by Nicole Helm
“I see.”
“So you can take it or leave it.”
He was quiet for the longest time, and it was stupid to hold her breath or worry. Of course he would take it. It was sex without strings. It was the modern American Dream.
But Jack never seemed to do the expected thing.
“Leave it,” he replied, a firm, commanding response that brooked no argument.
Chapter 9
“What?” Rose spluttered, and there was some satisfaction in that. Not as much satisfaction as her melting against him like candle wax when he’d kissed her, but still some.
“I said leave it,” Jack repeated, unable to keep from smiling, though he doubted she could see it clearly in the dark.
“I’m sorry. You’re turning me down because why?”
“Temporary and fun doesn’t sound… Well, it’s not what I’m looking for anyway.” Because he was looking for something, and he hadn’t figured that all out yet. But for as much as had changed in the past two years, he was still Jack Armstrong, and he was not a man who jumped into things without understanding what he wanted out of them.
He’d followed Alex and Gabe here, moaning and bitching, but there’d been a hope that Montana and Revival Ranch would offer him some insight. He’d come here with hope.
If he slept with Rose, he wanted the hope there too.
Because the moment his mouth had touched hers and that sharp, whiskey taste of her had infiltrated his system, he’d realized the answer to all the panic he’d felt in the bathroom not so long ago.
For the first time in twenty-eight years, he finally and fully realized that this was his life. Not his parents’, not Madison’s, not his country’s. This was his life, one he was in charge of. There was no one to give him orders. No one on some faceless other side wanting to lob grenades at him. There was nothing but this whole empty stretch of years in front of him.
Kissing Rose had loosed something in him. There was no one waiting for him to come home. There were no old plans to make a reality. There was nothing except whatever he wanted.
And damn if he didn’t want Rose Rogers.
Not like this though. Oh, his erection argued with that a little bit, but something quick in an empty bar wasn’t going to solve anything, and there’d been a few too many years recently where he hadn’t solved a thing. He wanted that feeling that had rushed through him when he’d taken out the guy at the bar. Rose had made a very good point that it was her life too, and she got to do what she wanted, and she didn’t want him stepping in to protect her.
Fair enough, all in all, but he needed to find something that gave him that same sense of control. Of choice. For the first time in his life, he needed to decide what it was he was going to accomplish, regardless of what anyone else said.
As much as he wanted one of those accomplishments to be getting Rose into bed, Rose was used to being in charge. Quite honestly, he wasn’t. He’d met the expectations of everyone in his life, followed his superior officers’ orders, and ever since the explosion that had rocked his whole life, he’d followed Alex around with only a few adolescent tantrums to counter.
Maybe it was time for a switch.
“Let’s go back inside.”
“For what? You kissed me and then rejected…” She cleared her throat, and it was dark, so he couldn’t see her, but he could picture her squaring her shoulders—he could envision her clearly drawing that armor over her expression again. “You rejected my offer. I think we’re done here, sweetheart.”
“Has your offer never been rejected before?”
“Um, no. I do the rejecting around here.”
“Well, maybe this will be good for you.”
She made a squeak of outrage, and he knew he shouldn’t laugh, but Rose held herself so together. Sure, he’d seen cracks in that tough-as-nails demeanor, but they had always been to let her kindness seep through.
He hadn’t seen her surprised yet, or affected. He hadn’t seen her spluttering or unsure. He couldn’t get over the crazy thought that he needed to find some surety in life and maybe Rose needed to find the opposite.
Wouldn’t it be fun to find it together?
“You know, Jack, I’ve been waiting around my whole life to have a man tell me what would be good for me.”
He was not the smartest man who’d ever walked the earth, but he knew that syrupy-sweet tone meant nothing—nothing—but trouble.
“I didn’t mean…” Only he kind of had meant that. He edged away from where he was standing, still way too close to her.
“Go to hell,” she whispered vehemently, and only about a second later, she crushed her mouth to his. If he’d thought his kiss was a little pushy, it had nothing on hers. She was all teeth and tongue, and her fingers scraped through his beard and into his hair—a rough, delicious friction.
It was an invitation, or maybe a deliberate show of all she could offer, and his body had tightened so painfully, he wasn’t sure when it would ever unwind. He questioned all those things he’d just assured himself of.
They could have sex now, and he could convince her of other things later. Much, much later. That seemed like a much better thing when her mouth was like the sun he wanted to revolve around. When for the first time in years, someone was touching him as something other than a patient or a friend. It was about him. And her. And so many parts of himself he thought had died felt as though they were pulsing to life.
Rose released him with a shuddery exhale that did all sorts of things for his ego.
“I hope that keeps you up all night, Jack,” she said. He didn’t think it sounded nearly as sharp as she wanted it to, but she turned, and he heard her footsteps retreat toward the bar.
She jerked the door open and, bathed in the small swath of light from inside the bar, flipped him off before disappearing inside. The bang of the lock clicking into place echoed through the night.
All Jack could do was laugh.
* * *
Rose stomped around the bar, flinging glasses into the dishwasher with too little care, wiping down the bar with as much force as she could muster. Sweeping and cursing in equal measure.
Usually Cletus handled half of this, but Rose knew she wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. If she wasn’t so irritated with smug, irrational, condescending men, she might have chased after Jack and insisted he put her to sleep real good.
What right did he have to kiss like that? What right did he have to sweep into her life—very uninvited—and suddenly make all her old choices and plans feel…
Wrong wasn’t the right word. Less. Not having someone around to kiss her like that suddenly felt like less.
That rat bastard. She didn’t even know his last name! Or what he liked to eat. And even though they’d all but skinny-dipped together, she didn’t know what the man looked like naked.
Except in his expression. She’d seen raw and naked emotion in those cool-blue eyes a few too many times to count, and it always pulled at something inside her that she’d thought she’d eradicated long ago. There was too much wrong flowing through her blood to ever do something right.
Which was self-pitying bullshit she didn’t have time for, much like she had no time for that macho stunt he’d pulled kicking that douche out of her bar. Though it had been nice for once—just once—not to have to fight her own battles. Wanting was one thing, but she didn’t need help and she didn’t need nice, and she sure didn’t deserve it.
She slammed into her apartment with tears burning in her eyes and emotion clogging her throat. She wanted to go to her house out in the middle of nowhere and sleep under the stars and dream of…
She had a terrible feeling she’d only dream about Jack.
She needed a shower. Shower. That was a thing she’d do. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and slammed it onto her nightstand and then glared at it.
It was the middle of the night, but Sunny wasn’t the best of sleepers, and Delia usually had trouble sleeping when she was pregnant and…
“You are not bothering your sister at two o’clock in the morning.” She said it firmly and determinedly into the empty room.
She stalked to the bathroom and got into the shower, trying to wash the bar grime and smell off herself. It didn’t help, because she didn’t feel like the sticky, sweaty mess she usually did after a Friday night at work. She still felt Jack.
The hard edge of his body. The scrape of his beard. The taste of his mouth somehow different than any other man who’d dared put his lips to hers.
She’d never touched anyone like Jack. Never allowed herself even the glimmer of an idea she might be good enough for the likes of him. She didn’t date a whole heck of a lot, but when she allowed herself the luxury of a man in her bed, she went for the slick and the mean. Men she could fight, whether with her words or her actual fists—people like her, ugly inside and out.
And there was that urge to cry again, no matter that she was clean and dry and wrapped in her favorite pair of sweats. So she grabbed her phone and typed a quick awake? text to Delia.
When her phone rang in the next minute, Rose curled up into bed and breathed a sigh of relief. “Sunny or baby?”
“Baby,” Delia replied, groaning. “I’ve been puking my guts out for the last hour.”
“You okay? I could bring you something.”
“Caleb’s already served me four glasses of ginger ale with varying levels of ice, a bottle of water, a bag of crackers, and a Snickers bar.”
“A Snickers bar?”
“He’s getting desperate. I told him to leave me alone to die in peace, so I can probably talk for fifteen minutes before he brings me some other thing. What’s up?”
“Well, since you’re married to one, I figured you could tell me why men are so stupid.” Although she never could quite think of Caleb as stupid. Especially not when he fussed over Delia like a mother hen. Caleb was good and sweet, and Delia deserved that more than anyone Rose knew. Definitely more than Rose would ever deserve.
“Hm. Well, that depends on the man, I suppose,” Delia returned. “Who are we talking about?”
Rose paused and considered doing something she’d never done—not as a teenager or even in the past two years when life had gotten somewhat normal for the Rogers girls. She considered actually telling her sister everything that was going on.
“Just a guy.”
“Hm. The guy you hired to look out for Dad, I’m assuming?”
Rose blew out a breath. “Poor Sunny isn’t ever going to get anything by you, is she?”
“From your lips to God’s ears. What was his name again? Jack?”
“Yes. Jack.”
“And what did this stupid Jack do?”
Rose sighed, thinking about that moment outside her bar. She couldn’t picture it since it had been dark, but that somehow made it worse. She had to relive the feel of it every single time. “He kissed me.”
“Did you decapitate him?”
Rose smiled, burrowing deeper into her pillow. “No.”
“Castrate then.”
Rose burst out laughing, but the answer was that feel of Jack all over again, and the laugh died. “I kissed him back,” she muttered, picking at a small tear in her comforter.
“Hm. Interesting. I’m guessing you aren’t calling me to talk about a shitty kiss at two in the morning, so it must’ve been good.”
Good did not begin to describe what had transpired between them. No word did. From the idiot hitting on her to Jack escorting him out, from their fight to their kiss, from Jack’s leave it to her flipping him off. There were no words for any of it.
“No one’s ever kissed me like that,” Rose murmured before she could think better of it.
“Like what?”
Everything inside her rebelled against saying it out loud, like a curse that would take if she did. And yet the truth of it bubbled up inside her, a poison she had to let out before it killed her. “Like I might have the answers he’s looking for,” she all but whispered.
Delia was quiet, a long, drawn-out moment that sat in Rose’s stomach like a weight.
“Well, Sissy,” she said at last. “Maybe you do.”
“I don’t have anyone’s answers,” Rose replied, fighting that stupid tide of emotion all over again. Answers? She was never an answer. “Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I’m not…”
“Let me tell you a little story that might help you sort through some things.”
“Don’t you dare once upon a time me.”
“Once upon a time…”
“Delia,” Rose tried to growl, but it ended somewhere on a laugh.
“There was a man who was the last man I ever thought I’d end up with. Granted, I didn’t think I’d ever end up with anyone, but really, most especially not him.”
“I’m going to hang up on you.”
“And then a magical thing happened, Rose. I gave him a blow job.”
Rose howled with laughter, gratified Delia managed to do the same without retching. And maybe she cried a little bit too, laughing with her sister over something as simple as sex jokes.
“Rose, in all seriousness, if he’s a good guy and things feel different with him, trust me, honey, it’s…it’s a… I don’t have the words. It’s big and it’s wonderful and it’ll hurt like hell half the time, but it can change your life in the most wonderful, beautiful ways. And I’d hate to think you, my brave, take-no-shit little sister, would be too scared to take a chance on something good.”
“I’m not scared,” Rose shot back, holding the phone too tight.
“Then what are you?”
Not good enough. She opened her mouth to say it, to finally let it out. Put everything at her older sister’s feet. That’s what they were for when your parents were assholes, right? A big sister was there to guide you through all the crap you thought about yourself.
Except Delia had never had anyone to do that for her. She was the oldest, and she’d protected all of them, and all Rose had ever done was protect herself at the expense of anyone else.
Apple of my eye, Rosie girl. The one apple that didn’t fall too far from the tree.
Rose swallowed against the rising tide of nausea that went with the memories of her father’s voice saying those words. The way her mother would say the same thing whenever Rose lashed out at her.
Only Dad had been gleeful, and Mom had been disgusted, and it was all too, too much to lay at her sister’s feet. Or anyone’s.
Delia groaned long and loud. “Sorry, I gotta go.” The line clicked dead, thankfully before Rose had to listen to the inevitable follow-up.
She set down her phone and stared at her ceiling.
Saved by the puke.
Chapter 10
Jack hated sessions with Monica. Of course, he also hated the label “PTSD” and doing obnoxious breathing exercises and yap, yap, yapping about all the stuff he’d rather leave behind three times a week.
On the other hand, the nightmares had started to go away. The headaches that he’d blamed on his physical therapy, on the pain pills the doctor had prescribed, and a million other things, had dissipated to almost never. Even the random bouts of shaking panic that used to grab him out of nowhere had diminished.
So he kept going back. He might not like therapy sessions, but damn if they hadn’t worked. Jack only wished Gabe would get over himself and do the same.
That was a worry for another day, because now he was standing in a stall with Monica, brushing down one of the horses. He supposed that was half of why this worked. They got to concentrate on the horses, on their hands, and the conversations that followed felt all the more natural because of it.
“Are you excited about your family visit
ing?” Monica asked, brushing out Pal’s mane carefully.
Jack focused on the side of the horse he was sponging down. “It’ll be good to see Mom and Dad,” he said, hedging. Which was pointless, because he had no doubt Monica would maneuver him into talking about the subject he was avoiding.
“You said you were having trouble sleeping again lately. Do you suppose it’s to do with the visit?”
He glared at her over the horse. “I hate ‘do you supposes.’”
“Hmm,” was all she said, her blue eyes on the horse’s mane.
Jack blew out a breath. “Yes, I suppose it does.”
“You’re excited about seeing your parents?”
“Yes. Them. And my sister. Not so excited about the rest.” Which he didn’t have to elaborate on, since he’d already told Monica the whole Mike and Madison story.
“Naturally. However, it might help to look at it as an opportunity for closure. I imagine whenever they told you about it, there wasn’t an opportunity to really discuss it.”
“Oh, we’ve never talked about it.”
“What?” Monica demanded, looking at him with wide-eyed surprise.
“My father was the one who called and told me Madison was pregnant and would be marrying Mike.”
Monica’s jaw actually dropped, which might have been funny if they’d been talking about anything else.
“You mean, your brother and Madison never…” Monica paused and smoothed out her features, pressing her fingers to her mouth before she continued. “They’ve never spoken to you directly about what happened?”
“No.”
Monica frowned at that, pressing her lips together so tightly, they all but disappeared on her fair face.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she replied and again smoothed out her features, though there was still a downward turn to her lips. “I’m an impartial listener.”
Jack was surprised to find…he didn’t think that was true. Clearly, she had an opinion, and she was trying very hard to mask her disapproval.
