Meanwhile, my family would all eat together at Grandma and Granddad’s place, as was tradition.
And Gemma and I would pretend, like we had been all month, that we were coworkers and friends at best.
If my family had any clue that I drove to Gemma’s cabin a few nights a week, no one had mentioned it—which meant they didn’t know. Besides my mother, the Greers weren’t known for subtlety.
So Gemma and I were keeping up appearances when we crossed paths at the lodge during the week. I didn’t stop to talk to her at the front desk. And on Saturdays, when everyone else was at home, this had become our routine. We’d eat Friday night family dinner, limiting conversation and pretending to ignore the other. Then I’d leave first but instead of going home, I’d go to the cabin. By the time Gemma arrived, I’d have a fire roaring and was usually naked in bed, waiting for her to join me. Saturday mornings we’d share a pot of coffee, then I’d come up with a handful of jobs for us to tackle together.
“Okay, I’m done.” Gemma appeared at the stall door, brushing her gloves on her jeans.
It was cold outside, the air frozen and the ground covered in a fluffy layer of fresh snow. But there was a light sheen to her brow from working hard and her cheeks were flushed.
She’d shed her navy winter coat—one she’d ordered weeks ago after I’d lectured her relentlessly for an hour about Montana winters. Over her long-sleeved black tee, she’d shrugged on one of my flannels to keep her clothes from getting too dirty.
Her hair was up in a messy knot because she hadn’t washed it this morning when we’d showered together. She wasn’t wearing a lick of makeup and a few pieces of straw clung to her boots—another purchase I’d encouraged her to make.
Standing there, fresh and relaxed, Gemma stopped my heart. Damn, but she was beautiful.
“Have you ever thought about swapping the storage stall at the end of the stables to one in the middle?” she asked. “It would save foot traffic.”
“Um . . . no.” That stall at the end of the stables had always been used for storage. I couldn’t think of a reason why—that’s where it had always been. “But I will.”
“Just an idea.”
Gemma had been tossing out ideas all month. The way she did it was always more curious than intrusive. But she saw things in a way the rest of us didn’t. And so far, I’d taken every single idea she’d pitched.
“What’s next?” she asked.
“This.” I fisted a handful of her flannel and dragged her into the empty stall, smashing my lips on hers as I pressed her against the wall.
She moaned, her gloved hands sliding up and around my neck as she opened her mouth to let me inside.
My tongue swept against hers and licked in long, smooth strokes. I leaned into her, my cock swelling as she gripped my ass and pulled me closer.
“Easton.” My mother’s voice resonated in the cavernous space.
I broke away from Gemma instantly, sucking in some air and wiping my lips clean.
Gemma pulled her lips in to hide a smile as she brought one finger to her lips and sunk down against the wall. Hiding.
I was sick of the fucking secrets.
“Easton?”
“Yeah,” I called back, scowling at Gemma as I walked out of the stall. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hi.” She smiled brightly. “How are you today?”
“Fine.” I’d been better a second ago. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, nothing. I was dropping some extra eggs off at the kitchen and saw your truck, so I wanted to come say good morning.”
“Glad you did. Good morning.” I held out my elbow so she could loop her arm through mine. Then I walked her down the center aisle. “What are you up to?”
“Not much. I’m—”
“Hello!”
Mom and I turned at Kat’s voice, seeing her come inside with a wave.
Since when were the stables such a popular Saturday spot? Normally, I was the only one who worked on the weekends, besides Katherine. But she usually stayed in the office. Everyone else who’d retired worked Monday through Friday.
Mom immediately let my arm go to give Katherine a hug. “Morning, sweetheart.”
Katherine kissed Mom’s cheek. “I was just on my way to your place but I saw your Jeep. When I went to town yesterday, they had a special on flowers, so I grabbed you a couple of bundles. They’re your favorite peach roses.”
“Ha.” Mom laughed. “Great minds. I went to the store first thing this morning and bought this beautiful pink bouquet I thought you’d like.”
As the two of them laughed and talked about flowers, I glanced over to the stall where Gemma was hiding. She could come out. She could pretend to have been working. But she stayed hidden.
“It’s been ages since we took a ride together,” Mom told Kat. “Let’s plan one for this week.”
“I’d love to.”
“Can you come over for a little while?” Mom asked her, earning a nod as they walked together toward the door.
If I knew them, which I did, they’d spend the rest of the day at Mom’s house. She’d lure Kat over with the promise of coffee and cookies, then she’d talk her into staying and helping bake a pie or working on some craft project. It would become a mother-daughter day, Mom having adopted Kat as the daughter she’d always wanted.
I stood and watched until they disappeared outside. “Coast is clear.”
Gemma emerged from the stall and her bright smile had dulled. Her eyes went to the door where the sound of Katherine and Mom’s slamming vehicle doors echoed. As she stared outside, her expression went blank.
Except I’d spent a month studying Gemma’s face. She was doing her best to block out her thoughts and maybe others wouldn’t notice, but I saw the hurt she was burying.
“You okay?”
She nodded and forced a smile. “Great.”
That was a total lie. But if I pushed, she’d shut me out completely, so I’d wait until she was ready to talk.
“Jigsaw needs a workout. Let’s go for a ride.”
“Actually, I think I’m going to go—”
“For a ride. With me.” I jerked my chin toward Sprite’s stall. “Get her curried off. Then I want you to saddle her today.”
“What if I don’t want to go for a ride?” She fisted her hands on her hips.
“Too bad.” I stepped close and took her chin in my grip, holding her gaze for a moment.
There were so many incredible things about this woman. She was smart and driven. She was beautiful and loving. But damn if she wasn’t blind.
Would she ever see what was in front of her?
Everything she wanted, everything she needed, was right here. A home. A family.
Me.
I’d stopped lying to myself over the past month. My heart was hers—it had been since the moment she’d nearly knocked me down on the lodge’s front porch. I’d stopped pretending that my feelings for her weren’t as real as the breath in my lungs or the pulse in my veins.
I’d stopped kidding myself that it wouldn’t destroy me when she left.
Because I believed she’d leave.
And I wasn’t going to beg her to stay.
“Holler after you get Sprite combed.” I leaned in and dropped a kiss on her forehead.
“Okay.” She didn’t argue because, deep down, I think she needed some air and a ride as much as I did.
It didn’t take us long to get the horses ready. Gemma was able to saddle Sprite without much help, remembering most of the steps from our first lesson. I usually only had to show her something once, then she’d tackle it on her own the next time. She remembered the details that most dismissed.
No wonder she’d been so successful in Boston.
The woman was brilliant and her determination to succeed was unmatched.
As we started across the snowy meadow, the horses antsy and happy to be out, Gemma kept her eyes aimed forward. Her coat was bundled up to her neck and she’d pulled on a slou
chy beanie.
“Loosen up on the reins,” I said. “Sprite’s not going to buck you off. Just relax.”
Gemma blew out a long breath, doing as I’d instructed.
“Good. Now let’s talk. What’s wrong, darlin’?”
She didn’t say anything for a full two minutes—I counted the seconds tick by—but then she looked at me and shrugged. “I’m jealous.”
“Jealous. Of?”
“Katherine. She found a mother. Yours. And I’m so, so happy for her. But I’m jealous too. And I’m angry at myself for being jealous.”
She didn’t have to be jealous. She could have that same relationship. Gemma had no clue how much love my mother had to give. It was endless. She’d pull Gemma into her life and never let go.
I opened my mouth, unsure what to say, but Gemma spoke first.
“My mother was crazy.”
I closed my mouth, watching her profile as she kept her gaze locked on the path ahead. This wasn’t the first time she’d hinted at her mother’s issues, and unlike her other mentions, I hoped her story wouldn’t end here. I hoped she’d keep talking and finally get some of this shit out in the open. To set it free and let the wind carry it away.
“Not like wild and crazy,” she clarified. “Crazy, crazy. It took me a long time after leaving to understand that there was something fundamentally wrong with her. Her mind, it wasn’t right.”
“What happened? Why’d you run?”
“To stay sane. Things were . . . unlivable. As I got older, it kept deteriorating. Until I knew if I stayed, I’d go mad. I’d end it before I became like her.”
The air vanished from my lungs. The pain in my chest was crippling. Gemma was fierce and strong. For her to consider taking her own life . . . things were far worse than I’d ever imagined.
I shifted Jigsaw closer and held out a hand, palm open.
Gemma laid hers on mine and I held it so tight that she’d have to rip it free.
“My mom was beautiful,” she said. “I look in the mirror each morning and she’s staring right back. I hate that I look like her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I almost got a nose job in Boston so I wouldn’t be the same. But then I found this great therapist and he helped me see that my looks were my own. Some days though, I still want the plastic surgery. Maybe that’s me being weak.”
“There’s not a damn thing weak about you. I get it.” And if she wanted to change her nose or her chin or her cheeks, I’d drive her to the surgeon.
“I want to hate her,” Gemma whispered, the words barely audible above the horses’ steps and the breeze rolling across the meadow. “It would make everything so much easier, except I don’t. I pity her. Her father, my grandfather, raped her from the time she was twelve. It broke her mind.”
I gritted my teeth, holding my breath so I wouldn’t explode as my temper surged. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Raped . . . by a parent? It was the unthinkable.
“As you can imagine, she was never right with men.” Gemma shook her head. “And thankfully, the bastard had a heart attack when she was six months pregnant with me.”
My heart stopped. Gemma had never mentioned her father. Was she—
“No,” she answered the question I hadn’t been able to think, let alone say aloud. “Once my mom turned eighteen, my grandfather never touched her again. She wasn’t interesting enough for him. My father was some guy Mom met at a bar and screwed in a bathroom. She was quite . . . forthcoming about her sexual escapades. She always told me every little detail. Other girls got fairy tales as their bedtime stories. I got detailed comparisons of Mom’s lovers.”
Gemma truly had lived in a hell.
“Mom worked at a grocery store,” she said. “I had a roof over my head and never went hungry. She’d buy me cute clothes from Kmart. I remember her laughing and tickling me when I was little. It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly when I realized she was crazy, and I’d been too young to notice early on. We were poor, but we weren’t unhappy. Then everything changed.”
“What changed?” I asked.
“Me. I got older. I wasn’t as naïve to the boyfriends Mom had always invited to our house. She’d parade me in front of them and say things like, ‘Isn’t she pretty?’ or ‘You can touch her hair.’”
My stomach rolled. I wasn’t sure I could keep listening to this, but I held her hand and let her talk because this wasn’t for me. This was for Gemma. Maybe she’d told a therapist about this, but she needed to air it out here too.
She tightened her grip on my hand. “Most men who came over never came back. They either got what they’d been after from her or they saw Mom’s crazy and left.”
“Fucking cowards,” I spat. “They left. But they left you there too.”
Hadn’t anyone called the cops? Hadn’t one of those bastards seen a girl in danger?
“Everything would have been fine if they all would have left,” she said. “Some were worse than cowards.”
“Gem, did you . . . did they . . .” Christ. I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth.
“I was never raped. But there are things that happened that I won’t ever talk about again.”
And I wouldn’t put her through reliving that time, especially now when the grip I had on my self-control was slipping. “Okay.”
“My mother didn’t deserve me.”
“That’s a damn understatement,” I muttered.
“The house that I grew up in was my mother’s childhood home. She lived there, even after what my grandfather had done, and after he died.”
“That’s insane.”
“Like I said, she’s crazy. And I want to hate her,” Gemma repeated. “I very much want to hate her.”
I took a few breaths as Gemma stayed quiet, her eyes forward. Jigsaw let out a snort and their footsteps thudded loud against the frozen ground. She tugged her hand free and I let it go, but I stayed close.
Around us, the world seemed so at peace. The snow blanketed everything and the scent of a warm wood fire clung to the air. It seemed so simple. My life seemed so simple. Easy. Blessed.
Gemma was a warrior. She’d fought every day to survive, and I was so proud of her. I was proud that she’d broken the cycle.
“After you ran away, did you ever see her again? Your mother?”
Gemma nodded. “She always knew where I was. I never told anyone, but I went home and checked on her about once a month.”
My jaw dropped. “She knew you were living in a junkyard and didn’t do anything about it?”
Gemma gave me a sad smile. “She did do something about it. She didn’t make me come home.”
Maybe there’d been a shred of sanity in her mother after all.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say. But now you know. When I see your mother hug Katherine and buy her flowers because she knows how much Katherine loves pink, I get jealous. And Katherine deserves that. She deserves a mother.”
“And what about you? Don’t you?”
“I have a mother. She lives in the same house she’s lived in her entire life. And I bought it five years ago so she doesn’t have to work and will never have to move.”
“What?” My eyes bulged. “You still . . . you what?”
She’d kept in touch with her mother all these years. She’d provided for her. She’d funded her life.
She wanted to hate her mother. She wanted to change her own looks to escape her mother.
But she’d chained herself to the woman.
God, she was strong. I’d never known anyone with Gemma’s strength and resilience.
“I moved out,” Gemma said. “I didn’t turn my back on her.”
“Does Kat know?”
“No one does.” There was a warning in her tone.
Gemma had made up her mind about caring for her mother a long, long time ago. And not a soul on earth would make her change her mind, even me.
She tightened her grip on Sprite’s reins a
nd clicked her tongue, picking up the pace and ending the conversation.
I urged Jigsaw forward and caught up, staying silent as I let her choose the path of the ride. Her story ran over and over through my mind, and though I had questions, I kept them to myself.
Where did Gemma and I go from there? Would this confession bring us closer together? Or now that I knew the truth, would it give Gemma the excuse she’d been searching for to run?
Or would she realize that she’d just opened up to me, because she’d finally found the place where she belonged?
Chapter Thirteen
Gemma
“Happy Thanksgiving.” I smiled into the phone, hearing the baby coo in the background.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” Londyn said. “How are you?”
“Cold. It’s freezing here. How are things with you?”
“Um . . . interesting.”
My smile fell. “Everything okay?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“What?” My hand came to my heart. “Really? Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” Londyn laughed. “This wasn’t exactly what we’d planned, but oh my God, Gem, you should see Brooks. He’s so excited.”
And she was too.
“I’m so happy for you, Lonny.”
“Me too. So what are you doing today? Are you eating with the Greers?”
“I’m sitting outside Carol and Jake’s house as we speak.”
“How’s the Cadillac fairing in the snow?” she asked.
“Not too bad. Though I think it’ll be happy to see warm weather again.” Easton had offered to get me a ranch truck to drive around, but I’d declined. For now, the Cadillac was doing fine on the roads they kept plowed. And if that changed, I’d take a truck.
“Are you still thinking you’ll leave after Christmas?”
“Unless the roads are bad.” The idea of leaving made my heart ache, but eventually, my time here would come to an end.
It had to end.
Dreams were only meant to last a few short hours. Already I’d had mine for weeks.
“There’s no rush,” Londyn said for the hundredth time since I’d left West Virginia. Every time we’d talked, she’d reminded me to take some time.
Wild Highway: Runaway Series - Book 2 Page 14