He has the unexpected sense to look ashamed. I stand my ground, glaring at him even though I’m wearing sunglasses and he can’t see my eyes.
"Look, Tam, I apologized a hundred times for what I did that day. I know you got those emails and voicemails I sent. I’ll always be sorry about that, but I wasn’t the asshole who used you when you were so vulnerable."
And now he’s back to bashing Joss, which a year ago I would have been doing right along with him, but a lot of therapy got me to admit that it was every bit as much my fault as it was Joss’s. Joss’s betrayal was no worse than mine.
"You know, I’m not sure what your issue is with Joss, but you have to know that it took two of us to have sex, Mike. I was there too. As much as I wanted to make him the bad guy, he wasn’t any more than I was. We fucked up—badly—but I want to fix it now. That’s why I’m here, and you getting in the middle of it isn’t going to go any better than it did the last time."
Mike pushes off the car and starts scuffing the dirt with his boot toe. He’s wearing a pair of very expensive-looking cowboy boots—black leather with red inlays—and I have to bite my tongue to keep from telling him to quit getting them so dirty.
When he responds to me, his voice is quiet. "Look, Tammy. I admit, I admire your perseverance. It’s entertaining as hell. But Walsh isn’t seeing it that way. I’ve watched this whole movie before. Someone…" He takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Someone I knew once, a couple who’d been together a long time and loved each other…This guy, this fucking asshole, who wanted what those two had took her away, and when it was over, it was all ruined. They were all ruined. I can’t stand to watch you and Walsh do that to each other. You haven’t been here watching him struggle with this. He was doing better, and then you showed up and shot it all to hell."
"He was doing better?" I ask, my stomach churning with the implication—yet again—that I’m somehow a danger to Walsh’s recovery.
"Yeah. I mean, he didn’t have a plan for what to do next, but he was stable, you know? He’s been working his steps, hasn’t slipped up once. He wasn’t angry and confused like he’s been the last couple of days. You’re fucking with his head big time."
I sigh and lean back against the car in the spot Mike vacated. He squares his shoulders and faces me, standing with his legs apart and his arms crossed, as if he senses that I’m wavering and wants to press his advantage.
"So you think I’m bad for him?" I’m trying so hard not to dissolve into a quivering mass of insecurity that I come off sounding defiant. But then, that’s sort of the way I always sound, so I doubt Mike will notice.
"Fuck, I don’t know. I just know that the dude doesn’t want you here, and it’s driving him nuts. I don’t think he deserves to be driven nuts right now."
I look at Mike standing there like the damn Queen’s guard. I don’t know who appointed him as Walsh’s personal militia, but Mike’s never thought about anyone but himself, so I don’t buy it. Somewhere in all of this is something for him, and apparently he won’t get it if I’m around.
"You know what, Mike? You may have been Walsh’s buddy all these years, but I’m the goddamn love of his life. I may be driving him nuts right now, but he needs me. He needs us. You don’t have to understand it. You’ve never been in love. You’ve never had that person who’s so much a part of you that you’re one being. Don’t talk to me about what Walsh needs until you’ve been in our shoes. Until you’ve actually thought about someone other than yourself for five minutes."
I press the button on the key fob and yank the car door open. Mike’s hand on my arm stops me from getting in though. He lifts his sunglasses from his eyes so he can look at me as he leans in close.
"Be careful, Tammy. You don’t know anything about what my heart’s been through or who I cared about most in my life. And you don’t know Walsh as well as you think you do. The guy you loved is gone, and you might not recognize his replacement," he growls at me.
I jerk my arm from his grasp and get into the car, sending up a plume of dust as I haul out of the parking lot. Mike stands and watches me until I’m so far away I can’t see him in the rearview mirror anymore.
I HAD no idea when I started my campaign to win Walsh back that it would be so damn hard. Walsh has always made everything easy on me—except his drinking. That was never easy on anyone. But in our relationship, he took care of whatever I wanted without me even needing to ask. After that first day I walked out of algebra class to find him waiting for me, it was nothing but smooth sailing. He asked me for my number—we talked. He asked me out—we dated. He asked me to have sex—we made love and learned each other’s bodies and each other’s hearts. Each time, it was as if he could read my mind, knew what I wanted next when I hadn’t even asked for it yet. It was never hard. There was never anything standing between us. Until the bottle and Joss.
Now, it’s like our mistakes—his and mine—are all there is. Nothing is easy, nothing is smooth, and I’m starting to wonder if it ever will be again. It’s been a week since I started working at the Double A Ranch. Every lunch and every dinner, I serve the food, and every meal, Walsh takes his plate from my hand without looking at me, without speaking to me. He enters and exits the house through the front door though I know he realizes that it pisses Leanne off. And every night before I go to sleep in my little room at Mrs. Stallworth’s house, he sends me a text with two words. Go. Home.
We’ve reached a stalemate, and I’m not sure what happens now. Mike was right about one thing—Walsh is different. The Walsh I lived with for fourteen years was the peacemaker, the easy one, the guy who could go along with anything. This new stubborn, angry Walsh is not what I’m used to and I don’t know how to deal with him. But in the dark of my room at night, as I stare at the cold words that light up my phone next to his picture, I find him to be a strange mixture of frightening and appealing. I’m scared because I don’t know what he’ll do next. Will he drink? Will he have me fired from the Double A? Will he get one of the old Lush security guys to come to town and bodily drag me back to Portland?
On the other hand, he’s sexy, this Walsh. I mean, I’ve always found him to be sexy—obviously. But there’s something darker about him now, something slightly dangerous. When he grabbed my wrist in the dining room that first day, he squeezed it just hard enough that I felt his anger, just hard enough that he reminded me how much stronger and bigger he is. It was a turn-on, and now I’m wondering if I need to go back to counseling for my new Fifty Shades tendencies. God, I’m a fucking mess.
So, because I don’t know what to do, because I don’t know what he’ll do, I do nothing. I go to work, I serve food, I try to laugh and have fun with Leanne—who is quickly becoming one of the nicest friends I’ve ever had—and I wait. For what, I’m not sure.
Ten days after I first rolled up to the Double A, I’ve served lunch and Leanne tells me to go home for a couple of hours. Dinner on Friday nights is leftovers, so there’s no real cooking or prep to do. I’m thinking that I will see if Mrs. Stallworth needs some errands run, so I head to my car in the back lot. I’ve got my sunglasses on and I’m humming a Lush song, looking down at the marks a horse’s hooves have left in the dust when I run smack into someone’s very nicely toned chest. I let out a little yelp and stumble backwards when a hand shoots out and grabs my elbow to keep me from falling.
The next thing I know, the chest and I are pressed against one another and I’m looking up into Walsh’s eyes—his burning, angry eyes that are blasting a hole right through my sunglasses.
"Sorry," I say quickly, trying to take a step back. "My fault. I wasn’t watching where I was going."
He looks at me, and for a moment, I swear I see the old Walsh flicker across his gaze, but it’s gone so fast I can’t be sure.
"You’ve never paid much attention to where you’re going," he says in a low voice as his hand continues to hold my arm so I can’t back away.
I swallow and notice that I’m having trouble getting enough a
ir into my lungs. "I never had to," I whisper. "I just followed you."
He cocks his head to the side and looks at me thoughtfully instead of angrily for a moment. He breathes in deeply, and I can see an internal struggle take place. His face is taut and his jaw flexes as he clenches it. In tiny, tiny increments, like he’s moving in slow motion, his head moves lower until his face floats alongside my neck. I hear him breathe heavily, and then he mutters, "Fuck it all."
The next second, his mouth crashes down over mine as if he’s a starving lion about to take a bite out of a juicy gazelle. His lips crush and his tongue invades as his scent and his taste take over my consciousness.
I gasp and feel his arms wrap around me as he pulls me so tight against him that I fear our heat will melt our skin together. He moans loudly and curses again, and I feel everything inside me go liquid. It’s a rush of sensations. I’m tingling and burning and aching all at once, everywhere. Heat licks at my insides as if Walsh is a flaming sun that can reach inside and burn me alive. He lifts me and spins in one motion, slamming my back against the nearest car. There’s a door handle digging into me somewhere back there, but I don’t have a moment to think about it as Walsh’s body mirrors mine, pressing me into the car from shoulders to feet, his erection a very obvious part of the whole tangle.
He’s kissing my mouth, my jaw, my neck, and the whole time, he doesn’t stop moaning words. "Tammy… Fuck… I tried… Give up… What you want…" It’s a jumble of profanity and shards of conversation. My arms are trapped between us, and suddenly, he jerks back, grabbing both of my wrists in his hand and raising them above my head, pinning me to the side of the SUV we’re trying to become one with.
He breathes heavily as he leans into me again, his forehead resting against mine. "Is this what you want?" he asks so low and so rough that it’s more of a growl. "If I fuck you, will you leave?"
I feel rage well up inside me, warring with the intense arousal that’s already made me wet and hot and utterly disoriented. "Go to hell, Walsh," I grind out just before his mouth catches mine yet again.
His lips are all over me while his hand moves up my shirt, under my bra, until he’s palming my breast. Then he bends his knees, dipping just enough to grind his erection against my core. I cry out as something nearly painful shoots up my center.
Walsh moans my name as he pinches my nipple between his finger and thumb. "You’ve always had the world’s most gorgeous tits," he whispers harshly in my ear. Before I know it, he’s lifted my t-shirt and bra completely, bent down, and taken my breast in his mouth, sucking hard. I push back harder into the car if that’s possible. I feel like something inside me is breaking, but I can’t stop it, and a strange part of me doesn’t want to.
He finally releases my wrists so he can bring his other hand to the apex of my thighs, where he begins a pulsing pressure with his fingers. Even through denim, it’s about to make me explode.
I dig my hands into his hair as he sucks on first one breast and then the other. I press him closer, wanting more, wanting it to hurt, because it’s the physical embodiment of all the pain I’ve felt inside for so many months. Walsh has made this sex and nothing more. No love, no caring—just hard, fast, hot sex—and as much as I want him, as much as I ache to feel that orgasm roll through me, this hurts like hell.
He lifts his head from my chest and looks me in the eyes. We’re both breathing like we just ran a marathon, and he plants one forearm next to my head against the car, pinning my hair and forcing me to look at him as his other hand moves to the button and zipper of my jeans. I quit breathing altogether as he unzips them and slides his hand inside my panties. When he runs a finger along my center where things are very damp and very hot, he bows his head for a moment.
"Christ," he chokes out.
He lifts his face back to mine and slips his middle finger inside me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice is screaming, This isn’t love. This is hate and anger and retribution. But when the waves of ecstasy race through me and I feel myself coming harder than I ever have in my life, none of it matters.
I gasp for breath as I cry out over and over, the pulsing sensations rolling through me for what seems like hours. When it finally stops, Walsh slowly pulls his hand out of my jeans. I feel him shaking, his whole body racked with tremors.
He takes a deep breath before he looks me in the eyes, and says, "Go. Home."
Then he steps back, turns around, and walks away.
Walsh
I STRIDE across the employee parking lot, trying not to break into a run or turn around and give in to the blazing want that’s got my head spinning in ten different directions.
I want a fucking drink so bad I’m ready to kill for one. Literally. I’m afraid I might hurt someone right now—as if what I just did to Tammy weren’t hurtful enough. I march into the bunk room, kicking the shit out of the door when I slam it shut with my boot. Everyone else is at work. It’s the middle of the day, and I should be out there too. I dig my fingers into my hair and yell, because that’s all I can manage at the moment.
"Fucking goddamn fucking shit!" I holler as I kick at the wall. I kick it again and again and again until my boot blasts through the drywall.
As I yank it out, it catches on a piece of wiring and breaks it. Shit, I’ve probably knocked out the electricity to the cabin now. That makes me even more pissed, so I turn and pick up the first thing I see, which happens to be Mike’s expensive digital camera, and I throw it—hard—against the wall, where it breaks into a couple of different chunks and falls on the floor. It’s sort of a letdown. No shattering sounds, no fragments of glass flying around the room. Just a thunk. Then nothing.
I’m exhausted, breathing heavily, and feeling weak. I collapse in the desk chair, lean my head back, and just sit there. Feeling nothing. For the first time in a week, I am empty and there is silence inside me. I’m like the desert after a bomb goes off. The noise recedes, the sand settles back to the ground, and nothing moves, nothing breathes. Everything waits to see if more is coming. But for now, it’s not. I am hollow. My heart, my head, my soul. I feel like some sort of machine—wind me up and I’ll move—but that’s all it is, rote motion.
I finally get up and go into the bathroom, where I slowly and methodically take my clothes off. As I stand under the steaming-hot water that pelts down in the shower, self-loathing lodges deep inside me. I have crossed a boundary I never would have thought I was capable of. I have humiliated the woman I love. I have taken my anger out on her, used sex to try to dominate her. I hate myself. But worse than that, I think I might hate her.
LIFE HAS a funny way of giving you moments of respite in between the moments of sheer and utter hell. It’s like the world knows when it’s pushed you to the point where you might break, and since it wants to torture you more, it backs off to let you recover before it resumes the punishment.
The days following my event with Tammy in the parking lot are quiet. She stays in the kitchen and Leanne brings the food out. She gives me some pretty scathing looks when she does, so I feel certain that Tammy’s told her what happened. I’m still human enough to be ashamed, still in love enough to be destroyed. I try texting Tammy, apologizing, but she doesn’t respond, and I can’t blame her. I acted like an asshole, and there’s no way to take it back.
Mike doesn’t ask what happened, although he’s not happy about his camera, but he treads lightly around me, and I can tell that everyone’s waiting for me to explode. What they don’t know is that I already have and what they’re seeing is the detritus that remains.
It’s Wednesday of the next week, five days after my blowup, when Ronny finally calls my ass out on the carpet.
"Clark!" he shouts into the bunkhouse first thing in the morning.
"Yo!" I mumble as I sit up in bed, my head throbbing like I have a hangover—if only.
"Meet me in the barn. You’ve got five," he barks.
"Sounds like Daddy’s pissed," Mike mumbles helpfully from the top bunk.
He flips me off and rolls over to go back to sleep.
I stumble outside to find that it’s still nearly dark out, but the cows are lowing, the dogs are barking, and the fucking rooster is crowing his head off. I hate animals.
I shuffle into the barn, squinting to see Ronny in the gray morning light.
"Over here," he booms from the far stall where he’s cleaning out old straw.
I walk over, hands stuffed in my pockets, wishing I’d thrown a hoodie on to ward off the slight chill that remains inside the wooden structure.
"What’s going on?" As if I don’t know.
"I think maybe I ought to be the one asking that." He stands up straight, resting on the handle of the shovel he’s using. "Everyone’s been tiptoeing around your ass all week. I’ve asked my wife several times what the hell’s going on because I could tell she knew something, but she and Tammy have been keeping it a girls’ secret for days."
I swallow, a sense of unease coming over me.
"I finally lost patience last night and got Leanne to cough it up. All I have to say is… What. The. Fuck. Were you thinking?"
His eyes are blazing, and I’m seeing a side to Ronny that I’ve never witnessed. He’s shorter than I am, but I have no doubt that he could take me if he wanted.
I back up a step and suck in a deep breath. "I assume you’re talking about my meeting with Tammy?"
"Meeting?" His voice is incredulous. "You call nearly assaulting the girl in my back parking lot a meeting?" I watch his fist clench and unclench. His anger vibrates through the still air of the musty space.
"Ronny… it wasn’t like that. I mean, I was pissed, and I know I was wrong, but she didn’t once tell me to stop. Seriously, I would never… I mean, God… Fuck." I close my hands together to stifle the trembling.
For the Love of a Lush (Lush No. 2) Page 8