[Tulsa Thunderbirds 01.0] Bury the Hatchet

by Catherine Gayle

  I didn’t want to think about it anymore, because it only made my heart hurt. But I’d be damned if I could stop the thoughts from running rampant through my head. I took a long swallow from my wineglass, nearly finishing the whole thing in a single gulp. Then I refilled it, forcing back the tears that threatened to fall. I wasn’t going to start crying about this. He didn’t need to know that I was a wreck because I’d done the unthinkable and let myself care too much.

  I was so lost in my own head that I stopped paying attention to what I was doing. I picked up a spoon in my right hand to portion out some lasagna, and without thinking, I grabbed hold of the aluminum pan with the left to hold it steady. I screamed in pain and let go immediately, allowing the spoon to clatter to the floor. Bits of pasta and meat sauce flew everywhere.

  “Shit. Are you all right?” In an instant, Hunter flipped on the cold faucet and led me to it, putting my burned hand under the flow of water. He positioned himself behind me, cradling me against his frame, one hand wrapped snug around my waist. I felt his cheek, his jaw, resting on the top of my head.

  It was too intimate, and I was too deep in shock to answer. I needed to step away from him, from the headiness that captured me when he was so close. I needed to put some space between us before I fell deeper into the trap of falling for him.

  “Better?” he asked, his voice muffled in my hair.

  It still hurt like the dickens, but I nodded, not trusting my voice. I tried to ease out of his grip, but he held me closer to him and shut off the water. He picked up a towel and put it over my injured hand. I jerked it away from him, the pain too intense still to bear even the gentlest touch.

  He turned me around, scowling as he lifted the towel away and looked down at it. “Not better,” he murmured. He drew my hand up closer, holding tight to my wrist so I couldn’t snatch it away from him and angling it toward the light, his eyes narrowed as he examined my palm. “No blisters. I don’t think we need to go to the ER, but we should put some burn cream and a wrap on it.”

  I chewed on my lower lip and nodded, once more attempting to tug my hand free.

  His heated gaze shot up to meet mine. “Stay right here. I’ll go—”

  “I can do it myself,” I forced out. “It’s not too bad.” I couldn’t bear to let him take care of me right now. I couldn’t handle his touch. Not while my gut was churning so much. One too many tender caresses would be all it took to send me over the edge, and then there would be no one to catch my fall.

  It took a minute, but he let out a grunting sound and backed away, releasing my wrist at last. I hurried off to bandage my hand in private.

  When I returned, he’d cleaned up the mess I’d made in the kitchen and had set two plates on the dining room table. I took a seat, fighting tears that wanted to burst free partially due to the physical pain of the burn and partially due to the deep ache that was filling my whole chest.

  At least it was my left hand that I’d burned, not my right. I picked up my fork and attempted to eat, struggling against the roiling in my stomach. Hunter didn’t seem to have any such qualms. He plowed through his meal, only occasionally slowing down to look across at me with a curious expression. After a bit, he pushed his plate away and sat back, crossing his arms in front of him.

  “All right, so when are you going to tell me what’s going on? What did I do wrong? What happened? How do I fix it?”

  “Why do you think something’s wrong?”

  “Because you’re hardly looking at me, you’re answering with two- and three-word sentences if you’re answering at all, you’re jumpy, and you’re generally not acting like yourself.”

  “This is me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Even though he’d completely nailed me with that, I didn’t feel like playing along. “I told you, I’m fine.” I toyed with my food some more, shifting it around on my plate before giving in and shoving it all away from me.

  “If you’re sick or something like that, just say so and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “I’m not sick.”

  He scowled. “Then tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it.”

  I reached for my wine. “What makes you think it’s something you can fix?”

  Hunter couldn’t fix the fact that he was in love with another woman any more than I could fix the fact that I was falling for him.

  He dragged a hand through his hair and down his face. “Tallie…” He said my name like a plea.

  I pushed my chair back and picked up my plate.

  “I’ll clean up,” he said, coming around the table.

  “I’ve got it.”

  He took the plate from my hand. “You’re hurt.”

  I huffed in frustration. “Hurt but not broken. I’ll manage.”

  “You don’t have to. I can do this.”

  “I’m perfectly capable—”

  “I never said you weren’t capable.” He tossed both our plates in the sink with enough force to make a racket but not enough to break them. “You’re capable of a hell of a lot. Maybe even more than you think. No one’s questioning that. I’m just trying to help you out because something’s clearly—”

  “Nothing’s wrong!” Despite myself, I actually stamped my foot on the ground just like Mama would always do whenever Daddy didn’t let her have her way on something, which was almost never. He always gave in because he didn’t want to have to deal with her temper tantrums, like the one I could feel myself gearing up to launch into. I was becoming my mother. I shuddered with horror, deciding instantly to make a change. I would do whatever it took to avoid falling into that trap. I had to. The thought that I might one day have a child and that I might treat that child in the ways she had treated me for twenty-one years… I couldn’t let that happen. I closed my eyes tight, crossing my arms while I tried to slow my pulse.

  When I opened them again, Hunter was staring at me, a mix of impatience and frustration evident in the crease of his brow.

  I’d put it there, the same as Mama had caused Daddy so much aggravation over the years. I had to put an end to it now, and there was only one way I knew to do it. I took a breath, then another. “I went to see Kade today,” I said slowly, watching Hunter’s expression change from frustrated to angry to concerned in the blink of an eye. But I couldn’t stop there. “He told me about Carrie.”

  With those few words, Hunter’s face went completely blank.

  I COULDN’T DECIDE who I was angrier with: Tallie, for having gone to see Kade even though I’d made it perfectly clear there was no reason for her to involve herself with my asshole brother, or Kade, for having said a fucking word to Tallie about Carrie. My pulse was throbbing in my temples, a frantic beat that mirrored the way I wanted to pulverize something with my fists.

  It pissed me off even more because I’d come home from practice ready to talk to Tallie about going to the game tomorrow and the Ice Breaker on Thursday, getting her involved with the other guys’ wives like she’d been wanting to do. I had hoped to start introducing her to that aspect of my life, and now this other side of things had blown up in my face.

  Yes, I should have brought up the subject of Carrie with Tallie before now. This marriage might not be going anywhere in the long term, but at least for the time being, Tallie was my wife. She deserved to know these things so no one could blindside her with them. If it hadn’t been Kade, someone else would have likely let that cat out of the bag sooner rather than later. It just happened to be Kade who’d let loose with it, and it happened to go down sooner than I had been ready for. So even though my brother had no business saying a fucking word to Tallie about anything, part of the fallout was on me for not getting my act together and explaining my relationship with Carrie so there could be no misunderstandings.

  If I’d been upfront about things, explaining all of this before Tallie and I had even gotten married, she wouldn’t have had any reason to doubt what I told her, and she would have known enough about my brother to steer clear of him. But since I hadn’t and
she’d gone to him without a full understanding of who and what he was, there was no telling who she would believe.

  If Kade had felt the need to bring Carrie up, I had no doubt he’d done so to get back at me for placing him in Horizons to begin with. He’d put up a hell of a fight when Dad and I had dragged him into the center, getting a few licks in against both of us before we’d finally subdued him. That just went with the territory with my brother. Depending on the day of the week and whatever he happened to be on, he somehow possessed a superhuman strength. We’d been lucky to get him into that facility at all, and I had no doubt he had been plotting his revenge against me the entire time he’d been there. He surely blamed me. He always had, since his very first stint in prison, because I’d been the one to call the cops and have him arrested. Never mind the fact that he was the one in the wrong.

  Getting mad about anything my brother had done this time around wouldn’t help anything, though. I’d learned that lesson. What he’d done was done. All I could do now was try to fix those things that could be fixed and move on with whatever I could salvage of my life. That’s what I’d been doing for years. I’d become a master at it, or at least I liked to think so.

  “What did he tell you? About Carrie?” I asked Tallie once I could find my voice again. It was possible that he’d only brought up my ex to explain about Kaylee and where she was now, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath about that.

  She reached for the wine bottle on the counter, carried it to the table, and refilled her glass again. If she wasn’t careful, in no time she’d be as drunk as she’d been that day on the beach, especially since she’d barely eaten a bite of her dinner. Wine and an essentially empty stomach were not a good combination. Granted, it might help with the pain of the burn, but that didn’t mean she needed to go overboard.

  “Enough,” she murmured after taking another sizeable swallow.

  I didn’t want her drunk, and if she stopped now, she shouldn’t get to that point. At least I hoped so, because I wanted to have a reasonable, adult conversation. We needed to clear things up, and we both knew what alcohol did to her: it sent her libido into overdrive. I absolutely wouldn’t mind having a romp in the sheets with her, but I’d be damned if I would do it while she was drunk. Not going to happen.

  I crossed over and collected the bottle, popping the cork back into place and setting it in the fridge.

  “I wasn’t done with that,” she said.

  “I think you are.”

  She set her glass down and took a seat again, frowning. “You’re acting just like Lance. Trying to tell me what to do.”

  That stung, but this conversation had nothing to do with him. She was just trying to deflect my attention from whatever she didn’t want to discuss, and I refused to allow that to happen. I sat across from her, drumming my fingers over the surface of the table to distract myself from her full, sexy lips and pouting eyes. “So he told you Carrie and I used to be a couple?” I ventured.

  “Used to be?” Tallie raised skeptical eyebrows at me.

  Fuck. So much for the idea that he’d kept it to the parts relevant to himself. “If not that, what did he say?”

  “I believe fuck buddies was the term he preferred for describing your relationship with her. I took that to mean friends with benefits, but considering the way he talked about the two of you together I’m not so sure I believe that was all it was. Seems like you’re a lot more than just friends.”

  “We were. Past tense. He was just trying to get a rise out of you,” I argued.

  “So you’re saying that’s not the sort of relationship you have with her? You don’t go home and sleep with her when you get a chance? You weren’t expecting her to come to—” Tallie pressed her eyes closed and shook her head. For some reason, my gaze settled on her neck. It was long and lean and utterly kissable. “Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter, because you and me? This is just temporary.”

  To come to the wedding. I could fill that part in easily enough. And I had been expecting Carrie, but not for that reason. If this marriage was truly going to only last a year, if there was nothing more between Tallie and me than an attempt to repair our images within the Tulsa community, why the hell did it make my heart pound like a stampede of wildebeests to know Tallie had found out about my ex in the worst possible way? Why did it matter to me if she knew? And maybe equally important, why was Tallie so upset by the revelation?

  We were both getting in over our heads, and all we could do was tread water and try to conserve our strength to fight the rising tide of whatever the fuck was going on between us. The terrifying thing about it was that I couldn’t put it all down to lust. Not anymore. Yes, I wanted her and had since the day we’d first met, but whatever was happening between us had moved beyond the realm of mere sexual desire and into far murkier waters.

  “I think it does matter,” I suggested, taking my time and weighing my words. That wasn’t something I was used to, thinking before I spoke, but now of all times, it seemed necessary.

  “If it’s so important, why didn’t you tell me yourself? It’s not like you haven’t had the opportunity,” Tallie shot back, although there wasn’t much heat behind her words. She reached for her glass and finished it off before eyeing the fridge as though she wanted to go back for more. She stayed put, at least for now, turning those amber eyes back to me in a way that made me want to wrap her up in my arms. She looked as hurt as I’d ever seen her. “The fact is that every time I’ve tried to be involved in your life in any meaningful way, you’ve closed the door before I could get one foot through it. You don’t want me to know anything about Kade. You’ve never even hinted about the fact that you’ve got a niece, let alone that you’re in love with another wom—”

  “Now hold on just a minute,” I interrupted, and her eyes went wide. “I’m not in love with Carrie,” I said emphatically. I couldn’t deny that I’d been keeping Tallie in the dark, even if her interpretation as to why I’d been doing so was off the mark, but I needed to make sure she understood where things stood between me and my ex.

  Tallie’s expression was pure disbelief.

  The urge to kiss her until she believed I could never feel that way about my ex hit me like a snow shower from a forward racing in at my net. “I’m not in love with Carrie,” I repeated. “She’s one of my best friends in the world, and I love her in that way—”

  “And you sleep with her whenever you get the chance.”

  “No,” I said, sighing. I leaned back in my chair, trying to figure out how best to explain our relationship. That was the problem, though. If I’d had a clue how to explain it, then I would have already done so, and it wouldn’t have mattered what Kade had told her. “It’s complicated,” I finally said, a feeble attempt if ever there was one.

  “I’m listening.” She twirled the fingers of her uninjured hand over the tablecloth, tracing the patterns and staring at her fingers. I stared, too, wishing she were tracing those patterns on my skin instead of the fabric. Yeah, she was listening. But she didn’t want to hear what I had to say, that much was clear. At least there wasn’t anywhere either of us had to be tonight.

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  “How about when you and Carrie started dating?”

  Fair enough. I crossed my ankles, trying to relax my body even if my mind was on high alert, watching her face for every reaction, however small.

  “We were sixteen,” I said. “Well, technically I was sixteen and she was still fifteen. She’d been in my classes for years, and I’d had a crush on her for a while. Her birthday was coming up, so I finally screwed up my courage and asked her out on a date. I was so nervous about asking her that I almost puked in the process, but for some reason she said yes. We went to see A Walk to Remember. Huge mistake. She cried all over me in the theater. I should have taken her to an action flick, so she wouldn’t mind if I wanted to make out—which I did—but instead, she was using my shirt as a Kleenex.”

  Tall
ie smiled. Just a little, but enough to warm me. I took that as a good sign.

  “After that, we were officially a couple. Only she had a twin—Chantel. Everywhere Carrie went, Chantel tended to tag along. On the weekends, if Carrie came to my house to hang out, her sister came with her. Kade had already started using drugs at that point. Mainly pot, but occasionally he scored some cocaine. I tried to warn Chantel to stay away from him, but she didn’t listen. Carrie was always the goody two shoes out of the pair of them, and Chantel had always had a thing for bad boys. Carrie and I tended to be absorbed with each other, leaving Chantel as a third wheel. Before long, she was sneaking off with Kade, and he was getting her into all sorts of shit that she had no business messing with. But they weren’t dating. They weren’t serious. They just messed around. Or at least that was what Carrie and I thought, in the beginning. That all changed when Carrie and I came back from one of my games and walked in on Kade fucking Chantel when she was so high she didn’t have a clue what was going on. She had passed out, but he didn’t care.”

  “She wasn’t even alert?” Tallie asked quietly. Her face had been a mask up until this point, other than that hint of a smile earlier, but now it was a whirlwind of emotions. “You mean he raped her.” She stated it calmly, concisely. She didn’t ask it as a question.

  It wasn’t a question as far as I was concerned, either. “When you’re drunk, high, unconscious, or otherwise indisposed, you can’t consent,” I said pointedly. Tallie didn’t appear to follow my meaning, so I moved on. This was supposed to be about me and Carrie, not Tallie and her foray in a hot tub in Cancun. “That was essentially the end of me and Carrie as a couple,” I said. “No matter how much the two of us cared about each other—and we did, there’s no denying it—Kade and Chantel were always between us. The two of them didn’t have any such problem continuing as they had been. Chantel ended up dropping out of school, and the two of them were in and out of legal trouble for years, always together except when they had one of their knock-down, drag-out breakups, usually when she’d get pregnant. The first couple of pregnancies ended in miscarriages because of her drug use. She had an abortion at one point. Maybe more than that, but Carrie and I only know about the one. They both spent time in prison for drug busts and theft and God knows what else. They were in and out of rehab, but it never clicked for either of them, just like this time won’t click for Kade.”