“Sure, sure,” he said quickly. “I was wondering if you were playing hooky or if you were gone for, uh, something else.” He cleared his throat. “Doesn’t matter. Tell me what’s complicated, and I’ll do my best.”
“The day of the rodeo was the first time I’d put on makeup since I got kidnapped.”
Wow, it sounded even crazier when she said it out loud. She covered her eyes with her hand and blurted it all out.
“I thought I was living my life, and suddenly I realized I let him change me, everything about me. Five years after it happened, and he’s controlling the way I look every day. How screwed up is that? I actually felt good at the rodeo, you know?” She took a breath. “So I went shopping. Except now everything that looks good shows off my body, and it’s like, why do I want to feel beautiful? Isn’t that an excuse for wanting to appeal to men? And I don’t want them to look at me, so why am I going to all this effort? But should I have to look and feel crappy just because I don’t want to date? So now I’m stuck because I have no idea what the right answer is.”
Her eyes popped open. Of course she had just word-vomited all of that on the one guy she might kind of want to flirt with. Except she wasn’t sure of that, either. She wanted to touch him, yeah. She just wasn’t sure she could handle it if he touched her, and she was well aware of how unfair and insane that was.
“Is that all?” he asked after a pause.
“All?” she squeaked. “Are you kidding me right now? I’ve been locked in a dressing room for over an hour. The employees are probably going to call the cops on me.”
“Hell, girl . . .” He chuckled. “It ain’t no crime to look beautiful. Doesn’t have to mean anything.”
A laugh jumped out of her. She pressed a hand to her chest as the tension started to ease.
“Buy yourself something nice,” he said. “Anything I need to do for you at the ranch so you don’t have to hurry back?”
“No, that’s okay. I’ll see you at dinner. I had an idea for tonight, so don’t bring anything over.” She let her head fall back against the wall. “LJ?”
“Mm-hmm?” A horse whinnied in the background, and she could picture LJ so clearly, an arm propped on a stall door, looking as perfectly at home in her barn as he always did in her kitchen.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Ain’t no thing at all. Have a good time.”
She dropped the phone to her lap, blowing out a long breath. The screen returned to her favorites list, and she found herself staring at Stacia’s name. It used to be they could tell each other anything. After her kidnapping, she hadn’t wanted to drag Stacia down into the depression she faced or talk about what had happened, but it had been years now. Was she going to keep letting that one thing define all her choices, from T-shirts to which person she called when she was upset?
She lifted her phone again and chose a different name.
“Andra? What’s, uh . . . what’s going on?” The tone of Stacia’s voice was a perfect measure of how long it had been since she last called.
“Hey, I ditched work today to go clothes shopping, and to be honest, I think I suck at it. Would you . . . Do you want to come meet me?”
“Did you get bucked off on your head?” Stacia snorted. “I buy motorcycle shirts online and hand-sew my own sequins because the world is too brain-dead to realize that some girls like a little glitter along with their RPMs. What about that makes you think I’m qualified to be your fashion adviser?”
She should make a joke. A normal person would make a joke.
Andra closed her eyes and whispered, “Because you’re my friend.” Even as she said it, she hoped like hell it was still true.
“Okay, your funeral,” Stacia said. “Where are you at? And hey, if Bill busts my ass for not getting the oil changed in the Chevy today, I’m totally telling him it was your idea.”
* * *
• • •
LJ shot a look toward Andra’s door, jumpy as hell that Bill would choose tonight to visit his daughter. But after her frantic call this afternoon, he wasn’t about to abandon her to a dinner alone.
“And then Stacia told the clerk where she could stick her push-up bra, which is how we got kicked out of T.J. Maxx.” Andra hip-checked him out of the way of the silverware drawer, and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
He turned away from the door. “I thought you said it was a JC Penney.”
“No, they didn’t kick us out of the JC Penney. They asked us to keep the volume down, which might as well have been the same thing.” She whirled past him on the way to the stove.
Even though he knew she was about to scratch the nonstick coating on her pot with that metal spoon, he didn’t say a word. He was enjoying her mood way too much to puncture it. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Only one day of shopping with your bestie and you’re giving me a run for my money on who the motormouth is around here.”
She snorted, stirring the tomato sauce. “Maybe I’ve been waiting for you to stop jabbering all the time so I could get a story in edgewise, hmm?”
“Hey, if you don’t like the conversation, you can always kick me out and invite your friend over, subject her to whatever experiment it is you have going there.” He struggled to keep a straight face so she’d rise to the bait. Sure enough, she planted one hand on a curvy hip and glared at him.
Stacia should take her shopping every day if it gave her this kind of spark. It wasn’t the better-fitting, dark-wash jeans, or even the subtle drape of the silky deep-green shirt that hugged Andra’s waist and didn’t drown her breasts in extra fabric. It was the shine in her eyes, the way every smile didn’t seem to have to fight its way onto her lips.
“Are you ready to hear the theory behind my magic, or are you going to keep making fun of me?”
“Oh, I’m ready for the magic to show up. I just kinda doubt it’s going to happen with your tin-can sauce there.”
She pointed the spoon at him. “Watch it, Delisle. Anyway, you said the secret to your mama’s spaghetti sauce was Italian sausage, lots of garlic, and a little bit of brown sugar.”
That and newly roasted tomatoes, fresh herbs, and about eight more spices, but if he didn’t want that spoon upside the head, he probably shouldn’t point it out. “Uh-huh.”
“I figured I could make it a ton quicker with canned sauce as long as I used fresh garlic, and I remembered I had big, soft cloves of garlic in a restaurant once . . .” She paused dramatically, her smile tugging a matching one onto his face. Until she picked up an unpeeled bunch of garlic and tossed it in the pot of boiling water.
“Oh!” He reached out to stop her, but it was too late.
“What?”
“I, ah . . . I guess I thought that water was for the pasta.” He tried not to look at the waterlogged garlic.
“It is.” She grinned. “Once the garlic is soft enough to put in the sauce, we’ll reuse the water and have garlic-flavored noodles.” She tipped her chin up. “Admit it, LJ.”
He must not have covered his horror at her culinary butchery well enough. “Admit what?”
“My spaghetti is going to be better than your mama’s.”
“No way.”
She advanced on him, pointing with the spoon. “Say, ‘Cassandra Lawler, you have won, and I’m going to text my mama right now to tell her we’ve been out-spaghettied.’”
He raised his hands. “Girl, you’re talking crazy.”
She clucked her tongue and went back to the stove. “Kicking your ass is what I’m doing.” She stirred the sauce.
“Don’t say that out loud. My ancestors can hear you, and they’re flipping over in their tombs.”
She banged the spoon against the edge of the pot. “Hear that, Delisles? That’s the sound of your family reputation biting the dust. Right here, right now.” She reached out with the same spoon and prodded her garlic e
xperiment to check it.
He groaned as he came up behind her to steal the spoon. “I can’t stand it. You’re boiling garlic with the skins on, girl! Boiling it!”
“Damn right I am.” She did a little shimmy. “Take that, old fogy Delisles.”
“Haven’t you heard of New Orleans voodoo?”
“I’ll voodoo your—”
He laughed, cupping a hand over her mouth. “Don’t say it! Talking like that, you’ll raise the spirits right up and—” All her weight dropped, and he broke off, catching her by instinct as she fell.
Thirteen
LJ’s first clue to what had happened was the choking gasp that fell from Andra’s lips. He lowered them both to the kitchen floor, her tensed body half in his lap.
“Shit. I’m sorry, that was stupid as hell. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Why had he put his hand over her mouth? There were about a hundred different ways she might have ended up cuffed to a bed, and at least fifty of them started with somebody coming up behind her and covering her mouth. “Shh,” he murmured, stroking his hands slowly down her arms. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
Last time this happened, she was rigid as a bridge beam. This time, she trembled so hard she was almost convulsing. It was so erratic that at first he didn’t realize the fluttering movements of her hands were pushing at him. She was trying to get away from him.
He let her go, flinching back. She curled against the cabinets, the ends of her hair catching a stray wisp of onion skin from the floor. Her arms locked against her chest, her lips starting to tinge with blue as her mouth gaped open and she tried to pull in air her lungs wouldn’t accept. She was going to suffocate right there while he watched.
“Andra? What do I do?” he begged.
Her eyes widened a little more, like his panic was contagious.
If he called her dad to pull her out of this, he’d kick LJ off the ranch, maybe worse. Think, damn it. “Hey, you left the burner on,” he attempted, remembering how her father had reminded her of her loose horse to pull her out of her other attack.
Andra didn’t answer, her lips twitching in airless gulps.
He reached to comfort her, and when she flinched, he bunched his hands into fists and shoved them against his thighs. “You’ve got to breathe, sweetheart. One breath, please. Just one.”
She started to tremble again, her cheeks stark white and shading to gray. She was looking right at him. Jesus, she knew who he was, she knew where she was, and she was still terrified. Her father had been right to try to keep him away. It wasn’t her memories that had frightened her. It was him.
Nausea roiled in his stomach, and he had to swallow saliva back to keep from throwing up.
He rolled up onto his knees before her. “Please,” he whispered, his voice as gentle as he knew how to make it. “Please be okay. I need you to be okay.”
Her little gasps were getting weaker. Even if he called her dad right now, Bill could never get here in time. Could a panic attack actually kill you? Why the hell hadn’t he researched that when he had all the time in the world? Back when she was still breathing.
Why didn’t she scream? Throw something at him? Shit, he wanted to scream. Anything but this terrible, breath-held howl of silence.
LJ grabbed her by both arms. “Hit me.”
Not a blink. Not even a flinch this time.
On the stove, the garlic water boiled over with a hiss of steam. He shook Andra, his knuckles smacking into the cabinet behind her. “Hit me, damn it!” he shouted.
She moved. Finally, finally she moved, her hand twitching against his chest as she pushed at him.
“Come on, you can do better than that.” He crowded right up into her face. “Come on, punch me. Hurt me. Make me leave you the fuck alone.”
She turned her face away and shoved, the strength coming back into her arms.
“Harder!” he shouted.
This time he got a fist. As he was drawing in a breath to yell at her again, another hit landed, and then she was screaming, coming at him with both hands at once. The punches slammed into his chest, his arms, battered into the thin skin over his ribs, each impact like an exhalation of relief. He’d never felt anything so glorious.
And then they stopped. She blinked at him, her gaze focusing on his, with her fist still upraised.
“Andra?”
Her eyes filled with tears, and it took everything he had left not to reach for her. Instead, he scooted back, giving her the space she’d fought for, that she so obviously needed. His touch only made everything worse.
A sob caught in her throat, and she moved, so much faster now that she was in his lap before he realized what she intended to do. Her arms clutched tight around his back.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “LJ, I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t have a prayer of resisting this time. He was holding her before he could debate leaving versus staying or even taking the pot off the stove.
They locked into each other, her tears wet against his neck, her breath huffing warm down the collar of his shirt. His ribs ached with the ferocity of her grip. He had no idea why she wanted to touch him now, when he was the one who had scared her nearly to death a moment ago. But then he didn’t care, because she was in his arms and she was okay.
He stroked a shaking hand down her tangled hair. He hadn’t been this crazy for a girl once in his whole life, and he couldn’t even get through cooking dinner without slamming her into a panic attack. Her father had warned him he would do this to her, and he wanted her so much that he didn’t listen. He never fucking listened. He just did what he wanted and damn the consequences, like his mama had always said. But this time he was hurting someone other than himself.
This time, he’d hurt Andra.
* * *
• • •
Andra pulled away first. LJ held her so gently, she thought he’d probably stay on the floor for the rest of his life if she asked him to, but his legs had to be falling asleep, and she needed a tissue. She rolled to the side, her butt hitting the hardwood floor next to his, and she let her head sag back against the counter. One second. She’d rest for one second, and then she’d get up.
The floor creaked beside her, and she cracked one swollen eyelid to see LJ stand and turn off the stove. Her nose was too clogged to smell, but she had probably burned something. So much for showing him up at cooking. So much for buying new clothes that made her feel like her younger, more confident self. It was distinctly the same old self slumped against this cabinet like a used dishrag.
A roll of toilet paper appeared in front of her, and she took it.
LJ lowered himself back to the floor, and their shoulders touched, creating a warm spot that counteracted the chill of the floor. “Can I ask you a question you’re not going to want to answer?”
She laughed. Sharper and louder than his question probably warranted, because how fucked up was this day? How much more blatant could the evidence be that her past still owned her present? That it always, always would.
“Knock yourself out.” She ripped off some toilet paper to blow her nose. The sound was rude and disgusting, but the sexy ship had sailed about half an hour ago.
He flipped around to face her, pulling his knees up and gripping one thick wrist in his opposite hand. His eyes were darkly circled and the tiniest bit red. “This is probably the last thing you want to talk about, but I was wondering how many different things trigger those.”
She shook her head, pulling her knees up to match his so she wouldn’t feel so limp. “They just happen, LJ.”
“I scared you. Both times.” His eyes flicked away, and when they came back, there was a light in them that was almost pleading. “But I thought if you knew of other things that caused them, too, or if we could nail down a pattern, maybe we could shake you loose of it.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“What, like I’m one of your colts and you just need to blow an air horn a couple of dozen times until I’m used to it?”
His shoulders hunched and he dropped his knees, sitting cross-legged instead. “I don’t know. There’s got to be something we can do, right? They’re not . . . permanent.”
“I’m not a stupid animal, LJ.” Her hands fisted around the tissue, and she gritted her teeth. She shouldn’t be yelling at him after what she had put him through, but seriously? “I can think through my own fear. I do it a thousand times every freaking day, okay? But this?” She threw an arm out. “My brain, my body, my everything locks down. I can’t control it, and it’s like I woke up in that room all over again and everything I took for granted about life was gone.” She shut her mouth. Fast, hard, because he didn’t need to share that moment with her. No one did.
She shoved to her feet.
The kitchen was a wreck. Of course it was. She had been totally butchering dinner, but she’d been in too good of a mood to care if her experiment failed. She grabbed the pot with the shreds of garlic floating in it and dumped the contents into the sink. A cloud of steam billowed up from the water and fogged the window above it, blurring the sunset light in the meadow grass out front.
“You want me to go?” His voice was quiet, and he was still on the floor.
She dropped the pot in the sink and gripped the edge of the counter, letting her head fall. “No. I’m sorry, LJ. None of this is your fault, and I’m sorry you keep ending up in the middle of it.”
“The hell it isn’t.” He shook his head. “I’m the trigger. That’s what you don’t want to say.” He jerked to his feet and headed for the door.
“Even just the sound of metal creaking will do it,” she said, and he stopped. “Smells, dozens of them. I don’t even know what they all are. One specific brand of laundry detergent, spilled beer.” She swallowed. “It’s not being scared so much as being startled that triggers it. When I don’t know it’s coming.”
He was still looking toward the exit, so she reached for his arm, wanting him to stay but not wanting to beg. His muscles flexed under her hand.
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