brody. He said he’s fine with casual, and I have to take him at his word, but tonight doesn’t seem casual, doesn’t feel like no big deal. And that worries me.

  “Sounds like a plan. Saturday night. Twirl me around the dance floor, Cowboy.”

  What the fuck did I just agree to?

  Quiet and low enough that no one should be able to hear, Brody whispers out of the side of his mouth, “Fuck yeah, I will, Lil Bit.”

  Mama Louise, who’s been silently watching the whole dinner and a show before her, finally interjects. “Language.”

  I almost laugh. The air actually bubbles up from my belly and the sound catches in my throat when I realize that she’s serious. A table full of big, growly alpha guys and their wives, who all seem to be pretty awesome themselves, but they all bow down to a single word from Mama Louise. She doesn’t even have to try. Her power here is absolute.

  I want to be her one day.

  Chapter 12

  Brody

  “Fuck you doing?” Some people can be described as their bark being worse than their bite. Mark isn’t one of them. His bark is bad. His bite is worse. I’m pretty much the same, but we’ve found some degree of respect in our similarities. For the most part, we try not to piss each other off. It’d be too easy to bury the body on the thousands of acres out here where no one would ever find it.

  Not that I’ve considered that. Recently.

  Today might challenge that, though.

  “Texting.” Translation: what the fuck does it look like I’m doing, dumbass?

  “Erica?”

  I give him a dark look that threatens imminent violence even though I know he’s pushing my buttons on purpose. “Yep. How’s Princess this morning?”

  No one gets to have that degree of familiarity with Katelyn but him. Mark and Katelyn are wound up in each other tight and are possessive as fuck of one another. So using her pet name is damn near like waving a red cape in front of a bull.

  He returns the glare, dips his chin, and the battle ends. Hell, it was probably his version of fun. Or more likely, he’s testing out the situation to get a read on me.

  “How’s Rix?” The change to the name everyone else uses is as much of an apology as I’m going to get because he’s damn sure not sorry. But my reaction at his using Erica’s given name wasn’t lost on either of us. He’s got reason to be possessive, and the sentiment is returned with his wife. I’ve got no reason to be greedy about being the only one to use her name, and she’s made it crystal clear that we’re casual. Exactly what I want too.

  Except . . .

  We’ve been texting every day. Pictures of cars and pictures of cattle. Pictures of her short, muscled legs wound up in her sheets. Pictures of my chest with the sheets puddled a bit low.

  I haven’t read a single page of a book all week because we sit in bed at night talking, the phone bridging the distance across town. Sometimes, it’s just her voice in my ear. Sometimes, we FaceTime, and I love to see her in thin tank tops with sleepy eyes. We have conversations about our day—work, people, random tidbits of life.

  I’ve heard stories about her time in the military and how she had to work twice as hard to prove herself because, according to Erica,

  “Apparently, engines are these magical, mystical things that can’t be understood if you have a vagina instead of a dick. The guys hadn’t liked it much when I told them that if I could find a G-spot, I sure as fuck could find a carburetor, but I doubted they could say the same thing. About either of those.”

  I’d laughed my ass off so loudly that Brutal had knocked on the door to check on me. When I said I was fine, he’d told me to shut the fuck up because Cooper had school in the morning. Like I wouldn’t be up two hours before Cooper, anyway. But I’d quieted down because I like the kid. And we have plans for a rematch at cornhole tonight so I can redeem myself after getting skunked during our last match.

  Erica and I have talked about her coming back to run the garage for her Dad, who retired a bit earlier than she expected. He’s fine and healthy, apparently, which is good, and wants to spend time traveling the US with Janice, which is great. But there’s a hitch in Erica’s voice there, something between her and her dad she’s not sharing.

  I don’t push because I don’t like talking about my dad, either. Which is why I tell her all the great things about ranch life, focusing on the hard work and pride in a job well done. I show her the goat herd and tell her how I raised them from newborn babies to adults that prance around mischievously, kicking me in the shin every chance they get. I explain raising calves and selling cattle every year so we can do it all again in a never-ending cycle. With close to fatherly pride, I tell her how Shayanne became an entrepreneur on her own terms, Brutal is becoming the almost-husband and father he was always meant to be, and Bobby is getting deeper into his music every day.

  It’s only been a week’s worth of conversations, but I feel like I’m getting to know Erica a little more in those few minutes of conversations before we both crash, knowing we have early mornings ahead. Last night, the looming alarm hadn’t seemed to matter and we’d talked for almost two hours. And I’m feeling it today.

  “She’s all right.” I answer Mark on delay because I’m glancing at my phone again, smiling at the picture Erica just sent. Black tires with white stripes along the side walls.

  Me: Putting shoes on Sally?

  Erica: Good memory. Wilson says hi.

  Wilson did nothing of the sort.

  Me: Tell him I said hello too.

  I look up to find Mark looking at me, his face carefully blank. I don’t
ask, don’t say a word, knowing if he has something to say, he will.

  “I like her for you. She’s brash, keeps you on your toes. A bit wild, but smart too.” He nods, having said his piece.

  I shake my head. “You met her for the grand total of like one hour, and it ain’t like that. We’re keeping it casual.”

  He laughs, deeply and violently. A rarity from the stoic man, which is probably why it sounds like rusty metal in his chest. I swear to God, he even wipes his eyes, tears leaking out from laughing so hard. At me? At the idea of Erica and me being casual? Fuck if I know.

  He sobers, and it’s like the laughter never happened. “You weren’t around back then, or well, not around like you are now . . . but James and Sophie? They were a summer fling.” He spits out ‘summer fling’ like it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. “They seem casual?”

  He already knows the answer as well as I do.

  “Me and Katelyn? Supposed to just be friends.” He actually does finger quotes with his thick, muddy hands. “Till she stomped out here in the middle of the night and forcibly yanked my head outta my ass for me.”

  My brows jump together. “Katelyn?” She’s the sweetest woman I think I’ve ever met, literally nice as can be, with the patience of a saint. I try to picture her giving Mark what for and can’t even imagine it.

  He snorts. “She’s tougher than she lets on.” His eyes go distant, and I know he’s thinking about his bride because he’s got that stupid-in-love look on his face. The look I never want to have.

  “Yeah, well . . . Erica and I are on the same page. Casual only. She’s busy, I’m busy, and we ain’t got the time nor the inclination for anything serious.”

  My phone dings in my hand. I’d like to say it’s a saved by the bell situation, but it feels more like it’s calling me out on my shit.

  “Time’s a fickle bitch. Don’t let her fuck you over.” He narrows his eyes like he’s imparting great wisdom. “I ain’t never regretted a single moment I’ve spent with Katelyn. Hard to say I regret the part when I was fighting us because we got where we needed to be in the end, but I’m a greedy fucker and I’ll take every second I can get with her, so I wish I’d had a head-out-of-my-ass-ectomy a little sooner.”

  Mark is not a share your feelings type. So he might as well have just opened his chest and fileted his heart to tell me how much his wife means to him, all the while implying that the woman I’ve spent one night with plus a week of texting looks like a pretty damn similar situation to him.

  Fuck this. “Are we going to hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and talk about our periods, or work?”

  These cows need to move over to the next fenced pasture, and we need to spread some hay and do a wellness check on as many as we can before the sun sets. James is riding fence on an ATV today, far on the back pasture where we’re eventually headed with the herd. It’s never-ending, it’s what I know, and it’s even what I love.

  And I’m gonna win that damn cornhole match tonight if it’s the last thing I do. My buddy Cooper is going down. I like that a simple game with my nephew is the biggest thing on my plate right now, and I plan to keep it that way.

  * * *

  Me: I’m here.

  Erica: On my way down.

  At Cole Automotive, Erica’s upstairs apartment doesn’t exactly have a front porch for me to climb up and knock on the door like a proper date. But the text does the trick. Because this is a date. An official one, preplanned with me picking her up and nervous excitement in my gut. I don’t know why I’m nervous. Hell, we talked earlier today, for fuck’s sake, but while I stand outside the door waiting for Erica to come down, my belly feels like I ate a gas station burrito.

  I peek through the single row of windows when I hear a door inside close. Erica’s not visible over the truck she’s got in bay one, but then I see her as she rolls the overhead door up like she’s revealing a prize on a game show. And she’s the fucking grand prize.

  Black suede boots reach just below her knees, fishnet hose disappear beneath a grey denim skirt that looks touchably soft and worn, all topped with a black tank top. Her hair is down, a shiny curtain of dark brown silk that nearly reaches her waist, and her eyes are smudged with black stuff, making them look hypnotic and smoky.

  “Fuck, woman.”

  I’m not known for being eloquent, and she’s taken what few words I do have. But her smile says it’s enough.

  “Looking pretty good yourself, Cowboy.” She lets her eyes lick up my body, and I hold still, not just letting her but wanting her to. I can tell she took her time getting ready for tonight, and so did I.

  I detailed my truck, well aware that Erica will be judging me on it, left my dirty hat at home, and wore my best jeans, nicest boots, and a grey plaid button-up shirt. Without even meaning to, we sorta match. And doesn’t noticing that make me feel like a thirteen-year-old girl?

  “Thanks. You ready?” I ask instead of pushing her back inside and going straight upstairs like I’m tempted to do.

  “Almost. Just one thing.” She beckons me with a crook of her finger, and I bend down as she tilts her chin up, the intent obvious.

  There’s no shy reacquaintance with us. We both dive into the kiss in equal measure, fighting to taste each other. When she falls back to her flat feet, taking those lips away from me, I growl at the loss. She pats my chest, knowing damn well that she’s driving me crazy.

  “Okay, now I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  “I kinda hate you right now,” I tell her without any heat as I adjust my dick in my jeans.

  “Then my plan’s working,” she says as she goes around to the passenger side of my truck. I open the door for her, but she rejects my hand in favor of using the oh-shit handle and rails to climb up into the cab by herself. It’s not graceful, and I get a shot up her skirt. Her look back says that was intentional too.

  I get in behind the wheel and ask, even though I know it’s a softball lob she’s pitched on purpose. “Plan?”

  “To tease you mercilessly all night. I’ll decide later if I’m going to do anything about it or just leave you with blue balls.” She taps her lips, which are fighting a smile, as she contemplates.

  “What if I work you up all night too?” I ask lightly, finding a flaw in her plan. Well, maybe not so much a flaw as another angle she hasn’t considered.

  “You’d damn well better. That’s my intention. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have told you about the plan.”

  Oh, she’s considered the angles, all right. Every last one of them, and I’m rushing to keep up with her when my brain is fogged over so quickly around her.

  Two hours later, she’s agreed that maybe Hank’s is the singular exception to meatloaf being disgusting, which he accepted graciously from behind the bar by sending over the beers we ordered with a lime wedge garnish. They’re not Coronas, so maybe a nice gesture, but also maybe a fuck you. But the meatloaf was good, and Lil Bit admitted it. That much I know for sure.

  Using the full space of the booth, I lean in close, putting my head on her shoulder and licking my index finger to make a tally mark in the air. I won that one. She laughs and shoves at me. “Get off me, asshole.”

  “That ain’t what you said last weekend,” I tease back quietly, mostly not caring that everyone’s listening to every flirty word between us.

  But they are, and I can see those wheels turning in each of their minds. When I look at Erica, I don’t care because she’s holding true to her word and I’m holding to mine. And that’s what matters.

  We’ve had fun all night—dancing, laughing, talking, and touching. And it’s just what I need. She’s what I need, like this and nothing more.

  Katelyn hops up, and by some invisible signal, the other women do too. Erica leans down, close to my ear so only I hear her. “Bathroom break so they can interrogate me. No worries, I’ll talk shit about you so they know I’m only after your dick,” Erica promises and then winks as she struts off behind Katelyn, Shayanne, Sophie, and Allyson.
>
  I can’t help but track her across the room as she goes. She stands out in Hank’s, her rocker look and spitfire attitude different from the mostly rural ranching types who frequent this bar. But fuck, if that isn’t what draws me to her. I realize that Mark’s right. She keeps me on my toes and I like it. Not that I’ll tell him that, and not that it has some greater, deeper meaning the way he suggested.

  “Well?” Brutal asks when the girls turn the corner into the hallway and we can all focus on something besides their asses again.

  “Well, what?” Playing dumb seems prudent.

  He pops me on the back of my head, knocking me forward. I’m a big motherfucker, but next to my brother, I look like an average-sized Joe. And he sometimes forgets his strength, but sometimes, he sure as hell uses it on purpose.

  “What the fuck, Brutal?”

  He leans forward, elbows on the table and eyes narrowed. “Get on with it before they get back.”

  Bunch of gossipy assholes.

  “Nothing to tell. I like her, like fucking her. She likes me, likes fucking me. The end.” How many times am I going to have to say this? Guys don’t usually do this, do they? Five pairs of eyes are laser-locked on me. Three blue, two brown, all telling me I’m a dumbass, but I’m not. “I swear it. She’s as much about casual as I am. We’re good.”

  One laughs, I’m not even sure who starts it, but then they’re all chuckling. At me. “Fuck y’all.”

  I sit back, arms crossed over my chest, knees spread wide beneath the table, a menacing glare on my face. They laugh harder.

  Thank fuck the girls come back, all atwitter. Each of us stands, letting them sit back down, but I hold out my hand to Erica. “Let’s dance.”