I’d known the second he asked where I wanted us to be.
“If we were out in town, we’d be out with the town,” I said knowingly. “And we do have a lot we need to discuss without people listening in . . .”
He tugged me even closer, making me ache to feel his hard body against mine again.
“Emberly Olsen,” he rumbled softly, “can I take you on a date to your place?”
A wide, unrestrained smile spread across my face. Warmth surged through my chest as my heart threatened to break free. “Now?”
“Right now.”
“Starting now?” I asked wryly, a giggle sounding in my throat when he pressed his mouth to mine, teasing me for a few precious moments before nipping playfully at my lips.
“Talking,” he said in a halfhearted reprimand as he started leading me out into the bar.
We hadn’t gotten more than a few feet before he released me. His hand gently moving me farther and farther away as he stopped directly beside Brady.
But the distance he put between us wasn’t enough to conceal the way he tensed or the furious look in his eyes. It wasn’t enough to hide his low, rumbling threat. “Next time you kiss a girl? Make sure she wants it. Touch this one again? I’ll break you.”
I was starting to wonder if I really was that easy to read. If Kip and Brady kept saying they knew me because they did even though I’d been sure they couldn’t.
Sure they’d only known the Emberly the town got to see.
But even Cayson had known what I would choose when giving me the option between going out and staying in.
He’d gotten a key from Rae and had already set everything up in my condo for when we’d gotten back. Lunch cooking in the oven, strawberry froyo waiting in the freezer, and my bedroom off-limits for the time being.
It was all perfect, exactly what I would’ve asked for . . . you know, except for that last part.
But when I asked, “Do you feel like you know me?” as we did the dishes side by side, Cayson just laughed.
A short, scoffing sort of sound.
“Know you? Emberly, I can’t figure you out,” he said in equal parts amusement and frustration. He set down the plate he’d been drying and turned to me, gripping my hip and pulling me flush against him. “Why else do you think I wanted to put a pause on everything?”
“So we would talk.”
He lifted a brow in confirmation. “You and me? It’s this fire that builds and builds into a frenzy I never want to escape from. It’s the rest we have a problem with.” He searched my eyes for a moment. “All that pain from our pasts has built walls so high and so thick . . . that fire means nothing if we can’t get past them.”
I wanted to get past them.
I wanted to do whatever it took if it meant this man continued to look at me the way he was—like he wanted me and was begging me to want him too.
But I was terrified to reopen the old wounds he’d inflicted. To expose myself so completely to Cayson. Because if he left after baring myself that way? I wasn’t sure I would survive that.
“This,” he said softly, sadly. “This, what you’re doing now. That worry and hesitation, I can feel it, Emberly.” He stepped away from me, gripping his chest before letting his hands fall roughly to his sides. “It’s like a disease crawling on me, and it’s always there.”
“You can’t blame me after everything you put me through or the way you just appeared again after so many years. You can’t fault me when Sawyer said you were leaving again.”
“Then talk to me,” he shot back pleadingly. “Tell me that, and we’ll talk.”
My fingers curled into fists as I held my ground. Forcing myself to stand tall as I dove headfirst into our current issues and the harrowing past we’d been avoiding.
Teeth clenched tight and voice wavering when I said, “I feel like I’m going crazy. Because your reappearance brought everything back to the surface and made me want to stay far away from you. Made me afraid that you would still be the Cayson I knew growing up. I was afraid you would destroy my heart again, and also terrified that you would leave because I have waited every day for you to come back.”
His expression was a mixture of so many emotions, making it impossible to pinpoint any one of them or know what he was thinking or feeling.
He did that a lot when he got silent, and it infuriated me at that moment because I wanted to know his thoughts.
I wanted him to be as easy to read as I apparently was.
My head shook as I stepped back until I was pressed to one of the counters, my shoulders bunching up when I continued. “And then everyone started talking about you, and Sawyer said you were leaving, and all I wanted was to avoid you until you left. But you kept being there and being there, and I . . .” I lifted a hand toward him as if to say I couldn’t help myself.
“My job.” The words were a hushed rumble. When I looked at him in question, he repeated, “My job—the furlough will end. I have to go back, that’s why he said I was leaving.”
It felt like the floor was ripped out from beneath me.
I’d known—I’d heard Sawyer that morning.
Still, I’d hoped maybe Sawyer was wrong or that Cayson would’ve changed his mind or anything other than his time here was truly temporary.
“Then why are we doing this?”
“Because I love you,” he said softly. “I have always loved you.”
Everything went still.
Time. My racing mind. The wrenching of my stomach.
But my thundering heart? That was going faster than ever. Crashing and hammering in my chest like a stampede of wild horses.
All in reaction to words I would’ve waited forever to hear.
“No.” My head moved in slow, full shakes as I came back to reality. “No, no, you hated me. You made me miserable.”
“And that is why this is important,” he said bluntly, indicating us and my kitchen. “Because you about blew my mind the other night with everything you confessed to me.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I spent most of my life thinking you were in love with Sawyer.”
I jerked back. “Wha—ew, what?”
“Why do you think I always picked on you and was an asshole to you?” He flung out a hand. “Other than the fact that I was just an asshole, it was because I hated that you wanted him—that I thought you wanted him.”
My eyes and mouth went wide as disbelief filled and stunned me.
“Duck.”
My head snapped up to find his jaw flexing as he stared at me.
“The two of you always followed each other everywhere—like shadows . . . like ducks. Even after Sawyer and Leighton started dating and it drove me crazy because no one thought anything about the fact that the two of you were inseparable.”
“That’s why you called me Duck?” I asked, voice breathless and head light as I tried to wrap my mind around what he was saying.
He looked at me as though I should’ve known. “Why else would I have called you that?”
“My lips,” I shouted, unable to control the reaction as memories quickly resurfaced.
His stare dipped to my mouth, brow furrowed.
“You did that,” I bit out. “You looked at my mouth when you called me Duck, and everyone was always teasing me for my lips growing up.”
A stunned breath fled from him. “If I was looking there, it was because I wanted to kiss you.”
“No, no, don’t lie to me.” He started to speak, but I said, “I remember what happened with the baseball guys, Cayson.”
He reared back, confusion lining his face. “What do you mean? What happened?” When I just rolled my eyes, he bent forward, tone sharp and cold. “What happened?”
I sighed and told him the story of when the players from Cayson’s year had gotten me into the gym. Crowding me into the corner, claiming they wanted to find out why Cayson called me Duck.
When I began, the words and events were clipped with my frustration at his pretending not to know.
But as I went on, I calmed and gave every last hushed detail.
Because at some point, Cayson had slowly begun pacing. Gripping at the back of his neck, chest moving in harsh jerks as he listened. And by the time I finished, he was still. Standing like a statue of regret, staring at the floor like he was in pain.
“After Sawyer and Gavin beat up the ones who didn’t scatter,” I added softly, “one of them admitted that you’d said the only way to get me alone was to say Sawyer needed my help.”
“And you believed him?” was all he asked.
“We all did,” I said softly, second-guessing everything for the first time in my life. I’d been sure of this, sure of who was behind it all, but it was hard to mistake Cayson’s shock and fury. “And it wasn’t the last time those guys used you as their reasoning or mastermind.”
His cold stare snapped to me. “What do you mean?”
I hesitantly told him about some of the other times: The red-dye water balloons, since, apparently, that had been Cayson too. And the time four of them had rushed me in a hallway at a party, grabbing me and lifting my shirt. One took a photo while another kept his mouth firmly to mine to mute my yells.
As they’d left, their proud laughs had been mixed with an irritated grumble of, “Cayson said they were bigger.”
“The hell?” Horror and wrath dripped from Cayson as he shook his head in quick denial. “I never got the baseball guys to do jack shit . . . I never had anything to do with them—period. Those guys had a reputation, they were assholes, everyone knew that. If I had known, I would’ve been right there with Sawyer, beating the shit out of them. If I had known, I would’ve stopped it all. Everything you’re saying, I never knew. Not before, not during, not after.”
“Cayson, it all had to do with you.”
“It didn’t,” he ground out, sorrow and rage wrapping around each word. “The following you thing . . . what you told me about when they wanted you to prove you weren’t a guy. You said those were baseball players, right?” When I nodded, his head shook, his fingers gripping at his hair and his chest heaving. “If I had—fuck.”
“Cayson . . .”
“Emberly, that . . . that I said. I said it in passing to someone as a joke so he wouldn’t ask you out because I wanted you. I didn’t know it was gonna take off. I didn’t know it was gonna turn into what it did. I didn’t know it had. The rest?” He sliced his hand through the air. “None of that was me.”
I let out a heavy sigh filled with so much confusion and unknowns. Then reminded him about the day at the lake that led to the red-dye water balloons, but he just looked at me blankly.
“When did I ever go to the lake with you?” Before I could respond, he gestured to me. “I never wanted to be near you and Sawyer.”
My stare fell as I thought, trying to remember that day and who all had been there. But the Dixon’s ranch and lake had been flooded with people.
There was no way to know if Cayson had been there or not.
But he was right, I couldn’t remember a time when he had been there.
“Kip said it was—”
“Kip,” he said on a cruel laugh. When my attention returned to him, his head was moving in a subtle but harsh nod. “Yeah, sounds about right.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked when he didn’t continue.
“Told you I was surprised that you were with him. I mean, not all of the baseball players were dicks, but he made the others look like saints.”
I jerked back. “What? Kip wasn’t—no, he wasn’t like that.”
“You sure about that?” he asked doubtfully. “End of my freshman year, party at our ranch, I found him pushing a girl up against a truck, telling her she wanted to have sex with him even though she kept saying ‘stop.’”
My stomach dropped.
My veins coated in ice.
I was pretty sure I was going to be sick.
“Even when I ripped him off of her and hit him, he tried telling me that she was fine and wanted it. He had a problem with listening even then. Guy hated me after that. I got in trouble enough as it was, but if he saw an opportunity, he threw me under the bus. And everyone believed him because it was me, right? Why wouldn’t the trouble-causing Dixon be the one responsible for all the shit he pinned on me?” A huff ripped from him. “Now this?”
I wasn’t sure when my head had begun shaking, but I couldn’t seem to stop it.
“I teased you,” he said, voice soft but firm. “I pranked people—including you. What was it you brought up the other night? Your hair?”
“My hair,” I echoed lamely.
“Yes, I cut your hair because you had gum in it, and everyone was making fun of you behind your back.”
I blinked quickly, my hands lifting as though I could maybe stop or reverse what he’d just said. “So, you cut my hair?”
“I was eight,” he shot back. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Oh my God,” I muttered and dragged my fingers through my hair. “You could’ve just told me.”
“Eight,” he repeated meaningfully. He sucked in a ragged breath, and when he released it, his words came out slow and deep. “You said I made you miserable, that I tormented you, except I literally had no idea because I wasn’t a part of any of it.”
My chin trembled when I met his stare as my life seemed to crash down around me in a bunch of unknowns.
“Teasing, pranking,” he repeated, nodding. “Lashing out at you, I did that too.”
He pressed the tips of his fingers to his chest, his expression shifting in a way that let me know I wanted to cling to every word that was about to leave his lips.
“I made jokes and pranked people to take the attention off of me before people could really see me . . . before they could make fun of me. Lashing out at you? It was to get you to walk away from me—the only times in my life I ever wanted you to.”
Hardened eyes and taunting words burst into my mind like a cruel joke.
He lifted his hands only to let them fall. “My dad . . . what you heard that last night? We’d had dozens of similar conversations throughout my life. And for some reason, you always seemed to be right there. Around the corner, down the hall, just outside—always there. Right after the worst, most debasing times of my life.”
“Cayson . . .”
“I wanted someone to hurt the way I was hurting.” His eyes held mine, regret pooling in them. “And I didn’t want you to see what he saw in me, so I made sure you didn’t.”
“What didn’t you want me to see?” I asked softly.
“That is what I did, and I’m sorry,” he continued without answering. “I’m sorry for all of it. But that other shit?” His head slanted, his entire demeanor looking both wounded and frustrated that I thought he could’ve ever had a hand in it. “I made it a point not to know what was going on with you and Saw because it made me so damn mad thinking he was who you wanted. But if I’d known what was going on? Everyone would’ve known what you meant to me then. Everything you said wouldn’t have happened because I would’ve put an end to it—Sawyer should have.”
I didn’t tell him Sawyer had tried.
I didn’t tell him that whenever anything had happened, Sawyer would hit him—what I now assumed Cayson had thought were random attacks.
I didn’t tell him we hadn’t been able to stop it because we’d always been watching and trying to stop Cayson from whatever he might have them do next.
Always a step behind, that’s what we’d thought . . .
Couldn’t have been more accurate. We’d just been a step behind the wrong person.
My head moved subtly as I tried to wade through the crippling weights of my past, each heavier and more shocking than the previous. But one look at Cayson, at the regret and pain there, everything faded away like a bad nightmare until it was only me. Only Cayson. Only his past that I was dying to know.
Because that pain was fueled by shame and resentment and fear, and it made me ache for him wit
hout knowing anything more than one overheard conversation.
“Cayson, what happened?”
His jaw tightened. His eyes bounced around my face.
“What happened,” I asked again, pleading. “With your dad . . . with you? Why did you leave?” By the end, I was trembling, and I wasn’t even sure why.
If it was the anticipation.
The anguish rolling off him in waves.
Or if my mind and heart already knew I wasn’t prepared for what he’d say next.
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Emberly asked again, cheeks stained with her tears.
“So I would’ve had my brothers ganging up on me too?”
“They wouldn’t—”
“You can’t know how they would’ve reacted,” I disagreed softly. “Told you what Caroline did when she found out.”
“But they wouldn’t have treated you the way your dad did,” she choked out, dropping her head into her hands.
At some point in baring my soul to her, she’d awkwardly lowered herself to the floor as though she hadn’t been able to hold herself up any longer.
At some point, she’d started crying and mouthing silent disbeliefs and apologies.
By the time I finished, I’d ended up on the floor as well, opposite where she sat as I released it all.
It’d been both easier and harder than when I’d told Hunter.
Harder because, of everyone, she had always been the one I was most afraid would find out. Easier because I’d already told her I loved her.
I’d already confessed my greatest secret.
Confessing the rest of my buried past felt natural and crucial after that.
“Even after he died, you let them continue to assume and attack . . .” Her head shook sadly as she lifted it and let it fall against the cupboard. “Cayson, why? God, if I had just told Sawyer what I heard that night.”
“No,” I said quickly, stopping her hushed self-reprimand. “That night . . . I told you nothing happened because I needed it to be that way for you and for them. I needed to leave, Emberly. If I hadn’t, I would’ve been trapped here as this person everyone had a certain mindset about. I wouldn’t have met AJ, and I wouldn’t have learned anything I had. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to become who I am.”
Whiskey (Brewed Book 2) Page 28