by Jill Shalvis
let out a long, shaky breath. “I guess you also think I shouldn’t have come.”
“You shouldn’t have, no,” she said. “I asked you for time. It’s the only thing I’ve ever asked of you.”
Jase stared at her for a long beat, and then nodded.
Becca rubbed the heels of her hands over her eyes, which were filled with a hollow, haunted devastation that just about killed Sam. He had no idea how Jase could even look at her without doing everything in his power to fix this.
“I’m sorry,” Jase whispered, but it wasn’t enough; it didn’t change Becca’s expression. If anything, it made it worse. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you after. . .Nathan—”
Becca snapped upright, eyes glossy. “Stop.”
He didn’t stop. “I didn’t get what happened. I honestly thought you two were back together, so I didn’t think—” He hesitated. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me most. I know that’s why you really left—”
“You’re sorry I’m gone.”
Jase stared at her for a beat. “Yeah. I’m very sorry you’re gone. I wish I’d paid more attention, that I’d really listened—” He broke off when she made a sound like a soft sob and covered her mouth. “Too little too late?” he whispered.
“No, I. . .I don’t know.” She closed her eyes. “Yes.”
Jase closed his eyes. “I shouldn’t have come,” he said again, and when Becca didn’t contradict this, Jase blew out a breath. “I’m going to text you the venue info for tonight, okay? Please, just think about it.”
Becca unlocked the hut and stared at nothing, vibrating with so much energy she didn’t know what to do with herself. She couldn’t get her mind to wrap around anything, but surely there was plenty to do. Their Summer Bash was in a few days. There were a million things she could be doing.
She didn’t do any of them.
Footsteps sounded behind her, and she forced herself not to move. She knew Jase wouldn’t follow her in here, not after the things she’d said to him.
He’d run tail.
That was what he did. He’d wait her out and eventually come back, not referring to their fight or the things she’d said. He’d smile charmingly, sweet-talk, give her the I-can’t-help-myself eyes, and she’d sigh and forgive him. Help him. Whatever he needed. She’d seen Sam do this with his father, and she could do the same.
She strode to the counter and busied her hands, forcing a friendly smile so she could greet their customer. But it wasn’t a customer at all. It wasn’t Cole or Tanner, either. It wasn’t anyone she could fool with her friendly smile at all.
It was Sam.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t trust her voice, plus there was nothing to say. She figured he’d heard a whole hell of a lot more than she’d wanted him to, but she couldn’t change that. She could, however, do her best to brush it under the table. She was off the clock, in fact. She could go home and lick her wounds in private.
Normally when he showed up, he strode in with that innate, almost cat-like grace, always looking completely in control and completely at ease. But this time, he was still by the door, not moving toward her until she made eye contact. Then he walked to her, took her hand, and tugged her into him.
“I’m not going to talk about it,” she said, muffled against his shirt. “There’s only one thing I will do, and it is definitely not talking.”
Lowering his head, he brushed a kiss to the top of hers, and she braced for rejection. But he kept ahold of her hand as he closed the big, sliding front door with his other, even though it always took her two hands and all her weight.
“You’d better not be teasing me,” she said, as he took her to his warehouse. “Because that’d be just mean.”
The big hanging door was closed. He bypassed the front and took her to a side door she’d never noticed before, guiding her down a hallway she’d also never noticed. The first door there was his office. He unlocked it, gently pushed her in, then shut the door behind them.
“Sam—”
“Shh a second.”
Oh, hell no. She’d been quiet for most of her life—all of her life. She’d been good, and a people pleaser, and all sorts of things she could no longer be because they made her sink. So she opened her mouth to tell him what he could do with his Shh, but he kissed her.
Softly.
Gently.
She didn’t want soft and gentle, so she did what he’d done to her not all that long ago. She pushed him against the wall, trapped him there with her body, and tugged his face down to hers.
His hands came up to her hips, his fingers tightening on her. He was going to push her away, let go of her, but if he did, she’d go under for the count and drown. She could feel it. “Sam,” she whispered, unable to say more.
He must have heard it in her voice. That or he knew her well enough to read her mind because his arms immediately came around her, hard and warm. But his eyes. Damn it, his eyes weren’t filled with heat. They were worried and concerned.
For her.
The very last two things she wanted. “Hold me,” she said. Demanded. “Just for right now, hold me.”
“Becca,” he said, and oh, God, it was in his voice. So solemn. Sliding a hand up her back and into her hair, he fisted the strands, pulling her head up to look into his face. He stared down at her, searching her expression, his own steady.
“I’m not fragile.” She kissed a corner of his mouth, moving along his rough jaw to his ear, which she nipped, liking when he sucked in a harsh breath. “Don’t you dare treat me like I am. I’m not going to break, Sam.”
“Maybe you should.”
No. Hell no. “I just want to feel something good for a change,” she said. “Please, Sam, make me feel something good. Make us both feel something.”
“I can’t.”
She froze for a beat and then tried to shove free but he held on with a grip of inexorable steel. “I can’t do good,” he said softly, his mouth against hers, “but I can do great.”
As payback, she nipped his throat. And then the crook of his neck.
He let out a shuddery groan, lowered his head, and played her game. He took her lower lip between his teeth while she wrapped a leg around him and tried to climb him like a tree.
He slid his hand beneath her other thigh and hoisted her up with ease.
Then he turned and dropped her on the couch, following her down.
“Now?” she whispered hopefully, flinging her arms around his neck.
“Yeah. Now.”
And he kept his word. He wasn’t good. He was great.
Chapter 24
It took a while, but when Becca finally retained enough muscle memory to move, they dressed, and Sam brought her into the small kitchen. Kicking a chair from the wood table, he gestured for her to sit and strode to the fridge.
Still a little shaky—the aftershocks of emotional trauma compounded by really great sex—she sat and looked around. “You’re being awfully generous with the Man Cave today.”
“Maybe I like the sight of you in it.” He brought her a soda and a cup of ice, setting them on the table in front of her. Then he kicked out a chair for himself. “Drink,” he said.
She looked at the soda. “You got anything stronger? Say, a hundred proof?”
She expected a smile but didn’t get one. “No,” he said. “I don’t keep it here anymore.”
She opened the soda and poured it over the ice. “Anymore?”
He held her gaze. “I used to like it too much.”
“AA?”
“No. Cold turkey.”
She let out a breath and gulped down some soda. She set the glass to the table and wiped her mouth. “You decided to quit, and you quit. Problem solved. Why can’t everyone do that?”
“You have to quit for the right reasons,” he said.
Her gaze slid back to his. “What were your reasons?”
“I decided I wanted to stick around for the rest of my life.”
“Talk to me, Becca.”
“I’m not going to Seattle tonight to play in the concert with Jase.”
“I got that,” he said.
“I’ll have a panic attack if I do.”
“I got that, too.” His hands came up to her arms. Gently. Softly stroked up and down. And the gesture made her open her mouth and say more. More than she wanted to.
“The first time it happened,” she said, “I was seventeen. I’d just grown about eight inches in six months and was so awkward that my fingers didn’t work. I embarrassed everyone. My parents, Jase. . .” She shook her head.
“Stage fright at seventeen sounds perfectly normal,” he said. “Stage fright at any age is normal.”
“Maybe.” She blew out a breath. “I fought it. I managed to keep playing for ten more years, and though I loved it, it was a really difficult time. I used to take anxiety meds to play.” She paused. “Jase started stealing them. I let him. And then he moved on to . . . other stuff. Pain meds that he got from one of the other musicians. He got addicted.”
“Not your fault,” he said quietly.
She stared at him. “I stopped playing when he needed me most. I missed playing, but not enough to get over my fear.”
He covered her hand with his, entwined their fingers. “The Becca I know isn’t afraid of shit. Well, except for spiders.”
“And things that go bump in the night,” she added with a low laugh. She stared at their hands, his big and capable.
He squeezed her fingers gently. “Who’s Nathan?”
The question startled her—or maybe it was the sound of Nathan’s name on his lips. She pulled free of him too quickly and spilled her soda. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry!” She jumped up but Sam grabbed her hand.
“It’s nothing,” he said and, ignoring the mess, pulled her into his lap.
Becca curled into him and pressed her face to his throat. He cuddled her and let her settle, but not for long because this was Sam, and he never ran from a problem. Nope, he faced it head-on, however he felt was best—and that was never the easy way, or the fast way.
It was the right way.
She usually admired the hell out of that. “He was our manager,” she finally said, “and then, when I stopped playing, Jase’s manager.”
He stroked a hand down her hair. “He’s the one who hurt you,” he said.
She pressed her face harder into his throat and concentrated on just breathing him in. He smelled like the sea, like the wood he’d sanded earlier. He smelled like her, too, and that actually made her smile, but then suddenly she was all choked up.
Sam merely tightened his hold on her in a way that made her feel safe and warm and cherished, and gave her the moment she so desperately needed.
“He was a longtime family friend,” she said. “I had this big, fat, painful crush on him. Always did, from the time I was seventeen. He was the one who talked me into staying in music when I had that growth spurt and kept fumbling.”
“How old was he back then?”
“What?”
He gently pulled her face from its hiding zone and looked into her eyes. “You were seventeen, and he was. . .?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Big age difference for a crush.”
“Maybe that was part of it for me,” she said. Compared with Jase, or the boys her own age, Nathan had been a grown-up. He’d been smart and funny, and so damn handsome . . .
“He went for you,” Sam said. Not a question, a statement of fact.
“Not until I turned twenty-one. We . . . dated, a little bit. Nothing serious.” That hadn’t come until later.
“He kept you playing.”
“Yes,” she said. “Until after we broke up. After that, not even God could have kept me playing. But Nathan gave it his best shot.”
“Tell me,” he said, his dark, mossy-green eyes never leaving hers.
She drew an unsteady breath of warm, protective Sam and found the courage to keep speaking about it. “We’d been dating again,” she said. “More serious then, much more. We were exclusive. And I did try to play. I tried for Nathan, for Jase, for everyone. But I couldn’t do it.”
“Let me guess. Nathan didn’t like that.”
“It frustrated him. I frustrated him,” she admitted. “He got . . . different. Unhappy.” Mean, she thought. “I left him,” she said. “And it got a little ugly.”
Sam gently tilted her face and looked down at her, his expression quiet, steady. “How ugly?”
She closed her eyes, the memories she’d managed to mostly bury over the years coming back to her. She swallowed hard. “Ugly. I refused to give in to pressure and stay with him. But he was a family friend, and our paths continued to cross. A lot. He was big in my parents’ life, in Jase’s life, and he was important to his career as well, so I did my best to keep things as friendly as possible.”
“It’s bullshit that you had to do that.”
She opened her eyes. Sam’s gaze wasn’t his usual calm now. “I don’t know a lot about family,” he said, “but I do know that the loyalty should have gone to you.”
“Yes, but you don’t understand. We were all like family. Nathan’s mom and dad had gone to college with my mom and dad. All of us were tight, real tight—”
“Still bullshit,” Sam said. “Tell me more about the ugly business.”
She stared at his chest. His broad chest. There was a lot of strength in his body, and he’d honed it well, both on and off the water with physical labor. And yet she wasn’t afraid of that strength because he knew he’d never use it against her. He’d never push her around in anger and try to take what he wanted, especially if it wasn’t what she wanted. He’d never—
“Becca,” Sam said, cupping her face, drawing her attention back to the here and now.
“There were a lot of family gatherings,” she said. “My parents throw a big shindig on Sunday nights, and everyone goes. After I left Nathan, I stopped attending so he wouldn’t have to.”
Sam’s mouth tightened, telling her what he thought of her family allowing that to happen, but he didn’t say a word, just waited for her to continue.
“Last year, on my twenty-eighth birthday,” she said, “Mom and Dad and Jase talked me into having a party at their house.”
“Tell me they didn’t invite your ex to your own birthday party.”
“Like I said, he was a family friend, a really good one.”
“Shouldn’t have happened, babe.”
They were the words she hadn’t realized she needed to hear, and she let out a shuddery breath. “Nathan came. He said he wanted to hook up again, but I knew what he really wanted.”
“Which was?”
“Jase had been floundering since the last rehab attempt. He’d been showing up late to gigs, missing some altogether. . .”
Sam dropped his head, swearing softly beneath his breath before looking at her again. “Nathan wanted you to keep Jase in line.”
“Yes.”
“Not your job.”
“But it was. It was my job, Sam,” she said when he swore again, not so softly. “That’s been my job my whole life. But Nathan also