“Then I guess you need to listen.” There was no malice in my tone, and I remained as relaxed as I could under the circumstances. I situated myself on the sofa. The velvety feel of the material under my palm and the softness of the cushions under my ass and thighs almost stole my focus, so I regrouped as I leaned against the arm. “You dumped a lot of emotion at my feet on Friday—”
“And you ignored all of it.”
“That’s not fair.” I bit the inside of my cheek. Fighting wouldn’t get us any closer to resolution. “I heard every word you said. I wanted to respond. I wanted to react. What I didn’t want was for you to wake up the next morning with regret.”
Her eyes left mine and drifted off to something across the room. “Ironic.”
We weren’t going to get anywhere if there were walls between us. I’d torn mine down between Friday night and now. It was time for Miranda to expose herself, too. “Maybe.” My voice was almost a whisper when I leaned toward her. Taking her chin between my thumb and finger, I encouraged her not to just see me, but I needed her heart to hear me. “I wanted to be certain that when I told you that I still loved you, there wouldn’t be a second of it you couldn’t remember because the whiskey blocked it out.”
Her jaw went slack, and her eyes widened. Neither of those gave me what I needed to proceed. When her bottom lip trembled, I felt it in my fingers, and when her pupils dilated, that was the moment I had her on my side of her defenses. She was vulnerable, and I struck with a thunderous roar.
“And Randi, I do still love you.” I gave that a second to sink in. “There hasn’t been a day that’s passed since you left Texas that I haven’t wanted you back, regardless of how angry I was.” Then and now. Although, I left that part off. I figure it was implied.
She shook her head, and I dropped my hand to my lap. “Then why were you so mean?”
It was time to play my hand, and I hoped like hell I still held my queen of hearts. “You want brutal honesty?”
“Seems kind of silly to have come all this way and give me anything else.”
“Because part of me wanted you to hurt the way I had.” It was immature but truthful. I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Admitting what I had experienced after she left would be almost as painful as the reality of living it. “When you ran off, I had no idea what happened. Your dad wouldn’t say anything. Sarah didn’t know anything. And all I could do was wonder if you were safe, coming back, dead, upset. You disappearing blindsided me, and it nearly destroyed me.”
She cocked her head to the side like she wanted to say something, so I paused to let her. “My dad didn’t tell you what happened?” It wasn’t surprise that lined her face. She appeared completely dumbfounded when I shook my head. “What about Sarah? He never told her?”
“If he did, Sarah never told me.” It didn’t take a lot of effort to recall those times. They haunted me with vigor. “I went to the ranch every day, hoping you’d come home. I spent hours there. For weeks, which turned into months and eventually years.”
Randi pulled her knees to her chest under the thin blanket and squeezed her shins. “Why?”
It wasn’t rational, and looking back, it now seemed stupid. “If you showed up, I wanted to be there. I needed to make certain you saw that I’d been faithful. I’d been loyal. I’d taken care of the things you loved when you couldn’t.” It sounded even more ludicrous when I said it out loud than it did in my head. “Because if you ever came home, I needed you to see I’d done my best to keep my promise to you, and that I’d waited for you.”
“And I never came.” She murmured the sentiment more to herself than for me to hear.
“Six years is a long time to be faithful to someone who’s absent and chose to leave. But I was, one hundred percent. My heart has belonged to you since we were kids, and it will until the day I die, regardless of whether we’re together.”
“I didn’t choose to leave, Austin.” Her pitch rose, as did the decibel level of her voice. Color tinged her cheeks, and it hit me that her truth might be as painful as my own. “All these years, you thought I left Mason Belle because I wanted to?” She stretched her legs out and tossed the blanket aside. In no time, she stood and began pacing the room. “He’s let everyone in town believe I walked away? Not that he sent me away?”
I shrugged, but she had her back to me and missed it. It was probably for the best because she didn’t actually want an answer, Randi needed to unload. Tears hung from her jaw when she faced me. “He attacked me after you left that morning.”
Jack had been on edge after the accident. Finding his daughter in bed with her boyfriend wouldn’t please any father, much less one dealing with all he had been going through.
“I don’t mean he yelled at me. He destroyed my room and everything I owned. He grabbed me. Hit me. Called me names—”
I saw red. That was the last day I had seen Randi, and I had all but refused to leave her. I’d seen it in his eyes, even though I couldn’t identify it at the time. “Why didn’t you call me?” I wondered if the pain of reliving these events would ever go away, if there would ever be a day where we forgot them.
She sat on the edge of the coffee table close to me. The temptation to reach out and take her hands nearly took over. If she needed a tether, she’d grab one. I shifted on the couch to face her. With my legs spread and my elbows on my knees, my hands dangled within her reach. Randi didn’t take them. Her shoulders slumped, she bowed her head, and her body shook when she began to sob.
I couldn’t take it. Every tear that fell, every shuttered breath she took, they each hit me with the force of a train. “Randi.” I whispered her name, trying to bring her back to me.
The sight of her bloodshot eyes and soaked cheeks when she lifted her chin were nothing compared to the agony that ripped through her chest and out of her mouth. For the second time in her life, I bared witness to the betrayal of one of her parents, and it was like we were ten again. Except there wasn’t a pasture to hide in, and we weren’t kids.
At the point she spoke, I’d forgotten the question I’d asked. And with each word that came out of her mouth, I understood a little more of the guilt Jack had carried over the years. His affection for me, giving me the ranch, it all made more sense. He knew I could bring her home because he knew she had never wanted to leave. My parents had adored Randi. My mom had daydreamed about our wedding like Miranda was her daughter. I didn’t know where Jack had gotten his information from, but it wasn’t Jessica Burin.
Randi cupped my jaw and waited for the rage to simmer. And my heart broke when she conceded to her father’s deception. “Don’t you see? He was right.”
I sprung up from where I sat on the couch, towering over her. “No. I don’t see. What about any of that trash holds any validity?” I realized my stance intimidated her when she bit her lip. I had too much adrenaline racing through me to sit, but I didn’t want her to shut down, either.
“You needed a spouse, one like Sarah or your mom, not one like me. I wasn’t built to be a farmer’s wife.”
She was dead serious, and I couldn’t stop the rumble that started in my chest. The laughter that exploded from my mouth scared her. “Then I wasn’t built to be a farmer. Because, sweetheart, no one else will ever meet me at the end of an aisle, much less carry my last name.”
We’d lost six years because her father made choices for us, and then we hadn’t bothered to communicate. Then I’d spent the last three weeks making her life miserable because I didn’t know the truth. As much as I wanted to place the blame on her over the years, after hearing what she had gone through that day after I left, I had to admit it was as much my fault as hers. I hadn’t chased her, I didn’t try to locate her, and even when Sarah had found her, I did nothing.
I sat on the couch and pulled her with me as I went. She didn’t put up much of a fight, not that she would have won, anyhow. Randi landed in my lap, and I wrapped myself around her. Her arms were chilly, but her breath was warm. She s
hook like a leaf until she relented and put her head on my shoulder. Emotionally, she was spent, and I wasn’t in much better shape. I needed to give her some space; unfortunately, I didn’t come here to let her go. Even with the stress of everything I’d learned since I walked through her front door, holding her had never been as right as it was in that moment.
There was nothing we could do to change the past; I just needed to grasp the future. I reached for the blanket on the opposite side of the couch to cover her and leaned back with her safely pressed against my chest. The scent of mint filled my nostrils when I pressed a kiss to her forehead. I hadn’t expected her to peer up at me or for her to say anything.
“When do you have to go back?”
Regret stained her eyes where I longed to see hope. She still hadn’t figured out why I’d come. “How long will it take you to pack?” We had a lot to figure out, and I didn’t know where Jack stood on all this. I’d been allowed to believe lies for years by a man I trusted, but maybe he needed to find a way to make his own amends and believed I would be the catalyst. I didn’t know.
Cold air seeped between us when she pulled away, and the blanket fell from her arms. “Austin, I can’t go back.” She believed that. “There’s nothing for me in Texas.” That was where she was wrong.
“There’s me.”
* * *
We had talked late into the night. I didn’t know where her roommate was, but I was glad he hadn’t interrupted. Eason would throw a monkey wrench into any progress I made once she realized she hadn’t factored him into the equation. By the time she had convinced me to spend the night, I didn’t have a commitment from her to come home with me. She had, however, admitted that she wanted to be together. If that meant I needed to sell my house in Mason Belle and relocate to New York, then I’d do what I had to do. Life without Randi was no longer an option.
She held my hand and led me down a dark hallway and up a flight of stairs. Randi didn’t bother flicking on a light until we stepped into her room. Her life had changed drastically while she’d been in New York. Her family had money by Mason Belle standards—at least they had while she lived there—but she lived in luxury here. Her bedroom was the size of my den and kitchen combined, her king-sized bed overflowed with pillows, and while I didn’t know much about fabric, I was fairly certain her drapes were some sort of silk. Her open closet door revealed racks of shoes and clothes, and from where I stood, she had enough purses to open her own boutique.
I continued to browse the space—it felt like window shopping in a department store. The few pictures on her dresser were of Eason, Miranda—Randi didn’t make an appearance in any of them—and a guy I didn’t know and she hadn’t mentioned. It was easy to see that both men cared deeply for her just by the way they looked at her and held her close in each shot. I didn’t want to be jealous that they’d had her for years, although the emotion still pricked at my heart…until I reached her nightstand.
The frame had changed, and there were random scratches and creases on the picture itself. I picked it up and stared at it. I’d never seen a woman as beautiful as Randi. When I’d picked her up that night, I’d choked on my own saliva as she came down the stairs. I loved seeing her in red, and she’d gone all out for my parents’ Christmas party. That picture captured us.
“My dad broke the frame you gave me.” It—the photo included—had been a gift on New Year’s. My mom had taken it, and as soon as I saw it in the stack of pictures, I had insisted on a copy to give to Randi. “It was one of the only things I took with me the day he kicked me out. Well, other than my clothes.” She stood next to me as she talked.
I didn’t have to see her face to hear the fondness in her voice. She’d kept a crummy picture on her nightstand, and I had to assume it had been there as long as she’d been in the city. “I can’t believe you kept it.”
She peered up at me, and her eyes sparkled. It might have been the light that reflected in them, but I chose to believe it was Randi coming back to life. “If you think that’s bad, wait ’til you see this.”
Randi’s shorts had ridden up on her waist, exposing the crease between her butt and thighs. With each step she took across the room, I remembered the feel of her legs wrapped around me and that perfect ass in my hands. My dick twitched, and I realized Randi wasn’t the only one coming back to life. She disappeared into her closet and took my fantasy with her.
She reemerged with a dingy, orange ballcap on. The same one I’d lost around the time she’d left. “Remember this?” Her smile was radiant, and if I hadn’t been thinking about her naked before she put my hat on, I would have been now.
I closed the distance between us and stopped once I could put my hands on her hips. “Where did you get that?” It hadn’t weathered the storm well. I didn’t remember it being so beaten up. I’d gotten it for Christmas that year.
“You left it in my room that day. When I packed, the picture and the hat were all I took.” She pulled it off her head and turned it over to look at it. “It’s seen better days. I wear it a lot.”
“You wear it a lot.” My girl was still in there. It might take me a while to find her Southern drawl, and her hair would grow in time, but the grit I loved about her hadn’t disappeared, she’d just hidden it.
I hadn’t let go of her when she twisted at the waist and tossed it Frisbee style into the closet. “Yep. It’s my favorite.”
“It’s your favorite.”
She giggled, a sound so pure I imagined angels sang. “Are you going to repeat everything I say?”
“I’m at a loss for words.”
Her eyes fluttered, and a blush crept across her cheeks. “Good, I wasn’t interested in talking.”
Randi didn’t give me time to ask another question. She kicked her door shut and reached for the hem of my shirt. I helped her remove it and dropped it to the floor. The same smirk that seized her lips any time she got me naked in high school made an unexpected appearance, coupled with what I presumed to be shock.
“What?” I asked.
Her gaze traveled from my shoulders to my jeans and back. “You’ve just… You’ve grown up.”
I’d put on weight since we graduated, and I spent a lot of time in the sun, working. I never thought much about having filled out, but I guess I had. “I do a good bit of physical labor.”
She held my eyes while her fingers worked the button on my jeans. “It shows.” Clearly, she wasn’t disappointed in the changes. After Randi released my zipper, she traced the muscles in my stomach, sending a chill up my spine. For someone who hadn’t been with anyone else, she’d mastered the art of anticipation.
I moaned when the warmth of her palms spread over my chest and her hands rounded my shoulders. Her lips shined and begged to be kissed, and every part of me ached to take them—and her. Bent at the waist, I tilted my head to capture her mouth, and her nails dug into my flesh. I didn’t know which of us had deepened the kiss, nor did I care. Her tongue massaged mine, and she tasted like honey. A sin so sweet I could dine on it for eternity.
My hands slipped under her tank top and eased up the curves of her sides and over each rib until the swell of her breasts and the intoxication of her touch nearly had me undone. I ran my thumbs over her taut nipples and cupped her mounds. She was as soft as a rose petal, and I wanted to bathe in the sensation—skin on skin. Six years was a long time, but our bodies remembered everything our brains had tried to forget.
She didn’t resist when I took her shirt over her head, and she didn’t pull away when I hooked my fingers in her shorts and panties to ease them down her thighs. As much as I wanted to drown in the sight of having Randi Adams naked in front of me, I wanted to lose myself in her even more. And she knew it.
I stifled my complaint when she broke away and moved toward the door. I’d been too enthralled in the sway of her bare hips and the lean lines of her spine and legs to move. But when she turned off the light, I didn’t wait for her to come back. I took it upon myself to push the tw
elve tons of pillows onto the floor on the opposite side of the bed and pulled the blankets back. By the time she’d joined me on the mattress, my eyes had adjusted to the dark, and the moon peeked through the gap in the curtains.
Her head rested on her bent arm. She was on her side, and I was on mine, facing her.
This would change everything between us.
I wasn’t foolish enough to believe it would solve anything, but it didn’t stop my desperate need for us to connect. Our fate had been sealed years ago; tonight, we got to remind ourselves of just how sweet that destiny could be.
It wasn’t until we became one that I finally understood that our journey was more important than our destination.
17
Miranda
It took me a moment to recognize the arms wrapped around me and realize the heat behind me wasn’t a blazing inferno I needed to escape before the house burned to the ground. In the haze of waking, last night was more like a dream than reality, and his embrace reminded me that life didn’t always follow an expected path.
I wiggled free without rousing him and rolled to my side. As soon as I did, I regretted losing the comfort that being close to him provided. Although, the view made up for the loss of contact. Austin’s disheveled hair gave him a boyish appeal in direct contrast to the maturity that age had given his body. My heart swelled, knowing I could think about him and not feel like a dagger had pierced my chest. He had the capacity to forgive, and despite the unknowns, that trait had the power to heal. Couple it with devotion and love, and somehow, we would get through this together.
Austin stirred in front of me, and my picture of perfection came to life when he moved. His biceps strained under his skin as he stretched, and every well-defined ab made an appearance when his stomach constricted. I hadn’t meant to groan, but when a dry spell had gone on as long as mine had, it was hard to stare at the only person I ever cared to have scratch that itch without acting.
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