by Lexi Blake
She’d never asked. She’d heard the rumors, but she’d always thought they were made-up stories. No way did a guy give up sleeping with the head cheerleader to pick up a friend and then proceed to spend the rest of the night on her couch watching sitcoms and eating popcorn.
“She was mighty pissed with me. I don’t think she spoke to me the rest of the school year, and she left for Dallas after that.” His unspoken words were that many of their classmates had left. So many friends had gone and found lives elsewhere.
“Why would you do that?”
He swallowed once, and she thought he might not answer her. “I realized I didn’t want to be with her. I wanted to be with you.”
Tears popped up. These tears were frustrated. “I don’t understand you.” She took a long breath. It didn’t matter. That was long past. “You’re crazy, Bo.”
He stepped close to her. Very close. She could feel the heat of his body. “I am crazy, Mouse. I have been for a really long time. But what if I wasn’t crazy anymore? What if I came to my senses?”
The world felt like it slowed down as Bo’s hand cupped her cheek. He smiled down at her.
“I’ve never told you how beautiful you are. That was definitely crazy.” He smoothed back her hair.
“Bo.” She wasn’t sure what was happening. Her breath hitched.
“You’re gorgeous, Mouse. And I love your hair down. You should always wear it down.” He leaned over and pressed his lips to hers.
Warm. Soft and yet strong. Bo’s kiss immediately lit up her every nerve. He’d pecked her on the cheek before, but this was utterly different. Those light busses had been a mere affectionate shift of lips against skin, but this was something more. This was purposeful. His lips brushed hers once and then again, her mouth opening under his. His tongue pushed into her mouth, a luscious treat. He pulled her against his body.
She’d dreamed of being close to Bo since she was a child. At eight years old, he’d punched Scotty Kirk for shoving her on the playground. Sometimes she could still feel the warmth of his hand in hers as he helped her off the ground and walked with her to the nurse’s office. He’d sat with her as the nurse had bandaged her skinned knees, but all she’d been able to think about was how nice it felt when he’d held her hand.
Bo kissed her, his hands sinking into her hair. She felt her hips press against his, the strong line of his erection rubbing against her belly. She was getting soft and warm. Her breasts were heavy, the nipples peaked. She breathed him in. She’d always loved the way Bo smelled.
He’d been her first crush. Her first lust. Her first love. God, he’d been her first friend.
But not her first lover. Trev. How could she do this to Trev?
She pushed at his chest. “Stop.”
His hands tightened. “I don’t want to stop. We just got started. Baby, we waited so long. I want to make love to you. I want to do it now.”
But they hadn’t waited. He had. “No. I can’t.”
Bitterness welled up. He’d kept her at arm’s length, taking what she gave him emotionally but not giving her what she needed physically. Trev had shown her what she needed.
She loved Bo, but she was starting to love herself a little, too.
“Mouse?” He looked at her, those blue eyes round and so much younger than his years. His face had fallen as though he couldn’t quite believe what she’d said. His boots stirred up dust as he took a step toward her.
Never once had she refused him anything he’d wanted from her physically, but she couldn’t hurt Trev.
“I have a boyfriend now, Bo.” The words sounded stupid coming out of her mouth. Boyfriend? She hadn’t actually been on a date with Trev. She’d slept with him.
“How can you choose him over me?” There was no anger in the question. He sighed with a sort of sad acceptance, like he’d always known it would happen.
It wasn’t fair. “I didn’t choose him over you. You never chose me at all. You never wanted me until he did.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She did. She loved him with everything she had. “But you can’t love me that way. If you did, you wouldn’t have spent all of your nights with other women.”
His fists clenched. “I didn’t sleep with Clarissa.”
She stepped away. “This isn’t about Clarissa. It’s about all the other nights.”
“Damn it, I love you. I’m stupid. I’m just stupid. Can you forgive me?”
She felt her heel hit the front of the step. She didn’t want to be here having this conversation with him. She didn’t want to let him go. She needed him. Her whole system rebelled at the thought of letting him go. Trev wouldn’t be around forever. He would leave, and she would be alone. Tears blurred her eyes. Why was he doing this now?
“There’s nothing to forgive.” Maybe she should take what he had to offer. She could walk into his arms and let Trev go instead. Bo would stay. He wouldn’t leave Deer Run. He didn’t have an expiration date, but he was only doing this because he knew she was with Trev. What would happen when Trev was gone? “Bo, you don’t really want me. Not that way.”
He reached out and grabbed her hips, pulling them together, slamming his cock against her. “Don’t you tell me what I want. Don’t tell me this isn’t real.”
But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. He’d denied her for so long she couldn’t trust it. And Trev needed her. Bo had never really needed her. She’d been a burden to him for so long. There had only been the one night he’d reached out and opened himself to her. That night when his father had crushed his world. Maybe Clarissa was right. Maybe she had held him back.
“I love you, Bo, but I can’t be with you like this. I started something with Trev.”
“He won’t stay.” He whispered the words against her forehead. “He won’t stay with you.”
“I have to see where it goes.” Not only for her sake, but for Trev’s. “No one goes into a relationship knowing how it will end. It requires a little faith.”
“He isn’t worth any faith, Mouse. He isn’t. He’s fucked up so many times. How many chances can one man get?”
“As many as it takes.”
“Please, don’t do this to us.”
She pulled away. “I can’t. I can’t. I understand if you won’t be my friend any more. You be polite when you see me.”
How was this happening? Her heart ached. She’d lived twenty-five years without a soul who truly wanted her, and now she had to choose? It was brutally unfair.
“Polite?”
She nodded. “You owe me that. I came to get you that night. I protected you. I kept your secret, so I’m calling it in. You don’t get to treat me the way the others do. You can ignore me, but don’t you talk bad about me, Bo O’Malley.”
She wouldn’t be able to stand it. She couldn’t live in this town knowing Bo was laughing with the rest of them.
“Mouse, I would never talk bad about you. I told you I love you. Fuck, Mouse, you’re my best friend.”
He could sound like a little boy at times. Maybe he still was deep inside. Maybe that was why he’d never been able to choose her. He was a boy unwilling to give up all the toys of the world for just one. Until he realized he’d lost it. Yes, when Trev left, he’d grow bored with her. His attention would wander, and she’d truly be alone.
“You remember that. And you be polite.” She turned and hurried up the steps. She threw open the door. It was unlocked. Again.
She took a quick step back as she looked inside. It was also occupied. And not by the raccoon Trev had found. A man stood in the middle of her living room. He wore a dirty T-shirt and a shocked expression on his face. And he had a gun in his hand.
Chapter Ten
Bo felt like the world had opened up and threatened to swallow him whole. How could she think he would laugh at her? How could she even think that he would become like everyone else?
Walk away. That was the only thing to do. He should have known that there was no way she wo
uld stay. Trev McNamara moving back into town just as Bo got his shit together was proof positive that he wasn’t supposed to be with anyone at all. People left.
People leave you because you aren’t worth anything. You’re the reason Aidan left home. You’re poison, boy.
His father’s voice resounded through his head. It was always there somewhere deep inside him. It whispered to him that he wasn’t good enough. It was screaming now.
He’d lost Mouse. And he couldn’t blame anyone but himself.
He turned to go, but instinct made him look back at the house one last time. Maybe there was something he could do for her. Not because it would get her back, but because he did owe her. He owed her for all those years when he kept her at arm’s length even as she opened her soul to him.
The door banged open, and he heard something horrible.
There was no way to mistake the sound.
Gunshot.
He took those rickety steps two at time. He hit that crappy door at a full run, throwing his body into the house. He had to sidestep the now ruined box of the coffeemaker Mouse had bought. He kicked it to the side.
“Mouse!” He screamed her name, his heart pounding in his chest. Terror absolutely threatened to overwhelm him as he looked at the skinny man in the center of the room with the revolver pointed at the stairs.
He could smell the acrid scent of discharge and hear the scrambled hurry as Mouse tried running up the stairs. He got a flash of a slender man in a T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap as he raised the gun again toward the fleeing woman. The asshole wouldn’t miss this time. Bo could see it. In that one point two seconds he had to make his decision, he could see that the bullet would tear through his Mouse and she would fall, and he realized that it didn’t matter if she slept every night for the rest of her life in Trev McNamara’s arms. He loved her. She was half of his heart, and she could stop him from acting on it—but not from saving her.
He did the only thing he could. He rushed at the asshole with the gun before he could fire again.
There was a shout and a terrible stinging sensation in his right bicep, but Bo remembered everything he knew about taking down a man.
Play it smart, Bo. Rush from your legs up. Send the power from the bottoms of your feet through your shoulder. Take him out at the waist. Breathe and hit him hard.
He hunched down and planted his shoulder squarely in the other man’s abdomen. There was a whooshing sound as the man hit the floor, the air obviously leaving his body. He got to his feet, springing up and kicking the gun out of the asshole’s hand.
“Mouse, call the sheriff.” Bo stared down at the man. Damn, he was really more of a boy. Austin? Allen? He recognized the young man on the floor. He was from another town, but he often came into Deer Run with his mom and sister. Fuck. That kid couldn’t be more than sixteen.
“You’re bleeding. Oh, my god, you got hit, Bo.” Mouse tore down the stairs. Her eyes were wide with horror as she pushed up the sleeve of his shirt.
He was bleeding, but it wasn’t serious. He could see that it wasn’t anything beyond a scratch. He kept a boot on his assailant’s chest. “I’m fine, honey. Go on and call Lou. Tell him he has a guest coming in.” Bo felt his eyes narrow. “I hope you like checkers.”
He heard Mouse on her cell phone and finally was able to breathe again. She was fine. The danger had passed. And now he could see that shooting wasn’t the only thing the jerk had done. It looked like he was into graffiti, too.
Get Out
It was spray-painted on the wall of the parlor in a horrible lime green. It was the same color the hardware store had on sale the week before. He was a cheapskate criminal to boot.
“Are you the idiot who spray-painted Trev McNamara’s truck at the sheriff’s office this morning?” Bo asked.
What did this kid, who hadn’t even been big enough to enjoy football when Trev was a high school god, have against the man? And this kid wasn’t even from Deer Run.
“I ain’t talking.” The words came out in a hateful sputter. The kid tried to move, but he had fifty pounds on him. And now that he looked at the young man on the floor, he could see how fragile he was. The kid had moved past lanky and into gaunt. Bo searched his memory. Austin. His name was Austin, and he lived in a trailer park with his mom. He was bussed in to the county high school. He’d always been a little on the small side. He wasn’t an athlete, but now the kid looked downright sick. There were scabs on his face.
“What did Trev ever do to you?” Bo asked, his voice softer now. He wasn’t about to let the asshole up, but he wanted to understand what had brought this kid so low.
“Trev? Who is that? Are you talking about the druggie quarterback? What does he have to do with anything?”
“If you’re not here to piss off Trev, then why the hell are you here?” A cold feeling started in Bo’s gut.
The boy shook his head. His skin was a pasty white, like it hadn’t seen the sun in a very long time. “It’s a job, asshole. I was supposed to spray-paint the truck and then break in here and fuck some stuff up. It’s a job. Nothing more.”
“Who hired you?”
The boy’s skin flushed, and his eyes widened. “No one. No one at all. I was only looking for drugs.”
“That’s not what you said a minute ago.”
But his head was shaking now. “I lied. I didn’t mean it. I was making shit up. I was looking for drugs. I heard the lady who lives here has a lot of drugs.”
Mouse? He could barely talk Mouse into taking ibuprofen when she had a headache. She’d read something about potential liver damage. No one in the whole state of Texas would mistake Mouse for a drug user. “Bullshit. You’re scared. Who are you scared of?”
“I ain’t talking. Not to you. Not to the cops.”
Whoever had hired the little fucker had him scared shitless. He wasn’t going to move. Bo had to hope Lou could muster up the energy to look somewhat threatening, but he doubted the sheriff would be able to get the kid to talk.
“Bo?” Mouse’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
He turned his head, never letting up on the pressure keeping the criminal on the floor. Mouse’s face was stark white, and it took everything he had not to pull her into his arms and promise her everything would be all right.
He couldn’t do that. She wasn’t his, not in that way. But at least he could say the words. “It’s going to be okay. Why don’t you call Trev?”
Bo could hear the sirens in the distance. Mouse ran to the door to let the police in, though he could have told her the door was kind of hanging on by a single nail at this point. No need for formalities now.
He hated it, but when the chips had been down, it hadn’t been his father’s voice that helped him. Never. But it hadn’t been Aidan’s, either. In that moment when he needed guidance, it had been Trevor McNamara’s patient voice that had come to him. Trev had spent hours teaching him the game when no one else had thought he could learn it. Trev had been the reason he’d made the varsity team his junior year. He’d never quite understood why Trev had been kind to him, but it had stuck with him, even after all this time. Even under all the bitterness, there was still some warmth for the man.
“I ain’t talking.” The kid was crying now.
Nope. He wouldn’t talk. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. After all, when he’d left the big house earlier, there had been a real live investigator snoring on the couch. Perhaps it was time to put the Irishman to work.
* * * *
“Seriously?” Trev stared at the door. It wasn’t where he’d left it. When he’d left this morning, it had been where doors customarily rested, in the doorframe. Now, long after the sun had gone down, the door was sitting on its side on the porch.
Beth smiled at him, a hammer in her hands. She’d changed into a pair of overalls with a collared shirt underneath. She’d slung a tool belt around her waist. It was pink and slightly prissy looking. It didn’t quell his des
ire for her. It merely made him want to shove his tool where it would do the most good. “There was an incident a couple of hours ago. I took care of it, but the door suffered. I’ve already reset the mountings. Now I need a little muscle to get the sucker in place, and it’ll be good as new.”
He seriously doubted that, but he picked up the heavy door anyway. His back protested, but he managed to hold out until Beth was satisfied. She turned her wrench and hammered something into place. When she pronounced it finished, he let go and hauled her close. Her time controlling things was done for the day.
“Hello.” He smiled down at her. There was a little sweat on her brow, but she still smelled sweet, like hard work couldn’t possibly mar her femininity. So fucking soft.
Those pillowy lips raised in a smile. “Hi.”
He loved how breathless she was when she talked to him. He wasn’t about to let her know that he felt the same damn way. He was the Dom. He was supposed to stay in control.
Damn, it had been a long day. O’Malley had put him straight to work. He’d thanked Leo as he left because if Leo hadn’t insisted on vigorous workouts during his rehab, Trev doubted he would have survived the day. As it was, all he wanted to do was cuddle up with Beth and make love to her over and over again. Well, and get fed. He would really like some food. But mostly the lovemaking stuff.
He closed the door. He was damn happy to see that she’d attached a proper deadbolt. He found it strangely sexy that his lady knew how to install a deadbolt.
“I like the lock, darlin’.” He twisted the handle, satisfied it worked smoothly.
“I’m good with a drill. My dad taught me.”
He pulled her close. “I can show you how good I am with a drill.”
She laughed, her amusement sparking something light in him. The day might have been difficult, but it seemed to melt away now that he was here with her. “I think I know how good you are.”
She had a sweetly sexy smile on her face, and his ego about doubled because he knew he’d put it there. He kissed her, surprised at how comfortable this whole “coming home” thing was. Even in this rickety old place. He looked around. Beth seemed to have had a busy afternoon.