He heard a giggle behind him and turned and gave her a hard look.
“The view is good anyway,” she said.
He rolled his eyes and shut the door, hurrying, naked and in broad daylight, into the trees, where he dug a small hole in the soft dirt and disposed of the condom. Then walked as quickly as he could back to the car, taking light steps, trying to avoid majorly sharp rocks and any particularly crunchy sticks.
When he returned to the car, Sadie was sitting there with the door open, her legs sticking out, jeans back on and T-shirt tugged back down. And she was smiling. Far too broadly.
“You look all back to normal,” he said.
She stood, her legs wobbling. “Looks can be deceiving. Are you ready to head back?”
“Well, I’d like to get dressed.”
She swallowed visibly and nodded slowly, moving to the side so that he could reach in and grab his clothes. He shrugged his underwear on, making sure none of the pine needles that were sticking to his feet flaked off inside the underwear, then grabbed his jeans, tugging them on as quickly as possible.
And now he felt at least marginally less ridiculous. He turned back to Sadie, who wasn’t smiling anymore. She had her arms folded beneath her breasts, a blank stare on her face, her lower lips trembling.
He flashed back to that moment she’d looked at him. That calm before the storm when she’d looked almost terrified in his arms.
“Sadie? Did I... Did I hurt you?” he asked, regret slamming into him, making his face feel numb and his stomach sick.
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m fine.” A tear trailed down her cheek, leaving a streak of glitter on her skin.
“You are not fine,” he said. “What did I do?”
“Nothing,” she bit out. “It’s just... I don’t know, it was more intense than I anticipated, is all.”
“I should never have agreed to this. To the handcuffs and...”
“No, it’s not that. Well, it is that. It’s just... I can’t stop thinking about what happened that night.”
“I’m sure it’s scary to get arrested,” he said, feeling like he was treading on thin ice, unsure of what to say next. “I’m sure...”
“Not the arrest,” she said. “It’s what... Eli, that night after I left the police station...my father picked me up.” She leaned against the patrol car and picked up a twig that had fallen onto the trunk. She gripped it, pushed on it with her thumb and snapped it in half, the sound echoing in the dense silence around them. “And when we got home...he beat me so badly I ended up in the hospital.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OH, DAMMIT, SHE was crying. And not just a few tears, but the honest-to-God beginnings of a flash flood. She could feel the dams eroding, so much emotion building, pressing against the already-compromised structure, and she knew the minute it gave way, she was going to cry until she was dry inside.
Because it had been building for years. And now it was all falling apart in front of the man she...the man she’d spent a long time blaming in so many ways. The man who’d just taken her to heaven and back in his car, with what could very well be the same handcuffs on her wrists.
It was fitting he was the one to witness this. When he hadn’t witnessed it then.
Why didn’t you protect me, Eli? You protect everyone. Why couldn’t you see I needed it?
But she didn’t say that out loud. Instead, she continued on, ignoring the tears that slid down her cheeks.
“He was angry at me. For the arrest. And...oh, he said I’d been daring him for a long time. And he wasn’t wrong about that,” she said, swallowing hard, imagining how her father had looked that night. His face red, the vein in his forehead standing out as he’d screamed at her. As he’d landed his first blow, knocking her to the ground. And after that she hadn’t seen him at all. She’d just wound herself into a ball while it continued. Unable to defend herself. Unable to move. While she heard nothing. Nothing but the sound of his knees, boots and fists hitting her body.
When she’d imagined him doing this, she’d heard her mother screaming for him to stop.
But in reality, she hadn’t. In reality, her mother had been silent.
“Anyway,” she said. “It was the last straw. I’d finally set him on me. After years of watching him go after my mother I finally managed to turn it onto myself. She didn’t call 911. So you would never have heard it over dispatch. She drove me to the hospital in Tolowa. We were far enough out that it was just as close as the one on the other end of Copper Ridge.”
“Sadie,” he said, his voice rough. “I had no idea...”
“I know,” she said. “But please let me finish. I had to go into surgery. I know you’ve seen the little scar.” So funny that it was so small, when the scars beneath were so massive. “My spleen had ruptured.”
“Shit,” he said, the word harsh in the silence of the forest, so much heavier with emotion than her own blank retelling.
“My mother told them I had gotten into a fight. She didn’t tell them my father had done it. When I was alone with the nurse she said that I could press charges. But that it was going to be difficult because my mother was adamant I’d gotten into a fight with a group of boys,” she snorted. “She said if I were a minor I could be removed while investigations were done, but I was eighteen and that meant there was nothing they could do. So she asked me what I wanted. My father had come to pick my mother up. My car was in the parking lot. My mother had left the keys. And that was when I realized that people don’t change. So I figured... I’d just change everything around me.”
He covered his mouth with his hand and took a step back, his complexion waxen. “Sadie, I don’t—” He dropped his hands to his sides. “That happened because I arrested you?”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t do that. I’ve done that. I... I do it still sometimes. It was my choice that got me arrested. It was his choice to beat me. It was...”
Suddenly she was pulled tight against his chest, all of the resistance pulled from her by his tight embrace, all of the emotion wringing out of her, tears falling down her cheeks.
He moved his hand over her back, warm and comforting. And way too much.
She buried her face in his chest, the tears hot now, angry. “Why didn’t you protect me?” she asked, the words slipping out before she could process them. Before she could analyze just how unfair they were. He didn’t know. He couldn’t have known. But it was the question that had screamed inside of her for ten years, even when the pain was buried so far beneath years of rocks and rubble and dirt she’d thrown on top of it in an effort to keep it quiet. In an effort to blot it out.
He tightened his hold on her and she curled her hands into fists, pressed against his bare chest as she let him hold her. Her shoulders jerked upward on the sob that filled her throat, forcing her to suck a sharp breath of air.
“You said it’s your job to protect everyone,” she said, the words muffled by his chest. “Everyone in your town. But you didn’t protect me.”
He gripped her shoulders tight, tugging her backward and looking down at her face, his dark eyes sincere, intense. She wanted to look away from him. Hide her weakness, her emotion. Every insecurity and stupid thought.
“Never mind, it’s not your fault...” she began again.
“Sadie, listen to me,” he said. “I would never have given you to him. Ever. I would never have let you go home. If I’d had any idea...” He shook his head. “I should have seen it.”
“Why would you?” she asked, stepping back, feeling so embarrassed she wanted to crawl under the patrol car and curl up into a ball.
“It’s my job. And...sometimes I think I don’t look long enough or hard enough. Because...well, like with Alison. My hands are tied because she won’t tell. She won’t ask for help. She won’t leave. I hate knowing that. That, no matter what, I can’t help. But I could have helped you. If I had asked...you would have told me, wouldn’t you?”
She studied his handsom
e face, the deep grooves around his mouth that spoke of years of frowns. The lines between his brows that told the story of just how many nights he’d sat up worrying. “I was angry, drunk and belligerent. There was no reason for you to offer me anything. I deserved to be arrested and I—”
“You said something to me when you first came to town,” he said, interrupting her.
“What?” she asked, feeling gritty and watery at the same time, and not really enjoying either sensation.
“You said that...that there were people like me who just put people away, and people like you who listen, and try to change things. You’re right. I wouldn’t have listened, not then. I didn’t listen. I figured I was doing the right thing. The legal thing was all the protection that was needed, but it wasn’t.”
“Eli, don’t. Don’t take it on yourself. You wouldn’t have listened, but I wouldn’t have told you. I wanted him to do it. For years... For years and years I watched him hit her. And then I finally decided I was sick of walking on eggshells. That I was going to go ahead and dare him to do the same to me. Because in my head I figured I could take it. Because I figured she would stop it. Well, it turns out I’m not as tough as I thought. And it turns out she didn’t care as much as I thought, either.”
“Sadie, you said—”
“I shouldn’t have said it. But I needed to say it,” she said. “I don’t... I’ve thought it before. I... Look, I really hate talking about this but I needed to tell you because, well...hello, post-sex emotional breakdown, and you did need to know why. I’ve... I was hammered that night, okay? But when you grabbed me and put me in the car, all I could think was you were really strong. The kind of guy who could put a jackass like my dad in his place. The kind of guy who would. You were good, Eli, and I knew it then. I know it now.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t stop him.”
“I’m sorry I ever blamed you.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” he said. “Not for that.” He looked grim, and she knew she’d pushed the worst button she could have ever pushed.
Other men might have shouted and said there was nothing they could have done, and they would have had a right. She’d given Eli a new sin that didn’t belong to him, to add to the long list of other people’s transgressions he seemed to be trying to atone for.
He released his hold on her and turned back toward the car and she just stared at his broad back, his strong shoulders.
All the better to carry the weight of the world on them.
She moved over to him and wrapped her arms around him, resting her head against his bare skin. “Don’t carry this,” she said, kissing the deep groove beneath his shoulder blade. “Please don’t.”
He lifted his hand and covered hers with it, pressing it against his chest. “No one’s going to hurt you again,” he said. “I promise.”
Another tear trailed down her cheek. Because it was everything she’d ever wanted to hear from someone, and it terrified her how much it meant to hear from him now.
Even more terrifying was just how much the words meant, and how cold she felt in her chest when she had to acknowledge that the only person who really had the power to hurt her was him.
No matter how much she’d wanted to keep her feelings for him neutral, he’d burrowed beneath her protective layer. At some point “just sex” had become a hell of a lot more. And she had no idea how that was possible.
She’d had relationships with men, whole relationships based on more than just sex, that hadn’t been like this.
At least, she thought that was what they’d been. They’d gone on dates and chatted, and some nights they hadn’t even slept together, which proved that they had a deeper connection than just the physical. Or that’s what it was supposed to prove.
But this was supposed to be sex. Hot, sweaty, ill-advised cop-cowboy sex. Like some kind of alpha-male female fantasy on steroids. With handcuffs. On a horse.
So why hadn’t it stayed that way? Why did she feel like things were changing? How in the hell had a romp in the backseat of a patrol car turned into the most exposing, soul-baring experience of her life?
“I guess we should get back,” she said, stepping away from him, wishing that separating the feelings that she had for him from her heart was as easy as breaking contact with his skin.
“Yeah,” he said, bending down and retrieving his shirt from the backseat of the car and tugging it on.
Something had changed between them. It was good and bad. She could feel it. He was all tension now, and she couldn’t blame him. But at the same time she felt like the bond had tightened between them.
Because he was the only person who knew. The only one who knew the whole story. Who knew that she wished, more than anything, she’d had someone to protect her.
She hadn’t even let herself in on that, not really, until the moment she’d told him.
“That was fun,” she said, wiping the moisture from beneath her eyes.
“Yeah,” he said, slamming the back door shut before jerking open the front door. “Fun.”
* * *
ELI SLAMMED THE maul down on the splitter and two pieces of wood went flying onto the dirt, the physical energy doing very little to relieve the raging...whatever the hell these feelings were that were roaring through his veins.
He didn’t know what he was feeling. So he was chopping wood instead of feeling. Or at least, that was the plan. And if that didn’t work, eventually he would be exhausted enough that he would just forget he had feelings that didn’t involve his screaming muscles.
Barring that, he’d drink them away, but considering that was the way most other men in his family handled Unpleasant Things No One Wanted to Handle, he was averse. But not entirely opposed. Desperate times, et cetera.
“You have enough wood to keep all of Copper Ridge toasty through the wet season. Why are you chopping more?”
Eli turned and saw Kate standing just behind him, her hands on her hips, her weight resting on one leg. “Because,” he said, bending over and picking up one of the log halves, “I’m expecting it to be a cold year.”
“Oh, okay. Hey, have you talked to Sadie lately?”
Oh, good, that was what he needed. To talk about Sadie with his sister when he was trying to forget the woman via manual labor. In that way that he just wanted to forget about her for long enough to make himself feel comfortable again.
Enough to make himself forget the look on her face. The way she’d shivered in his arms.
Why didn’t you protect me?
He bent and picked up the other log half, scowling deeply. “I talked to her this morning. Why?”
“I wanted to tell her that I made rolls.”
“What?”
“I made rolls by myself. And they’re edible. She showed me how yesterday, so I was... Hey, how are you?”
“Fine,” he said, gritting his teeth and walking over to the wood pile to stack the pieces on top.
“You don’t seem fine,” she said, frowning. “Is this about the people coming for the barbecue next week?”
Weirdly, that bothered him a hell of a lot less than it had in the beginning. In fact, in a very strange way he was looking forward to it. Looking forward to seeing Sadie’s vision come to life. To seeing her hard work become a real, tangible thing.
He shouldn’t care. He did.
Don’t carry this.
Too damn late, Sadiepants.
“Nope,” he said. “I am fine.”
“You are growly.”
“And?”
“That’s Connor’s job. What is up?”
“Just thinking about things,” he said, putting another log on the stump. “Dad.”
“Oh,” she said, looking down.
He positioned the splitter, then lifted the maul again, bringing it down hard. “It’s that time of the year.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” She bit her lip and looked down, then back up, her dark eyes fierce. “I don’t think about him very much.”
�
�You don’t?”
“No.”
He looked at Kate and fully realized—maybe for the first time—that she had never, ever known the good parts of their mother or father. And they had existed. Their mother hadn’t always been despondent and unable to cope. Their father hadn’t always been a man viewing life through an alcohol haze.
He’d gotten to know the people they were. So had Connor.
“He was a good man at one time, Katie,” he said.
“That’s fine,” she said. “For him. For you and Connor. But I never knew that man. I never saw him any way but falling on his ass drunk. You and Connor loved me. Then Jessie, when she married Connor. Jack was there, and Liss, our friends who always made our house feel less empty. But I can’t miss the person who made the house seem sad.”
She didn’t understand, because she didn’t realize what really made him think of their father. She didn’t know that he was trying to cope with the feelings Sadie’s words had triggered.
That they had brought to mind all he’d failed to protect.
And that was the crux of the problem. He wanted to protect the people he loved, the people of Copper Ridge. And his track record was hit or miss at best.
“Hello.” He turned and saw Sadie standing in the driveway, her hands in her back pockets, tugging the T-shirt she was wearing tight across her breasts, her expression sheepish. “Hopefully I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Not anything important,” Kate said, forcing a smile.
She looked a whole lot like him when she faked okay, and he wasn’t sure what he thought about that.
“How is everything, Kate?” Sadie asked, smiling. Sadie’s smile, regardless of her feelings, always seemed genuine. And that was even more concerning. He was starting to realize that everything about Sadie, all of her ease and lightness, wasn’t what it seemed.
Ruptured spleen. Hospitalization. Her mother wouldn’t defend her...
He couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t believe this bright, amazing woman had been subjected to horrors that topped the Garrett Ranch’s Greatest Hits by a mile. He hadn’t even guessed at her pain, and today she’d poured it out onto his chest.
The Cowboy Way Page 56