Baked with Love

by Erin Wright

  “There you are,” he said, surprised at the strength of the relief that washed over him. “Are you guys okay?”

  Emma straightened up first. “That son of a bitch!” she spat out. “He didn’t love Sugar while he was married to her; I don’t know why he thinks he deserves anything more from her. Did you smell the alcohol coming off him? I swear to God, I was getting drunk just breathing in the fumes!”

  Satisfied that Emma was indeed just fine, Gage turned to Cady. “How are you doing?” he asked quietly, not making a move towards her, waiting for her to think through the answer before giving it.

  She looked up at him, her golden brown eyes huge with sheer panic and terror. Shit. She was spiraling and Gage knew that if he didn’t break through to her and pull her back from the abyss, she’d go tumbling over. What she’d just seen was traumatic, sure, but somehow, Gage knew it had been a thousand times worse for Cady than anyone else in the crowd. He didn’t know how he knew that – he just did.

  Cady continued to stand there, blinking, not saying a word, and the longer she said nothing, the more worried Gage got. This wasn’t good. She wasn’t going to be fine. She wasn’t going to snap out of it and come out fighting on the other side, like Emma had.

  And then without a sound, she turned and sprinted around the side of the house, through the gate that led into the front yard, disappearing into the shadows as if she’d never existed. Emma turned to Gage, her eyes wide with surprise. “Is there something wrong with Cady?” she asked quietly.

  “I think so, but…well, she hasn’t exactly been confiding in me. I’ll be back,” he promised his sister, and then took off in a jog towards the front of the house. She probably didn’t want to hear from him or see him, but since he was the only one there who even had a chance of getting through to her, he had to try. There was a primal terror in her eyes that called out to his protective nature – he wanted to care for her; to help her realize that she was going to be okay. There was a small part of him – okay, a very large part of him – that doubted that he’d succeed, but still, he had to try.

  She’d made it to her Jeep by time he finally caught up to her, but she was just sitting in the darkness, not moving, not turning the key, just staring blankly ahead of her, a frozen statue of a person.

  He hesitated for a moment, and then pulled on the door handle to the passenger door, sending up a silent thank-you when it swung open for him. He’d been a little worried that she’d locked herself in, and he was a thousand percent sure there was no way he’d be able to talk that statue in the driver’s seat into letting him in.

  “Cady,” he said, his voice just above a whisper, as he struggled to get comfortable in the cramped quarters of her Jeep. Her back seat was filled to the brim with junk, and she obviously hadn’t had someone in the passenger seat who was over 4’10” in a very long time. Finally, he managed to get his legs in just the right spot and he turned towards the statue sitting in the driver’s seat, still not moving, not blinking, not…breathing?

  “Cady, you gotta breathe.”

  Nothing.

  He reached over and patted her roughly on the shoulder, much like he’d burp a baby, hoping to force some air into her lungs.

  He’d known to expect an explosion from her – she didn’t appreciate being touched, no matter the circumstances – but still, the ferocity of her attack was shocking. She went from perfectly still to launching herself across the console between them and straight at his eyes, howling as she tried to blind him with her fingernails. He found himself wrestling with her, pulling her arms down by her sides, pinning them there, doing his best not to hurt her even as he kept her from hurting herself.

  “Cady, it’s me. It’s Gage. You’re okay. You’re safe here. You’re fine. Just breathe.” He kept his voice low and smooth, not even winded by Cady’s struggles in his arms. She was such a tiny thing, the only way she’d manage to hurt him was if she got access to delicate parts of him, like his eyes or his nuts.

  Yeah, even a tiny slip of a human could do real damage there.

  Finally, she wore herself out and collapsed against him, her breathing harsh and ragged in the darkness. “You’re okay, you’re all right,” he kept murmuring, finally moving his hands to her cloud of wildly curly hair and stroking it out of her face. “You’re gonna be fine.”

  Eventually, she made a move to clamber out of his arms and back into the driver’s seat, but Gage ignored that, instead settling her more comfortably on his lap, where he held her loosely. Please, dear God, let my dick stay down. Even with her sliding her very curvy, very delicious ass across me, this is not the time to sport a boner.

  “You wanna tell me what’s going on?” he asked in the darkness – a statement, not a question.

  Chapter 9

  Cady

  “You wanna tell me what’s going on?” Gage asked her quietly, his breath hot on her neck as he held her captive. He was trying to nestle and hold her in a reassuring way – the rational part of her could tell that was true – but as far as she was concerned, trapped was trapped, and whether the trapping was done with ropes of silk or metal chains, she was still stuck exactly where she didn’t want to be – on a guy’s lap.

  And not just any guy. Oh no, of course not. This was a huge, muscle-bound, could-squash-her-flat-if-he-wanted-to guy.

  She wanted to struggle again but she was tired from the first bout and then there was the awful fact that he sounded so reasonable. So calm and friendly and caring, as if spilling her guts to him should be an easy thing to do.

  “No.”

  She sounded truculent even to her own ears, probably because she was being truculent, but despite her best truculescent (was that a word? It should definitely be a word) efforts to drive him away, he seemed completely unmovable. A human version of the granite cliffs that made the Goldfork Mountains so beautiful.

  But this…this wasn’t beauty. This was him being a jackass. She wanted him to pull away, to wash his hands of her and leave. Why did this bastard insist on being there? Couldn’t he just walk away? Couldn’t he just abandon her like everyone else had and get it over with already? Waiting for the other shoe to drop was exhausting. Terrifying.

  But he didn’t leave and his muscular arms were encircling her, holding her loosely, but she’d already figured out that that was a trick. Like those Chinese finger traps she used to play with as a kid, the harder she struggled, the more trapped she was. She’d already tried every self-defense trick in the book on him and it hadn’t made a damn bit of difference.

  Self-defense…She’d studied up on that particular topic like her life’d depended on it – because it did – and it was from that in-depth study that she’d learned that a woman of her stature had to go for the more delicate parts of the male body: The eyeballs or the groin.

  No matter how Goliath a guy was, nobody could handle being hit there.

  But as hard as she’d fought, Gage had deftly protected those delicate parts of his body, all while simultaneously keeping her from wiggling free of his grasp. If she didn’t know any better, she would’ve sworn he had ten hands.

  “Wanna tell me what’s going on?” he repeated in the darkness, just as quietly, just as…as caring as before, and somehow, this broke her. Broke through her defenses. Or maybe it was because she had no choice. Or maybe it was because he was so quiet, so calm, no matter what she threw at him.

  Whatever the reason was, she found herself talking, almost without meaning to, but before she could stop herself or reconsider, it was all just spilling out, an avalanche of pain tearing through her.

  “I was an assistant physical therapist,” she said in a monotone voice. “Went to school at Boise State and got my degree in sports medicine. Afterwards, I started working for a physical therapist’s office in Boise that specialized in working with the student athletes who were attending BSU. It was…fine. I’m actually not much into sports – like, at all – and had stupidly thought when I got my degree that I’d be working with peopl
e who hurt themselves doing yoga or something. Which, in retrospect, was a really idiotic thing to think.” She laughed bitterly at her ignorance. She sure had been dumb. “Of course I’d be working with football players who got hit wrong at practice. Why I ever thought otherwise…” She sighed.

  He was rubbing her back in small, slow circles, and it was soothing, and for a moment, she wondered if this was how a baby felt – wrapped up in someone’s arms who was bigger and stronger than them, being soothed by hands that seemed to be large enough to take on the world.

  She wasn’t sure what that meant, comparing herself to a baby. Nothing that she really wanted to think too hard about, that was for damn sure.

  “There was a football player from BSU who came in – took a fall wrong during a game and did a real number on his knee. We worked together three times a week on it, and he was starting to make great strides. The entire time that we worked on his knee, he would brag to me about some amazing pass he’d intercepted or caught or thrown…I don’t even know. I’d just nod and say ‘Uh-huh’ occasionally, and that satisfied him that I was listening. He acted like he was God’s gift to the earth because he had ‘mad handling skills.’ I didn’t think much about it, or about him – if nothing would’ve happened, a year later, I wouldn’t have even been able to tell you his name or what he looked like. He was just one more dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks jock who had three brain cells to rub together, and two were preoccupied with his dick at all times.”

  She stopped then, waiting for him to jump to the guy’s defense. She’d seen the way that Gage had tackled Richard just minutes before. He looked like he’d done it hundreds of times. Cady was willing to bet next year’s salary that Gage had played football at least in high school, if not in college.

  So Gage would pipe up here and say that playing football was difficult and required lots of brainpower and then she could argue back that the mere ability to catch or throw a piece of pig skin around did not make you special, and then they could get off on that topic and never, ever come back to this one and…

  Nothing.

  He didn’t rise to the bait. He refused to get sidetracked away from this godawful story and onto a topic that was impersonal and not in the least bit painful.

  She really, really hated him now.

  Finally, the infernal silence got under her skin, and with an irritated huff, she continued on. “It was our last appointment together. I was just checking him over – doing some range of motion tests – and then turned to get his paper file from off the counter when he…”

  Except now that she’d gotten to it – the bad part, the part she relived again and again in her dreams – her throat was tightening and the panic that was beating through her made it hard to think – run away, run away – and she wanted to throw up on his shoes – it’d serve him right for pushing her to talk like this – and her breaths were coming in short bursts and the world was turning dark around the edges and she was struggling to get free because she wanted to be anywhere, anywhere at all but there.

  Please just let me go…

  “Oof!” A puff of air blew out past her cheek and she realized that Gage was gasping for air and somewhere in the dim recesses of her mind she realized that she’d elbowed him in the stomach in her panic but still, he wasn’t letting her go.

  “Then what happened, Cady?” he asked quietly, but there was an edge of pain in his voice that wasn’t there before.

  She was torn between feeling guilty for hurting him, and feeling triumphant for hurting him.

  “He grabbed me,” she whispered, trying to push back the darkness crowding in around the edges of her vision. Breathe, Cady. Breathe. “I hadn’t been expecting it, and was just reaching for that damn folder – I was just about there – and then his arms were around me. Pinning me down. Hand over my mouth. Told me to shut up. That I wanted this. That I’d been teasing him and taunting him for months now, and it was time that I got what I’d been begging for.” The words were acrid on her tongue and the bile was rising higher, the acid burning her throat, and she was quite sure then that she’d throw up all over Gage and a small part of her mind wanted to, in retribution for forcing her to go through this pain.

  Bastard, bastard, bastard – why are you making me tell this story?

  “Then what happened, Cady?” he whispered in the darkness.

  She swallowed hard, forcing the bile down enough to let words out. Just a little bit longer, and it’d be over.

  Just breathe, Cady, breathe.

  “I bit down on his hand as hard as I could,” she admitted. “I heard later that he had to get stitches.”

  She chuckled a little at the thought, a dry, humorless laugh. Oh, the number of times she’d dreamt about him being stupid enough to stick his dick in her mouth. She would’ve really extracted some revenge then.

  Except then she would have the memory of the feel and taste of his dick in her mouth and…

  She pushed that horrific thought aside.

  “He yanked his hand back,” she continued on, monotone, “but I still wasn’t free because he was stuffing his shirt into my mouth instead, and my arms were pinned by my side, and I couldn’t get any leverage to kick him in the balls. I don’t know…this next part…”

  She drew in a deep breath. Almost there, almost there, almost there.

  “I’ve tried to remember what happened next – even went under hypnosis one time to see if they could help me remember – but it’s just this blur and in the end, all I know is that my clothing was either torn to shreds or gone completely, and that I finally got my foot free enough to kick as hard as I could against the examining table. It was steel and the heel of my knee-high boot against it caused quite the racket. A nurse walking by popped her head in to see what was going on and found us rolling around on the floor…”

  Gage was smoothing his hand down over her hair, again and again, saying nothing, just listening.

  “The police came, my boss was in there, and I couldn’t stop shaking…I was mostly naked other than my boots and finally, one of the nurses found some blankets and wrapped me up in them. The police took the guy away as soon as they got there so I didn’t have to look at him, but I’ll never forget what he looks like.”

  She cuddled against Gage’s broad chest – his frighteningly huge, muscular chest – and sighed. She’d only gotten through the story in its entirety from start to finish one other time – when she’d told her parents what had happened – and she felt boneless now, as if every bit of what made her her had been sucked out and wrung out and hung out to dry.

  “What was the guy’s excuse?” Gage asked, and she swore she could feel the question as much as she could hear it. The rumble against her cheek…she nestled down further. It was warm here in his arms, even with the cold nighttime temperature outside trying to seep in through the doors and windows, and if she could just melt into his body heat, she’d be happy then – happy for the rest of her life.

  Never move again.

  It sounded lovely.

  “Excuse?” she finally mumbled.

  “Yeah. He would never admit that he’d actually tried to rape you. So what piss-poor excuse did he try to give?”

  Cady could’ve kissed him then.

  Could have, but didn’t, of course.

  He believes me.

  No questions.

  No, “Are you sure you didn’t lead him on?” No, “Are you sure it wasn’t just some sort of crude come-on move?” No, “What did you wear to work to make him think he could do this to you?” No assumptions at all that she was at fault when you got right down to the heart of the matter.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. A little too stunned to take it in properly, honestly.

  “He said…” She drew in a deep breath. “He said that it was all a big misunderstanding.” She snorted a little at that. It really was the most ridiculous defense on the planet. “That I had started to fall over and that he’d tried to catch me, and that this had made me think t
hat I was being attacked so I’d fought him and he’d just tried to protect himself from me…it was total bullshit. Everyone knew it. The story had more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese.”

  “What happened to him?” Quiet. Steady. Unwavering.

  “The usual,” she said sarcastically. This part – this was almost more painful than the attempted rape had been. The aftermath. She’d been so scarred by it all, and he went right back to his life as if nothing had happened.

  Because to him, it had been nothing.

  “He was forced to write me a letter of apology for the ‘misunderstanding,’ the university paid out a large settlement to keep me quiet, and he was back on the field the next season. He’s playing in the NFL now. I hate it, you know – part of the agreement is I can’t ever speak publicly about this. I can’t even tell you his name. Last year, a small story showed up about a domestic violence charge being brought against him by his girlfriend but she dropped it soon after and it didn’t make big waves. I only know because I have a Google Alert set up for the bastard. I want to know every time he twitches his nose. He’s playing for a team on the East Coast, far, far away from here, so at least that’s a consolation.”

  It was quiet then between them as Gage thought through what she’d just said.

  “Why aren’t you still working as a physical therapist?” he asked, still just as quiet and steady as ever.

  What would it be like to be this steady and calm?

  She had been once. If she strained hard enough, she could remember back to a time when she’d been friendly and outgoing and cheerful and steady as a rock.

  That was Innocent Cady, though, and that version of her was long gone.

  “I tried,” she admitted. Failure. She was nothing but one big ball of failure. “I went back to work the next week. Walked into an examination room – not the same one; they weren’t stupid enough to give me the same room again – and the panic just closed in on me from all sides and I threw up in the trash can. Told them I had the flu and went home. Tried one other time, and…couldn’t. Suddenly, every athlete was just way too big and strong for me and every one of them freaked me the hell out just by walking into the room. I know you probably haven’t noticed,” she said wryly, “but I tend towards the smaller side, and pound-for-pound, I was outmatched. Even the long-distance runners on the BSU track team had a weight and height advantage on me. Women get hurt too, but not nearly as often or as badly as guys do, and anyway, the little appeal that physical therapy had held for me had disappeared completely by that point.”