Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) (28 page)

              And, as always, she was a shit liar.

              “I need to go home,” she said, facing Fox again. “Everything that’s happening – I need to be there.”

              “You don’t actually think you – one person – are going to make a difference, do you?” he asked.

              His cynicism was too natural to be offensive. “I don’t know.”

              “Yes, you do.”

              “Okay, so I don’t think I’ll make a difference,” she admitted. “But I just…I feel like I need to be there. If that makes any sense. It’s my home. My people. I need to…to be present.”

              “What a stupid notion,” he said, flatly. “It’s because you’re young. Young people have stupid notions.”

              “Meanwhile, you’re a genius over there,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m serious, Charlie.”

              “Of course you are, and it’s adorable. Cute as anything. But, like I said, stupid.”

              She sighed and invited him to explain with a lift of her brows.

              “Okay, you want to be there. Maybe you even need to be there. But what about here? Are you not wanted or needed here?”

              “I…Anyone could manage the accounts–”

              “Ah, pet.” He
tsked
. “The accounts mean shit-all.
Shit-all
,” he repeated, with emphasis. “A trained cat could work them. I could work them.”

              “Make sense, Fox.”

              “Things are bad in London, and you want to be with the people you love. Yeah. But things are bad here in Amarillo, and somebody here loves you, too. And no, I don’t mean me.” He pushed his shades up and gave her a direct, blue-eyed look that left no room for miscommunication.

              “I don’t – I mean – Candy…he doesn’t love me. Not the way you’re talking. Not like that.” Her voice was a whisper by the end.

              “Yes, he does. Like that.”

              Her heart wedged itself high in the base of her throat. She couldn’t swallow.

              “I take you for a lot of things, Chelle,” Fox continued. “But I never thought you were someone who’d run out on her man.”

              “Don’t say that about me.”

              “Then don’t be that,” he returned. He was cold as ice, unruffled, and dead serious. It was spooky as hell.

              “He’s forty-five, childless, and never been married. Men like that don’t…don’t…want people like me to stay.”

              Fox chewed another pickle, swallowed it. “He’s forty-five, childless, lonely, and tired as shit of being that way. He’s also gigantic and terrifying.”

              She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. From the corner of her eye, she saw their waitress returning, weaving between the crowded tables. She wasn’t hungry anymore.

              “All I’m saying is,” Fox continued, “is that you need to think it through. Because you’re not just marking time here. Not anymore. And whether you’ll admit it to your uncle or not, you know it’s true.”

~*~

She felt it the moment she walked into the clubhouse that evening: the charge in the air. The way electricity licked silently down her arms and lifted the fine hairs, teased down her throat and tightened her skin.

              The guys, tired from another day of remodels, were sprawled throughout the common room. Blue and Duke played a halfhearted game of pool.

              Jinx was at the bar and swiveled around on his stool as her footfalls progressed across the floor. He might not have hated her anymore, but she could find no love in the look he sent her.

              Her stride faltered, and she wanted, inexplicably, to cradle her injured hand against her stomach. There was a threat in his gaze, and seeing it was exhausting.

              “He’s in back,” he said. And that was all he said. He turned back around to his drink on the bar.

              Eyes followed her as she headed down the hall. Did they know what had happened last night? Did they know – the real problem – that she’d been wanting to leave for a while now? She wanted to give them all the finger, but that charge in the air dampened any anger she might have felt.

              Her pulse thumped hard in her ears as she reached the sanctuary door and slipped inside. It was louder than her footsteps, louder than the latch clicking into place as she shut herself in.

              She turned, and that was when she saw the reason for Jinx’s anger. He had no idea what was going on, only that something must be – something that would cause his fearless leader to look like
this
.

              Candy was in his chair, head turned toward the TV, Macallan bottle clenched tight in one hand. Not an abnormal scene, in reality. But it was the energy in him, the invisible tension wires running beneath his skin, the force of his displeasure, that arrested her on the spot. He was a nuclear reactor, the radiation pouring off of him. And Michelle was afraid, suddenly, to take a breath.

              He’d heard her come in, though. “You know,” he said, and the dark, sober clarity of his voice ran across her skin like the cool point of a knife. Shit, he wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t even a little bit drunk.

              She tried to swallow and moved a careful three steps around the back of the chair, watching the top of his blonde head.

              “You know,” he repeated, “back in the good old days – the Crockett, Duane Teague days – if a man thought his woman was trying to skip town, he’d chain her hand and foot to the bed until she realized that wasn’t a very good idea.”

              She froze, again, lower lip clenched between her teeth. She took an unsteady breath through her nose. “I didn’t take you for that kind of man, though.”
Was I wrong?
she tacked on silently.

              “How should I know,” he said. “I never had my own woman before.”

              This was terrible. This was worse than anything she’d ever expected. It had seemed so preposterous that she hadn’t believed them. But they’d been right: Jinx, Fox, Blue, Jenny…Candy was in love with her. Or whatever approximation of love a man like him could feel. And she’d never even considered the possibility.

              Carefully, as if trying not to spook a wild animal, she walked around so she stood in front of his chair. He hadn’t shaved that morning. His clothes were rumpled, as if he’d been sleeping in them. He’d been drinking – a lot, she could tell from the red around his eyes, and the lighter-fluid stink of Scotch in the air. But his gaze lifted to hers, and it was razor-sharp.

              The human heart was nothing but muscle, all meat and pulp, but she swore hers must be marble, because she felt the sudden spidering of cracks across it. The fault lines. It was a hard, cold lump behind her sternum, and it was fracturing, and it was all her fault.

             
What have I done?
she thought.
How could I have thought…how could I not have…

             
How could I?

              “Don’t look so scared, sweetheart,” he said with a snarl. “I ain’t gonna chain you up. If you want to go, then go. It doesn’t matter.”

              Still slowly, still afraid a sudden movement might snap his threadbare self-control, Michelle sank down to her knees on the rug, her arms resting on his thighs. “Except,” she said, voice not much more than a breath of air, “I think it does matter. To you. I think it matters.”

              He took a long pull off the bottle in his hand.

              “Candy.” She scratched lightly at his knee with her nails, rasping against the denim. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

              He looked at the TV.

              “Derek.”

              “Just fucking go already.” His smile was terrible, and still he wouldn’t look at her. “There’s gonna be some waitresses happy to hear you’re gone.”

              It stung. It stung worse than she would have thought. “I’m trying to really talk to you,” she said.

              “And I’m trying not to strangle you!” he shouted, eyes finally snapping to her face, wild with fire.

              Michelle gasped, and rocked back, sat down hard on the floor, clutching at his jeans for balance.

              He was breathing hard through his mouth, gripping the Scotch bottle so hard she thought it might shatter.

              “You–” She swallowed. “You don’t mean that.”

              “The hell I don’t!” He was still shouting. “What the hell is wrong with you that you want to go back over there and play secret agent? And what the hell is wrong with me that I even give a shit?”

              His chest collapsed, and his shoulders, and his outburst. He ducked his face and took a deep, unsteady breath, fingers flexing on the bottle. He licked his lips; she saw the dart of his tongue. Saw the flicker of his lashes as he shut his eyes.

              “I don’t have time for your shit,” he said, quieter now. “I have a club to run, I have an old man to keep alive, I have a fucking cartel on our backs, and a motherfucking bank loan to pay back. I’m forty-five goddamn years old, and I don’t have the time or the stomach for your bullshit, Michelle. You wanna know why I never had an old lady? Because it’s too much goddamn work, and you don’t even want to be here anyway.”

              He let out a deep breath and so did she. She imagined his chest must ache the same way hers did. Probably more, given that a bullet had ripped through it six weeks ago.

              When she could, she cleared her throat and said, “You’re right.”

              His head lifted, gaze wary, maybe a little surprised.

              “It’s bullshit. The whole world is nothing but bullshit.”

              He huffed a breath through his nose. Yes, surprised, for sure.

              “It’s full of stupid people. And bad men who deal guns, and drugs, and break all the laws to collect little pieces of heaven in their own backyards. It’s full of real evil – men who blow other men up for sport, or for their God, or for whatever the hell reason they deem necessary at the time. People die. Good people die, and bad people live. Families are torn apart. Beautiful things get trampled in the dust. And love is just a word people use to fill the empty dark space inside them.”

              He stared at her, unblinking.

              “And because it’s all bullshit, it’s complicated,” she continued. I can love you, and I can feel like I need to go home. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Why can’t I feel both?” she asked, eyes starting to burn. “Why does it have to be one or the other? Why does leaving have to hurt you? And why does staying have to hurt them?”

              “Because being alive hurts, baby doll. Every second of every day.”

              She sighed and gathered her legs up beneath her. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe you ought to tell me that you love me, and ask me to stay?”

              He didn’t answer, jaw clenched.

              There was nowhere else to take this, she realized. They’d said things – dark, explosive things – that they couldn’t take back, and there was no way to sit here, frozen, and pretend nothing had happened. She hated it. Hated it viscerally.

              “I need a drink,” she said, and got to her feet.

              Her head throbbed, and her eyes ached, and every part of her felt heavy as lead as she went to the drinks table. She plucked up a clean glass and a bottle of Crown Royal. Maybe there was some Coke in the fridge. She’d always hated Crown neat, and the fizzing of the soft drink might ease some of the tension in her throat. She…

              She didn’t hear him get up, but suddenly her hair was brushed to the side, and his massive hand encircled her neck from behind.

              She stilled, hands braced on the table. Strangle her, he’d said. He’d wanted to strangle her.

              She heard him take a breath, something deep and ragged, the sound a dragon would make in a high-budget movie. She took a breath of her own, small, insufficient.

              And then he grabbed her hip and twirled her around so she slammed against his chest, and he attacked her, mouth-to-mouth, the kind of kiss that hurt in every sense of the word.

              She closed her eyes and grabbed at his shirt, digging through it with her nails, trying to get to warm skin. She gasped and opened her mouth for the thrust of his tongue, strained up on her toes as he bent her back over his arm. She heard bottles crash together on the table, didn’t care. Clawed at him, tried to press so close she felt his heartbeat up high against her collarbone.

              “You little fucking bitch,” he hissed, and bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. The hand at the back of her neck squeezed, thumb digging at her windpipe. A quick press and release, one that made her gasp again.

              Well, if he wanted it rough, she could…

              No, no, she couldn’t. Because he didn’t like it rough. He liked it dirty, and he liked it fun, and he liked to show her how strong he was, and how he could use all that strength to make it good for her. And she didn’t like it rough at all, and she wasn’t going to turn this…this…
savagery
into another battle of wills. No, not now, when he was so ready to fall to pieces.