Unbreak Me

by Michelle Hazen

  The butter began to melt and slide, pooling into the far edge of the pan and filling the kitchen with its warmth and aroma.

  “Dad doesn’t care that you’re black. But he’s not making any sense. It’s almost like he hates you, and he’s making up reasons why.”

  He snorted. “Sure. He has a weird feeling about me, like I might be trouble. That’s how it works. Nobody thinks they’re racist, Andra. They just think some people can’t be trusted, especially not with their daughters.”

  She paused, the paper towel wadded in front of her. “I just can’t imagine my dad . . . But maybe you’re right. He kept saying how different you were from me, and he doesn’t even know you.” She shoved the paper towel away. “That’s not all of it, though. He thinks we have nothing in common, but mainly he thinks I’m not capable of having a relationship. And that by spending time with you, I’m leading you on.”

  Heat roared through LJ’s ears. He flipped off the burner and set the pan aside, going back to the table.

  He pulled out a chair across from Andra, his jaw muscles locked tight as he propped his elbows on his knees so he’d be closer to her height. Then he looked up at her. “Two things.”

  She nodded, eyes on the wadded paper towel she was shredding in her lap.

  “First, there ain’t any ‘leading on’ between me and you. Ever.”

  Her gaze jerked up to his, and he watched it flicker toward his bare shoulders and back to his face.

  “I got no expectations, and we’re both free to do anything we please. Anything that feels good to us, you got that? You wanna come to my door and kiss me into next week, you do that. If I want to make you a sandwich in my apartment after your father made it damn sure clear he didn’t want us alone together? I’m gonna do that, too.” Louisiana tasted thick in his throat as he spoke, but he didn’t try to clean up his roots. He wanted her to hear the truth of him, and he couldn’t do that with any fake university accent. “‘Leading on’ is for assholes who think the world owes them something.”

  The corner of her mouth turned up. It wobbled a little, but it was kissing cousins with a smile, and he’d take that. Hell yes, he’d take that.

  “What’s the second thing?” she asked, her voice still more hesitant than he’d like.

  LJ made himself calm and neutral, the way he had to for the colts. And then he asked, “What do you think about what your dad said?”

  “He’s right.” Her eyes started to water again. “I don’t want him to be, but he is. I never meant to be a hermit, LJ.”

  His eyes narrowed, but he nodded. She ate dinner with him almost every night, but he’d bulldozed his way into her house and into those cooking lessons. As far as he’d seen, it was the only time she spoke to another person about something that wasn’t a horse. So as much as it grated on him, he didn’t argue with her assessment of herself. He just let her talk.

  “After the attack, there was the trial. I went back to college, because I wasn’t about to let that jerk chase me away.” She looked away, moving his salt shaker so it was lined up next to the pepper. “Everybody knew what had happened.”

  He was all the wrong sizes. His throat too small to breathe through, his shoulders too big to stay still. His hands clamped uselessly together, dangling between his knees. He ignored all the jigsaw pieces of himself and listened.

  “When they looked at me, it seemed like the filth of what had happened was all over me.” Her voice rasped against the silence in his kitchen. “I had to say, out loud in court, what Gavin did.”

  He shook his head, his gut twisting acidly. It wasn’t right, to make somebody speak to strangers about something so private. Where was the justice in that?

  Chair legs squeaked over laminate flooring as he pushed to his feet. He couldn’t change what had happened, but he needed to do something for her. Besides, he had faced enough hard days with an empty belly to know it was better if you didn’t have to.

  “I’m sorry,” Andra said. “You probably don’t want to hear about all this.”

  He flicked on the burner again. “You talk,” he said. “I’ll cook.” He looked back and caught her eyes from across the kitchen. “Okay?”

  Her head tipped slightly to the side, like a surprised nod. “Yeah.” She took a breath. “Okay.”

  He ripped off a paper towel, wiped out the pan, and then put in fresh butter to melt while he took down some sourdough bread.

  “I didn’t drop out. I kept going to class, all the way through graduation.”

  “Good.” From the fridge, he chose cheddar and his tiny, prized chunk of parmesan and knocked the door closed with his elbow. “Glad you didn’t let that bastard ruin a degree you earned.” He dropped the cheese in front of her and retrieved a grater and a plate. “Can I put you to work?”

  “Oh, yeah, of course.” She pulled the grater toward her. “My senior year was hell, and I spent a lot of it in courtrooms. When that was over, I came back to the ranch, and I just wanted everyone to stop looking at me. My family didn’t know how to talk to me anymore, and conversation was weird, stilted, when I was around. So I took my share of the past profits from the business and built my cottage. I wanted to be left alone for a minute—that was all. Around that time, Dad gave me Gracie, and I threw myself into training her.”

  “He gave you that horse?” LJ flicked a glance at her before he dropped a piece of bread on top of the melting butter.

  Andra smiled. “I know, right? A palomino quarter horse with top-notch bloodlines and four white socks isn’t something a good businessman can spare to put in his daughter’s stocking at Christmas.” She started grating cheese, her eyes dry now that she had something to do with her hands. “It helped, though. The first time I got back on a horse was the first time my body felt right again. It was good to come home, but I’ve spent too much time just making it through the day, you know?”

  “Yeah,” LJ said. “I do know.”

  After Katrina, it was all about getting people off the rooftops. Then being able to find a bottle of water for Mama when she was thirsty. A hose to rinse the mud off his only set of clothes. He went to college a few years late, partly because there was nowhere to graduate from high school in the year after the flood. And partly because he couldn’t concentrate on solving for x when what he needed to solve was how to build a roof that kept the rain out with no money and even fewer skills. But he didn’t say any of that, because Andra needed to talk tonight, not listen.

  “I thought I was doing okay,” she said, frowning down at the plate as she grated even faster. “And then today, it was so obvious . . . this isn’t the life I want. I love the horses, but all I think about is who has a sore foot and the point rankings our animals are pulling in the show circuit. I don’t want that to be all I am.”

  He flipped the bread to its other side and came over to where she’d grated nearly all his cheese. “Can I borrow a little of that, do you think?”

  She sat back, blushing. “Sorry. Think I got carried away.”

  “With the cheese, or with me?” He winked.

  She groaned, dropping her face into her hands. “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”

  “Depends.” He sprinkled the cheese onto the toasted bread, flipped off the burner, and put a lid on the pan. “You give me a second kiss to think about, and I might just forget to tease you about the first one.”

  He turned around and leaned his hips back against the counter, crossing his arms. He hadn’t wanted to leave her to get a fresh shirt, but when she peeked over her hands at him and her gaze dipped to his abs, he was very happy he hadn’t gotten dressed.

  He tipped his chin up, just enough to catch her attention. “I’ll forget it,” he said quietly. “If you want me to.”

  She blew out a breath, her hands dropping. “I—”

  He waited, his heart thumping so loud he was afraid he wou
ldn’t be able to hear her over the drum of it.

  “I wanted to see if I could feel anything.” She glanced at him and then away. “It felt good.” Her voice trembled. “But I just . . . I don’t know if I want any part of all that, ever again.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough.” That’s exactly where he’d thought she was at until she’d up and kissed him. But she hadn’t asked him to forget about it, and he’d told her where he stood—and that she could stand anywhere she pleased when it came to him. Too bad her daddy didn’t agree.

  LJ lifted the lid off the pan, scooped her sandwich onto a plate, and cut it once diagonally, the cheddar and parmesan melting out the sides.

  He took it to the table and slid it in front of her with an easy smile. “For now, how about you just eat your sandwich, Rodeo Queen?”

  Ten

  Andra pushed up the sleeves of her sweater, once red but now faded to a rusty pink. She tucked an unraveling thread back into the cuff before she pulled the cutting board across the table and took a mushroom out of the bowl. After three days of rain, her whole house smelled of sagebrush and wet, dark soil, even though she’d showered and changed into clean clothes when she got home. LJ looked like he’d changed, too, but his jeans were wet up to the knees from walking through the tall grass to get over here. His shirt was dry, though, a soft cotton Henley that clung to his shoulders before falling loosely over the curve of his lower back.

  She let herself look an extra minute because she was sitting at the table and he was facing away from her, working over two different skillets on the stove. The thickness of his shoulders did something deep inside her, and she wasn’t entirely sure what to call it. She imagined running her hands over his back, fitting her palms into the curve of his spine above the waistband of his jeans. Thanks to the night she’d surprised him at home, she knew how he looked without a shirt. Now she couldn’t stop imagining how it would feel to do more than look.

  The thought of touching him was like the longing for a fluffy blanket on a frosty night, but it had a zing of danger, too, like a beautiful horse you knew was too wild to ride. She didn’t know what the hell to do with feelings that argued with each other that way.

  She shivered and tucked one of her legs up under her on the chair, tugging the hem of her sweater out to cover more of her. LJ set down the spatula and crossed to the thermostat in the living room, bumping it up a couple of notches.

  “I’m fine—don’t waste electricity,” she said. “I’m already wearing a sweater in June, for crying out loud.”

  “How am I supposed to concentrate on cooking with your teeth chattering away over there?” He looked beside the couch, and then he opened the closet. “You’ve been getting soaked to the skin all day going from the indoor arena to the barns. A sweater isn’t going to cut it. Where are your throw blankets?”

  “Don’t have any.”

  His hand started to rise to the phone in his back pocket, and she threw a mushroom, nailing him above one hip bone. “Don’t even think about it.” She got up and grabbed her barn jacket from the hook by the door, spreading it over her legs when she sat back down. “There, happy?” He laughed, and his camera phone clicked. “Damn it, LJ! Don’t you and your mama ever get tired of laughing at me? I have plenty of blankets. For my bed. Which is where people use blankets.”

  Her scowl was only halfhearted. It was hard to be mad at a guy who texted his mother daily, even if they seemed to think she was some kind of barbarian for being clueless about words like “braise” and “poach,” as if they came up so often in conversation.

  “We’re not laughing at you,” he protested, though the twitching of his lips gave him away as he typed out his text message. “This is for your own good. Once she sees what you’re using for a throw blanket, she’ll have one knitted up for you by Monday morning.” He put his phone away, picked up the mushroom she’d thrown, and went back to the vegetables he was sautéing. “If we get another three days of rain, you might be grateful by then.”

  Three days of rain. Which meant it had been three days since the rodeo, three days since she’d kissed him, and he hadn’t made a single move. In fact, he hadn’t changed toward her at all. He was casual, playful, his jokes were dirty as ever, and his hands never strayed past a quick tug to the end of her braid or a brush across her shoulders, whether they were in the barn or in the privacy of her house.

  She propped her chin on her hand. She’d spent every one of those days thinking the word “relationship” into tatters, along with everything that might mean, and she still didn’t know if the life she wanted for herself would ever include a man. What she did know was that she wanted to explore the curves of LJ’s shoulders. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure that’s what he wanted. Maybe he just liked having company at dinnertime. She couldn’t imagine him eating ready-made meals at the main house, with the way his hands were so quick and competent on a skillet handle or a whisk, fitting each tool as if they were made for that purpose alone.

  Outside, the rain picked up, the steady drum on the roof getting louder.

  She dropped her hand onto the table. “LJ?”

  He picked up the skillet and gave it a flick so all the bell pepper slices leaped up and flipped themselves over. “Mm-hmm?”

  “What did you think when I kissed you?”

  He shouted with laughter. “Probably exactly what you’d expect a man to be thinking just then, Andie-girl.”

  She scowled at his back. “I’m serious.”

  “Me too.” He switched to the other skillet, turning the zucchini slices for their stir-fry. “I was halfway through my first glory hallelujah when I realized you were crying, and that pretty much cured me of the idea that the kissing had anything to do with me.”

  Of course it’d had to do with him. She’d been lonely, and his house was the only place she’d thought to go. She sat back, the wooden chair creaking. But then, she hadn’t really hung out with other men since she’d been kidnapped. If her dad weren’t so overprotective and the ranch were overrun with eligible bachelors, maybe she would have been kissing them instead.

  Her throat clamped closed at the idea. Strange mouths, strange men. She’d take her empty house a thousand times over that. Of course, they wouldn’t be strange if she spent as much time with them as she did with LJ. But which of the men in town would she even ask out? She knew all of them, and she wouldn’t want to share the tiny space of her kitchen with a single one of them.

  “C’mere,” LJ said, cocking his head to beckon her over since both his hands were occupied.

  Andra’s heart crashed up into her ribs. She pulled the jacket off her lap and set it aside with shaking hands. The few steps across the kitchen to his side might as well have been miles, and for the first time in weeks, she felt how intimate it was to be alone with him in this house. Her gaze jumped from his relaxed face to his hands, busy with the skillet and spatula, trying to guess his intent.

  Maybe he would turn and kiss her, as confident as he always was. When she’d kissed him, it had been fast and hard, her thoughts whirling, so she hadn’t had time to catalog all the things she’d been wondering about ever since. His lips looked sensual, soft. She wanted to know if they’d feel different if she were gentle, exploring his shape instead of crushing him to her. What it would be like to have his chest touching hers.

  She swallowed. She never would have had the courage to kiss him the first time if she’d had this much time to think it over.

  “The thing with cooking vegetables,” LJ said, “is that they’re all different. They all have a temperature that will ruin them, and right below is the sweet spot, only enough heat to get a perfect caramelization.”

  She blinked and startled color rose to her cheeks. This was about cooking? Quickly, she looked at the skillet, hoping she hadn’t done anything to give away what she’d been thinking. “Is that why you’re doing them in different skillets?”
>
  “That, and you don’t have a wok, sad as that is. Anyway, if you do it in the right order in a wok, you can get them to all finish at the same time. Since you’re a beginner, though, I thought it’d be best to master one at a time.” He handed her the spatula and started discussing the differences between the needs of zucchini and those of bell peppers.

  He smelled like pine trees and rain. Andra stared down at the stove, trying to focus. That was not remarkable. Everything smelled like pine trees and rain this week. It was more like something about being caught between the heat of his skin and the heat of the stove, where olive oil and bright-red bell peppers sizzled. That damn rainwater scent on the smooth skin of his chest that she could picture all too clearly despite his shirt.

  “Okay, but how can you tell when they’re ready?” she asked.

  “Bite ’em.” He grinned and snagged a bell pepper out of the skillet, white teeth flashing as he popped it into his mouth. “But if you aren’t so brave and dashing as me, or if your tongue burns easy, poke ’em with a fork.”

  He got one out of the drawer and folded it into her fingers, guiding her hand as they tested one of the pieces of the bell pepper. His hand was huge, each finger so much wider than hers, and not at all hesitant about holding her. Her heart beat so fast, spots danced in front of her eyes.

  “You should feel the tension of a little resistance,” he said, “but softness, too.”

  She nodded, backing up as she tried to ignore the tingles rippling up her inner thighs. “Right, yup. Got it.”

  He let her go, cocking an eyebrow at her expression. “You feeling okay? You’re looking a little flushed, as my mama might say.”

  She leaned against the refrigerator where it stuck out from the counter, and closed her eyes. She was not imagining the double meaning to his every word. Nobody’s mind was lower in the gutter than LJ’s. He was flirting with her, had probably always been flirting with her, according to her father. It was just a different brand of flirting than she knew what to do with. All possibility, no pressure. And he was certainly doing it on purpose. The man missed nothing. Not the tiniest flick of a horse’s ears, not the morning he brought her coffee because her belt had missed one loop on her jeans and he figured that meant she’d been in a rush that day.