Last Chance Rebel (16 page)

Lane had been the first real friend she'd made after high school. She'd been so isolated in school, and she'd imagined she always would be. But she'd met Lane after they'd both gotten jobs at the Crab Shanty, and then they'd stayed in each other's circles ever after.

Thanks to Lane, Rebecca had a group of friends.

Rebecca owed Lane so much. But even so, she'd always kept her friend at arm's length. They got together and watched movies. They ate snacks and talked about sexy celebrities. But Lane didn't know that up until last night Rebecca had been a virgin. She hadn't known the name of the man who had caused Rebecca's accident.

So many things that Rebecca kept buried down deep because she didn't know how to have those sorts of conversations without feeling horribly exposed.

Whenever she thought of it, she thought of what it was like when the gauze bandages were removed at the hospital right after her accident. When a nurse had unwound the bandages with Jonathan and her mother in the room.

She didn't know what they'd expected to see. But Jonathan's face had turned to stone, and her mother had burst into shrieking tears that felt like salt on those unresolved wounds.

Exposing them to the air had hurt. Seeing their reactions had been even worse. She had always thought they'd both expected her to look more healed. To be more okay.

But if she turned Lane away now, she would break something in their friendship, and she couldn't risk that. Not when everything was so messed up. Rebecca hated to need anyone. She really hated it.

This wasn't need, but it was a really strong want. And it was going to win over her desire to hide.

“I...” Rebecca's throat felt like it had been packed full of sand. “I went home with him.”

“To...see his new knitting pattern? To discuss
War and Peace
?” Lane's suggestions sounded hopeful and desperate and it made Rebecca feel even worse.

“War and Peace,”
she said.

“Holy hell, you slept with him.”

Rebecca let out a long, hard breath. “I mean, not really. Because I didn't stay the night so we didn't sleep.”

“I thought you hated him.”

“I do,” she insisted. And then felt like she was lying. She wasn't sure she hated him. She wished she could. But she didn't think she did anymore.

“But you slept with him.”

“You've never slept with a guy you didn't like?” she asked.

“No,” said Lane. “I mean, I have often come to dislike them after the fact. Depending on how things went, sometimes very soon after the fact, but not...during.”

“I don't know what I'm doing,” she said, feeling helpless. Sounding helpless.

“Obviously you can't do that again.”

“Right,” she said, even while her stomach turned over at the thought of doing exactly that.

“Rebecca, he's evil. He caused your accident and he's messing with everything.”

“And selling you your store.”

“I didn't know about the connection,” Lane said.

“I know. But I just mean...he's not evil.”

“Even if you thought he was evil... Would you have not done it?”

Rebecca didn't like that question, mostly because there wasn't a good answer for it. Well, there was a lie. Which was that she had clearly decided that he was a man of excellent character, and therefore had made an extremely reasonable decision to follow her completely normal attraction to him.

The truth of the matter was there was no logic involved in any of this. She had made absolutely no decisions about the quality of his character. She had just been feeling. She spent so much time doing her very best not to do that, and here she had gone and done it spectacularly.

She had led—if not with her heart—then with her pants. There had been absolutely no reason or logic involved.

“I don't know how to answer that,” she said, rather than going for strict honesty.

Lane arched her brows. “You move your lips and you say words. You just don't know how to answer it because you don't know how to have honest conversations.”

“Hey! I'm having a conversation with you. Insulting me is not the best way to get me to give up information.”

“I'm sorry,” Lane said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “But, I really don't think it's the best idea for you to get involved in such a complicated relationship.”

“It's not a relationship. I just... Look, I guess it's messed up for him to get involved with me, and I know it's messed up that I got involved with him. But I just think it's something that needed to happen. Sex is...a release. And I think there was some pent-up stuff. That needed to release.”

Lane looked at her skeptically. “If you're in some kind of hostage situation just blink twice.”

“No, I did this to myself. And obviously I'm feeling a little bit messed up about it. But, it happened. And he didn't hurt me.”

Lane looked at her out of the corner of her eye. “Was it good?”

“What?”

“The sex.”

Rebecca had to seriously consider how to answer that too. “Is sex ever really...bad?”

“Yes. Sometimes it's very bad. If you haven't had that experience, that just makes me mad. So I'm curious. Is having sex with somebody you don't like actually good? I've never done it outside the context of a relationship.”

“Really?”

“Really what?”

“You've never had sex with a guy you weren't in a relationship with.” She hadn't really considered that. She just sort of assumed that almost everybody else was much more casual about it than she was.

“No. I've never really seen the point.”

“Oh. Well, I can honestly say that this was... That... I...”

“That good?”

Rebecca covered her face. “I've never felt so good in my entire life. Followed by being incredibly embarrassed and never feeling quite so bad in my entire life.” And then there had been all of that at the hospital. Witnessing the way he cared about his family but didn't quite know how to build bridges between them.

That made her feel things. Things that weren't entirely negative. She had felt... Well, in that moment she had felt almost like she understood him.

“Come on,” Lane said, tightening her hold on Rebecca's shoulders. “You need cheese.”

She propelled Rebecca out of the small space between the bathroom and the main part of the store, and back toward the entryway. Finn was still there, and Rebecca wanted to melt into the floorboards.

“I didn't see any of this,” he said, climbing back up the ladder and fiddling with another light fixture.

“Appreciated,” Rebecca mumbled.

“Cheese,” Lane said, reaching into the cooler and producing a wooden board with thin slices of meat and some precut cheese, covered by saran wrap. “And a promise of discretion from me too.”

“Thank you,” she said, her throat tightening.

She felt... She felt tender and exposed, but in some ways she did feel better. She knew more about Lane than she had before. And Lane knew more about her. It was strange, to let somebody in on your secrets. Things that you weren't sure about.

She couldn't say she liked it. But, she felt like it was the right thing to do in the situation.

“I never noticed how quiet you were during our girl-talk sessions,” Lane said, her voice low. “Actually, I've been noticing lately.”

“Some things just feel too personal to me,” she said, not offering any further information.

She could only take so many steps. Could only give away so much. She felt like something had shifted inside of her, as though she were in the middle of an internal sea change. She hated it. All of this. But at least there was cheese.

“Thank you,” she said again.

“For what?”

“For letting me tell you all of that. And for not making me feel bad.”

Lane smiled slowly, stretching her hand out and putting it over Rebecca's. “That's what friends do, Rebecca. And I'm really sorry if I didn't show you that sooner.”

Rebecca was finding it difficult to breathe. “You don't have to be sorry for anything. If I wasn't friends with you, I wouldn't have any friends at all. You were the one that introduced me to Alison and Cassie. You were the first person to really treat me like I wasn't just someone with scars and a sad past.”

That was one reason it was so hard to share with Lane. She didn't protect her. Didn't treat her like she had a fragile sticker affixed to her forehead.

“I don't deserve thanks for that. It's the easiest thing in the world to treat you like you're more than a victim. Because you are.”

Rebecca's heart turned over. She nodded because she didn't have any words.

Everything inside of her felt jumbled up. Like someone had ransacked her feelings. Pulling them out, riffling through them, turning them upside down and leaving nothing but a mess.

She didn't understand. Didn't understand what was happening inside of her. Didn't understand what had compelled her to kiss Gage in the first place. She didn't really understand what had been driving her actions at all starting last night and ending today with this strange bit of honesty that had passed between herself and Lane.

And that statement about her being more than a victim stuck with her. She held it close, turned it over. Maybe that was why. Maybe that was why she'd kissed Gage. Why she'd done all that with Gage.

To prove she was more. But she'd done it. It was over. She didn't need to touch him again. And she wouldn't.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

G
AGE
HAD
SPENT
the day going over the financial state of the family with Colton. His younger brother had come to his house, and they had sat across the living room from each other, poring over various spreadsheets.

It hadn't been the friendliest interaction, but it hadn't been bristling with animosity either. They hadn't made a whole lot of personal conversation, but he hadn't minded that either.

He didn't really know how to have a personal conversation.

Colton had told him that Sierra and the baby had gone home, and that everything was going well. Which had been good to hear.

Colton had actually seemed to be pretty happy that Gage had decided to come to the hospital. Something he had to give Rebecca credit for.

Just thinking about Rebecca sent a streak of heat through his body. He couldn't remember the last time a woman had affected him so much, couldn't remember the last time sex had damn near blown his head off.

He had spent a lot of years wandering from town to town, but he sure as hell hadn't played the part of chaste monk. Moving around like that made it easy to slip in and out of casual sexual relationships. And it was how he liked it. Women who didn't want to know much more of anything beyond the size of his dick and what he could do with his hands.

Rebecca, on the other hand, was inextricably linked to this place. And just so many different aspects of his life. It made him question his sanity. But it did not make him question his resolve to keep it at a onetime thing.

Still, even while he thought of her, he burned.

She had been a virgin. Because of her scars. Because of him.

Shame lashed over him like the crack of the whip. There was no end to it. No end to the consequences of his mistakes.

Sometimes he felt like there was a boulder resting on his chest threatening to crush him completely.

When he'd been with her, he hadn't felt ashamed. When he'd been with her, it had felt good. Wrong, a little bit dirty, a whole lot like embracing the dark side in him rather than turning away from it. Opening up all that need he normally kept on lockdown and just letting her have it. It made him want more. It had felt so good to just let himself have that. Instead of being with a woman who barely made a ripple inside of him.

He stood from the couch, stretching out his muscles, aching from being sedentary for most of the day. He wasn't used to this. Wasn't used to managing this level of paperwork.

But, it was a convenient thing to bury himself in. To bury the rage and grief he felt over this entire situation in a stack of ink and paper instead of actually having to go and see his dad and try to have a conversation with the old man in his reduced state. Instead of making time to go to the house and visit his mother, who he still hadn't seen.

Dealing with Rebecca was even easier than all of that.

Just thinking her name reminded him of her body. Of how soft she felt to his touch, of how her hair had sifted through his fingers. Of the sounds she had made when he'd made her come. All primal and unrestrained and every damn thing a man could ever want.

He was sick to want her, maybe. But then, he was kind of past concern for his mortal soul. He was damned if he did, damned if he didn't, damned all the way down to hell.

Might as well enjoy the trip.

He looked over at his phone. Rebecca's number was on it. He could call. See what she was doing.

“You're acting like an ass,” he said into the silence of the room. Acting like a man who had a right to get in touch with her after sex. Acting like a boyfriend, or a friend, and he was neither of those things.

He was hot for her though. And just the thought of her had left him hard and aching. But, he didn't really think he deserved to have any of that satisfied. It was probably a fitting punishment. To want the last woman he shouldn't want, to know exactly how good it could be to slide inside her. To know just how erotic it was when she came hard around his cock.

To know all that and never be able to have her again.

Not having her was the honorable thing to do. If there was any honor to be had in this incredibly messed-up situation.

He picked up his phone, and he was already scrolling through the contacts, looking for her name. Because he didn't have any honor. That was the real issue. He had come back here to play the knight in shining armor. Had come back here to fix things, but he just didn't know how. He wasn't good, and acting like a good guy was never going to make him one.

He hated himself. He hated himself as he dialed her number. Hated himself even more when she picked up and answered in a tense, breathless voice that ran across his aching dick like a wet, slick tongue.

“Hi,” he said back.

Heavy silence fell between them, stretching the entire distance between his house and hers.

“You're the one that called me,” she pointed out when he didn't say anything else.

“I know.”

“Is everything all right with Sierra and the baby?”

It touched something in him that she thought that's why he might be calling. It touched something that she had thought of them. She had no reason to. She had no reason to care about any of his family.

“Everything's fine.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

“Are you home?”

“Yes,” she said, the word simple and so sweet it made him want to bow down and give thanks. But surely no God in heaven had arranged this for him.

“I'm coming over,” he said.

He hung up, and strode out the front door to his truck, not bothering with a coat. His hat was sitting on the driver seat, and he put it on, starting the engine before he could have any second thoughts.

He wanted her. That thought, that
certainty
, pounded through him with every mile he drove down the road. He turned off the pavement onto the long, dirt driveway that would lead him to her place, tightening his grip on the steering wheel, clenching his jaw as he drew closer. Restlessness ran through his entire body, a kind of wild heat that burned like a brush fire. Hot and dangerous and just as difficult to contain.

He shouldn't be doing this. He hadn't even stopped to listen to her answer. Didn't even know if she wanted him to come over, but he was coming anyway.

He was a bastard. Such a bastard.

That thought played on repeat as he pulled up to her house, killed the engine and slammed the door shut. As he walked up the front steps of her modest porch.

He was about to knock when the door opened, and Rebecca was standing there, her dark eyes wide. “You came,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, his feet still firmly planted on the deck, making no move to come into the house.

“Why?”

He laughed, but the sound didn't have any humor to it. “Baby, you know why.”

She shrank back slightly, biting her lower lip. “We said it would just be that one time.”

“Yeah.”

She closed her eyes, the expression on her face one of distress and anguish, and he hated himself for hurting her again. For putting her in this position.

Not enough to leave.

“This is... It doesn't make any sense.” She opened her eyes again, her emotions blazing there. “Why? Why is it you? Why do I want you? I could want anyone else. I almost hooked up with Finn instead of you. And that made... It made so much more sense. Even if it was only ever sex with him, at least I like him. At least he's a good guy, and he has been here forever, and he runs a ranch with his grandfather. He's like... The salt of the earth. He was in Lane's store today inspecting the wiring. Just because he's a good friend. And what have
you
done?” Her words were furious now, shooting out of her mouth with the velocity of bullets. “What have you ever done for anybody? You cause destruction and pain and then you walk away. You're going to do it with me. I know you are. So, why are you here? And why do I want to invite you in?”

He reached across the threshold, grabbing hold of her, forking his fingers through her hair and curling them into a fist, grabbing her tight, holding her against him.

“I can't promise I'm not going to hurt you,” he said, his voice a low growl. “I can't promise I'm going to leave anything other than a burned-out mass of devastation in the end. Oh but, baby—” he slid his thumb across her bottom lip “—I'll make you scream all the way there. I can make it feel good.” His throat was prickling, hot with some kind of strange emotion he couldn't name. “This time I'll make it feel good,” he said, every word a raw, stripped-down promise that he wasn't sure made any sense.

She was trembling, her dark eyes liquid with unshed tears. And he still didn't release her. He still didn't leave. She was angry, and she was upset, and he was holding her crushed up against his body so that she could feel the raging of his heartbeat, so that she could feel just how hard he was for her. He didn't know what the hell was wrong with him.

He didn't know who the hell he was.

But, he suspected that he hadn't known who the hell he was from the moment he walked out of Copper Ridge. Because the problem was, when he'd been here, he had known exactly who he was. He was the spitting image of Nathan West. The heir to the older man's kingdom. A selfish bastard who had never done anything for anyone but himself.

He was the same. He hadn't changed. Standing here now, he could see that clearly.

He had wanted to be better, but he simply wasn't. He had just moved fast enough that he'd never been put to the test over all these years.

“All right,” she said slowly. “Make me feel good. I have felt... So bad for so long. My body has never given me much of anything other than pain. And last night you made me feel so damn good. You're so wrong for me, and I know that it can never be anything but this. And I know that there's something so very, very wrong with us. That we want this. That we're doing this. But I don't care.” She stretched up on her tiptoes, pressing her lips lightly to his. “Please, just make me feel good, Gage.”

That was all the invitation he needed. He propelled them back over the threshold, using his foot to shut the door tightly behind them without taking his hands off of her. He kissed her then, deep and hard, consuming her mouth, each stroke of his tongue going deeper.

He was desperate for her, for this. Desperate to ease the unbearable tension inside of him. It wasn't all physical. It would be better if it were. But there was an intense, fraught longing between them that went so much deeper than simply sex. If it were sex, it could've been with anyone.

But no.

This felt like some kind of misguided bid for healing on both of their parts. Or maybe, they were both just compelled to keep on causing pain. To themselves. To other people. He didn't know. But he did know that she was with him every step of the way. If he couldn't raise her up out of the pit, he would at least take comfort in the knowledge that she was willingly walking down into hell with him.

This probably
was
hell. It burned like it. But underneath that sweet streak of fire it felt so damn good it was hard to care.

“Where's your bedroom?”

“Down the hall,” she said, her words punctuated with harsh breaths.

He slipped his hands down to cup her ass, moving them down further, taking hold of her thighs and lifting her, wrapping her legs around his back.

He walked them both down the narrow, rustic hallway that led to a small bedroom. Her bed was a double, but the kind that was not quite long enough for someone of his height. He didn't care. They weren't going to sleep anyway.

He threw her down onto the middle of the mattress, breathing hard. He forgot to be gentle. Or maybe he just remembered he wasn't.

Her eyes were round like saucers, a sudden shock of fear streaking through them.

“Turn off the light,” she said, the words nearly desperate.

He warred with his desire to see her, his desire to shield her from discomfort and his own desire to shield himself. Ultimately, he decided to comply with her demand.

He reached back and flicked off the switch, pledging them both into velvet darkness that didn't do anything to blot out the tension between them. He had a feeling there was nothing in heaven or hell or anyplace in between that could.

He turned back to the bed, his heart setting a dull, slow rhythm, a reminder of the fact that no matter how much he wanted this, he
was
in control.

He'd spent the past few years feeling like he didn't deserve much of anything, but knowing he had needs that had to be met. Doing the bare minimum to take the edge off of hunger—sexual or otherwise.

He was making a choice now, and he was doing it with grim determination. He couldn't justify it later by saying he'd lost his mind, by saying he had been overcome. That was the easy way out. Part of him wished he could take it. But it wouldn't be fair.

It would be giving his scarred, ruined soul a whole lot more credit than it deserved.

He took his hat off and set it at the foot of the bed. Then he grabbed hold of his T-shirt and tugged it up over his head. He could hear Rebecca rustling around on the covers.

“Stop,” he said, the word hard-won, forcing it through his tightened throat a serious effort.

“What?”

“Let me do that,” he said, instinctively knowing that she had been undressing.

Maybe he was too much of a coward to look at her. Maybe she was too afraid to let him look too. But he was going to touch her, everywhere. Taste her too.

He'd worry about the guilt later.

He stripped off the rest of his clothes, bringing a condom from his wallet over to the bed with him. Seeing as she'd been a virgin until yesterday, he hadn't imagined she would have supplies on hand.

He lay down next to her, curving his arm around her waist, pressing his palm against her back and sliding it up between her shoulder blades. He pressed her body against his, enjoying the soft, lush feel of her.