by Maisey Yates
“Any,” he said. “Any and all.”
“All right, we’ll fill your plate with meats.”
He smiled and right then she didn’t really care about impact and other deep things like that. Because Eli was smiling right at her, and that meant a hell of a lot.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I want steak, and I hear it’s fantastic because it’s Garrett beef. And I want copious amounts of potato salad because who doesn’t love a mayonnaise and starch party in their mouth?”
“Well, you obviously do,” he said.
She smiled at him, then had to look away to avoid kissing him. She noticed that Alison was at her pie booth, looking harassed and serving pieces of pie onto plates as quickly as possible. Then she noticed that Jared was standing right next to her, his large arms folded over his chest, looking every inch the threatening, Neanderthal jackass he was.
“Uh-oh,” she said, “I think we might have a problem.”
Eli frowned, then followed her line of sight over to the pie booth. “Oh. That asshole.”
“Yeah.”
A muscle in Eli’s jaw ticked. “I’m feeling pretty short on patience with him.”
“I know. But I do understand that there’s...” Suddenly Eli was moving out of line and heading toward the booth. “Oh,” she said, hurrying after him.
Jared was leaning in near Alison, saying something, and Alison was looking increasingly distressed. And Eli was starting to walk faster.
“Do we have a problem here?” Eli asked.
Jared was a big guy, and scary enough if you were a woman. But Eli stood about four inches taller and had to outweigh him by thirty pounds of pure muscle. Even without the badge and the gun, Eli was an intimidating sight.
In many ways he was more terrifying without the uniform than he was with it on. Because in the uniform, you could see his boundaries. Clearly. Deputy Garrett was a lawman. He was a man who would see justice done in accordance with the legal system.
Right now in his cowboy hat, tight black T-shirt and jeans he looked more likely to dispense a different kind of justice entirely.
And she didn’t really know what he might do.
And that was funny because he was predictable and good. Except...except he wasn’t all that predictable, not really. When they were in bed, he was a different man, a dangerous man.
When they were together he was something a lot more authentic.
Just now, as he was standing there ready to do God knew what, she realized that the man he was in bed wasn’t an anomaly. It was him.
“No problem, Deputy Garrett,” Jared said, not drunk today, just hella mean, apparently. “Just talking to my wife.” Alison’s shoulders shrunk in when he said the word. “That’s not a problem, is it?”
“It depends on what words were being used.”
“Eli...” Alison said. “It’s okay...”
“You on a first-name basis with him?” Jared asked, his tone hard. “Is that why he always seems so worried about you? Are you sleeping with him, you stupid whore?”
And that was when Eli moved.
He leaned in and grabbed Jared by the back of his neck at the same time he brought his fist in to meet the other man’s nose. Then he shoved him downward, bending him at the waist while he brought his knee up into Jared’s stomach.
Before stepping back and letting the other man fall to the ground at his feet.
People were looking now, craning their necks, wide-eyed. Sadie just stood frozen, almost unable to believe that Eli had done it. And yet, at the same time...she wasn’t shocked. No, she wasn’t shocked at all.
But she was proud.
“I don’t take kindly to the words bitch and whore,” Eli said, keeping his voice low so that the families nearby couldn’t hear him. “Especially not when you’re talking to your wife. Now stand the fuck up.” He gripped the back of Jared’s neck and brought him to his feet. “You want to hit someone, why don’t you hit me? Or is it not as much fun to go toe-to-toe with someone who outweighs you? I’ll bet you’re okay with hitting women. But that’s not going to play today, so why don’t you go ahead and hit me instead?”
Jared spat and blood dribbled down his chin. He wiped it with the back of his hand. “You prick,” he said, his eyes blazing.
“Yep,” Eli said, “and let me tell you something, this prick is not on duty today. Today, I’m just the owner of this property, and you’re the bottom-feeder who isn’t welcome on it. You’re not welcome in my town, either, but there’s nothing I can do about that. But I’ll tell you this. I’m going to be looking for you to make a mistake. And then I’ll lock your ass up. You put one finger out of line?” He gestured to Alison. “You touch her again? I will see that you stay in a jail cell for a very, very long time. So step carefully. And right now? Step. The hell. Off my property.”
Jared stumbled forward and headed away from the stand. Then he turned to Eli, shouting obscenities that all ran together in a blur, before he stopped, like he intended to come back. Until Connor walked into view, from the direction of the main house.
He wrapped his hand around the back of Jared’s neck, holding him steady. Eli was pretty big. Eli was threatening. But bearded Connor, who was broad and thick, every bit of him heavily muscled and with rage pouring off him, was terrifying. “I think my brother asked you to go,” he said. If Eli hadn’t been deterrent enough, Connor was there for backup.
Jared looked back at Eli one more time before turning and walking away, spitting profanities as he went.
Connor moved forward and joined the group. “Well, what an asshole. Sorry.” He directed the apology to Alison, who was wide-eyed and shaking. “But seriously.”
“Are you okay?” Sadie asked Alison.
Alison nodded, then shook her head, closing her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Fair enough,” Sadie said.
“I’m embarrassed. I’m so embarrassed that I’m still married to him,” she said, her voice breaking. “But it’s...”
“I know,” Sadie said. “And trust me, I have spoken to a lot of women who’ve dealt with this, professionally. And unprofessionally...my mother has never left, Alison. She’s stayed and stayed. For more than thirty years. I’ve seen what it does to someone. I’ve seen what they can make you think about yourself. But you have to know, whatever he’s said, it’s a lie.”
She nodded. “I know. I do.”
“Please don’t go back to him. Don’t go home tonight.”
Connor shifted his stance. “Especially don’t go home tonight. He’s a coward with us, and that means he’ll take it out on you.”
“Is there somewhere you can go?” Eli asked.
She nodded. “My...my mom and dad live in Tolowa. I can go there. Not sure what they’ll think when I show up, since I don’t really... I’ve been so embarrassed.”
“You can call them if you like,” Sadie said.
Alison shook her head. “Right now? I just want to serve pie. Because that’s what I’m here for. And now that... I have a feeling I’m going to need this. This business. The pie.”
“Well, I’ll buy a few a week at least for my B and B,” Sadie said, determined. No matter how good her cooking skills were, she wasn’t going to produce a pie as amazing as Alison’s. “And I’ll be around. Whatever you need.”
“And if he ever comes near you again,” Eli said, “if he hits you or threatens you...”
“I’ll report him,” she said. “I promise I will.” She took a deep breath and straightened, and for the first time, Sadie saw an echo of the girl she’d known in the woman who stood before her. Someone a little scrappy. A lot angry. Someone who was ready to fight. “Now, I have pie to serve.”
She turned and went back to slicing her pies and Eli, Connor and Sadie moved away.
“What are you doing out?” Eli asked Connor.
Connor shrugged. “Liss is going to meet me to watch Kate ride. You know I like to watch her do her thing.”
“Yeah,” Eli sai
d. “She’s great.”
Sadie looked behind Connor’s shoulder and saw red waves bouncing just before Liss came into view, jogging up behind him. “I made it. I’m late but I made it.”
“You’re chronically late,” Connor said, turning to face her. “It’s an illness.”
“I’m bizay, Connor,” she said, poking him in the side. “You don’t know anything about that, obviously.”
“No,” Connor said, “I just run a whole fricking ranch, Liss. I know nothing of your busyness. I bet all that paperwork is a real strain. Wanna trade?”
“Eff no. I am not roping cows.”
The ghost of a smile touched Connor’s lips when he looked at his friend. “The cows don’t like you much, either, honey.”
“Glad to know it’s mutual. The cows and I can go on giving each other the evil eye. Then I’ll eat a burger because I’m human and I win.”
“Come on, then, let’s go,” Connor said, putting his hands in his pockets and jerking his head in the direction of the arena.
“We haven’t eaten yet,” Eli said, and his referring to them as a “we” made Sadie feel a little warm and fuzzy.
“Go get some food, then. We’ll see you over there,” Connor said, eyeing them both, and Sadie felt her cheeks heat a little.
“So that was Connor in a good mood?” Sadie asked, when he and Liss were out of earshot.
“Pretty much. He got to threaten bodily harm to someone so I fail to see how he could have had a better day.”
She started back over to the barbecue line, chewing on her lip. “Are you worried?” she asked. “About how all that might affect your campaign?”
He frowned. “I didn’t even think of that. Which is...weird. I usually think of everything.”
“Well, I don’t want to add concerns that you don’t really need.”
“No,” he said, “I think it’s interesting. I don’t care,” he said, meeting her gaze. “I just don’t care. Because I still want to be sheriff. I still think I’d do a damn good job, but I do a good job at what I do now. And...whether or not it was a popular thing or easy thing or good thing...punching that asshole in the face was the right thing to do.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him, then quickly stepped back, embarrassed by her public demonstration. “It was,” she said.
“Somehow, knowing that, believing that, makes me not care very much what the consequences are.”
“I think you’re amazing,” she said, looking ahead, smiling. “I mean, if that matters.”
“It does,” he said.
“And...thank you. Because she’s my friend. Because she reminded me too much of my mom. And...I’m always afraid people like that will never leave.”
“A lot of times they go back,” he said, his voice rough.
“I know. But we’ll help her.”
“Yes,” he said, “we will.”
Yet again, she didn’t know what to do with him. She felt so close to him right now, and she couldn’t kiss him here. She wanted to ask him to hold her. She wanted to tell him something about herself. Wanted him to decide that, much like punching a guy in front of the whole town, she was okay, too.
And right then, she thought of the one place she hadn’t been yet. She’d driven by the house where she’d grown up, but she hadn’t been back to her clearing. Even though it was within walking distance of the B and B. She’d avoided serious thoughts of it since the first day back.
Again, a prickling sensation dotted the back of her neck.
There are no ghosts there. And if there are...maybe this will put some of them to rest.
She let out a long, slow breath, trying to gather her nerve. “Can I show you something?”
“My mom warned me about girls like you,” he said, a smile teasing the corners of his lips.
“Did she?”
“No, my mom wasn’t here.”
“That’s a dire punch line.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Sometimes life is so dire you have to make a joke about it, right?”
“I think you’ve learned too much from me.”
“Or not enough,” he said.
“Hey, I’ll get our food. Can you get a blanket for us to sit on?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
She finished waiting through the line and got small portions of everything on offer, making small talk with the men and women manning the grills and scooping up sides. It was hard to do, though, since she was all jittery and fluttery inside over what she was about to do.
And there was no real logical reason why. Just that it seemed like a big deal. Bigger in some ways than what she’d shared about her father.
Because this was something she’d avoided. The last bit of Copper Ridge she hadn’t revisited. And she wasn’t going to test it alone to be sure she was okay. To be certain she could visit it without betraying her emotions.
She was going to let him see. All of it.
She wandered over to where he stood on the edge of the lawn, where people were sitting at the tables that had been set up, and on blankets spread out like a rainbow patchwork over the green grass.
“Okay,” he said, “what do you have to show me?”
“I hope you’re ready for a hike.”
* * *
IT WAS ONLY a five-minute walk, through the trees behind the B and B, just over the Garretts’ property line. But the path was thick with brush and branches, the narrow trail overgrown in the years since Sadie and her friends had used it.
She and Eli wound through the evergreens, needles reaching out and grabbing her T-shirt. Then the grove thinned out, and beyond that was her clearing.
It was overgrown now, moss covering the ground, ferns encroaching. There was still a fire ring. Stumps, some on their sides, some still positioned like stools.
It had definitely been used by other people in the past decade, but not, it appeared, very recently.
“This,” she said, “was my home away from home.”
Her chest swelled up with emotion just looking at it, being in it. She wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t sure why this felt so big. Why she felt so naked.
But, like all her big feelings concerning Eli, the flip side was that as much as it hurt, she wanted him to know this part of her.
She wanted him to know her. There wasn’t, she realized, another person on the whole planet—except Toby—who did.
“Alison, Matt, Josh, Brooke and a few others and I all hung out here in the afternoons. Sometimes when we were supposed to be in school. Usually on weekends.”
“Doing what?” he asked.
“Drinking. Smoking...things of varying degrees of legality. Like you do. Well, not like you do, but like a lot of teenage ne’er-do-wells do.”
He looked up at the canopy of trees overheard, then back at her. “I bet it was a great place for that.”
‘Perfect,” she said. “You never arrested me here.”
“I didn’t.”
“But then, in fairness, I never lit the woods on fire.”
“That is true enough.”
He set the blanket down in the middle of the clearing and they sat, putting their food in front of them. Sadie sat on her knees and started to poke at her potato salad.
“I lost my virginity here.” Next to her Eli made a choking sound and she laughed. “Sorry,” she said, “just a Sadie fun fact.” It wasn’t, though. She was minimizing it again. Minimizing why she’d told him. She always did that. So that if what she’d offered was rejected, she could pretend it didn’t hurt.
She shoved her plate to the side and took a deep breath. “Sorry.” She started over. “I told you because it seemed... This is where I learned to run,” she said. “Where I learned to escape. None of us could handle the things that were happening at home and so we came here. Did a bunch of things that made us feel good. Sex was just another thing to do. But that’s changing for me. All the way until I met you, sex was just a part of the logical steps in a relationship. A way to pre
tend that I was intimate with someone without ever really having to be. And this? Telling you this, showing you this, it’s more intimate than anything I’ve ever done. But that’s fitting, because when we’re together...when we... It was never part of a logical step. It was just a thing we couldn’t not do. And that’s different, too.”
“You’re...different for me, too,” he said.
She wanted him to say more. And she didn’t know what more, but she did. She wanted to say more, but again, she wasn’t sure what else. Wasn’t sure what she could say that wouldn’t scare her off.
She was a flight risk of the highest order, putting herself in a situation that scared her to death.
“Eli...I...” She wanted to say something big. She wanted to try to express what she was feeling but she couldn’t even quantify it to herself.
The thing she wanted to say was the thing she couldn’t say. Because to say it was too much. And way more than this was ever supposed to be.
The one thing she knew for sure, and the thing that terrified her to her bones, was that she wanted to have him here. In this place. The moments of weighted silence, punctuated by heavy sighs and long drags on cigarettes. Days when they’d come and sat in the rain and talked and swore as loud as they wanted, because screw the world. They were in their own world. When she’d come alone with Josh and kissed him and, eventually, taken things further because they’d both just needed someone to touch.
In this place where she’d been with her first guy, she wanted to be with Eli. The last one.
Shock skittered over her skin in an electric current. At the weight of the thought, the depth of it, the truth of it.
So she just said what she could.
“I want you.”
“I thought you wanted potato salad.”
She tried to laugh, shaking from the inside out. “No. Just you.”
He seemed to sense the shift in tone. Another luxury of being with him. Of having him know her. He seemed to know what was happening inside her without her having to say it.
He set his plate off the blanket, too, cupping her cheek and leaning in for a kiss. She returned it, her chest filling, swelling, making it impossible to breathe. But breathing seemed secondary at the moment. Because of Eli.