Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to speak for the first couple of days that he was awake, but he found a way to communicate as soon as Sawyer offered up his cell phone. For those two days, that was exactly how Zane communicated with everyone. Including V. The only difference was that once he was coherent and finally able to talk, he’d had the honor of talking to every single member of his family, his best friend Beau, and even Zoey, Kaleb’s fiancé, on a daily basis. But he hadn’t yet been able to say two words to V in person.
And since he came to, she’d become even more unresponsive as each day passed, to the point Zane had stopped texting her altogether. His attempt at interrogating both Zoey and Beau hadn’t worked either. Neither of them shared much information with Zane when he asked. The only thing he managed to pull out of Zoey was that V was doing fine and that she felt responsible for what happened to him, which she seemed to be having a hard time dealing with.
Her being responsible was so damn far from the truth, Zane was livid when Zoey had told him, and from what he remembered, he had told her as much. That might explain why V wasn’t showing her face or answering when he called. At least he hadn’t been stupid enough to leave her a voicemail telling her what he thought. It wasn’t V’s fault. That bastard Jake Sanders was responsible.
And his pussy ass friends.
It took a couple of weeks after he woke up for Zane to remember what happened. Once he did, the images continued to sneak up on him at the most inopportune times. Just thinking about how they came at him, all four armed with fucking tire irons, still pissed him off. But, Zane wasn’t all that worried about Jake and his band of losers. Not a single one of them had shown their face in town since that day, and he figured it would be a long time before they did.
Especially since, word was out that Travis Walker, Zane’s oldest brother, was looking for them.
Literally.
But Trav wasn’t going to be the only Walker looking for them. As soon as Zane was able to walk out of the hospital on his own two feet, he vowed to apply a little Walker retribution of his own.
As it turned out, that day was today.
“So you haven’t heard that Jake contacted her?” Braydon spoke, and Zane turned to look at him.
“What?”
“Kaleb mentioned it this morning. V seems to be blowing it off, but Zoey’s really worried.”
“What the hell did he say?”
“Don’t know for sure, but apparently he got her phone number somehow. Looks like he might’ve been the one behind the texts she was getting, too,” Braydon stated calmly, as though they were talking about the weather, sitting in the guest chair with his attention divided between the silent television and Zane’s face.
“Texts? When did she start receiving them?” What the fuck? No one told him anything about any damn texts.
Braydon managed to pry his face out of the television long enough to look back at Zane, but turned back again.
Fucking hell. Having a conversation with Braydon, or Brendon, for that matter, took a considerable amount of effort. Their attention spans were so damn short, it was a miracle they remembered their own fucking names.
“Don’t know. Ask her.”
He would ask her if she would answer her damn phone.
Zane grabbed his cell phone from the rollaway bedside table and ran through his contacts. With surprisingly nimble fingers, he typed out a text.
You better get your ass here to pick me up, or I’m walking.
Zane had had enough of this hell hole. If luck was on his side, Travis would answer the text quickly because it was time for Zane to blow this joint.
An hour and a half later, and not a second too soon, Zane was following Travis out into the brilliant Central Texas sunshine. He didn’t look back at the hospital, just continued to move his feet forward. His oldest brother had been kind enough to bring Zane a pair of jeans, his boots, and a t-shirt and for the first time in a long time, he actually felt like himself.
He’d been wearing his own clothes for the last month and a half while he was in the hospital, but never more than sweats or shorts. He figured there wasn’t any reason to get dressed more than that because someone was always poking and prodding, or sending him down to the rehabilitation center for a few minutes of “activity”.
The weather had changed a bit since he went in. No longer was it oppressively hot. Instead, it was mildly warm, but that’s what was to be expected in Texas. They didn’t have harsh winters because the severe weather was reserved for the blistering summers. Even in December he didn’t need a jacket. However, that could change overnight.
When they approached Travis’ Silverado pickup, Zane suddenly missed his own Jeep. It was strange to be outside, and even more so to be climbing into a vehicle. Three months were a long damn time to be cooped up inside of a building, never allowed to go too far because he was pretty sure they feared he’d run.
He would’ve.
“Need help getting in?” Travis smirked as he moved around to the driver’s door.
Zane grinned, shot Travis the finger, but didn’t say a word.
He never thought it possible, but he had missed his brothers harassing him. Being the youngest of seven, he was intimately familiar with the constant pestering and irritating comments that his brothers bestowed upon him. At twenty four, he’d had years to get used to it, although that was easier said than done. Although, at that moment, Zane didn’t necessarily hate the snide comments he knew would be directed at him. He actually welcomed them. At least for a little while.
“Where to?” Travis asked when they were pulling out of the hospital parking lot a minute later.
“V’s,” Zane said without hesitation. He hadn’t been able to do anything about her avoiding him for the last couple of months, but now that he was out of the hospital, he was the one who would be calling the shots from here on out.
“You sure?” Travis questioned, and Zane promptly hated his brother’s inquisition.
If Zane was smart, he would go home, get his Jeep and head over to V’s without involving his brother. It was apparent that he needed to acclimate to being out in the real world a little while longer before he opened his big mouth. Before he could say anything more, Travis’ phone was dialing through the Bluetooth speaker in the truck at his brother’s voice command.
Shit.
“You get him?” Kaleb’s voice reverberated through the interior of the truck, and Zane rolled his eyes. He was fucking twenty four years old, and it still galled him how much his brothers tried to baby him.
“Yep,” Travis replied.
“Y’all do realize I’m sitting right here?” Zane glared at his brother.
Travis didn’t even bother to look at him, but both Kaleb’s and Travis’ laughter filled the truck.
Zane couldn’t help but smile.
It felt damn good to be back.
♀♂
V’s phone rang as soon as she walked through her front door. Glancing down at the screen, she noticed it was Zoey, and she wondered if her friend had forgotten something. They’d just spent the better part of the day cleaning houses, so V couldn’t imagine what else they had to talk about that was noteworthy enough for her to call so soon.
“Hey!” V greeted Zoey when she answered the phone. “Miss me already?”
“I always miss you.” V could hear the smile in Zoey’s voice, but it didn’t help to explain what she was calling about.
“What’s up?”
“Kaleb just told me that Zane got released from the hospital today.”
Wow. V had to sit down for a second. “Already? The doctors think he’s ready?”
“It would seem so. He’s been officially released, and Travis is on his way to get him now.”
“That’s fantastic.” V knew her voice didn’t back up the words she muttered, but she was having difficulty breathing. It truly was terrific that Zane was finally coming home, but V had been dreading this day for too long to actually be excited a
bout it.
“He wants Travis to take him to your house, V.”
The words out of Zoey’s mouth were like a punch to the solar plexus, leaving V feeling even more out of breath than she already was. And a little dizzy.
“No. He can’t come here.”
He couldn’t. Not after what had happened. Not after Jake Sanders and his friends had beaten the shit out of Zane right there in her front yard. V still couldn’t come and go through her front door without seeing the gruesome image playing through her mind, making her stomach churn and her heart ache. In fact, the overwhelming terror was beginning to wear on her.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to stop him.”
“You have to. Call Travis. Tell him not to bring him over here,” V rambled. “I’ll... I’ll meet Zane at his house.”
She might be able to handle that much. Seeing him was going to be hard enough, but she definitely wouldn’t be able to see him at her house.
“Today?” V barely heard Zoey’s question, her head still reeling from the memories flooding her.
V wasn’t sure when a good time to see Zane was, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to put it off much longer. Especially not if he was out of the hospital.
“You have to go see him today, V. I won’t be able to convince him otherwise.”
“Fine,” V huffed. “I’ll go see him in a couple of hours.”
V could hear Zoey’s muffled voice as she plainly told Kaleb what they were talking about.
V held her cell phone to her ear with one hand and her face in the other, her elbows propped on her knees as she sat on her couch. She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten to this point in her life, but for some reason, she couldn’t seem to dig out of the despair that had plagued her ever since that horrific day. The overwhelming sense of responsibility for what happened was almost debilitating in its intensity. All because of that jackass Jake and his big fucking mouth.
V had grown accustomed to being flirted with, she’d even gotten used to the assumptions that most men made because of whom her mother was, but it would appear Zane hadn’t been able to brush off the nasty comments the way V had. Instead, he’d confronted Jake in front of a large group of people. That was the day Jake made the threat, one no one paid much attention to because of his penchant for unsubstantiated threats.
Jake Sanders had grown up with most of them, although he was several years older than V and Zoey. Since he was held back a couple of years in school, they’d actually attended high school at the same time. He hadn’t been well liked back then, and his reputation hadn’t improved significantly over the years either. He was one of those men who liked to stir up trouble, spouting bullshit whenever anyone was close enough to listen. Most people had learned to tune him out, or flat out ignore him, which was what they had done the day he’d threatened Zane.
She remembered the day they’d been at Anderson Croft’s mother’s house, trying to clean out the house after the woman spent years hoarding everything she could get her hands on. That particular day had started out like many others; everyone talking, laughing and actually enjoying what they had set out to accomplish. That was until Jake’s unruly mouth got out of control like it tended to do.
Jake seemingly set his sights on her, and V tried to be as polite as she could be, ignoring his snide comments and even avoiding him for a good part of the day. At one point, he began saying nasty things about V’s mother, long after V had refused his numerous advances.
Although the things Jake said about her mother, then about her, had broken her heart, she’d learned long ago not to let the stones shatter the tough exterior she’d carefully erected.
It had taken her a long time to be able to stand up tall and ignore what others said about her mother, some of them true, others made up over the years through various versions of one story or another. Living in a small town like Coyote Ridge didn’t make it easy to avoid the various rumors and lies, but V had somehow managed to ignore them.
Mostly.
“V?”
Zoey’s voice broke through her thoughts, and she stood up, shaking off the despair that threatened to consume her all over again.
Taking a deep breath, she answered as strongly as she could, “I’m here.”
“There’s one more thing you need to know.”
Shit.
V wasn’t sure she could handle any more grim news, and Zoey’s tone didn’t sound like she was about to tell her that she won the lottery or something equally as exciting.
It seemed as though bad news was all she was getting these days, and it was certainly having an impact on her mood. How was she supposed to fake the happy-go-lucky girl when everything seemed to be crumbling around her?
“What?” she finally asked when she felt she could handle whatever Zoey was going to throw at her.
“Braydon told Zane about Jake harassing you.” Zoey didn’t sound happy, not that V expected her to.
“Dammit.” V knew she shouldn’t have said anything to Zoey.
“I’m sorry, V. I told Kaleb because I thought someone needed to know. This is serious. Look what he did to Zane.”
V didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t like she told Zoey not to say anything, although, looking back on it now, she should have.
“You need to be careful, V. About Jake. He’s crazy.”
The man was crazy all right. And homicidal. What he had done to Zane wasn’t just a warning. He and his friends had beaten Zane so badly, V was certain if she hadn’t been there to alert her neighbors, they probably would have killed him.
“And Zane’s changed,” Zoey continued. “He’s not the same man he was before. His brothers are keeping an eye on him.”
V sighed.
She had purposely stayed away from Zane for the last couple of months, choosing to find out how he was doing by asking Zoey or Beau. Zane’s reputation was more of a fighter than a lover, unlike most of his brothers. He had a short fuse to begin with and a protective streak a mile wide. V hadn’t wanted to provoke the first, and she didn’t deserve the second, so she had avoided him at all costs.
Zane wasn’t a man to mess with. He didn’t have the laidback country boy attitude that Kaleb and Sawyer did, and he wasn’t the fun loving, attention grabbers like the twins, Braydon and Brendon either. Zane Walker was edgy. He was hard, and what made it worse, he was infused with a passion so fierce, those he cared about risked the chance at getting burned from time to time
“I’ll go talk to him.” V could do that much.
With a quick goodbye, she hung up the phone and dropped it onto the couch cushion as she paced back and forth continuously.
Why did Zane have to be so damn stubborn?
Why did she have to care about him so much?
It wasn’t like the past couple of months had been easy on her. She’d stayed away out of necessity, not because she wanted to. There were times it had been so damned difficult to ignore Zane’s phone calls and texts, but she had managed for the most part.
On occasion, she would break down and answer, but that was usually after she’d spent hours thinking about him. Since the day he woke up, V refused to go back to the hospital to see him, mostly because she feared she wouldn’t be able to walk away. V refused to get too attached to a man who would eventually slip right through her fingers. She wasn’t interested in forever, and Zane wasn’t the forever kind of guy.
Before the assault, they had shared a few memorable moments together. Most of them resulted in the two of them being naked, or close to it. Not that V was complaining. Considering she hadn’t had sex with anyone other than Zane in the last two years, she welcomed those memories. Especially now, after three months of celibacy, when she wondered if she ever would have sex again.
V wasn’t naive enough to believe she could keep Zane at arm’s length, no matter how much her heart begged her to. Now that he was out of the hospital, she was going to have to see him. She just hadn’t expected to have to see him so soon.
&n
bsp; Moving toward her bedroom, V checked the front door one more time to make sure it was locked. She did that frequently these days. Almost to the point that she was beginning to wonder whether she had OCD. She knew her nerves were primarily the reason for her sudden paranoia, but she still worried.
Once in her bedroom, V shut and locked her bedroom door as well before moving to the closet. She needed to shower before she went to see Zane. With a full day’s worth of dirt and grime caked on her skin, she clearly needed some time to freshen up. Not to mention, maybe an hour or two to steel her resolve.
She was going to see Zane today.
If she wasn’t happy about that, then why did her stomach churn with anticipation?
Chapter Two
♀♂
Two hours later, V was standing on Zane’s front porch. For at least five minutes – maybe more, she wasn’t sure – she had been pacing back and forth, trying to convince herself to knock on the door.
She couldn’t bring herself to do it.
When the door slowly opened, V stopped mid step and stared at the man standing casually in the doorway. Her eyes traced every graceful line of his lean, magnificent body as he braced his hands on the top of the doorjamb and leaned into it, his smoke blue eyes fixated on her. The movements made every muscle in his upper body stand out in stark relief.
Oh, damn.
Without a word, V let her eyes trail slowly down his thick, ropy biceps, over those sexy as hell back muscles that flared at his sides – lats, she was pretty sure that’s what they were called – over his pecs, his washboard abs, and that enticing, perfectly sculpted “V” that disappeared into the waistband of jeans that had seen better days. Her eyes even wandered down to see his beautiful feet were bare.
“Were you planning to stay out here all night?”
Yes. Yes, she was.
Zane (Alluring Indulgence) Page 2