Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy Book 1)

by Lorelei James

  “Whoa. You’re pissed off about this.”

  “I’m tired. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to fuck. I just want to sleep. So goodnight.” I rolled away from him to my side of the bed, giving him my back.

  Or the cold shoulder.

  I didn’t wake him up the next morning before I went to work.

  I could claim I did it out of thoughtfulness, letting him sleep in.

  But the truth was, I didn’t feel like rehashing our middle-of-the-night argument and he’d insist on it. He’d insist on makeup sex and well, I didn’t feel like that either.

  Hormonal much?

  Boone wasn’t around when I got home from work. As I searched for a note in the kitchen, I saw the space hadn’t gotten trashed since I’d scrubbed it last night. His laundry remained in a pile in front of the washer and dryer but the family room had been tidied. I checked outside. Boone had cleaned off the patio…or maybe it’d been the pool maintenance guy.

  So I followed my usual after-work routine. I changed into exercise clothes and hit the elliptical machine for forty-five minutes.

  No sign of Boone after I finished.

  I showered.

  No sign of him after that either.

  It wasn’t like him to be out of communication.

  Maybe he was called in to cover a shift at the hospital.

  Or maybe he’s pissed off.

  I spread my notes across the coffee table and my research materials on the couch for an article I was working on for a trade magazine. They’d contacted me to write it, which was cool, if a little unusual, especially when the submission time frame was so short. I had to email it by Monday morning. I’d just compiled an ordered list of my sources when Boone barreled in.

  And I do mean barreled.

  He saw me and said, “There’s the woman who rocks my fucking world.” Then he flashed that dirty-sweet smile and he was on me. Literally. His knees bracketing my thighs, his hands in my hair, his mouth plastered to mine in a morning mouth fuck. Pressing me into the couch cushion with such force I panicked that he’d break the frame—or my back.

  But the man didn’t release any part of me until he was damn good and ready. After he placed a soft kiss over my heart, he murmured, “I missed you today.” Then he muttered that he needed a shower. He hopped off the couch and strode away, leaving everything in disarray; my notes, my papers…me.

  Those I-wanna-eat-you-alive kisses made me think Boone wasn’t pissed at me.

  Good. Now I could give the article my full concentration.

  I closed my eyes. Where had I gotten to before the interruption? The main theme was the importance of…what?

  Dammit. Think.

  The importance of organization.

  I snorted. That was simplistic. It needed more punch right off the bat.

  Wait. Where’d I put that magazine with the kickass bullet points?

  I shuffled through the papers that’d tumbled together when Boone had jumped on the couch. I found the information and jotted down notes, moving between hard copies and my laptop.

  When Boone returned with a beer, he picked up the papers I’d stacked in order and set them on the coffee table so he could sit next to me. Right next to me. Thigh to thigh. With his arm draped along the back edge of the couch, allowing him to drag those clever fingers across the ball of my shoulder and down the outside of my arm.

  He turned the TV on but couldn’t stand the commercials so he constantly flipped through channels. It drove me crazy, which was why I rarely watched TV with him.

  “Did you eat dinner?” he asked.

  I just realized I hadn’t. “I had other things on my mind and I forgot.”

  “How can you forget to eat?”

  “It happens to me all the time.”

  “Raj and I spent the last three hours playing basketball with some of the guys from the hospital. I haven’t played a pick-up game that intense for a long time. So I’m starved.”

  “I would’ve thought you’d stop for food on your way home.”

  “I was hoping there’d be food here.”

  I did cook frequently, but not every night. “I’m not sure what’s in the fridge.”

  “Pretty much bare,” he said, reaching for his beer. That he’d set on the coffee table. Above my paperwork.

  “You went to the store yesterday.”

  “Just for the hot turkey sandwich stuff.” He kissed my temple with his beer-cooled lips. “Are you hungry now?”

  Meaning…do you feel like cooking us something?

  Not so fast. Maybe he asked so he can go get you both food.

  “No. I’m good. I want to get this done.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “An article for a trade magazine.”

  “What’s it about?”

  I looked at him. “What’s the article about or what’s the magazine about?”

  He shrugged.

  “Accepting your limitations and learning the true value of organization.”

  “Huh. Cool.” Flip, flip, flip. “What is the true value?”

  I almost snapped, It’s a hardware store on Baymont Street, why don’t you go check it out now? Snapping at him wouldn’t solve the problem. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. And I can’t do that with the constant channel flipping. It’s distracting.”

  So much for not sniping at him.

  Immediately he pulled away from me. “Maybe you should work in your office and not in the only room in the house with a TV.”

  “Or maybe you should go find something to eat since you’re starved and I can finish what I started, where I set up to work first.”

  “Fine.” Boone pushed to his feet and disappeared again.

  I heard cupboard doors banging. Water running. Pans clanking.

  Did he expect me to follow him and take over preparing his meal?

  Dream on, buddy.

  He annoyed me beyond words today.

  Now I was mad and distracted so I needed to find a different location to work.

  I closed the lid on my laptop. I picked up my papers, stacking them crossways to keep them separated. Hugging it all to my chest, I hoofed it upstairs to the family room at the opposite end of the house from the great room.

  I’d done nothing with this big space except create a corner to stash my elliptical machine and other workout gear. I gave the ugly-ass floral couch the stink eye. It was a castoff from my mom; she insisted I could “repurpose” it but there was no freakin’ hope for it. It sucked it was the only furniture in here.

  I dragged the weight bench over to use as a table.

  A cloud of dust puffed up when I plopped down on the couch.

  I sneezed four times.

  Awesome.

  Somehow I managed to focus—the absolute silence helped—and I finished the rough draft for the article in three hours.

  I gathered everything for the third time and returned to the kitchen to load up my laptop bag.

  Boone had left the pan, his bowl and spoon, a sandwich plate and a wadded-up plastic sleeve from a box of crackers…right where he’d finished with them.

  Just pick it up and put it away. It’s not that big of a deal.

  But it was. If I picked up after him from the start, he’d expect I’d always do it. It was setting precedence. I did the same thing with my clients; made a point to be upfront from the start about their responsibilities and mine.

  Boone is not your client.

  I wasn’t his mommy either.

  That thought was a sharp stab in the heart. Boone’s mother hadn’t bothered to feed him, what were the odds she cleaned up after him?

  Slim to none.

  Let it go, Sierra. Just for tonight. Bring up your expectations for house care, chores or whatever tomorrow.

  I locked the doors and shut off the lights in the kitchen. Then I went to find my man.

  Boone had fallen asleep sitting up on the couch. His head lolled to the side, his lips were parted and his arm
s were crossed over his chest. I had to smile that he’d kept the TV volume low.

  I straddled his lap. I ran my fingers over his ropy forearms and up his biceps, trying to wake him gently. Then I framed his face in my hands, loving the feel of the dark scruff on his cheeks beneath my fingers.

  He stirred. His confusion melted into happy eyes and a drowsy smile. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “Did you get your article done?”

  “Yes.”

  He placed an openmouthed kiss on the hollow of my throat. “I’m so damn proud of you.” When he tipped his head back to look into my face, his eyes clouded. “What’s wrong?”

  Don’t make excuses, make time to discuss this. It doesn’t have to be now. “Remember those ‘unspoken rules’ I talked about at Kyler’s that night? And you said you preferred no rules? Well, soldier, that is not working out so well for us. So starting tomorrow we’ll have defined rules of the house. That way our duties and responsibilities are clearly spelled out. That way order is maintained and violations will be dealt with swiftly and immediately. Understood?”

  Boone stared at me oddly.

  “What?”

  “You would’ve done great in the military. I feel like saluting and then polishing your boots.”

  I laughed softly.

  He started to say something and I shook my head. “It can wait until morning. Let’s go to bed.”

  “The Parent Trap” was the codename my smartass girlfriend called the day I was meeting my dad in Flagstaff and she was attending her mother’s wedding at the country club.

  I suggested “Meet the Parents” but apparently that was too obvious.

  I took comfort when I pulled into the motel parking lot that I wasn’t alone in dealing with a parental shit show today. Sierra was stuck watching her mother pledge her eternal love and devotion to Bill’s bills. Nope. No cynicism there.

  I wondered why I agreed to this meeting with my father.

  Maybe I should’ve asked over the phone if he’d recently joined a twelve-step program and had committed to acknowledging his past mistakes.

  I didn’t need that clarification. I already knew his mistakes; I’d lived with them.

  After snagging my duffel from the front seat, I headed to the lobby to check in.

  The room had a king-sized bed and that’s all I cared about. I sent Sierra a quick text asking if being in room 113 was a bad sign.

  What was a worse sign? Dad hadn’t been in contact for a week. I’d be pissed if he had to cancel and hadn’t bothered to let me know.

  With nothing else to do besides sleep, I pulled out the two textbooks I’d brought for next semester and copied the proposed class list. Repetition helped my retention.

  An hour passed. I’d started to get hungry. And antsy. I changed clothes and opened the door only to find my dad standing on the other side, poised to knock.

  “Oh. Hey Dad. One of us has great timing,” I said.

  “Unlikely it’s me.” He ran his hand down his beard. “How’s it going?”

  “Okay.”

  I hadn’t seen Dax West since I’d graduated from boot camp. Looking at him now…there wasn’t a lick of a family resemblance between us. His hair, what was left of it, was an orangey gold shot through with gray. Seven years ago he’d had an inch or two on me. Now, with his shoulders slumped, I towered over him.

  “I’m starved. You want to eat at the restaurant here?” I asked.

  “That’ll work.”

  We walked side by side down the hallway. “You’re checked in?”

  “Yep.”

  Christ. If this was how our talk would go tonight, I needed alcohol to get through it. Which made me blurt out, “Did you insist on this meeting because you’re in a twelve-step program?”

  “Nope.”

  Awesome. One-word answer again.

  When we got to the restaurant and he reached for the door handle, his hand shook.

  That sour feeling in my belly expanded.

  The place was empty but he asked for a table in the back anyway. He took the seat in the corner, where he had a full view of the room and no one could look over his shoulder.

  I studied the menu without seeing it.

  “I ordered beer.”

  I glanced up at him.

  He aimed his gaze out the dark window. “How pathetic is it that I don’t know if my twenty-six-year-old son likes beer.”

  “I like beer just fine.”

  He said nothing.

  The waitress poured the pale liquid—poorly—into glasses, leaving three inches of foam on top. Next round I’d forego the glass.

  Yeah. I figured this would be a multiple-beer conversation.

  We both ordered hot beef sandwiches.

  That was one meal that reminded me of him. The few times he’d taken me out to eat, it’d always been to a truck stop café because that’s what he knew and where he usually ate.

  Neither of us was good at small talk. But we tried.

  “While we’re waiting on food, you wanna fill me in with what’s going on in your life?”

  I told him about being selected for the army’s experimental program with the VA that resulted in me being in Phoenix to attend school. I talked about Raj, but didn’t mention hanging out with my McKay cousins or my relationship with Sierra. He’d mutter about McKays, just because that’s what the West family did.

  He talked about a few of the more unusual items he’d loaded and driven across the country.

  The food arrived. We each ordered another beer before we tucked in. I kept shooting glances across the table at him, searching for some familiarity. The harder I tried to rattle those memory banks, the more I realized there wasn’t anything there.

  But I did notice he wasn’t shoveling in food like I remembered. He pushed his potatoes around on his plate. Set down his fork. Swigged his beer.

  He’s stalling.

  As much as I wanted him to get to the fucking point of this meeting, I wouldn’t push him. Whatever he needed to say…he had to work up to it.

  That kicked those alarm bells in until my ears rang from them. I purposely slowed my eating pace to match his.

  But he only ended up eating half of it. I hadn’t seen that before either.

  The waitress cleared our plates.

  Dad turned his focus to picking the soggy label off the previous bottle of beer. When he finally started to speak, his voice was so low I had to lean closer to hear him.

  “I don’t gotta tell you I’ve always been a loner. That’s why long haul works well for me.”

  “So you asked me here to talk about your career as a truck driver?”

  His eyes met mine. Sometimes I forgot I’d inherited the color and shape of his eyes, so it spooked me to see such wariness in them now. “No. It’s just…I don’t know where to start with this.”

  “You talking in circles isn’t the way to start. Just rip off the fucking bandage.”

  “You’re right. Lemme get through”—he looked away and cleared his throat—“the worst of it before you start asking questions.”

  “Okay.”

  Long pause. Then he said, “When I was a kid, I was sexually abused. But being a kid…you don’t really know that it’s wrong if that’s how it’s always been. If it’s just part of the day or night…” He cleared his throat again. “My first memory of it was when I was three years old. And it’s not one of them ‘false’ memories, where you see a picture and convince yourself you were there when you weren’t. I know how old I was because there are pictures of my birthday party—the only birthday party I ever had. A picture of me with the plastic truck someone gave me as a gift, I remember holding it tight that night as he…when…”

  I felt hot and cold, then that surreal sense of disbelief that accompanies shock.

  “Like I said, I got a little older and I figured what he did to me and expected in return was probably wrong, since it was only just the two of us and he said I couldn’t ever tell a
nyone.”

  I managed to choke out one word. “Who?”

  “My dad.”

  My food threatened to come back up. I swallowed it back down, taking a healthy drink of beer, praying that helped.

  “It went on until I was twelve. Over the last couple of years as I’ve started to deal with this, I tried to pinpoint why that’s when it ended. Had my mother found out? Had I stopped looking like a child? I do know that’s when my folks became born-again Christians. Was it the cause? Was it the effect? But it just stopped.”

  I waited and watched him working through this in silence.

  “This is where it’s fucked up, son. So fucked up I don’t wanna admit it, but you need to hear all of it.” He fiddled with his beer bottle. “After the abuse ended, I should’ve been relieved. But not only did the…physical contact end, all contact ended. For my dad it was like I ceased to exist. He ignored me. He wouldn’t even look at me. I had no idea what I’d done wrong. No idea how to deal with such complete rejection. So I followed him out to the garage where all the stuff happened and I tried…”

  My father seemed to shrink before my very eyes.

  I felt so goddamned helpless. I reached out and put my hand on his arm and wasn’t surprised when he flinched away from me. “It’s okay. Take your time.”

  He nodded. Keeping his eyes closed he drained his beer.

  I signaled the waitress for two more.

  Finally he leaned forward again. “I followed him out to the garage and tried to do what he’d always made me do before. He…hauled me up off my knees and backhanded me. He beat the hell out of me, calling me a sick little pervert, claiming I’d been possessed by evil and he wasn’t letting me lead him astray from the righteous path ever again.”

  Rage immediately supplanted that sick feeling.

  “He sexually abused me and then shunned me. We didn’t have a normal conversation after that until I turned fifteen. Now I can guess it was because I didn’t look like a boy and the temptation was gone.”

  “And so did you just…block all of this out?”

  “Yeah, for a few years. Especially those years I lived at home. I left as soon as I graduated. In those days if you passed the test for the Commercial Driver’s License then you could be trained on the road by a company that hired you and not have to go to vocational school. I started out a secondary driver for long haul. I intended to get a fresh start someplace else.” He looked me in the eyes for the first time since he’d started talking. “Then I found out about you.”