Last Chance Rebel

by Maisey Yates

  Which started to feel a lot more like closeness than simple physicality. Blurry damn lines.

  “I don’t want to brag, but I’m actually a pretty good cook. It comes from years of being on the road and making do with incredibly Spartan situations. I’m the MacGyver of cooking.”

  “Does that mean you made a tortilla out of a paperclip?”

  He laughed. “Not quite. But, if it exists I’ve probably cooked it on a camp stove. So what I made for you tonight is skillet macaroni and cheese with bacon, a salad, just so we don’t feel guilty, and I bought a pie from your friend Alison.”

  “Oh,” she said, not quite sure how she felt about him getting in the middle of her life like that. Her real life. It was easy, up here at the lake, to feel separate from everything that happened in town. That her store, her friends, all of that was somehow a different life. Even the Gage she dealt with in the professional capacity could be a different one than her lover. But not if he was going to keep blurring all the lines.

  Again with the blurry lines.

  “I suggest you start with the macaroni and cheese, skip the salad and go straight to the pie.”

  “Then why did you make the salad?”

  “The appearance of virtue.”

  She laughed, in spite of herself, in spite of all the jumbled-up messed-up feelings rolling around inside of her. “As far as I can tell, you never really bother with appearing virtuous, why start now?”

  “Because you do.”

  She frowned. “I do?”

  He reached out, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her up against him so that her back was resting against his chest, his hand splayed over her stomach. “Yes,” he said, his breath hot on her neck. “You’re such a prickly little thing. Like a sea urchin.”

  She scowled, whipping her head around and looking up so that she could see him. “That is the most unflattering comparison I have ever heard.”

  He ignored her. “Prickly, near impossible to get to the center of. Yeah, hate to break it to you, baby, but that’s you.”

  “A virtuous sea urchin?”

  He chuckled, low and soft in her ear and her knees forgot their function, buckling beneath her, only his strong hold keeping her from crumpling into a Rebecca-shaped heap on the floor. “I didn’t say you were virtuous, I said you gave the appearance of being virtuous. It’s all a part of that untouchable vibe you have going on.”

  She struggled to get out of his hold, pushing her hair off of her face and turning to face him when she succeeded. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you skip the psychoanalyzing, and just feed me bacon.”

  “If you prefer.”

  “Who doesn’t prefer bacon over self-examination?”

  “Well-adjusted vegetarians?”

  She snorted. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but the two of us are neither of those things.”

  She took a seat on the couch with a glass of wine provided by Gage, and continued to watch him wander around the kitchen looking like some strange fantasy she hadn’t even realized she had. But oh boy, did it ever work for her.

  His muscles shifted and punched with his every move as he efficiently prepared their plates. And every time he bent down for something she hoped that his jeans would slip a little bit more. They never did. They were some kind of magical, infuriating cut designed to drive women crazy.

  She couldn’t remember ever being taken care of this way before. Jonathan had cared for her every practical need, and she couldn’t fault him. He had been a kid, doing his very best to take care of a kid. But no one had ever done this. This felt luxurious, lavish.

  Dinner tasted amazing, the kind of rich comfort food she had never indulged in growing up, because it was too complicated for her to make and too expensive to buy. They talked about their days. He about the progress he’d made with the Main Street buildings, and she about the incredibly loud tour group that had nearly rattled her ceramic birds off their perches with their noise, and about the loose floorboard she kept stubbing her toe on, even though she knew it was there.

  And then, when it was all finished, he did the cleaning up while she lay down on the couch, listening to music that he played from his phone to a wireless speaker.

  She closed her eyes, humming along until she must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she remembered was being picked up, held against Gage’s chest and carried to the bedroom. When he tried to set her down, she clung to him even harder, reluctant to lose this feeling. Of being small, of being light and easy to hold on to. Of being completely and utterly sheltered in the strength of his hold.

  Of being safe.

  “I’m just going to set you down on the bed,” he whispered, his words as rough as the stubble that scraped against her cheek when he spoke. “I’m not going to leave you.”

  She let him set her down, and she felt the mattress depress behind her, felt him stretch out alongside her, curving his hand around her body, holding on to her protectively. He seemed to remake himself to fit around her, something she would have thought impossible for such a hard man to do, and yet, he did it.

  Her last thought before drifting off with him was that it should be unsettling to fall asleep with someone like this. But it wasn’t, not with him. Hadn’t been even the first time. Somehow, being with him, though in a strange bed, made her feel an awful lot like she was home.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “WHAT ARE YOU doing here?”

  Gage ignored Rebecca’s evil glare as he walked over the threshold into her shop. “I came to fix your floorboard.”

  “This is real life, Gage. This is not porn. So, whatever you were thinking was going to happen here…”

  He laughed, because even though she was playing prickly with him, she was also teasing him, and that was a welcome change. “No, I came to literally fix your literal floorboard. The one that you said you keep stubbing your toe on.”

  Her eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open into a perfect O.

  “What? I can be nice. See, I’m being nice. Also, I listen.”

  “You do,” she said, looking slightly surprised that she agreed with his statement.

  She looked a little bit worried when he walked toward the back of the store, eyeballing all of the boards as he went.

  “It’s over here,” she said, gesturing to a spot behind the counter. “But…”

  “You’re afraid somebody’s going to see me here and start asking questions.”

  “Yes. Absolutely, that yes.”

  “I own the building. Also, that’s not very good for my ego.”

  “What?” she spluttered.

  “The fact that you are desperately ashamed of us being involved.”

  She crossed her arms, then began to pace as he made his way to the offending board and knelt down. “I’m not ashamed. It’s just that we are not really involved. Not on a permanent or even semipermanent basis. We are only doing this until you leave.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Also,” she said, “I do know how to fix a loose board. I just hadn’t gotten around to it.”

  Of course she would know how to fix her own board. Rebecca did not strike him as the damsel in distress. In fact, she was aggressively independent. “Maybe that is the point. Maybe the point is that you just need to learn to let someone do something nice for you once in a while. Even if you’re capable of doing it yourself, sometimes you have to let someone do it for you.”

  “I disagree. Because then you start needing people.”

  Her words made his stomach seize up tight. How long had it been since he’d needed somebody? He couldn’t remember. It was a fine thing for him to lecture her on taking help when he had been no less solitary for all these years.

  But he wasn’t the point. She was. And he was fixing the damn board.

  He heard the bell over her entry door go off, and he turned just in time to see a very large man who looked to be in his early thirties walk in. “Rebecca?” he asked.

  It di
d not take long for Gage to connect what the relationship was between this man and Rebecca. His skin was darker, his hair a glossy black, but the hard expression in those dark eyes were definitely a Bear family trait. The biggest difference was that he was large enough to kill Gage with one fist.

  “Hi,” Rebecca said, too quickly. “Jonathan, what are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you. Because I’ve been busy. So I felt bad because we hadn’t managed to connect in a few days. Also, you need to start answering your texts, brat.”

  Gage stood up from his position behind the counter, and he immediately caught Jonathan’s attention. He probably could have smoothed the situation over easily, but Rebecca’s face turned bright red, her expression registering intense distress.

  Jonathan’s dark eyebrows locked together, and then, he looked over at Gage, studying him intently. “You wouldn’t happen to be Gage West, would you?”

  Gage had a feeling that was his polite way of asking if Gage wanted to die today.

  “I am,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  He wasn’t going to back down, not now. Of course, he imagined Rebecca would rather that he and Jonathan didn’t have a bar brawl in the middle of her knickknack store, but Gage wasn’t going to start it. He’d damn well finish it if he had to—that was the conclusion he came to then and there.

  “What the hell are you doing in my sister’s store?”

  “She had a loose floorboard. I came by to fix it.”

  “I see, and how do you know about the floorboard?” Jonathan took a step toward him.

  “She told me. I didn’t break into the place late at night and start testing for weak spots.”

  “Gage,” she said, her voice hushed, “stop.”

  Jonathan’s dark eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you throw him out?”

  “Jonathan,” she said, “maybe we should talk somewhere else.”

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  “I’m just fixing the floor,” Gage said, because the last thing he wanted to do was cause more trouble for Rebecca.

  “No, you’re not just fixing the floor,” she said, then she turned her furious gaze onto Jonathan. “He’s not just fixing the floor. He’s… I’m…we… We’re not exactly dating…”

  And that was when Gage found himself being hauled over by the front of his shirt. “Are you fucking my sister? I would’ve thought you’d done that enough.”

  “Stop it!” Rebecca got between the two of them, putting her hands over her brother’s, trying to break his hold on Gage’s shirt.

  Jonathan released him, Gage suspected only because he was concerned about hurting Rebecca. “Did he hurt you?” he asked her.

  Rebecca scrubbed her arm over her eyes. “No. This is not a hostage situation. Why would I have told you if I was ashamed? Or if I was upset?”

  “I figured you told me because you wanted me to kill him.”

  “No. I don’t want you to kill him, but I’m not going to sneak around, and I’m not going to lie to you. Jonathan, we’ve been through too much together for me to lie to your face. Yes, I was going to avoid having this discussion if I could. But, I guess we can’t avoid it.”

  Jonathan turned to face Rebecca, acting as though Gage wasn’t even there. He reached out, sliding his thumb across her scar-roughened cheek. “He did this to you. It’s his fault. How could you ever let him touch you again?”

  “Because we both deserve to be more than those scars.”

  He had a feeling she might mean Jonathan just as well as she meant him. Jonathan stiffened, drawing away from her. “It wasn’t just you. And it isn’t just the injuries.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice thick.

  “And you’re still with him?”

  She nodded silently, and he treated her to a long, hard look. Gage expected him to haul off and punch him next. But he didn’t. Instead, he turned around and walked out of the store, slamming the door so hard behind him that the bell screamed and a small ceramic ornament fell from the top of one of the armoires, smashing onto the floor.

  Rebecca put her hands over her mouth, like she was holding back a scream. Gage closed the space between them, wrapping his arms around her, holding her against his chest. “You didn’t have to tell him,” he said, his voice rough.

  “I know,” she said, her words muffled.

  “Why did you?”

  “I just want… I just want to have this. And I don’t want to feel bad about it. And I was hoping that maybe he would help. But he’s not going to.” She took a deep, shaking breath. “I guess that’s important too. He disapproves. I knew that he would. But, I’m going to do this anyway.”

  She pulled away from him, picking at some imaginary dirt beneath her fingernail. “This is the other thing I do, you know. I don’t put a foot out of line. I’ve never fought with Jonathan. How could I? How could I when he gave everything to take care of me.”

  “That’s what he meant. About it not just being the accident. He blames me for your mother leaving.”

  “Sometimes I think he blames me,” she said.

  And then she went down onto her knees.

  *

  REBECCA FELT LIKE she was going crazy. Like she was breaking apart inside. She had no idea what she had been thinking, telling Jonathan that she was sleeping with Gage. She had no idea what she was thinking confessing that deep, betraying thought that she had always carried so close to her chest.

  Maybe this was the thing. Maybe it was circular. Maybe it always had to be him. Maybe he had needed to be brought out into the light, revealed to be nothing more than a man so that she could finally face the real monster. The one that lived inside of her.

  The one that was afraid she was the reason her mother had left. She had become too much, she had become too much to handle and so her mother had left her, left her as a burden for Jonathan, and he had done the right thing, the strong thing, but even he probably resented her. And she had no doubt that he knew she was the real reason their mother wasn’t there.

  Their mother, who had barely been strong enough to raise two children on her own as it was, was never going to be strong enough to care for an invalid daughter who had endless health issues. And that was the real problem. It always had been. She had been the tipping point. Her.

  In that moment the bandage had been removed. The moment she had been exposed. That was when she had lost her mother.

  Sure, the accident had been the catalyst. Nathan West had provided the getaway cash.

  But she was the culprit.

  And so she had spent the past seventeen years trying to do her very best to avoid being left again. To hold people at a far enough distance that she would be able to handle it if she lost them. To make herself palatable enough that maybe people wouldn’t want to leave.

  She was doing a terrible job of it now. She had just alienated her brother in a huge way, and now she was breaking into tiny pieces in front of the only man she had ever allowed to touch her. He was seeing her naked now, even though he had never seen her naked in the physical sense. She was completely bare to him.

  And she was too caught up in her misery, in her brokenness to care.

  Gage was holding her now, and that made it feel better too. Just like he had done last night, he made a shelter for her out of his arms; his broad chest and shoulders were more than enough to shield her from almost anything that came from the outside. But he couldn’t help her with this. He couldn’t stop it. The storm was inside. There was no hiding from it. There was no escaping it.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, mostly because she imagined it was what any decent person would say in this situation. But it didn’t make it true. It had been the thing that pushed her mother away once and for all.

  Even if it wasn’t fair it was true.

  Fair didn’t have any place in life.

  At least, not in hers.

  She nodded, feeling that his shirt was wet beneath her cheek. Great, she was crying on him
. She was too miserable to care. “I want to go home,” she said.

  “Your home or mine?”

  “It doesn’t matter. As long as you come with me.”

  *

  WHEN THEY GOT back to her house it was cold inside. The fire in the woodstove had gone out and Rebecca wrapped her arms around herself to keep from shivering. She felt like the cold was coming from inside of her. She doubted a fire would help.

  Still, Gage set about warming the interior of the house. She supposed the rest of it was up to her. Figuring out how to deal with her own self. How to get a handle on the emotions that were rioting through her.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to get a handle on them. She never let them break through. Never let these thoughts form all the way. They just sort of hovered in the back of her mind, a vague kind of dread that she never allowed herself to truly look at. Never allowed herself to understand. She could see it all now. All of that vague, often overwhelming anxiety now taking its full form.

  For some reason that realization, the full understanding of exactly what she was afraid of made everything feel so tenuous. Like Jonathan really might pull away from her completely. Like her friends would all desert her.

  Made her feel as if even this, this connection that she had with Gage, was a kind of thin, fragile line.

  She watched him as he put pieces of wood into the woodstove, moving them around with his bare hands, trying to get them to ignite. She watched the tattoo, that thick black band that signified their shared past, shift and ripple over his muscles, and a shiver ran down her spine.

  She was the only one that knew. The only one that knew the entire story. Other than his father, at least. But not even his father had the full picture. The years that had passed in between the time he had left Copper Ridge and when he had come back. Rebecca knew. She was the keeper of Gage’s story.

  And he was the keeper of hers.

  Somehow, this relationship had shifted, changed. They had become each other’s confidants. They kept each other’s worst secrets, had done so for years. Not to protect each other, but initially to protect themselves. Everything seemed like it was turned on its head now.