“Should I be on the look out for needles aimed at my neck next?” Chance pulled open the front door and held it open for me.
“That depends. Are you with me or against me?” I asked as I passed through the door. “Because Conn’s made it a point to be against me on pretty much any and every thing.”
Chance covered his heart with his hand. “I’m hurt you even have to ask that.”
I waited for Chance at the top of the stairs. “You were the one who suggested leaving the animal to die on its own out there, so yeah, I think I need it clarified.”
After closing the door, he approached me, his gaze impossible to look away from. “I’m with you, Scout. I always have been, and I always will be. Even when you might think I’m not, I am.” He lifted his hands to snap the top button of my jacket. Without the sun on my back, the air wasn’t nearly as warm. “All you need to do is say the word, and I’m right there beside you. I won’t waver. I won’t turn and run. You want to save every damn orphaned wolf pup out there? I’ll be at your side, fighting the fight. Just say the word.”
Whatever frustration I’d built up toward Chance crumbled away. “So you’re saying you choose to be with me instead of against me?”
Chance wove his arm through mine and walked me down the porch steps. “I’m saying I couldn’t not be with you if I tried.”
ITEM NUMBER FIVE hundred forty-one I’d forgotten about ranch life in the seven years I’d been away from it? Spending a day working a ranch meant waking up the next morning with a sore body. So sore I could barely crawl out of bed. After enough time went by, that muscle soreness would fade some but only some, and the exhaustion was a whole other story.
I’d spent sleepless nights studying for exams in college. I’d taken overload credits more semesters than I hadn’t. I’d worked part-time jobs while juggling vet school and a semblance of a social life, yet I’d never felt exhaustion as I did forcing myself out of bed that next morning.
After we’d devoured our sack lunches on the tailgate of Chance’s pick-up, he suggested I take the rest of the day off so I didn’t wake up the next morning feeling the way I did now. Being a determined, stubborn fool who had a serious issue with showing weakness, I told him thanks but no thanks and wound up watching the sunset before finishing the checklist for the day.
After Chance parked his truck at the house, I staggered up the porch steps, relieved Chase of wolf pup supervising duties, and passed out on the same sofa Conn was no longer sprawled out on. The thought of dinner or any kind of nourishment wasn’t even a fraction as appealing as sleep. Other than getting up once to change the I.V. bag, I slept so hard I doubted I would have noticed if a tornado had ripped through the house.
Rubbing my eyes open that next morning, I found a couple blankets thrown over me, and my boots were propped against the wall across from me. I’d been too tired to take them off or find a blanket the night before, so someone must have come in and helped the comatose girl. Groaning as I peeled myself off the couch, I guessed who that person might have been.
“How’s he doing?” My voice sounded as drawn and quartered as I felt. The sun streaming through the windows was almost painful.
Chase took a break from looking at the pup to glance my way. “Seems good. Better. He’s tried getting up a few times but can’t hold himself up for long. What are we going to do when he can get up and run around? I’m guessing he won’t be all agreeable and stay on the pool table forever.”
Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself off the couch and hobbled toward the table.
“Yikes, you look bad. You didn’t let Conn drag you out to his favorite watering hole, did you?”
I shook my head. Even that small motion hurt. “Worse. I spent all day with Chance working the ranch.”
Chase grimaced. “That is worse.”
“Thanks for the blankets and taking care of my boots. My feet and warm body thank you.” It took me four times the normal amount of time to cross the room, but I made it.
“Oh, that wasn’t me.” Chase rubbed the back of his neck. “Not that I wouldn’t have, but Chance beat me to it.”
I nodded, knowing I shouldn’t have been surprised. “With him doing twice as much work twice as fast as me, I can’t believe he didn’t pass out harder than I did.”
Chase eyed the I.V. bag hanging off the umbrella stand. It wasn’t quite what I considered running low yet, but he was clearly about to change it himself if I didn’t.
“When I came down around three to check on the pup, Chance was already here, hanging out in this chair and going from checking on you to this guy. He left a couple hours ago when he guessed the sun was thinking about rising.” Chase elbowed my arm. “It’s like that guy’s got some kind of psychic connection with the sun, because it doesn’t matter what time of year it is, he’s up and out before it’s up, and he’s still out after it’s down.”
After changing the bag, I checked the pup’s pulse again. It was stronger, and my light touch seemed to stir the wolf. Chase was right—he was getting better. Soon he wouldn’t be so content to stay put in his warm, cozy nest, which meant I’d have to figure out a solution that would suit everyone—the ranchers and the wolf.
“Well, that was nice of him. I’ll have to thank Chance when I see him next.”
I felt Chase watching me. When I looked at him, he cocked his head to the side.
“You really don’t see it, do you?” he said.
“Don’t see what?” I kept my voice level, distracting myself with fussing over the wolf to keep from meeting his eyes.
“The way Chance feels about you,” Chase replied.
My hands froze in the middle of readjusting the hot water bottles, which were still warm—Chase had taken wolf-sitting seriously. “What do you mean how he feels about me?” I swallowed. There were enough complications with my trip back to Red Mountain without stacking another on the pile.
“Come on, Scout. You and Chance have been like best friends since the day you first showed up here. You were each other’s wingmen, and when one of you got in trouble, the other was there to help get you out of trouble. I can’t remember a day when you two weren’t at each other’s side for a good portion of the day.” Chase nudged me, which made me wince. Even a soft nudge hurt. “And then one day you just up and leave, and he hardly ever hears from you again. But now you’re back, and it’s like Chance’s long lost best friend has returned from the dead. He’s not going to waste a single second of your being here, even if that means tossing a blanket on you while you’re passed out on the couch.”
“I missed him too.”
Chase was still watching me. He had an all-seeing kind of look that almost made me wish he’d go back to talking about curses and playing with eight balls.
“But you’re still going to leave when John dies, and this time, you won’t come back. Right?” He waited a minute, and when I didn’t answer, he sighed. “Just because you’ve been damaged by one brother doesn’t mean you can go and damage a different one.”
My mouth fell open. “Are you implying I’m damaging Chance?”
“I didn’t realize I was implying it. I thought I was more along the lines of stating it.” Chase’s voice and expression weren’t unkind, but they hit me like a slap to the face.
“Let me get this straight.” I braced my hands on the lip of the pool table and kept my head down. “You’re stating that I damage Chance the way Conn damages me?”
“Maybe not in the same way, but you left scars just as deep on Chance when you skipped town and his life as Conn left on you.” Chase stroked the pup while I stewed in disbelief.
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“That’s the truth.” When my mouth flew open to snap back, he shook his head. “You might not have intended to hurt him, but just because you don’t want it to be true doesn’t mean it isn’t. You hurt Chance. Bad. When he told me you were coming back, I hoped you wouldn’t really. I hoped you’d stay away.”
My eyes close
d. “Why?”
“Because I knew you coming back would get his hopes up. I also knew that when you left, it would be for good. It’s taken him seven years to be able to say your name without pausing, and I don’t want to see him go through the same shit for another seven years after you leave.” Chase leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes with his palms. “Sorry. You know I care about you, but I care about my brother too. I don’t want to see him go through that again. He deserves better than you acting like you’d put us all in the rearview. It was a shit thing to do, and it will be an even shittier thing to do the second time around.”
The words were tough to hear and tougher to accept, but Chase was right. Just because I didn’t want to believe I’d hurt Chance didn’t mean I hadn’t. “I know it was a terrible thing to do. And I know it hurt Chance.”
“Not to mention the rest of the family who’d spent five years with you,” he said under his breath.
“I know I hurt all of you, but it was the only solution I could see to separate myself from Conn. In the process of doing what was right for me, I didn’t stop to consider that my decision was wrong for the rest of you.”
Chance twisted his head my direction. “Is that an apology?”
“Yeah, it’s an apology.”
He puckered his mouth in consideration then nodded. “Then I believe someone else is in need of hearing that same apology.”
My shoulders tensed. “I know.”
“Good.”
When Chase went to nudge me again, I moved out of the way. No more nudges until I’d downed a few ibuprofen.
“Hey, listen,” he said. “I know Conn made it a point to mess you up as bad as he was back then. I know it couldn’t have been easy on you, but just because you want to tell one member of the family to fuck off doesn’t mean you have to issue the same to the rest. It kind of seems like in the midst of carving the bad away from your life, you cut off a large chunk of the good too.”
I rumpled Chase’s long, messy hair. “Okay, I’ve come to expect these kinds of earth-shaking revelations from Chance, but you’re seriously messing with my worldview right now.”
Chase chuckled and lifted his arms. “Just call me twenty-first century Buddha.”
I smiled, backing out of the room. “I’m going to hop in the shower then pop back down for breakfast. Want to join me?”
Chase’s brows touched the ceiling.
“For breakfast.” I rolled my eyes. “Would you like to join me for breakfast?”
Chase shook his head a few times, his expression clearing. “Who will watch this guy then?”
“He’ll be okay. He won’t be terrorizing anything for another few hours, but after that, we won’t be able to leave him unattended.”
Chase stayed quiet for a minute.
“So? Breakfast? Will you be there?” I’d pushed the issue too far. I could tell by the way his face shadowed.
“Not sure,” he replied with a halfhearted shrug. “I’ll get there when I get there.”
The familiar scent of bacon and fried eggs saturated the stairwell as I made my way down one slow step at a time. The hot shower had helped my muscles, and the pain relievers were setting in, but nothing could put a dent in my exhaustion.
In addition to my body feeling it, my head did. Being here, having the conversations I’d had with the three brothers—Chase’s being the proverbial straw that broke my back—had left my brain feeling as if it were swimming in a thick, soupy haze. I was having a difficult time weaving through the thought maze of who I should and shouldn’t stay away from and what exactly my role was with the Armstrongs. It was the same question I’d been plagued with when I’d arrived all of those years ago. Somewhere along the way, I’d thought I’d figured out the answer, but whatever it was, I couldn’t recall it anymore.
I’d slid into a well-loved pair of jeans and a loose-fitting T-shirt, wanting to be prepared in case Chance said he needed my help again. I couldn’t guarantee my body wouldn’t break if I did, but I was dressed and ready to go in case.
The foyer was quiet, nothing but the antique grandfather clock ticks echoing off the walls. My mouth was just salivating at the thought of sinking my teeth through a thick slice of bacon when the coat closet door jerked open, a hand reached out of it, gripped my wrist and pulled me inside.
“What the hell?” I half-hollered as the door shut behind me, settling us in a stifling darkness. “What is this, Conn?” I didn’t need light to know who’d pulled me inside the closet. I’d memorized the way Conn’s touch felt, the way he smelled, and the way he behaved long ago. He was the only person in the house who would pull me into a pitch-black closet without a warning.
“I needed to talk to you.” His smoky voice rolled over me.
I told myself the goose bumps that erupted on my arms were because of the chill inside the closet, not because of Conn’s voice and its proximity. “And your ideal spot for this discussion was inside some dark closet?”
I reached for where I guessed the handle was. I wanted out of there. I needed out of there. I wasn’t strong enough to deflect such a potent dose of Conn. Like I’d learned from Chase, just because I wished I was strong enough to stay away from Conn didn’t mean that was the truth. The truth was that I could still very much feel his pull on me. Like opposite ends of a magnet, we were drawn together whether we wanted to be or not.
“It’s as good a place as any,” was his reply.
“Then either you need to remember to take them or go get a prescription for some crazy pills, because I don’t want to talk to you in some dusty, mothball-scented coat closet.”
When my hand found the doorknob and twisted it open, Conn’s hand clamped down on mine, stopping me from throwing the door open. “What? Would you have preferred the shower?”
When I tried to shake off his hand, his grip went to my wrist, and instead of loosening, it tightened. Grabbing my shoulder, he whipped me around and had my back against the wall before I knew what he was doing.
“I know I would have preferred the shower.” His hot breath fogged against my neck, clouding my head and my senses.
“Let me go,” I said firmly, trying to stay calm. Trying to pretend that having his body so close to mine didn’t make me feel the same things it had before I ran away.
Conn kept my shoulder pinned to the door with his shoulder, his chest brushing mine with every breath I took. “I don’t want to.”
“Funny, given that pushing me away and fucking with me was what you seemed to live for when I lived here.” I couldn’t see him, but I clamped my eyes closed in an attempt to put some distance between him and me. I felt Conn’s smile slide into place. That twisted, tilted one I’d been so enamored with.
“You and I both know we never got to the fucking with each other part.” He stepped closer until his hips fit against mine, pressing me into the door until I felt like I would be swallowed by it. “We could change that now though. You wanted it then, but you were a naïve, gullible girl who wouldn’t have known the first thing about being with a man. Now though . . .”
When I felt his lips brush my neck, I tried to shove him away. I couldn’t though. Conn was too strong. He always had been. No matter how hard I’d pushed, I could never shove him away.
“Now you’re a woman who’s got some experience under her belt.” Conn’s fingers curled around one of my belt loops. “Now, instead of some pathetic pity fuck, I might actually enjoy myself.”
His words were like poison . . . at the same time, they were like honey. I was like an addict. I’d thought I’d kicked the habit years ago, and I’d been clean for close to a decade, but having my drug of choice so close, tempting me, made me almost give in.
Almost.
“That would make one of us who’d enjoy themselves,” I fired back, trying to twist free again. The harder I fought, the more his grip tightened. I was like a fish caught in a net, just getting more tangled up.
“You can cut it out now. I can see through the act
, and there’s no one around you need to convince that you’re over me.”
I smelled the familiar scent of Conn’s shampoo. I could almost taste the spice from his aftershave. One sense at a time, Conn was overtaking me. Still, for every moment I wanted him to fold me into his arms, I wanted to push him away with every other moment. He was pushing through my barriers, but he hadn’t pierced them yet.
“It’s not an act.” My voice was too breathy.
He didn’t miss it either. “No?” He leaned in closer until I felt like every part of my body was somehow connected to him. “Then prove it.”
Tequila tainted his breath and no doubt twisted games tainted his mind, but his heart . . . for the first time, it was beating as hard as mine. With his chest pressed against mine, I felt it thundering so quickly, it was impossible to distinguish one beat from the next. Since our game of push and pull had begun over a decade ago, this was the only time Conn’s body had ever responded to mine in such a way. Whether it was excitement or fear or arousal or something else, he was feeling something so strongly it was playing out physically.
I knew if I lifted my lips to his, he would kiss me back. I also knew that if I wanted to do more than kiss, he would keep up. I’d wanted Conn so badly for so long he’d been the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last before I fell asleep. I felt like five years of wishing and longing and hoping had created this moment—I could have him.
When I moved against him again, his grip loosened, most likely in anticipation of me doing all of these things we both knew I’d wanted to do. I lifted my hands to his chest, but instead of curling them into his shirt, I shoved him. Hard.
From the sound of the thud, followed by a curse, I guessed I’d pushed him hard enough to smack into the back wall of the closet.
“How’s that for proving it?” I said, twisting the doorknob. “Don’t do that again unless you want to wind up with another needle in your neck.”
I didn’t wait for him to say anything, and I sure wasn’t going to wait around for him to do anything else. The moment the door was open, I flew out of it and slammed it closed. If only it were so easy to close the door on every other aspect of Conn.