by Cara McKenna
She didn’t reply.
“You can’t, can you?” he demanded. “You’ve never felt this. Is that why you’re so scared?”
“I’m not scared. I’m being practical.”
“You say that like I haven’t known you since we were kids. Like I’d honestly believe this is about what’s practical, and not the fact that you’re fucking terrified.”
“Practically speaking,” she said sharply, “exactly how long did you think this was going to last?”
He stared at her. His gaze had hardened, as had the set of his mouth, his shoulders. “Maybe forever, if you want my honest answer. That’s how long I expected it to last. I don’t go into relationships—or sex for that matter—expecting nothing. And love changes shit. Love changes people’s minds, changes their goals and priorities and who they even are.”
“For you, maybe. Maybe for me, love means accepting somebody, exactly how they are.” And fuck, she’d really thought it was going to be different this time. That if any man would know her, that if any man could take her at face value, it would have been Miah.
“You’re banking on me changing, Miah, and I can’t take that pressure. I resent that pressure, if I’m honest. And it’s not only that—marriage and kids. It’s fucking Fortuity, too. I don’t know if I want to die in the same town I was raised in. And maybe you can change your mind about kids, but not the ranch. I know that for a fact. This is your home, the place where you belong. But I don’t know if I belong here, not forever. I don’t know if I can wake up in thirty years and still be pouring drinks, rattling around in my dad’s dreams.”
“I see.”
“And maybe I am scared. But not of what you think I am. I’m not afraid of you, or what I feel for you, or what you feel for me. I’m scared of getting stuck. And giving up my freedom, just for love . . . ? Maybe it sounds callous, but I don’t think it’s enough.”
“What you and I are to each other isn’t enough?”
“Enough to commit to this town, this life, for good? No, it’s not enough for me. The very fact that we’re having this conversation, talking about these decisions two months into hooking up . . . ? You care about the future. You need to know the shape of it. Me, I don’t want to even know. I don’t want to have to know. I don’t want my place or my path already laid out, waiting for me.”
“You want an escape hatch. Some promise you can just . . . take it all back someday.” He was nearly spitting, and working hard to hide it. Not hard enough, though. She touched his shoulder, but he shrugged it away. “You’re thirty, Raina. When exactly do you plan to grow up? And I don’t even mean that as a jab. When do you plan to figure out what you want, and claim it?”
“I want options.”
He shook his head. “You don’t know what the fuck you want.”
“No, I don’t. Some of us don’t have our lives all figured out by the time we’re ten. Some of us aren’t born into the exact, perfect role for who we are, with our future just laid out, fenced in all pretty with our last name on the front gate.”
He frowned. “Is this about my family somehow?”
“Of course it isn’t.”
“Tell me this now—are we over?”
She took a slow, sad breath and nodded. “Yeah. We are.”
He stood from the bed and grabbed his boots, tugged them on. “You know, you’re never going to find another man who loves you the way that I would have. And that’s not a jab, either—that’s a fact. I would’ve treated you so goddamn good, for as long as you’d have let me. Would have made you the center of my life, the fucking sun in the sky.” He jerked his shirt over his head, not meeting her eyes. “No one’s going to ever be for you what I could have been.”
“Not what you could have been, no.”
But there would be others, in time. No one could replace Miah. Maybe he wouldn’t be the last man she kissed or held or welcomed into her bed or her body, but he’d be the toughest one to forget. No question.
He grabbed his wallet off her bedside table. “You’re breaking my heart, honey.”
She stood and held his stare, and her tongue.
“Bet you always knew you would, huh? Knew from the start I was going to wind up some lovesick idiot over you. Saw it coming a million miles off.” He paused, sucking in a curt breath. “I fucking loved you. I’d have done any goddamn thing to keep you.”
“Miah . . .”
“I’ll see you around,” he said, not turning when he reached the threshold.
His footsteps faded through the den and kitchen, and she listened for the sound of breaking glass, of water dripping, as he knocked the roses to the floor—nothing. And that was almost worse than rage, knowing she’d have to face them herself, fold them over and get cut on those thorns before tucking them unceremoniously in the trash.
She felt the weight of him thumping down the steps beneath where she stood. When the doors rattled and the building went still, she sat on the edge of the bed, chest aching, eyes stinging.
“See you.”
Keep reading for a preview of the next Desert Dogs novel
BURN IT UP
Coming November 2015
The temperature had dropped, way down to freezing to judge by how their breath fogged the night air.
Having already survived one trip on the bike, Abilene clambered aboard behind Casey with passable confidence. She was pooped, looking forward to bed and hoping the baby was having what Christine called a “merciful night.” But the moment the engine started up between her legs, all that fatigue rattled away in the brisk February breeze. She squeezed Casey tight and reminded herself not to confuse vibration with arousal.
It didn’t help. The noise and the wind swallowed her, left her feeling alive and awake in a way wholly unique to being on a motorcycle. Suddenly it made sense, why people would want to live their waking lives on these things. So much freedom, without even any windows standing between you from the world. All those stars overhead, no roof to hide a single one.
And a warm, strong man in your arms, she thought, hugging Casey’s middle. Did he get pleasure from feeling her at his back, as anything more than a reprieve from the winter air? She hoped so. She was a mom now, and his employee—thoroughly un-sexy roles, but she hoped maybe some shadow of his old crush might linger.
Yeah, right. Not after he’d seen her give birth, seen her fall apart into tears a million times, seen her grouchy and frustrated at two a.m., and lost hours and hours of sleep for her. She knew from hearing Miah and Christine talk about him, Casey wasn’t historically a guy who stuck around and did the right thing. He was kind of like Abilene, and kind of not—always adrift, except it sounded like he’d been in control of where he wound up. In addition to his record, he’d been a card counter in Las Vegas for a while, which struck her as the shadiest thing you could probably do for a living without actually breaking the law. His drifting sounded adventurous. So no, maybe they weren’t really anything alike at all.
The wind found her hands through her knitted mittens, and she inched them into the pockets of his hoodie. He felt way too nice. Warm, strong, big but not too big. Big enough to make a girl feel feminine and protected, but not so big that it was intimidating.
As she held onto him, she wondered how it’d feel, being in his lap. Her thighs around his hips, his excitement right there, against hers. His hands on her waist. Just to feel a man like that again, right there against her . . .
Not just any man. Your boss.
What had James said to her, back when they’d been together? If you’d ever gone to college, you’d have lost a good professor his tenure. He’d been teasing, and at the time she’d laughed. She knew she had a type—you could only make the same mistake so many times before you had to admit it was more than a coincidence. But it wasn’t funny anymore. Not now that she had Mercy to think about.
The scattered lights of Fortuity fell away behind them, the bike’s headlamp the only glow to be seen until the lit gate of Three C appeared a
s the highway curved. This was her last night like this—closing up late, riding home out in the open, be it in a car or on this motorcycle. Tomorrow, she had to start watching her back. She tried to soak up every second that was left, but in a blink Casey had parked them by the fence and killed the engine.
He helped her down. “Not so bad, right?”
“It was fun, thanks. Worth the frostbite.” The automatic porch light came on when they neared. Abilene dug her keys out of her purse as they mounted the steps, and let them inside.
“Man, we missed some good dinner,” Casey said, shutting the door behind them. “Meat loaf? Pot roast?” The house was warm and smelled impossibly good, like gravy and rosemary. Someday Abilene would have a little home that offered Mercy this experience—comfort and hot meals and nice smells. A fireplace, holiday traditions.
“Bet you there’s leftovers,” she said, hanging up her coat.
“Bet you they’ll taste real good around four o’clock, when your daughter decides to wake me up next.”
They walked to the den, where Casey would be making his bed once more. It was a comfy enough couch—a big old tan leather behemoth, probably as old as Abilene—but he had to be missing his apartment. And his freedom. And his privacy.
“I better head up and check on Mercy,” she said.
He nodded as he sat and unlaced his boots. “See you in the morning, hopefully. Though if you need any help, you know how to wake me.”
She smiled. “One good poke to the forehead. Night.”
“Night, Abilene.”
“Thanks again for the ride,” she said, and her smile felt shy when she offered it. She headed for the steps.
The door to her room was open, and she found Mercy sleeping peacefully in the crib. She switched off the baby monitor, officially relieving Christine of her duties. She changed into her pajamas and scrubbed her face in the guest bathroom, shut the door, climbed into bed.
Sleep while you can, she ordered herself. The peace could be over at any moment, shattered by that noise that filled her so wholly with both dread and maternal urgency—the first tentative coo that inevitably snowballed into a squall.
But sleep wasn’t coming. She lay in the darkness, trying to deep-breathe, trying to think relaxing thoughts. But with the chaos of the bar gone, and the distraction of the ride over, all that passed through her head were the what-ifs that surrounded tomorrow.
Today, she corrected. James would be released around ten in the morning.
The prison was ninety miles away. He could be in Fortuity by noon if he wanted to be. If he had his truck waiting for him, and enough money for gas. How long would he need to find her? How long would it really take to run into somebody who said, yeah, they’d seen a young brunette around, didn’t she just have a baby? Heard she was staying up at the ranch out east, they might say, and just like that . . .
Poof. Poof went her security. Poof went her secrets, if James saw fit to tell Vince or the Churches or Casey or anybody else about the way they’d met. Poof went her custody, maybe.
Maybe. Only maybe. It was almost impossible for a mother to lose custody to a father, and she wasn’t a bad person anymore. She wasn’t that girl James had first met. She was good, now. Wasn’t she? Better, at least. She was trying to be good. She worked hard, hadn’t had so much as a sip of beer since the moment she’d found out she was pregnant.
He couldn’t get her child taken away.
Could he?
***
With sleep eluding her and lying in the dark producing nothing but waking nightmares, after twenty minutes, Abilene abandoned the covers and poked her head out the door.
A lamp was on in the den, and she crept onto the landing. Casey was lounging on the couch, tapping on his lit-up phone. She went back into her room and put on a bra and socks, left the door open in case Mercy woke, and padded to the steps.
Casey sat up as she reached his periphery. He glanced at his phone then switched it off, screen going dark. “Thought you’d be out like a light in five minutes flat.”
He spoke softly, as all the Churches were sleeping. She loved when he did that. Normally he was a loud, brash man, not strong on the volume control, but she adored how his voice sounded in late-night moments like these. So close to a whisper. Soft in every way.
She shook her head. “Can’t sleep. Too much on my mind. Were you about to turn in?”
“Don’t have to. Hey, how about I start a fire? It’s kinda chilly down here.”
A fire did sound nice. She got settled on one end of the couch and pulled an afghan over her lap, watching Casey assembling wood and balled up newspaper pages in the big stone hearth. His back flexed where his jacket pulled tight across his shoulders, leaving her warmer by a degree.
His lighter snicked, and as yellow flames licked at the wood, he joined her, tossing his hoodie over the couch arm.
“How you feeling about tomorrow?” he asked. “Scared?”
“A little. To be honest, I’m trying not to think about it.”
Studying this man’s handsome face was certainly a welcome diversion. It was more than mere gratitude drawing her to him, she realized. There was a very real chance that once James was out, her past would follow suit. Everyone believed they were protecting her welfare—and they were. But it was her secrets nearly as much as her own skin that Abilene was hoping to protect. The illusion of who she even was. James could hurt her worse by talking than by hitting her, and she bet he knew it.
Depending on how pissed James was, in a week or a month or who knew how long, Casey might know the truth about her, and that would just about destroy her.
She couldn’t ever be with this man, not for real, for keeps. But she still felt for him—worse than ever, in fact. Going forward, she’d make better choices. Find herself a man as sweet as this one, minus the criminal record and all the secrets. But she couldn’t deny she still wanted him.
She eyed his mouth. And I don’t want much. Just a taste. Just a kiss. A farewell kiss, to say goodbye to her old habits, once and for all.
He smirked, seeming to realize she was staring. “What?”
“Nothing. Just in my head.”
“If we weren’t on baby patrol, I’d take you out back and make you smoke a joint.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’m not much for drugs.”
“Pot doesn’t count.”
“Pot also never solved anybody’s problems.”
“Nah, but it’ll shut your brain up real good. Damn, that sounds perfect, actually. Smoke a bowl, stare at the fireplace . . . Hardly anything better in the world than that. Not with your clothes on, anyhow.”
She laughed. “Sounds fun, I’ll admit.” The exact kind of fun she’d missed out on in her teenage years.
“Being a grown-up is such a drag sometimes,” Casey sighed.
“Tell me about it.” Again, she couldn’t help but imagine some different world, one in which she and Casey were the same age, and had met in high school. Some world in which he’d maybe taken her virginity, been her date to prom, horrified her parents in ways that looked downright innocent, compared to reality . . .
Would he stop me, if I tried? Tried to kiss him? Tried to touch him? Everything was changing in a matter of hours. This felt like her last chance. One final reckless mistake . . . Did that old crush still live inside him someplace, strong enough for him to maybe forget the baby and the danger and the fact that she was his employee, just for a little while? Make her feel like a sexual person again, remind her how good wanting could feel, and being wanted right back?
Heart pounding, she turned, bending her legs so her knees rested atop his thigh. She lay her arm along the couch, and her cheek on her shoulder, leaning a bit closer.
Casey seemed to take the move for exhaustion or vulnerability, and wrapped his own arm around her shoulders, giving her a little squeeze. It had been a long time since he’d touched her with this kind of casual ease. It reminded her of her final weeks of pregnancy, the n
ights they’d closed the bar together and he’d sometimes rub her aching back when there was a lull in orders. Not sexual, but friendly and familiar. Comforting.
Though tonight she wanted something more than comfort.
“Everything’s going to turn out okay,” he told her in that soft, fascinating, un-Casey-like voice. “Right now, this will probably be the worst of it. The waiting.”
“I wasn’t even thinking about tomorrow.”
“No?”
“I was thinking about how much things have changed, since last summer. Since I first met you.”
“No fucking kidding, huh?”
“You used to flirt with me,” she said, making sure he’d hear the smile in her tone, and know it wasn’t a complaint. “Shamelessly.”
“And you must have turned me down like, eighty times.”
“I miss those old days, sometimes. Including the way you looked at me, and all that.”
He sat up straighter, took his arm back and met her eyes. “I still think you’re real pretty, you know. If things weren’t so different, I’d still be hitting on you, every chance I got. Wait—did that count as hitting on you? Don’t sue me for sexual harassment.”
She poked him in the side, and let her hand linger there. A tiny but bold move, and something spiked in her blood, something hot and nearly forgotten. Nostalgic, a touch dark. Innately natural.
Do what you always did best, a mischievous voice whispered. And to heck with tomorrow.
***
Casey swallowed and glanced at the fire, trying to blame it for how hot the room seemed to have grown. It couldn’t be the contact, right? This was just friendly, supportive touching. Like friends might do, if they got along real good.
Like, real good, he thought, feeling the heat of Abilene’s palm through his tee, warming his ribs. He couldn’t seem to make sense of that hand.
“What do you want most, Casey?” She asked it quietly, but there was a strength in those words—a fierce and curious charge.
“What do I want?” He used to know the answer to that. He could’ve replied with a single word, without thought. Money. But things had changed since he’d moved back to Fortuity, and now the answer wasn’t so obvious. “I want . . . I want the bar to succeed, first and foremost. And for you to find your way through this messy situation with your ex.”