Between the Sheets (19 page)

They were just worried about their friend and he was a stranger. Perhaps a stranger that had seen this very YouTube clip and wanted to test his chances.

You won’t tell anyone about this
.

Oh God, remembering her words from that night just ruined him. But it also made him angry, because he was nothing like Dean Jennings and if he let her have her way, she wasn’t going to give him the chance to prove that to her.

Suddenly, he had a lot he wanted to talk about with Shelby Monroe.

He found his phone on the kitchen counter and texted her.

Hey. You awake? All right?

A few seconds later she messaged back.

Fine. Doing some work in the barn. How is Casey?

We went to the clinic. No broken bones. No concussion. He’ll be fine. Can I come over and talk to you real quick?

It took a little longer for her to write back and he imagined her staring down at the phone, the corner of her lip caught in her teeth.

Sure
, she finally wrote back.
Come on back to the barn
.

Give me ten
, he said.

He went up to Casey’s room and found him playing video games.

“I iced,” he said quickly. “I just finished.”

“I need to go over and talk to Shelby.”

“You’re not going to tell her, are you?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I thought I would tell her some of it. Just so she understood. And frankly, someone should understand what a jerk that John kid is.”

“I don’t think that’s a secret.”

“Frankly, Casey, what you did—I would have done the exact same thing, if some guy said that about Shelby.” He would have done worse. Thinking about Dean Jennings, his blood ran hot and thick with the need to teach him a lesson. “And she’s really worried about you. I want to just tell her everything is okay. You want to come with me?” he asked, hoping Casey would say no, because there was another huge conversation he needed to have with her about how he wasn’t Dean Jennings, and he wasn’t going to humiliate her. Or hurt her. And if that was why she didn’t want to date him, she was going to need a better reason.

But then he thought of Shelby’s mother in church on Sunday.

Was that Alzheimer’s? Was she the only one caring for her?

Shelby was dealing with a lot.

“Heck no.” Casey was wide-eyed in horror.

“Fine. I won’t be gone long.”

Casey nodded and went back to shooting zombies in the head.

Ty changed his shirt and washed his face. Brushed the barbecue smell out of his breath.

And wondered what the hell he was getting into when he crossed the street.

Chapter 13

Shelby quickly ran a hand through her hair and put a little lip gloss on and then, sick of herself and not even sure of what she was doing, she wiped it off.

“Hello?”

Ty’s voice in the barn sent a lick of flame through her blood.

She stepped out of her office and down the dark, narrow hallway into the bright sparkle of the Art Barn. Ty stood at the door in that denim jacket with the shearling collar and the cowboy boots. Tonight he wore dark denim that hugged his long legs.

What she’d been so quick to dismiss about him—his beauty, masculinity, the raw appeal of him—she now quite liked.

That man, that beautiful masculine creature right there. I had sex with him
.

“Hey,” she said.

She set down the construction paper she’d brought with her and began to sort it into five piles with one of each color. There was no reason for this, but it gave her something to do with her hands.

“How is Casey?”

“The nose isn’t broken, but he’s going to have a few shiners to brag about, so he’s pretty excited about that.” She gave him a wry smile.

“Thank you,” he said, approaching the table where she sat with one long step. “Thank you for stepping in when you did.”

Her sorting paused on the pink paper. “I only wish I had gotten there sooner.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”

“Why did Casey start the fight?” she asked.

Ty’s silence had a certain loaded quality to it.

“I understand if you don’t want to tell me,” she said when he didn’t answer. “But chances are, whatever it was, it hasn’t gone away, and in a week’s time when they’re back together they’ll fight about it again.”

“So why would telling you change anything?”

“Wow. Is it all teachers and schools you don’t trust or just us?”

“I had my fair share of teachers who didn’t care.”

“I care, Wyatt. I care a lot.” Her gaze tangled with his and she found it impossible to pull herself away. He wasn’t just handsome, which lord knows he was. He was also … magnetic. He carried himself the way she imagined cowboys did, or outlaws. Men who were their own law, their own code. That kind of authority over one’s life, over one’s perspective—it was attractive.

Sexual.

That kind of authority … it dared her. It dared her to test it. Or try it. To taste it.

She had to look away. The events of the day had been trying to say the least, and she felt undone by it all. Worn down. Having sex with Ty would not fix that.

“I know you care,” he said, his voice low, and for a moment she wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
Oh God, right. Casey
.

“Everyone does. I know you didn’t get the best impression of Mr. Root, but he’s working uphill against budget problems and cuts to child mental health in the state and, since the closing of other area schools, a spike in enrollment. He’s trying to do the best he can for all the kids.”

“That doesn’t mean Casey needs drugs.”

She sat back against the chair. Ty was not a see-all-sides kind of guy, not when it came to his own; she understood that. “No. It doesn’t. But whatever they were fighting about, the more the teachers know, the more they can help.”

“John was talking about you.”

“Me?” She sorted the yellows into each pile. And then the pinks. She was one short. “What about me?”

As soon as the question fell from her lips she knew the answer. There was only one thing people would say about her.

She lets men fuck her like an animal
.

Her heart shriveled and her stomach froze for just a moment before hot blood flooded her whole body.

No one believes it
, that’s what Joe had said. And she’d believed him.

She looked up at Ty. Ty believed it. Ty believed it because she’d let him do it to her. Or, more honestly, she’d done it to him. She’d fucked him like an animal.

“What … what did he say?” she whispered.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Her laugh was a jagged mess. “To you maybe. It matters very much to me.” John was her student. One of her many students, and if John was talking about her, there was no way she could go back into her job believing that all of them weren’t talking about her.

“It was fifth-grade bullshit and … well, Casey handled it.”

She shook her head, stunned by the machismo of such a stupid statement.

“Casey didn’t handle it. He punched a kid.
I
handle it, Wyatt. Me. Every day.” The chair she was sitting in screeched out behind her. “Every time someone looks at me twice. Every time I go into the grocery store and people pretend not to watch me through the produce section. Every time some stranger from out of town approaches
me in Cora’s wondering why I look so familiar. Every time someone looks at me like they
know
me. No one knows me!”

She was standing. Yelling. Her skin burned and she stepped away. Wishing she could just disappear. When had she gotten this bad? This nearly out of control?

It was her father’s congregation all over again. Strangers believing some version of her that was far from the whole truth. And it was terrifying to her, terrifying that she would fight so hard to not be what they thought of her, just to be perverse.

She was beginning to scare herself.

“Having sex with me doesn’t mean you know me.”

“You don’t know me either,” he shot back, revealing his own anger. “And clearly you didn’t want to.”

I’m sorry
, she wanted to say.
I’m sorry I acted that way. I’m sorry I don’t know how to be sexual and human and kind all at the same time. I am sorry my father ruined me and my mother couldn’t quite save me and all I have left for people are these broken pieces
.

“But,” he said with a small smile that somehow smoothed so many of her jagged edges, only because it revealed his own. “But you helped me with my kid. And … and I saw you at church. I met your mom.” It was an arrow through her. His gaze. His words—they pierced her skin, slid through muscle and bone. It was true, she could pretend otherwise because she’d kept her dress on while they had sex, because she didn’t go out to eat with him. But every time he looked at her she had the sense that he saw her—and all those things she buried. “And … and I think maybe I know more about you than you’d like. Because you sure as hell know more about me than I’d like.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, because she felt like she should. But he only laughed and shrugged.

“Can’t do anything about that now.” He glanced
around, and she was reminded of one of the stray dogs on this street. One summer when she’d kept all the doors open trying to get a cross breeze, this skinny, nearly feral dog had wandered into her dining room. It didn’t growl or lunge or try to bite, it looked around like it just couldn’t believe it had wandered into such a place.

Ty looked the same way.

“You have any more of that bourbon?”

She nodded and went back to her office to grab it. Back at the table she put down the mugs and Ty took the bottle from her, pulled the cork out with his teeth—which was such a weirdly attractive thing to do—and poured two shots in the mugs.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” she said, taking a sip of her bourbon.

“Why did you have sex with me?”

She choked on the bourbon.

“Because …”
Your leather bracelets, your hair, your beauty, your easiness. I want all of that.
“I wanted to feel something.”

“What was it that you wanted to feel?” he asked, sounding like he really wanted to know. Like it wasn’t just a ridiculous thing to say.

“Powerful. Powerful and out of control and … alive.”

“You made me feel that way,” he said. “The other night.”

She felt as if the tide had come in and parts of her were just washed away by his words. And he was still talking, revealing bits of himself, but somehow even more of her.

And she wanted to fight it. Pack up the mugs and the bourbon and shoo him out the door like that stray dog. But she couldn’t. Her body would not obey her scared impulses.

“I understand why you were scared that I might tell
someone what happened. And I get it why you didn’t want to go out. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have people whispering behind their hands. I get it.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“But I want to feel that way again.” The sound of his mug hitting the table made her jerk. “There are things in my life I’d like to forget about for a few hours, and maybe you feel the same way?”

Oh God
. She did. So badly, she did.

He stepped a little closer. “I’d like to feel good. Alive. And I’d like to make you feel that way.”

He was a breath away, a tiny step, and she was riveted to the floor, unable to move. It was as if he’d opened up her head, read her dirty secrets.

“Do you want that?” he whispered.

She nodded.

His eyes blazed and he took the mug from her suddenly limp fingers before she dropped it.

“Tell me,” he breathed.

“I want it.”

He laughed. “What?”

“I want you to make me feel good. I want to make you feel good.”

“Oh, sweetheart. That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

She reached up to pull apart the snaps of his coat, but he stopped her. “I was naked last time,” he said. Under her skin she shivered. “You this time.”

She shook her head and he stepped away.

“Wait—”

“I want you, Shelby. I really do. And I can play any kind of game you want, but it’s got to be an equal thing.”

There had to be rules. She couldn’t just let everything go. She’d tried that. So desperate to feel something, so
desperate to be connected, she’d let Dean dictate everything. She couldn’t let that happen again.

“Trust me,” he murmured. “I won’t hurt you.”

“What if I hurt
you
?” In her life, no pleasure came without pain. Everything was a double-edged sword.

“I’ll take it.”

I’ll take it. I’ll take the pain. Who said that? Who offered that in return for sex?

And why am I so turned on by it?

She didn’t think about it, gave herself no time to second-guess. She pulled her sweater over her head, and the tee shirt went with it. And she stood there in her bra and yoga pants. It was so pedestrian, so everyday, and yet he looked at her as if she were riding out of the waves in a clamshell.

She wanted to scoff at him, wound him, so he’d really see her. Her belly and the frayed strap to her second-oldest bra and her anger … the anger she tried so hard to keep at manageable levels. But it bubbled and spit and overwhelmed her.

But then she realized he really did see her, and the bra and her belly—it didn’t matter to him.

“I’m angry,” she said, for no good reason.

“Tell me about it.”

“No. I’m …” She shook her head, her hands clenched into fists.

Knowledge coalesced on his face and he nodded once. “Take off your pants.”

“Ty—”

“Do it.”

The tone of his voice was hard, a brick wall she would not be able to get around. A hard wall she could only heave herself against until she was exhausted by the effort.

Her lust unwound in her chest; like a giant sleeping jungle cat it woke up and took over, colored everything.
Changed her perspective on herself. Her second-best bra.

In a blink she had her pants and underwear off and she stood in her Art Barn naked but for a bra and socks.