Foolish Games: Cartwright Brothers, book 3

by Lilliana Anderson

  “I don’t know what to say to you.“

  “Then we won’t talk. We’ll just drive. Please.”

  “What about my ride?”

  “I think he’s already found a way to pass the time.”

  With a sigh then a nod, I gathered my things, not wanting to be parted from them again, and followed him to where his Ute was parked in the driveway.

  “Your door is fixed,“ I commented, noticing the scratches were all gone.

  “Yeah. Jazz had it done while we were in Sydney. Maybe you won’t scratch it up again?” He gave me one of his beautiful boyish smiles.

  “I can’t promise anything. But I’ll try.“

  He nodded. “That’s all I ask,” he said, opening the door to get inside.

  A nervous pressure tightened my lungs as he closed me in. It wasn’t that I was afraid to be alone with him. It was that I was afraid of forgiving him and giving him the chance to hurt me all over again. What was the saying? Once bitten, twice shy? Most people never changed, they were what they were. I’d had enough experience with bad relationships to know that the same shit rolled around time and time again. The only difference was the smell.

  For two and a half hours, we drove. Nothing was said besides him asking if I wanted music (I said yes) and me asking where we were going (he said somewhere quiet).

  When we finally stopped, we were just outside Healesville. He turned off the asphalt and onto a narrow dirt road that lead to a clearing with some of those squat-log fences in it. Lush-looking trees from the outskirts of the forest surrounded us.

  “Exactly what kind of talking are we going to be doing in a place like this?” I asked when he parked the car.

  He opened his door and jumped out. “The talk-until-you-forgive-me kind.”

  Getting out, I slung my bags over my shoulder and looked at all the green. I’d never seen anything like it. The rich fragrant smell of the damp earth filled my nostrils, and the air felt cleansing in my lungs. Birds chirped, and I could hear the croaking of frogs. This was a part of Australia I’d been missing all my life. It was so peaceful.

  “This doesn’t feel like the place for speaking,” I said. “It feels like a place for listening.”

  He reached out to take my bags, but I refused his help. A couple of hours in a car with him hadn’t changed much about the way I felt or my lack of desire to fight. I simply wanted quiet, which was the only reason I followed when he walked. The lure of the forest gave me a sense of escape.

  “This way,” he said, leading me to a wooden pathway that looked a lot like a plank bridge. It wound down through the forest for at least eight hundred metres and ended when it wrapped around a fairy-tale cabin that literally hung off the edge of a cliff. I felt like I was standing in a dream.

  “What is this place?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around the fact that such a place existed. I stepped carefully onto the balcony and bounced, checking the structures stability.

  “It’s not going anywhere,” Kristian said, striding onto the wooden planks with confidence as he inserted the key in the door. “This is my favourite place to come when I need some time to think. It’s also off the grid, so it’s a good place if you ever need to hide.”

  Cautiously, I stepped inside and dropped my bags on the floor, still not trusting that we weren’t going to go down in a landslide or something. When I reached the opposite side of the building without a death-defying drop, my worries were replaced with awe. That view.

  Have you ever felt as though you were standing at the edge of the world? I thought I had, growing up in a coastal town with plenty of cliffs to tease the edge of, I felt like I’d stood with Mother Nature at the boundary of her creation. But that was nothing compared to this place, the tops of trees, the mist rising into the sky, the quiet, the noise, the abundance of life hidden from view but right in front of my eyes. This wasn’t the edge of creation. This felt more like the beginning of it.

  “What do you think?” Kristian asked, standing just behind me.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, meaning it. I could already tell that my soul would find peace here, one way or another.

  “Hungry?” he asked, and I nodded. I hadn’t eaten all day.

  Moving into the well-appointed kitchen, he opened the cupboards and looked inside. They were well stocked with long-life items, telling me this place was exactly what he said it was. Although, it could also be an apocalypse cabin, I supposed. He pulled out two cans of Irish stew then emptied them into a saucepan. While that heated on the stove, he shook out some flour and opened a long-life milk, mixing a basic damper with a final pinch of salt. Flattening them out, he cooked them in a frying pan then served it all up at the rustic wooden table in what looked like hand-sculpted bowls.

  “I want to apologise to you for the way I treated you yesterday. There was no excuse,” he said, pressing a torn piece of the damper into the beefy gravy.

  “Apologise? Is that even something you do?”

  “Not typically. But in this case, I think it’s necessary.”

  “Well, I don’t want your apology. People say sorry all the time, and it doesn’t mean a damn thing.” I sliced a cube of potato into increasingly tiny pieces with the side of my spoon.

  “It does when you realise how very wrong you were. I know this can’t excuse my reaction, but seeing you with him, looking so…familiar…I jumped to conclusions.”

  “Well, he’s obviously a very familiar person. He’s probably still back there fucking your mother as we speak.”

  He winced. “I’d really rather not think about that.”

  “Why not? She’s got needs like the rest of us.”

  “This is seriously the first time we’ve ever been aware of those needs.”

  Bouncing one shoulder, I chewed on a mouthful of stew then swallowed before I spoke. “Breaker is a pretty charming guy.”

  “Did he try anything with you?”

  I swung my eyes in his direction and held his gaze in place. “No. He doesn’t touch taken women. I made it very clear that the only thing I was worried about was getting back to my fiancé. I talked about you so much that I must have seemed pathetic.” I shook my head and looked away, focusing on my bowl of food. “I feel pathetic now.”

  “You shouldn’t,” he said, reaching across the table to take my hand.

  I pulled away. “But I do.” We ate the rest of the meal in silence.

  Chapter Thirty

  Where Do I Sign?

  Life was built from moments. The overall picture being formed by the tiniest of things. A step left instead of right. The decision to stay or to go. A yes or a no. A pause, a breath, a smile. A kind word when needed. A single moment of hurt. The realisation that dreams didn’t come true and people weren’t perfect…

  “How could you believe I was a cheating whore who sold you out? Within one hour, I went from a member of your team—your family—to an unwanted piece of shit.” I was lying on the couch while he built a fire, adding the kindling a little bit at a time to help feed the flame.

  Picking up a pre-cut piece of wood, he played with the soft fray at the edge with the tip of his finger. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I was freaking out. Everyone was telling me to leave because the burn message came through, then Randy called and said the cars were no good. We needed to dump and run. I was fighting with them all, telling them you’d be back. We’d staked out the police station and tuned into their radio, so we knew the search for you had been scaled back. They didn’t have anything but a description of you, and they weren’t looking for us, so we could afford to wait. We had a van by that point, so we checked out and waited down the road a bit. Then, this couple turns up on a Harley and Sam made a comment about sweetbutts. Is that what the bikers girls are called?” I shrugged because I didn’t know. “Anyway, it was a lewd comment and we all laughed. Then the girl gets off the bike and I think, I know that body. Then she took the helmet off and I knew it was you. You were smiling like you were having the
greatest time. ‘She probably hitchhiked,’ Abbot said. But Sam said that would have been too risky, that you must know him. Then you went into reception, and Leesh asked, ‘Why would she bring him here, to us?’ and the doubt that had already started, grew into this tightness in my chest. Then you stepped outside and it was like you were arguing with him. He grabbed you and held you, and it looked intimate. Leesh put her hand on my arm and said we should go. But I wouldn’t, I needed to know who this guy was and why you were with him. So I jacked another car and followed you to his house, camped out for a few days, and watched you through the window, saw you coming and going. You smiled with him, held so tight to him on that bike, leaned into him whenever he put his arm around you. I felt like a fool after three days of it, so I came home. I didn’t think you’d be coming back.”

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  “If you knew where I was and you thought I’d moved on with Breaker, why didn’t you confront me, ask me what was going on? Abbot said that Cartwrights don’t back down and they go after what they want. So, if you truly wanted me, why didn’t you fight for me? I had no way of contacting you, Kristian. I had nothing. I thought you’d abandoned me. Just left me in Sydney with nothing but the clothes—”

  “Because of your smile.”

  “My smile?”

  He nodded. “When I saw you with him you were smiling. I’m not such an arsehole that I’d drag you away from someone who makes you happy.”

  Tears welled in the corner of my eyes and I dabbed at them while laughing. “You are such a fucking idiot. I wasn’t smiling because of him. I was smiling because I loved riding on the bike.”

  “The bike.”

  I sat up. “Yes. Have you ever been on a Harley? Those things are almost as fun as surfing.”

  “The bike,” he said again.

  I nodded. “The bike, you fucked-up piece of shit.” I spoke through tears as I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.

  “Fuck. I couldn’t see straight. And by the time I did, I’d already attacked you.”

  “I trusted you, you know,” I whispered. “I’ve never trusted anyone, but you gave me…you gave me hope that I could actually be more than an obligation to someone. You made me feel wanted, and then you threw me away. Do you understand that? Do you have any clue how that made me feel? I came to you with nothing. You gave me everything then boom, one doubt, one moment, and it was gone.” Even saying that made me feel so vulnerable again. I hated it.

  “It doesn’t have to be gone. We can go back to what we were. I can promise to never be an arse again.”

  “That would be impossible,” I said.

  And he smiled before saying, “Probably.”

  Then we sat in the quiet and thought. I revisited his words and tried to make peace with his reasons. I put myself in his shoes and imagined how I’d feel in the same situation—if I’d been scared he was in trouble then he turned up looking cosy with some girl, I’d probably assume the worst too. I knew I would.

  There was always that problem with assuming; it made an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’. And boy, did I feel like one now. If he’d just approached me, if I’d seen him and approached him… All of this could have been avoided.

  “Do you still hate me?” Kristian whispered early the next morning. We were lying in the giant king-sized bed, facing each other on our sides. Birds provided the background music and a parrot added a little noise, making the moment feel less like a Disney movie and more like reality.

  “No,” I whispered back, my hand tucked under my pillow. We weren’t touching, and I didn’t wake to find him spooning me like he had that first night we were together. He’d offered to sleep on the couch, but I told him he could share the bed as long as he stayed on his side. I had to admit that I was a little disappointed when the sun woke me and he’d actually obeyed my request. My head could be pretty messed up a lot of the time.

  “Do you like me yet?”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “Well, not hating me is something. That’s where we started, after all.”

  We’d stayed up till the early hours of the morning, talking until our voices went hoarse. I gave him a blow-by-blow detail of everything that had happened in Sydney, and told him everything about my life that I’d never told anyone. Breaker didn’t hear about the abuse. The emotional abuse from my mother, the physical abuse from my first serious boyfriend, the long list of people who’d used me, who I’d allowed to use me because I hadn’t felt I’d deserved much more than the crumbs I was given. Then I told him how the fight with him on the beach had caused my rock-bottom moment, landed me homeless, and made me swear I’d never let any man use me and cast me aside again.

  He’d shed more than a few tears in my honour, telling me he couldn’t even imagine the life I’d led. He promised to make every day together better than the last, it would be his life’s mission to show me a better world.

  I told him that was too much to promise, and that all I needed was a promise I never had to struggle like that again. He gave me that immediately.

  Then we moved to his stories. He spoke of growing up without his father in the house, of memories of his mother being so beside herself with grief that Toby and Nate were the ones who took care of all the boys. Then he went on to detail how they were raised to be thieves and that he knew no other way to live. Jasmine had convinced—or possibly brainwashed—them all into believing that relationships would be their family’s downfall. But recent years had shown her undergo a change of heart. She wanted grandchildren, a new line of Cartwrights to continue what she’d built. It sounded as though she was a bit of a mad woman, but the kind of crazy that worked. I was honestly impressed by everything she’d built after her husband went to prison. She had erected her own mountain to sit on top of. I understood the need to keep that kind of effort within the family, no matter how crazy it made you appear.

  On top of that, he also walked me through every moment of our Sydney trip—how it felt to see me speed off with a cop hot on my tail. He’d been petrified and said that he only just found me and wasn’t ready to lose me yet.

  It had been one of those nights that we should have had before now—the airing of all our laundry, the trusting of secrets, the sharing of stories. But we’d both been too afraid, too caught up to risk letting our walls down too far, to let someone in so deep that they saw all the ickiness we tried to hide. But we saw it now.

  In the cold light of the day, everything that we were was in the space between us, looking on with hopeful eyes and crossed fingers whispering, “Just make the fuck up already.”

  Taking a lungful of air through my nose, I reached out and ran my fingers down the side of his face, feeling the prickle of his whiskers on my fingertips. He closed his eyes and hummed. I missed that sound. I missed the way he moaned when we were connected.

  “Put your hands on me,” I whispered, inching a little closer as his hand slid over my hip then up my side, pushing my shirt a little and landing on my bare skin. I shivered in the most wonderful way. “Why does your touch have to feel like the reason?”

  “The reason for what?”

  “For everything.” My voice was so small, I wasn’t sure if he heard it until his gaze softened and he pulled me closer so I was flush against his body. Then he pressed his lips to my forehead and breathed me in.

  “You’re my reason too, Ronnie.”

  My breath shuddered as his hand curved along the side of my head and angled me towards his, my entire body rejoicing at the touch of his lips to mine, the tender exploration of his tongue. I sighed with relief, knowing he was the only man who could make me feel this way.

  I love him.

  “Don’t call me Ronnie,” I whispered. “Call me doll. I want to be your doll again.”

  “Doll,” he said over and over between kisses.

  “Just promise me one thing,” I gasped, sliding my hands beneath his shirt, loving the return of his silky skin against my palms. My God
, he’s a drug.

  “Anything. I’ll do anything to make us right again.”

  “Ask me next time. If you think something is going on, just fucking ask me and I’ll tell you.”

  He held himself above me and we locked eyes. “I promise,” he whispered, returning his lips to my mouth the moment I nodded in reply.

  When his lips moved to my neck, I pressed myself against him, wanting to be closer, wanting this whole ordeal to be over and done with so we could get back to being us.

  “Fuck, doll, I missed you. I messed up so much, I’m sorry. I really am.”

  Tears pushed at my eyes as I nodded, accepting that as his truth. “I’ve never had a real family before, Kristian. Every moment we were apart, I was petrified I wouldn’t get it back.” My dam burst on the last word, spilling from my eyes.

  “Oh, doll,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

  “Me too,” I cried, hating that I was doing it all over again. But this time, he kissed the tears away.

  “I will never doubt you again, understand me?” he said, his hands on either side of my head. “You will never lose me or my family. Hell, they stuck up for you and called me an arse. We’re all here for you, and we’re not going anywhere.” He slid the ring off his pinky and returned it to my finger. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise you on my life.”

  “Oh, Kristian,” I cried, looking at the ring back where it belonged and feeling so overwhelmed that all I could do was leak tears and snot.

  Leaning down, he kissed the mess that I was. “Call me Kris. It’s the name everyone I love gives me.”

  Sniffing, I stopped my blubbering and locked eyes with him. “Love?”

  He nodded, his thumb brushing lightly next to my temple. “Yeah. I love you, doll.”

  “I love you too,” I said in a rush, a little afraid of the words that needed to burst from my mouth.

  With a chuckle, Kristian brushed his fingers through my hair and down the side of my face, so lovingly. “I’m going to marry you. And once we’re married, there is nothing on this earth that’s ever going to get in the way of us again. Does that work for you?”