Dynomite: A Stepbrother Cowboy Romance (19 page)

Not that it absolves my mom completely. But she was trained in the Cliff Pleasure School of Denial, so now she stepped forward. “What’s going on here?”

Marcus filled in the fantasy details for her. “I came home and found this guy assaulting poor April! I tasted that gin and tonic over there and it tasted like Rohypnol!”

Which was asinine, because Rohypnol doesn’t taste like anything.

Not to mention…why would I need to drug April to get her to do me?

I started for April, who was just down there on the floor like a mindless used Swiffer. Her eyes were already drooping, and I knew she wouldn’t remember much in the morning. It’d be like a comic strip to her with some of the panels missing.

But both Cliff
and
Marcus went for me this time, grabbing my arms like I was about to leap off a bridge. “Let’s take him to the station, have Carson book him for assault!” suggested Marcus brightly.

“I don’t fucking think so,” I growled. “Cliff,
he
was the one assaulting April when I came back in. He was trying to slide his wang down her throat, as you can fucking see by the way it was angled when you came in.”

“I don’t fucking think so,” Marcus growled back, rattling me like a baby’s toy. “You’re the one with a history of assault. Right, Sadie?”

Sadie’s words tumbled from her mouth uncertainly. “Well…not really…”

“Mom!” I yelled. When desperate, call to your mom for help, right? “You fucking know I was never accused of any fucking assault! Help a guy out here, why not? Marcus is the one who’s been all over April for years like she’s a fucking jungle gym! He’s been doing much worse than ogling her boobs for God knows how long now. Right, April?”

But her eyes had slid shut now, and she swayed from side to side like she was meditating.

Marcus yelled, “I found some handcuffs in his room, too! They’d come in mighty handy right now.”

So I was fucking cuffed with my own cuffs that I’d been hoping to use on April. I was hauled to their beloved station house to meet up with their butt buddy Carson, such close friends they already knew he worked that shift. I was eighteen now, so liable for statutory rape. The whole thing was a farce from beginning to end. Especially the part where they dragged April to the hospital for a rape test kit.

I had only had a vague idea of the sort of treachery the Pleasures were capable of. I had known I wasn’t an ideal employee for Cliff. We had different ideas about almost everything.

We had hugely different ideas about the sort of life his daughter should lead. He wanted her married to a rancher, being a rancher’s wife, running the family business.

I hadn’t stopped to think what sort of life I could give April, even if I’d wanted to. Hell, I was eighteen. What eighteen-year-old guy thinks about anything halfway permanent, even
if
April would have me? If, if, if. There were far too many “ifs” in this equation.

And Cliff Pleasure’s actions that night eliminated almost all of them.

APRIL

S
everal days after
that horrifying night, I had finally recovered enough to visit Sequoia at home.

“April!” Sequoia said. “Nice of you to visit. Come on in.”

“How’s the arm? Sequoia, I can’t fucking apologize enough for the actions of my friends. I was going to bring you a bottle of champagne but I remembered Dyno said you were trying to cut back on alcohol. I know I am.”

“Cut back? Why the fuck would he say that?” Jovially, Sequoia lifted a bottle of something dark from his coffee table. So much for cutting back on booze.

It felt weird even
mentioning
Dyno. It had taken me so long to piece together what had happened the night of the impromptu rodeo. I knew Marcus had drugged me. I’d woken up the next morning alone in a hospital room. I knew nothing until Sadie came by and told me Dyno had been arrested for my assault. What sort of mother doesn’t even believe her own son when he says he didn’t assault someone? Mothers are always the first—and sometimes only—defenders of sons. However, the memories became pretty mixed up in my brain. I started to confuse Dyno with Marcus, I guess, so I couldn’t point any fingers with absolute certainty. When the rape kit turned up with Dyno’s seed up against my cervix, well, that sort of sealed his fate. I admitted to voluntary sex earlier that night, but everyone connected it with my bedroom scene.

And the more I tried to tell them Marcus had forced me to blow him, the angrier everyone got. Marcus called me a slut, and my dad didn’t even tell him to shut up. “Slut” was always a favorite moniker of my dad’s too. By that time, I’d been so drugged I wasn’t even sure who had blown whom. All I knew for certain was that Marcus had put something in my gin and tonic, an act which made him guilty. But as usual, everyone was rushing to defend Marcus, and Dyno was a convenient target. My dad didn’t absolutely
need
him for the ranch. He didn’t
need
him to ride bareback for him. Cliff Pleasure didn’t absolutely
need
anything aside from a rancher’s son for his saintly daughter. And I knew I was just as guilty, if not more, than Dyno.

I missed him with an ache, the way I imagine elderly couples who’ve been together for decades miss their dead spouses. Dyno had vanished as though dead. I had crying jags thinking he was gone from my life forever. Sadie claimed to not even know where he’d gone, but I had a hunch.

“Maybe because you promised it? Sequoia, if I can do it, you can too.”

“You’re cutting back?”

“No, quitting. I was going to wait until December but I figured this was a good time.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Sequoia swigged some more and smacked his lips. “I don’t fucking care, anyway. I’m gonna have to quit when I go into the army. Quit during the day, at least. I heard those army guys really pound ’em back.”

I’d been so stunned by incredible news lately I think I just registered mild shock at this. When I went to sit on the crusty old couch, though, I almost sat on a piece of clothing I realized was Dyno’s. Dyno’s sleeveless army jacket, the one with the patch “Melrod” above the pocket. I never did find out who Melrod was—probably someone who donated the jacket to a secondhand army surplus store. I thought he’d be staying here with his closest, maybe only, friend in the world. I put the jacket in my lap, cradling it like a baby. I wanted to put it to my face and inhale, but I didn’t want to look stupid in front of Sequoia.

Instead, I stupidly said, “They took you? The army enlisted you?”

Sequoia must’ve been so used to being insulted, he didn’t even look offended. “Sure they did. I mean, I’ll just be a regular grunt. They’re sending me to boot camp as soon as this cast comes off. I’ll definitely be sent to Iraq. But it’s a damned sight better than hanging around here where I’m not wanted.”

“Oh, you’re wanted,” I said, not too convincingly. Truth was, Sequoia was right. When he recovered, he could still be pickup man in a town where they’d call him a buffalo jockey or a teepee creeper.

“I know I ain’t wanted.” Sequoia was starting to sound like Dyno too, and I was starting to think visiting him was a mistake. Dyno was fired from Hardscrabble, kicked out of our house, and my chances of a future with him were zero to zilch.

“Well, you can get good training in the army,” I said lamely.

“Dyno’s going to get much farther than me. He’ll probably join the SEALS.”

I half-rose off the couch. Truth was, I didn’t want to touch it with my butt anyway. “The SEALS? As in navy?”

“Yep.” Sequoia seemed proud. “They’ll take him in a heartbeat. He’s got a damned good standing as a rookie.”

“They don’t ride horses in the navy.”

“Yeah, but they look for all-around toughness. He’s got it. I don’t.”

“So he’s giving up the rodeo?”

Amazing how badly I’d wanted him to quit earlier. Now that he was, I felt gut-stabbed by the reality.

“Sure is. Hell, if they take him in the SEALs it’ll be over a year before he gets deployed anyway. All that’s training. It’s pretty intense.”

I blurted, “But he
can’t
go! I won’t let him!”

Sequoia grinned at me. Thank God he was my close friend, or I’d have never heard the end of the teasing. “Your dad kind of screwed him, April. No one in the Coachella Valley will hire him anymore, not after being fired by Cliff Pleasure. My dad can tell you all about that. If he can’t get a cowboying job, what else is he gonna do? Work in a tire store? Can you see him doing that?”

“No, but maybe a tack shop.”

We shut up then, because a distant hum of a motorcycle could plainly be heard. It would figure that Sequoia chose that moment to say,

“Gonna go get another bottle. Hang tight.”

I paced the living room until I realized I was clutching Dyno’s jacket to my stomach. I tossed it aside like a dog turd.
I was going to see Dyno
. The love of my life was going to join the Navy and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it. He’d be gone out of my life forever. We’d been ripped apart by shitty circumstances—shitty people, if you want to know the truth. I had no close friends I could trust, and now I certainly couldn’t trust anyone in my family.

My heart rapped against my chest when the back kitchen door slammed. Dyno’s boots resounded against the linoleum—uncertain, questioning. He’d obviously seen my car out front and was probably unsure what the fuck to say to me. I couldn’t blame him. He never would’ve gotten into any trouble at all if it wasn’t for me. He wouldn’t have even been illegally in the arena to begin with, much less defending me from a pervy uncle. He’d only been trying to do the right thing, and events kept biting him in the ass.

“I’m in, buddy,” he called from the kitchen, ostensibly talking to Sequoia. “Just got to take the physical tomorrow in Palm Desert. I’ll pass that righteously enough.”

He appeared in the doorway, long, lean, and mean as ever. But holy fuck, he’d shaved off almost all his hair. It wasn’t military short, but sort of a cute, scruffy businesslike thing that made him look even hotter, if such a thing was possible. His cornflower blue eyes stood out even more piercingly without the curtain of dirty blond hair to cover them. He snorted. “Where’s Sequoia?”

I stopped pacing. “He said he went to get another bottle. I assumed he meant the kitchen. You living here now?”

He snorted again, but entered the living room. “What do you care? Through no thanks to you and your fucking dad I’m even being accepted into the navy. They’re giving me a waiver for the assault charge.”

“Dyno, I can’t begin to fucking tell you how sorry I am how everything went down. My dad is never going to believe that Marcus is a deviant motherfucker, that he’s been putting the moves on me for years. I mean, he
believes
it, because he’s seen it with his own eyes. But he’ll keep defending Marcus until the cows come home. Marcus owns fifty-one percent of Hardscrabble.”

Dyno’s jaw was tight. I’d never noticed how chiseled his face was. He was like one of those runway models for ridiculously expensive suits. A guy who might look seedy and low-born if you saw him on the street, but he sure cleaned up nice. “Doesn’t matter anymore, April. Speaking of, how’s Willard doing? Your boyfriend better be near death to’ve caused all this heartache and uproar.”

I bristled a little at that. I hadn’t even been to the hospital to see Lawson yet. I’d come to see Dyno—well, Sequoia—first. I could’ve walked to another floor in the same hospital I was in to see Lawson, but I didn’t. The compression fracture was causing paralysis in his legs, so I’d heard. “He can’t walk, if that makes any difference, Dyno. Listen. I don’t want you to go into the navy. That’s so…permanent. I’m still working on convincing my dad you didn’t—”

“Yazzie! John Redcorn, my buddy!” Suddenly Dyno sounded drunk, the way he was carrying on, though I doubted it, having just come from a navy recruitment center.

Sequoia entered, hefting another bottle of dark liquor. “Hey! I hear there’s cause for celebration, bud!”

“You said it!” Their conviviality seemed fake, forced. They were all celebrating escaping from a nightmare that shouldn’t have even occurred in the first place. If we’d all been normal, well-adjusted people, people who went to the country club and joined the 4H and became rodeo stars, none of this would’ve happened. “Only I ain’t touching that stuff. None of that for me. I’ll grab a bottle of water from the fridge.”

“Aw, just this once!” urged Sequoia, again drinking straight from the bottle. “Look. April here came to wish you luck.”

Dyno and I shot each other fiery glances. I snapped, “That’s not why I’m here. I didn’t even know he was leaving until just now. And I wish he wouldn’t. Leave.”

Dyno said nothing, so Sequoia filled in for him. “Well, we
all
wish he wouldn’t, ain’t that right? But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

Dyno glared sideways at his friend. “That ain’t necessarily true. I wouldn’t
have
to do this if I hadn’t of hooked up with this poisonous arm-jerker, this fucking lethal black widow here with a fucking tyrant for a father.”

My heart nearly stopped. I’d never imagined Dyno would loathe me that much. I thought if I just explained a few things, we’d be back on the same track we were before. He’d forgive me. All I’d failed to do was convince my dad that Marcus was at fault, not Dyno. That was more my dad’s fault than mine, really. “Dyno. If you just give me a chance to convince my dad—”