by Elle Thorpe
The cab dropped me in the valet parking at the front of the hotel, and I walked through revolving doors and into a huge, high-ceilinged reception area.
The man behind the desk greeted me with a polite smile. “Checking in?”
I put my phone down on the shiny marble, noting that there was a little number one in a red circle by my message app. I’d been so off in my head in the cab that I hadn’t even noticed it come in. “Sort of,” I replied, ignoring the message for now. “My fiancé already checked in. He said he’d leave a key for me. His name is Austin Maxwell.”
The man’s fingers raced across his keyboard, and then he pulled a white card from a drawer beneath the desk and handed it over to me.
“Room seven-one-nine. Just take the elevator to the seventh floor and turn left.”
I thanked him quickly and pushed my oversized purse strap up on my shoulder. I hadn’t really planned on staying more than one night, so I’d just thrown a change of clothes and underwear in there. I stabbed at the elevator buttons, and rode to the seventh floor, deciding that I could just go shopping in the morning. I needed new clothes anyway. I somehow didn’t think that my wardrobe of worn jeans, T-shirts, and flannels was appropriate city fashion. I tried to tell myself that it would be fun to go buy a new wardrobe. But that would take some convincing.
I followed the numbered rooms along the corridor until I got to seven-one-nine. The card swiped silently, a little light to the left of the handle lit up green, and the lock clicked off.
But the room was dark and quiet, and I quickly realized he wasn’t here. Disappointment seeped in that he wasn’t waiting for me, but then I realized he wasn’t expecting me for another two hours until after the rodeo finished. He’d said something about an early dinner with his new colleagues, so he was probably still there.
Not wanting to call him and interrupt their meal, I turned on a lamp and put my bag down. This room was fancier than the one I’d booked for Dom. It was set out like an apartment, with a living room and kitchen area, and a bedroom behind a closed door. I dug the toe of my boot into the plush softness of the carpet. It seemed like such a luxury. The ranch was all wooden floors, not even a rug in sight. It was easier to sweep and mop when you lived in the middle of a cattle ranch where muddy boots were the norm. But carpet was definitely one thing the city had up on the country.
A muffled noise came from the bedroom, and I flinched in fright, realizing I wasn’t actually alone. Then felt stupid because it was obviously Austin, and he just hadn’t heard me come in. I pushed open the bedroom door. “Hey, I didn’t realize—”
A feminine squeal froze me to the spot. As did Austin’s bare ass, the rumpled mess of bed sheets, long dark hair, and the red lacy bra discarded on the carpet at my feet.
Anger spurted inside me, spewing out of my mouth. “I didn’t realize you were fucking someone else!”
“Summer!” Austin jumped off the woman, but that only made things worse.
That left her completely naked, her fake tits round and perky and twice the size of mine. She snatched up a sheet, but not before I caught sight of everything she had going on below, her legs widespread and glistening with the effects of what they’d been doing.
Shock punched through my gut, nausea rising and roiling until I was choking on it. But I couldn’t move. Every muscle in my body froze up, locked solid, while I was forced to watch my fiancé rush toward the bathroom, pulling a condom off his still-hard dick.
His dick he’d just been fucking another woman with.
Hurt roared through me, but I stamped all over that, pushing it down, because there was no way, not in a million years, that I would let him see that this affected me.
Instead, I laughed. I let out a laugh that started from my throat but worked its way lower, through my chest until it rumbled through my entire body.
“What are you doing here?” Austin yelled from the bathroom.
“Oh, I don’t know, I thought I was coming to see my fiancé. Did you forget? Should I have made an appointment with your secretary?” I glanced over at the woman who was trying to get her panties on so frantically that she’d managed to twist them up completely. “Maybe I can do that now? Is he free? Or should I come back at a more convenient time?” I raised my voice and shouted at the bathroom door again. “Like when you aren’t dick deep in another woman?”
I bent down to pick up the woman’s bra and tossed it in her direction.
“I’m so sorry,” she muttered, putting it on. “I had no idea.”
I flapped a hand around, not caring to hear her excuses. It wasn’t her fault. I had no doubt in my mind that Austin wouldn’t have once mentioned that he had a fiancée. It wasn’t her responsibility to keep his dick in his pants. “Just go.”
She struggled to grab the rest of her things and put them on as she pushed past me and hobbled to the door. I didn’t watch her leave, but I was sure she was probably still only half dressed when she stumbled out into the hall.
Austin finally emerged from the bathroom and glanced over at the bed.
My blood boiled. “Sorry to disappoint you, but she’s gone.”
He folded his arms over his bare chest. All he’d bothered to put on was a towel, and that somehow made me angrier. He couldn’t even be bothered putting on clothes and was standing there in front of me, his naked chest a reminder he’d just had another woman scratching her nails down his back. His pale skin was still flushed pink with the exertion of his effort.
Bile rose in my throat.
“You’re early. I wasn’t expecting you for a few more hours.”
I gaped at him. “Is that your excuse? Yeah, Austin, I’m early because I was having a hard time being at a rodeo again. I thought coming to you might actually make me feel a little better. Wasn’t I wrong about that?”
He pushed past me and strode out to the kitchenette.
I followed after him in complete an utter disbelief and watched while he took a glass from a cupboard and calmly filled it with water.
He didn’t offer me one.
Lucky, because I would have thrown it in his face and then possibly hurled the empty glass at the wall. Or his head. “Are you seriously not even going to say anything?”
“Not until you calm down and stop being so dramatic.”
I raised an eyebrow as hot, fiery fury rolled through me like the flames of Hell. My fingers bunched into fists, my knuckles cracking.
I’d never punched anyone in my life, but boy did this feel like a good night to start. “How’s this for dramatic? You’re dead to me. Thank fuck you went and did this before we got married, so I don’t have to waste my time, or the ink from a cheap pen, signing divorce papers. You aren’t worth it, and you can go to hell.”
I grabbed my bag from the floor and stormed to the door.
He didn’t follow. “When you’re over your tantrum, we’ll talk about this at home.”
I swiveled slowly, stalking back until I stood in front of him. I tried to school my features into something calm and reasonable. Something rational that hid the rage protecting the tiny ball of devastation inside me.
He nodded, like I was a good fucking puppy.
The rage grew stronger, until it was a storm.
“Now, if you want to talk about this like adults—”
I didn’t.
I swung my fist back and then rammed it straight into his cheekbone.
Something cracked, and I had no idea if it was my bone or his, but his howl of pain was more satisfying than anything.
I didn’t feel anything. I yanked my ring from my finger and hurled it at him.
“Summer!” he screamed, clutching his face.
But I was already on my way out the door. I let it slam behind me, closing out his cries.
Closing out an entire chapter of my life.
12
DOMINIC
On the tiny hotel TV screen, a shark sailed through the ocean, came up behind an unsuspecting orca, and sank his teeth into
the whale’s side. Blood filled the water, while the animals thrashed, foam frothing up in red-tinted bubbles.
I cringed at the vicious act, but it was oddly fascinating at the same time.
I needed to be more like that shark. I was so busy being the nice guy, always trying to make sure everyone liked me, that I’d somehow become the orca.
That realization didn’t sit well with me.
Summer was off having a great time with her fiancé, after ditching me at the rodeo, leaving me completely alone to deal with Grave Digger. It was my job, fair enough, but it was still hers, too. She’d sent me an apology text, and I’d sent her one straight back, apologizing as well.
It was only then, when I’d gotten back to the hotel after making sure Grave Digger was okay in the temporary pen he’d been assigned, that I realized I’d apologized to Summer twice tonight, even though all I’d been trying to do was be a friend. I had my stupid feelings for her all mixed up in our professional relationship and didn’t quite know what to do with them. I wanted to see her succeed. I could see that she wasn’t happy and that she was hurting. Austin might not care. He might be happy to let her walk away from something that was a core piece of her. Summer was a bull rider, and even if he was willing to let her give that up without a fight, I wasn’t.
So yeah, I pushed her. I wasn’t coddling her, like he was. It might have ended in an argument, but someone had to say it.
“You’re a fucking idiot, Dom,” I muttered to the empty room. I’d come straight back here when the rodeo had finished. Why? A bunch of the riders and owners would have all been meeting up at a bar for drinks and to dissect each ride of the night. I would have been welcome there. Instead, I’d let my bad mood dictate my choices, and I’d come back to the hotel to sulk like a whiny fucking baby who hadn’t gotten his own way.
I knew why. And it didn’t have all that much to do with Summer in the end. I’d ditched the too-tight button-down shirt as I’d walked in the door, but I was still wearing the same jeans I’d worn all day. Shoved deep in the pocket was the balled-up piece of paper with Preston’s messy scrawl, and the phone number for Felix Kaur.
My friend, Julian, had mentioned that my birth mother might have other kids. But there was no chance in hell she would have told them about me. She’d nearly called the cops on me for Christ’s sake. I doubted she’d had a one-eighty change of mind as she drove away with a screech of tires, then gone home and told her perfect nuclear family all about the baby she’d abandoned.
I had two brothers. Theo and Spencer. I didn’t need anymore.
But even I didn’t believe that thought. I might have had two brothers who I loved, even if they were a pain in my ass from time to time. But part of me was starving for even the tiniest scrap of a clue as to who I was without my adoptive family. They were all I knew. They were truly all I needed. But there was still a part of me that yearned to know who I came from.
I couldn’t silence it, no matter how far across the country I traveled. I’d tried to outrun it, but now that I’d gone down that road, I couldn’t seem to cut it off. The road had wound its way back to me.
I couldn’t just leave it.
I pulled out my phone and called Julian, flopping back on the bed among a cloud of fluffy white pillows while I waited for him to pick up.
“Bro,” he yelled in my ear, without so much as a hello. “Where are you? Your dad said you up and moved to the other side of the country? Knee-jerk reaction, much?”
I stared at the ceiling. “Yeah, I know. Just needed a change of pace. Wyoming feels real small sometimes, you know?”
“Fair call. I’m pretty sure my neighbors know everything about me, right down to my underwear color and what sort of breakfast cereal I like. Nosy buggers. So what’s up? I’m assuming you didn’t just call for small-town chat?”
“Not really. You remember how you said I might have a brother? A biological brother, I mean?”
“You want to know about him now that you’ve had time to think it over?”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “Please.”
“Yeah, I saw him getting into a car with an older guy. Kid looked a bit like you. Dark hair. Tanned skin. Tall probably, but he couldn’t have been any older than twelve.”
“Twelve?”
“Yeah, maybe ten? I don’t know. Hard to tell with kids that age. Why?”
I shrugged. “Someone called the ranch I’m working at. Said his name was Felix and that he was my brother. Just wouldn’t have expected that from a kid, you know? I thought he must have been older.”
“Want me to research it some more?”
“You gonna get busted by the feds for breaking some sort of hacker laws to do it?”
“Nah, man. We good. Plenty I can find without getting arrested.”
“Go at it then.”
We hung up, and I tossed my phone across the bed. On the TV screen, the orca was dead, and the shark was enjoying his dinner. I groaned and stabbed a button on the remote to switch the channel.
The TV flickered for a second and then flashed up a warning about pay-per-view adult content. I squinted at it, realizing I’d stumbled on the porn channel.
I tapped my fingers over the remote, intending to flip to the next channel, but then I stopped. I was alone in a hotel room, with nobody to talk to, nothing to do, and nothing to watch, unless I was in the mood for another shark mauling.
Porn suddenly didn’t sound like the worst idea.
I hit the ‘okay’ button, accepting the charges, and watched for a minute while the actress rode her partner, letting out over-the-top shrieks of ‘pleasure’ that nobody who’d ever really made a woman scream would believe.
A thumping knock came from the door, and like some fifteen-year-old kid who’d been caught with a Playboy and his hand down his pants, I grabbed the remote and hit the ‘mute’ button, glad my dinner hadn’t arrived any later, or I might have been answering the door with a boner. And that would have been highly embarrassing for all parties concerned.
The hotel room wasn’t big, just one room, with an en suite, so it only took me three steps to cross to the door, pulling out a few dollars for a tip.
I yanked the door open, ready to receive the meal I’d ordered.
“Hey, Dom.”
The dollar bills slipped from my hand, and I fumbled to catch them. “Hey! What are you doing here?”
Summer stared up at me with those gorgeous brown eyes. “Long story. Can I come in?”
I pushed the door open wider, motioning for her to come inside. “Of course. Sorry, I would have put a shirt on but I thought you were room service.” I closed the door as she moved past me and into the room. I checked to make sure it locked properly, then turned to face her.
She was staring at the TV screen with an amused smile on her face.
I suddenly remembered what I’d been watching and dove across the bed for the remote.
She let out a laugh. “Oh, please don’t stop on my behalf.”
We both widened our eyes at the idea of me doing that in front of her.
Her cheeks went pink. “Okay, well, I didn’t think that word choice through, did I? Now we’re as embarrassed as each other.”
I chuckled. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Just preparing to?” Then she held up a hand. “You know what? Don’t answer that. But do tell me if you want me to leave. I don’t want to get in the way of your…alone time.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Piss off. I don’t want you to leave. But I do want to know what you’re doing here. Where’s Austin? Shouldn’t you be having your own ‘alone time’ with him right now?”
I immediately wished I hadn’t said that, because it put the idea of her with someone else in my head, and that just wasn’t something I wanted to think about.
She slumped down on the couch beneath the window. “Austin wasn’t alone to have ‘alone time’ with.”
She could have meant he was just with friends, but something
about her expression said it was something more sinister than that. I couldn’t stop my face giving away exactly what I thought of that.
“Yeah, that was my reaction when I had to watch him pull his cock out of some other woman’s vagina. Good times!” Her laugh turned bitter. “Buck him. No, you know what? He deserves a proper swear word. Fuck him.”
I went over to the couch and sat beside her. “Shit, Sum. I’m sorry.”
“Why? It wasn’t your fault my fiancé tripped and fell dick-first into another woman.”
I hated the way she said it. So hard and matter-of-fact. It just made me all the more furious with Austin. What the hell had he been thinking? “Hey,” I blurted out, grabbing her hand. “You’re beautiful and smart and talented, and he’s a moron who doesn’t know what he had.” I bit my lip as I realized I’d gone a little past the friendship line, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Every word was true. But I covered it anyway by turning it into a joke. “You want me to go kill him for you? I will.”
She shrugged. “Don’t bother. I punched him in the face. He’s probably still crying over that.”
I raised an eyebrow in surprise. “No shit?”
She let out a laugh. “Yeah, no shit. Frigging hurts now, too. My dad taught me a lot of stuff, but he’s no fighter, and neither am I.” She held her hand up, showing off an ugly red mark that would very likely be a nice shade of purple by morning. “Think it’s broken?”
I studied it without touching her. “Nah, I think you’re okay. I’ve had worse. I’ll get you some ice, though.”
I opened the mini fridge and pulled an ice cube tray from the tiny freezer section. I dumped the cubes into a hand towel and then went back to sit by her. She was staring at the porn again, but I didn’t really think she was seeing it.
