Unbreak Me

by Michelle Hazen

  “It wasn’t only that, Andra. You looked at me and you knew me.” His voice went hoarse. “And you were still afraid.”

  Her hand fell away as he turned and paced two steps, scrubbing both hands over his close-cropped hair.

  She needed to say something, do something, so that this moment wouldn’t be the end of whatever this thing was between them. “I can’t help it,” she whispered. “It’s not your fault. It just happens.”

  “It doesn’t. Not according to your daddy. Not until I started shoving my way into your life because I didn’t want to wait until you invited me. Damn it.” He laced his fingers behind his head and stared up at the ceiling, one of his knuckles popping when it clenched too hard.

  He was so wound up it made Andra’s heart pound to take a step closer, but she did it anyway. She was taking a chance she knew him well enough that what she was about to do might be the right thing instead of exactly the wrong one. She hated to see him upset, but at the same time . . . it was for her. And that simple thought melted her entirely.

  She ducked inside his bent elbow and pushed up onto her toes, laying a kiss on his cheek.

  He blinked and dropped his hands. “What was that for?”

  “For caring,” she said softly. “And for not waiting for an invitation.”

  The wound in his deep-brown eyes was one she had no idea how to heal, because it ripped deeper with every word out of her mouth. “I care a hell of a lot more than you think, Andra.” He stared straight over her head, toward the exit, but he didn’t move. “I hate that I’m making everything harder on you just by being here.”

  “You’re not. You’re making it . . .” She touched his side, and when he didn’t pull away, she stepped closer, warmth spreading through her at the intensity of his reaction. “Different. Good different.”

  “Didn’t look like good from here.” He blew out a breath. “Fuck, those things scare me. You know it?”

  “I know.” After a second, she let her hands settle on his waist. When that seemed okay, she slid them around to the curve of his lower back, the muscles to either side of his spine filling her palms. “I’m sor—”

  “Don’t apologize. Just let me hold on to you for a second, okay?” His arms came around her, and he rested his chin on top of her head. “I don’t want your daddy to be right about me, Andie-girl.” The words were so low they were no more than a rumble in the places where his neck touched her forehead.

  “I don’t want him to be right about me, either,” she whispered back. And she didn’t let go.

  Fourteen

  A crisp wind blew rain in across the hills, but birdsong still drifted in through the stable windows, like Montana birds were too tough to pack it in for the weather. LJ patted the silky neck of the colt he’d just finished riding, and grinned. He could understand those birds. The air was so clean up this close to the mountains, he never wanted to go inside, either.

  His phone shrilled from his pocket, and Snap jerked away from him, burning the reins across his palm. Sucking in a breath, LJ winced and let the phone ring as the colt paused, stiff-legged and wild-eyed. It was going to take more than two rings to get past that reaction, but he didn’t dare wait more than three.

  He answered the phone. “Hel—”

  “LJ Delisle, what are you doing that’s so important you can’t answer the phone when your mama calls?”

  “Juggling colts, that’s all.” He cleared his throat and focused on dropping his accent as he led Snap up the barn aisle. Mama had stretched her every penny when he was in college so she could send him money to supplement his scholarships and meager work-study paychecks. The least he could do was show her she’d gotten something for her investment. “How are you?”

  “Well, I’m fixing to mail you some things this week. Some green tea—I know you hate it, but it’s good for the antioxidants—some fish fry in case you’re getting low, and a new Tai Chi video I love. Don’t you dare lie about doing it this time, either. It’s good for your joints, and you’ll thank me when you’re old. Oh, and Andra’s afghan. I hope she’s not one of those prissy types that needs a blanket to be all one color, now. It costs the earth for a ball of yarn these days, so I had to make do with what I had lying about the house. How’s that girl coming along in the kitchen?”

  He smiled and used one hand to slip the bridle off Snap’s ears. “I must be better at teaching horses than humans. She tried to boil garlic last week. Didn’t peel it or noth—anything. She threw the whole bunch in the pot, skins and all.”

  “She didn’t!” Mama clucked her tongue.

  When he took off the bridle, Snap threw his head, so LJ pinched the phone between his shoulder and ear so he could repeat the process a few more times, waiting for the horse to calm. “I can’t get Camellia Brand beans up here, but if you mailed me some, Andra might be able to manage red beans and rice. She’s about a year off from being ready for gumbo.”

  Mama sighed. “Folks always act like making a simple roux for gumbo is some kind of voodoo magic. Pure foolishness. How’s your job? Are you getting along okay with your boss? They’re his horses, LJ, and you know that means you got to do things his way.”

  “He mostly stays out of my way when it comes to the training.” On the fourth try, Snap released the bit without a fuss. LJ swapped bridle for halter and patted the horse, thinking of the whack his uncle would have given the colt for throwing his head. “You should see the stock they have up here, Mama. Did I tell you Andra loaned me her horse for the rodeo? King Cash and Allure bloodlines, and she didn’t bat an eyelash. She’s got that mare tuned up something beautiful, I tell you.”

  She laughed. “You never met a horse you didn’t like, even if it was cross-eyed, knock-kneed, and mean as a stepped-on snake. And what do you mean, ‘when it comes to the training’? Are you butting heads with the owner on something else?”

  LJ gritted his teeth. He should have chosen his words more carefully. “He, ah . . . he’s not so hot on the idea of me hanging around his daughter.”

  “Lyndon Johnson, tell me you’re not risking your good job over some pretty girl.”

  He swallowed a groan as he clipped Snap into the crossties. “Mama, please don’t call me that.”

  “I’ll call you that as many times as I have to so you can remember the great man I named you for. I guarantee President Johnson didn’t get to the White House without learning to pick his battles.”

  “Actually, he ramrodded through anything he wanted, from civil rights bills to the Vietnam War. It’s part of what—”

  “I am not done speaking. I know you think you don’t need to take orders from any living soul, son, but until you can pay your own paycheck, you got to swallow down that pride of yours and behave.”

  LJ jerked the cinch loose and hauled the saddle off the colt’s back. “I’m only giving her cooking lessons.”

  She snorted. “You think he don’t know what two young folks get up to, alone in a kitchen? Mind your manners and stay away from that girl if that’s what your boss wants. You wanna be exercising horses for a hundred dollars a week and arguing with your uncle over the right way to do every blessed thing? Well, then keep it up.”

  “You told me to teach her to cook!” LJ’s voice spiked enough that Snap balked, throwing his head and yanking on the crossties.

  “Don’t you raise your voice at me, young man. When you’ve lived twenty more years and raised a child of your own, you can tell me my business. Until then, you close your mouth and listen to somebody who knows better than you do. You hearing me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled, kicking the tack room door out of his way and hoisting the saddle up onto a rack. The phone slipped from between his ear and his shoulder, and he caught it before it fell.

  “Now I’ll send up those red beans quick so you’ll have ’em, then mail the blanket slow and cheap, but I don’t—” She broke off
with a little gasp, and then there was silence on the line.

  “Mama? Mama, are you okay?”

  He left the tack room and paced down the barn aisle. She still didn’t answer. He exploded out into the sun with long strides, as if that would put him any closer to Louisiana than he’d been inside.

  “Mama?!”

  “I’m fine. Stop shouting in my ear.” Her voice wasn’t right. Not weak, but . . .

  “What are you doing home?” It was too early for her to be off work yet, even with the later time zone there. “Why aren’t you at work?”

  “I took the day off. Now tell me more about—”

  “What do you mean, you took the day off? What for? Are you feeling all right?”

  “Don’t you interrupt your elders, LJ. I have been working since before you took your first breath, and if I want to take a day off, that’s my business. When you’ve lived twenty more years and raised a child of your own, maybe then I’ll need you to tell me how I should spend my time. Until then, you mind your own affairs, you understand me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said automatically, but he didn’t remember to blink until his eyes started to burn from the glare of the sun. Was she sick? It could be simply a cold, or she could be headed into another flare-up. “Are you having an okay time getting the groceries?” he ventured. “No problem getting them home on your own?”

  “I’m just fine. Don’t you worry none about me.” She dropped her voice. “Son, I’m proud of you, being neighborly and looking after that girl. But if her daddy’s your boss, you have to do what he says. It’s just that your heart’s too big and so’s your temper. I know you don’t want to hear your conscience telling you the truth, but you’re grown now. It’s your job to start listening.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, the beginnings of a headache throbbing behind his temples. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now, I’ll mail your package later this week, so keep an eye out. I love you, son. Mind your—”

  “Mind my manners, I know. I love you, too, Mama.” He hesitated, searching for another question that might give him a better idea of whether she was sick, but she’d already hung up.

  He tapped the phone against his lips, squeezing it too tightly. If she was headed into another one of her lows, she’d have to tell him because he’d need to take some time off to help out. He was probably worrying for nothing, when he should be focused on his career.

  It wasn’t only this job he was looking at losing. The horse-showing world was small and gossipy, not to mention whiter than a snowstorm. If Bill Lawler talked his reputation down, he’d have a hard time getting any job in the equine world that paid better than working a drive-through window. His mama was right. The smarter thing would be to do as he was told instead of pretending there would be no consequences for pursuing what he wanted.

  Andra had said he was making things better for her, not worse. She was the one whose opinion mattered. And yet if her dad knew he was still spending time alone with Andra, he’d lose everything. His chance with her, his chance at a new life. Any possibility that he was actually helping, like she’d claimed.

  “What, so you think you can take up the whole barn aisle, not leave anything for the rest of us?”

  The sound of Andra’s voice felt like the whole world tapping him on the shoulder. His pulse jumped, and he cleared his throat before he turned around, the lightness of her tone tugging up the corner of his lips. “I wouldn’t dare. Not if it meant taking on your fists again.”

  “What do you mean, again?” Andra scoffed, lifting Snap’s crossties so she could lead a bay gelding underneath to the next set. “It’s not like I beat you up every time you take the crossties closest to the tack room. Though maybe I should.”

  Screw her dad. Andra sounded happy. When he’d first started working here, she’d never sounded like anything, because she’d hardly spoken.

  LJ stuffed his phone into his pocket and raised his eyebrows. “I was talking about what you did to me last night.” He started unbuttoning his shirt.

  Andra stopped with her hand on the crossties. “Uh . . . LJ?”

  He sauntered closer, enjoying the way her eyes followed every button. He spread the two sides of his shirt open, and his smirk widened into a grin. “See that?”

  “Oh my God. I didn’t.”

  “You sure enough did. Look.” He took her hand, fitting her knuckles to the bruise on his ribs. “Fits like Cinderelly’s shoe. This beauty’s going to go every shade of purple before it fades, I can tell. I’m impressed.”

  Her gelding flicked an ear, and LJ looked up to see Jason. Andra’s brother stood alongside a buckskin mare, his brow furrowed as his eyes bounced back and forth between LJ’s bare chest and Andra.

  LJ took a step back, clearing his throat as he began to button his shirt. Yeah, if this little scene got back to Bill, he’d be on the curb by morning, his bags hitting the pavement beside him. Especially if Jason caught a glimpse of that bruise.

  “Uh, what are you guys doing?” Jason asked.

  “Buttoned my shirt wrong this morning.” LJ smiled tightly. “Andra was kind enough to point it out.”

  Andra’s head jerked toward him, but she didn’t call him on the lie.

  “Okay,” Jason said, his brow creasing deeper. He didn’t move.

  LJ raised his eyebrows, taking a step forward. “You need some help with that mare? She sure was giving you hell earlier.”

  Jason set his jaw. “She’s fine.”

  “Well, I’d better get to work. More than enough colts around here to keep me busy.” LJ popped the quick releases on Snap’s crossties, dropping the ropes so the clips banged against the stall doors on either side of the aisle.

  It took every bit of self-control he had not to knock Jason’s shoulder out of his way when he stalked by. He didn’t look at the other man, because he hated that fucking expression. He’d seen it last week, too, when he got pulled over taking one of the ranch trucks to get an oil change. The local sheriff didn’t happen to think anybody who looked like him could afford something that shiny. It only got worse when the man approached the truck, his hand drifting to the butt of his service pistol as he took LJ’s measure.

  He’d spent his whole life trying to be a person who didn’t trigger that suspicion.

  Seeing it in Jason’s green eyes, so like his sister’s, was nearly unbearable.

  Fifteen

  Andra was blowing on a molten-hot bite of Salisbury steak when her cell phone rang. She flinched, the cardboard tray holding her dinner folded, and the meat slithered out onto the tile with a wet plop. “Ugh!” She dropped the tray on her kitchen island, sucked the fork clean before tossing it into the sink, and picked up her phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey there, Rodeo Queen.” LJ’s deep voice rumbled through the phone. “You up for dinner tonight?”

  Her breath hitched in her throat. “Um, yes?”

  The day after her last panic attack, he’d said he was going up to the main house to eat with the crew. The second day, she’d waited for him to come up until nearly midnight, and then had a Pop-Tart for dinner. The third day, she’d waited until nine before she ate without him. Today, she’d pulled something out of the freezer by six thirty, her mood so heavy the microwave had to beep three times before she remembered to lift her hand and open the door.

  LJ was too nice to tell her he’d rather not spend his suppertime with somebody who could freak out at any second, but she figured the fact that he was staying away said plenty. And then the phone rang. Now she didn’t know what to think. Where had he been the last three days?

  “Good, good,” he said. “Hey, I finally made you something from back home, but nothing southern cooks up quick, so it’s been on the stove since morning. Any chance of you coming down to my place to eat tonight?”

  Her gaze cut over to the soggy brown d
isc of meat on her floor. “Of course, yeah. What time?”

  “Whenever you feel like wandering my way. Door’ll be open.”

  She hung up, staring at her phone. He’d sounded as relaxed as he always did. It was hard not to think of the arguments she’d been having with him in her head for the past few days, about why he seemed to have quit their cooking lessons over something she couldn’t help.

  When she saw him in person, she wasn’t certain she’d have the guts to say any of the things she’d been thinking. Or even if she should. A normal person wouldn’t have been hurt just because their friend decided to eat dinner elsewhere for a few days. But then, she wanted him to be more than her friend. She just wasn’t sure how much more.

  The Salisbury steak succumbed to paper towels and some cleaning spray. Even in the garbage can, the gravy smelled so bad she took the trash out before she left. She’d been eating them for years and never remembered hating the scent before. Maybe the generic brand she’d bought this time had changed its recipe or something.

  She hopped on Gracie bareback for the short ride so she wouldn’t have to take the trip over the hill alone. As they descended toward the ranch, the sun drooped low against the flank of the pine-fringed hills, sending golden light across the pastures that did nothing to warm the chill beneath her ribs.

  At the main ranch, she found a paddock full of geldings to put the mare in, threw her a flake of hay, and walked toward the employee apartments. She knocked on LJ’s door, her hand jittering so the sound came out more urgent than she’d intended.

  He answered with one corner of his mouth lifting into a smile. “What you knocking for? Afraid I was naked?”

  She snorted, feeling almost normal again as she came inside. “Why wouldn’t I be? You can hardly ever keep a shirt on.”

  “My mama always complained about the same thing when I was a kid.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Make yourself at home. Sorry it isn’t much down here. I figured it would be less obvious than me walking over there lugging a pot of beans.”