Chapter 15
Where’s the Love?
Brooke
She waited until Bryce left to make her move.
And no, she hadn’t counted on serendipity to make sure her path to Seth was clear. She was never that lucky. But as it happened, she’d overheard Bryce making plans with Nikki Brewer to catch the early movie at the pitiful little Cineplex in the town’s pitiful little mall. That bit of information is what gave her the idea in the first place. Seth would be rounding up the horses to lock them in the barn for the night.
She started her car when she saw Bryce turn out the long Walker driveway in his father’s humongous F250 pickup. As their vehicles passed, Bryce didn’t even look sideways at her in the generic grey Intrigue her mom had leased for her for the year. Sometimes it was good to be invisible.
She drove right past the house to the horse barn. As she suspected, Seth had already called the horses in and settled them in their box stalls. She stopped just inside the doorway and waited for her eyes to adjust to the relative dimness inside. There he was. Three stalls down, he was inspecting his father’s prize broodmare. Damn, he looked good. She hated that she still wanted him so much. Still cared for him.
She made her way quietly down to the stall, her heart pounding. What to do now?
“Hey, Seth,” she said.
He just about leapt out of his skin, which caused the horse to snort and dance away. Cursing, he scuttled out of the mare’s way.
“Dammit, Brooke! What the hell is wrong with you, sneaking up like that? The horse could have trampled me.”
Oh, crap. “Sorry. I didn’t realize she’d spook like that.”
“Horses spook at anything. I’ve told you that before.” He seemed to catch himself at that mention of their previous relationship. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought I saw the last of you after that performance in front of my friends.”
Brooke grimaced. “Yeah, the HPV thing. Sorry about that.”
“You’re sorry?” He laughed bitterly. “That’s nice. Real nice. Meanwhile, I’ve had doctors swab me from stem to stern. I’ve endured them going over my junk like they were looking for the Hope-freakin’-Diamond. Sorry doesn’t cut it.”
Brooke bit her lip. “But you had to have known I was just messing with you. You know, because you bailed on me.”
“Of course I knew.” Seth let himself out of the box stall, latching it behind him. “But that’s hardly the point, is it? I had to prove I was clean for—”
“Your new skank,” Brooke finished.
“Melissa is not a skank,” he retorted. “Unlike some people I could mention.”
The words slid into Brooke’s heart like a hot knife going through butter, straight and sure and devastating. The pain shocked her, even though she knew it shouldn’t. She’d known Seth resented her for giving it up to someone else, and hadn’t he been avoiding her like the plague? But somehow, she’d been unprepared for it. The armor she’d been building around her heart should have provided more protection. Guess she’d have to work on that. Starting now.
“Unlike me, you mean?” Brooke smiled, letting it cover the hurt. “Well, that’s okay. I seem to remember you liking my skankiness just fine.” She stepped forward and laid a hand on his chest, and was rewarded by how hard his heart pounded. “Come on, admit it, Seth. You liked what we did together.” The words were bitter in her mouth. “You want to do it again.”
She tugged his t-shirt out of his jeans and laid her hands on his skin beneath, and he tipped his head back and groaned. The sound suffused her with a sudden sense of power, and she grabbed at it. Anything to push back the pain, the self-loathing. She did have power over him, with this.
He didn’t even make a token resistance. When she pushed his shirt up, he tugged it off. Then they were making out like crazy. At some point, he broke it off long enough to lead them to the relative privacy of what served as an office. All the while, Brooke reminded herself this was what she wanted, but nothing felt right. It didn’t stop Seth from getting off, though.
Afterward, he tossed her clothes at her and started to dress again. So much for tender afterglow. It didn’t matter, though. She’d won. Buh-bye, Melissa.
When she’d shimmied into her jeans and was working on her shirt, he said, “So, what now? Do you want to do this regularly?”
What the hell kind of question was that? “Hey, you know us skanks and the sex thing. Can’t get it often enough.”
Her sarcasm blew right by him, as usual.
“Great! And this is a good spot. But next time, call first. Bryce helps with the chores most times.”
Brooke’s hands stilled on her buttons. “You want me to come here to the barn for... dates?”
He snorted. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a date, but yeah. How else are we gonna keep it on the downlow?”
It clicked then. She hadn’t won anything. He didn’t want to get back with her, at least not publically. And he wasn’t going to give Melissa up. He just wanted her for a piece on the side.
“You are such a jerk, Seth Walker.”
He looked up, genuinely astonished. “What?”
“I am not going to be your fuck buddy in private while you date Melissa in public. While you and your friends laugh about me. It’s not gonna happen.”
He snorted. “What? You thought this meant we were going to get back together? That it meant anything? That we’d go to the Halloween dance together and slow dance in the auditorium?” His eyes turned hard. “That was last year, Brooke. Before you went home for the summer and spread your legs for somebody else. Well, this is a new year, and I have a new girlfriend.”
His words lashed at her, flaying her to the bone. She wanted to explain. I was lonely. I was angry at my mother for assuming the worst. Dammit, I was hurt. He said he cared about me, and I thought it would make me feel better, at least for a while, but it didn’t. It made me feel like shit. But she’d die before she told him any of that, because he’d made her feel like shit too.
She lifted her chin. “Ah, the ego smarts over that, doesn’t it? Well, I’m here to tell you, it’s a good thing I did. Otherwise I might be standing here, not knowing what a sorry excuse for a lover you are, Seth. I might have thought this was all there was to it.”
His face darkened like a thunderous black cloud. “Get out of here, right now! And don’t come back. I mean it, Brooke. If you turn up here again, I’ll set Dad’s Dobermans on you.”
Brooke smiled. Oh, she’d be back again. And again and again, until she’d made him pay sufficiently for this. For rejecting her, humiliating her. Dammit, for breaking her heart. But when she came back, she wouldn’t have to worry about dogs. Or anything else.
“Fine. I’m going.”
And she did go, for a while. She drove into town and had supper while darkness fell. When it was full dark, she made her way back to the Walkers’, parking her grey Intrigue on the shoulder a few hundred yards down the road. Then she crept onto their property, careful to be as quiet as she possibly could. Though if she were discovered, she’d just say she’d lost an earring in the barn when she and Seth had all that wild sex earlier. Ha! Let him explain that to his parents!
She slipped past the house without detection—not even the Dobermans stirred in their kennel—and opened the barn door. The horses lifted their heads and snuffle/snorted a greeting. She spoke quietly to each of them for a moment, then unlatched their stall doors and pulled them open. One gelding took the opportunity to leave his stall to join the mare in the next box, but the others were content to stay where they were. They knew it was nighttime, and none of them wanted to venture out of their safe, warm stalls. Which was a good thing, because as she walked away, she left the barn door propped ajar.