by Sharon Kay
Rosie forced herself to breathe. What were the odds of running into him here?
“It is you! Shoot, girl! How long’s it been? Five, six years?” Peter stared at her chest. “You look good.”
Her throat was dry. She needed to tell him to leave. But she couldn’t get words out.
“Yeah, guess it’s a surprise to run into each other here,” he went on, as if this was somehow normal. His eyes raked her hair, her entire upper body. “How ya been?”
“Good.” She pushed the word out. “You should leave.”
He took a half step back. “What? Is that any way to talk to an old friend?” He had the nerve to act pissed. “I’m almost offended.”
Peter had been handsome before. Blond hair, blue eyes, he’d played football in high school and had been in shape—then. Now, he was definitely bigger in the middle. “Well, it was a weird coincidence that you’re here and so am I, but you really should go.” Cruz would kill him.
“Are you here with someone? Is that the problem?” Peter scanned the room. “What kind of idiot would leave you sitting here alone, in that dress, looking completely fuckable?”
His puffy cheeks reddened. What had she ever seen in him? What had the other girl seen in him—the one he cheated on her with? The half decade hadn’t been kind to him. And now he had the nerve to stand at her table and cuss? “You need to walk away. Now.” If not because she’d asked three damn times, then for his own sake, because Cruz would be back soon.
“Listen to you, all bossy.” His smile was lecherous. “I like it. You and me had some good times, remember?”
What planet was he on? “Before you slept with someone else?”
“Aww, now don’t be like that. I’m sorry.” He leaned one arm on the table, getting too close. “How about I buy you a drink and we catch up?”
A whoosh of air behind her was her only warning. Cruz appeared at her side and grabbed Peter by the throat. “How about you go fuck yourself? And while you’re jerking off your tiny two-inch dick, remember to never, ever,” his voice was feral, “talk to my girl again.”
Cruz flexed his fingers into the man’s neck and hoped it would take the edge off his rage. Rosie’s discomfort had been clear as a fucking neon sign and that made him insane. Every fight instinct in him tore to vibrant life. A tiny voice cautioned him that he walked a fine line.
But with Rosie, that line was blurred. He’d do anything for her.
The man gasped and wheezed, grabbing futilely at Cruz’s hand.
Rosie leaned close to him. “Cruz,” she said softly but with urgency. Her perfume swirled around him, a reminder of her sweetness and why he’d come between any man and her, from now on. “Please stop. Let go. He’s not worth it. Not worth getting in trouble over.” She laid a hand on his bicep.
Her touch was soft, familiar, reassuring, and it brought him back from the precipice of fury. He released the asshole, who stumbled back.
The man coughed and swore and rubbed his neck. Straightening, he glared at Rosie. “Shit, Rosie. Where the hell’d you find this guy?”
What the fuck? A new tendril of emotion shot through Cruz. Not a good one. He wanted her to not know this douchebag, to have him never be a part of her universe. But he had to know. He swung his focus to her. “You know this guy?”
She swallowed. “We dated. A long time ago. His name is Peter.”
“Aw, it wasn’t that long ago. Seems like yesterday. And all I wanted was to say hello tonight.” Peter made a scoffing sound. “Didn’t know you’d turned into a cold-ass bitch who hooked up with a fucking pit bull.” He scowled, then as if in a delayed reaction, he chuckled. “Ha. Bitch, pit bull. You deserve each other.”
For a split second, time stopped. Cruz was aware of his fist clenching, of Peter’s sneer, of Rosie behind him. Only for a second.
Then his fist was flying forward. It smashed Peter’s jaw with a satisfying crack. Rosie gasped and the crowd around them backed up, leaving a circle that in seconds drew the attention of the entire place. Peter staggered back but didn’t fall, and came up swearing, fists raised.
He charged Cruz, angling a shoulder into his middle. But Cruz had fought too many fights to ever lose one to some overweight pompous dick in a bar. He grabbed and twisted Peter’s shoulders, turning so he could snare him in a chokehold.
The crowd cheered. Above people’s heads, he spotted bouncers running toward them. Peter sputtered. But he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Cruz, let him go. I don’t want you to get arrested.” Rosie pleaded in his ear. “Please. I mean it. He’s not worth it. I just want you to take me home.”
A burly man taller than Cruz pushed through the crowd. “Break it up, men. Time for you both to leave.”
“Cruz.” Rosie’s voice took on a note of anguish.
A link snapped in his mind, and he released the jackass. Peter dropped like a stone but leaped to his feet, glaring. “Fuck you.”
“Ignore him.” Rosie grabbed Cruz’s shoulders. “Take me home. Okay?”
Wide blue eyes gazed up at him with worry and urgency. But nothing in her gaze was casual. It was deep, caring…He pulled her tightly against him. “Okay.” He just breathed her in, felt her softness next to him, felt her hands caressing his shoulders. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” She pulled back to study him. She caressed his jaw and then reached for his hand. “Let’s go.”
He led her out, past people who looked at his arms and shot him wary glances. Past people who nodded, saying Peter was asking for it. But he blocked it all out. The rage-fueled adrenaline swirled in his veins, but Rosie’s touch calmed him. Her body tucked close to his was a security blanket he didn’t expect.
No one had ever been there to take the edge off his anger. It was always just another fight, another theft.
Dark humidity hung thick in the air as they exited. Damn. He hustled Rosie to his truck without speaking, needing to get out of here ASAP. He cranked the air conditioning and the engine to life and peeled out of the parking lot.
“I’m sorry I ruined our dancing night,” he muttered.
She angled toward him in the seat, something she liked to do. He liked it too, glancing over to see her pretty face looking at him. “You didn’t ruin it. He did.”
“I was walking back from the bar and saw you. Saw him looking at you like you were a piece of meat.” His hand clenched on the wheel. “No one is allowed to look at you like that. Ever.”
“I told him to go away. He didn’t listen.”
“He just walked up to you and started talking?”
She nodded.
“How long ago did you date him?” And what the hell had she seen in a loser like that…
Short choppy breaths drew his focus to her. “Rosie? Seriously, did he hurt you in any way?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s just that…that…I dated him in college.”
The last word hug in the air, nearly dissipating before he realized what she said. College. She’d dated a guy in college, they broke up, and then she’d… “He was the one you…you were trying to get over, that night?” Cruz steered the truck to the side of the road and reached for her.
She nodded. “He was different …not fat. Not such an ass. But still an ass. Enough of one that he cheated on me. That’s why we broke up.”
“Shit.” Cruz wrapped an arm around her. “I’m sorry he hurt you. But I’m not sorry you two broke up. He’s a loser.”
“I know.” She sniffled. “Which makes the accident seem even worse. Like, why did it have to happen over him? He didn’t even know. I guess he still doesn’t. And that’s fine. He wouldn’t care.”
“He didn’t deserve you.”
A fresh wave of tears started to fall and Cruz had never felt so bad at offering comfort. So he shut up and just held her, stroked her hair. If she hadn’t seen him�
�if they’d been broken up since before her accident, he could see how tonight would be like a nuclear bomb. He thanked the stars he was the one with her—that she hadn’t been out with girlfriends who may have thrown insults but couldn’t physically subdue a guy that size.
“I’m sorry.” She swiped at tears that soaked his shirt. “I—I can’t pull it together.”
“Shh, baby, you don’t need to. Fall apart all you need to. I got you. I always will.” The last words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them. But…
They were true. Hell. Deep in his heart, something relaxed and bloomed. They were true. But her shoulders only shook harder. And he was having an epiphany. Rosie was his girl.
Not for the summer.
He wanted her forever.
“Shh, pretty girl.” Her sobs went on and on. He started to remind her it was over, it was in the past, that asshole was gone…but it wasn’t gone. Not for her, not ever. She carried the scars and consequences. Ah, hell.
To have what she had taken away was the worst of injustices. He could say that. And he would say it, until the end of time. He may be the only one who could.
But as her sadness wracked her lungs, images shifted in his mind. How good she was with Brenda’s children. The shadows that would sneak up on her, betraying her sunny nature for those split seconds before she could hide it.
Those damn shadows. He’d chase them away forever if he could. She was his light, the brightest thing in his life. He wouldn’t lose her, and he wouldn’t let anything dim her spirit. But as she cried herself into a blubbering mess, he knew, intrinsically, that she wasn’t just crying over her idiot ex-boyfriend. That she wasn’t only reliving the crash.
That something unnamed, that deep hurt?
He needed to know what haunted her. “Rosie.” He slid a finger under her jaw, trailing through rivers of tears, and tilted her head up. “What else happened?”
Chapter 25
Every part of Rosie froze. Even her tears stopped halfway down her cheeks as if they were too scared to move.
She stared at Cruz through a watery haze. All she saw was his compassion. And she was thunderstruck, again, at how he could read her.
She’d brushed him off before. Maybe that wasn’t fair. But the terror that stilled her soul wouldn’t loosen its iron grip. So intense was the fear that though that thought should have triggered more sobs, her body refused. “C-can we just go home?” she whispered.
He studied her for a second. Then sweet as pie, he kissed her damp cheek. “Sure.” He kissed the other cheek. “I don’t like to see you so sad, pretty girl. Let me help.”
She couldn’t look at him. Kept her chicken-shit gaze on the gear shift as he put the truck back into drive and took them home.
With every mile that passed, her heart squeezed more tightly into itself. Protecting itself? It was like it knew her world was about to implode. The big bang was about to happen to her soul, and she couldn’t stop it.
Her heart wanted Cruz. More than she’d ever wanted another man. Her mind, too—but she’d never let anyone in before, never been close to even thinking about it.
After passing field after field of knee-high corn, her driveway came into view. She knew every bump on the road. Glancing out the window, every star was bright and twinkling. All familiar things. But she may as well have been catapulted into another world. She’d been running from the truth for so long, she didn’t know how to begin.
Cruz parked by her front yard and hustled around to open her door. She slid out and into his arms. He clutched her tightly to his chest, lifting her off the ground as if she weighed nothing. “Baby,” he murmured into her hair. “Tell me what’s going on in that pretty head of yours.”
She sighed. A sad, angry, hopeless sigh. How to even proceed? “Can we sit on the porch?”
“You got it.” He put her down and draped his arm around her shoulders.
They reached the porch and she sat on the swing. He nestled close, tucking her against his broad chest. She expected an instant question, but was only met with Sundown’s nocturnal residents. Mockingbirds sang their repertoire of calls and katydids trilled all around the yard. It should’ve been a nice, normal rural night…but the axis of her world was about to crack. She breathed in his clean, masculine scent and tried to find strength.
She failed. She couldn’t find strength, or her voice. After a while of sitting in the humid country night, he sifted his fingers through her hair. “I just get the feeling that something is bothering you. Like I said before, you get this look sometimes, I don’t know. Like there’s more going on, and it hurts. Something big, something deep down.” He paused. “Am I wrong?”
She couldn’t lie. Just couldn’t do it to this man, who she cared about more with each passing second. “No.”
He shifted to face her, and framed her face in his hands. “Baby, I want to help you with it. Whatever it is. I fucking hate that you’re hurting.” He frowned. “I can beat up a man. But this? Whatever it is, I can’t touch it, can’t see it. I wish I could. I’d take it down right this second.”
A thousand emotions hit her as she gazed into his slate blue eyes. But they jumbled together in her mind, a heaping roadblock that wouldn’t let her speak.
“Whatever it is, it hasn’t stopped making you a caring person,” he went on. “Someone who can bust her ass doing three people’s jobs at work, and still help out with a friend’s kids, playing whatever they want to play. Even if you’re sick of that particular game.”
She swallowed.
“Was it something about the night of the crash?”
She nodded.
“You were at a party—did someone hurt you? Give you a drink with that roofie crap in it?”
“No.”
“What was it?”
Still, she couldn’t find her voice.
“When you wrecked…did anyone else get injured too?”
Jesus. That was the question, wasn’t it? It hung in the air like a dandelion puff that wouldn’t pick a spot to fall, tossing aimlessly on the breeze. She stared at his hands, unable to look him in the eye.
“Rosie. Let me in, pretty girl.” He traced her jaw, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Whatever it was, I guarantee I’ve done much worse. Not that that makes anyone feel better or takes it away. But I’m here, and I’m not giving up.”
“I don’t want to tell you,” she whispered.
“Why?” His voice roughened, as if he was reining in emotion.
“I’m scared of…”
“You’re scared of what I’ll think?”
She nodded.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. Paused. “Do you realize what you’re doing?”
“Holding it in.”
“Shutting me out.” He angled to face the truck, letting his elbows rest on his knees.
A sharp pain flared behind her sternum. Oh no. She hadn’t intended to…
“And you’re not giving me a chance. You’re deciding how you think I’ll react without letting me weigh in.” A new emotion lanced through his words, one she hadn’t seen on him before. And one that made her feel worse, something she hadn’t thought was possible.
She’d hurt him. “I never meant that. “
He blew out a breath and stood. “First, it was hard to see you hurting, and see you want to keep it inside. But I get it, we’d just met. But now? I don’t play mind games. I thought you’d know me better. You think I’d judge you?” He paced now, his shoes stomping on her porch. “I’ve told you I’m the last person who should judge anyone. I would never, ever do it to you.”
Fresh tears welled. Now she’d done it. She couldn’t blame him for whatever he was feeling right now.
“I had ten years. Ten years, Rosie, of my choices taken away. People told me when I could eat, sleep, and take a piss. I’m done. I’m never letting any
one take that away ever again.”
Her shoulders shook with the truth of his words. She had no right to do what she was doing. And maybe that was a sign. If she couldn’t find courage, she didn’t deserve him. But then he swooped down to kneel in front of her. “Let me in. I am fucking begging you. I care about you more than I ever expected to care about someone. I want to help you carry this pain. Because that’s what you do when you really truly care.”
“No matter what it is?” She hoped against all hope.
“No matter what.”
She gazed into his eyes, watching in fascination as they searched her own. He’d been honest with her. He’d even told her the things that were sealed up in his court record.
The least she could do would be to return the favor. Though opening up would be the hardest thing she’d ever done, harder than her months of recovery. She’d pasted on a smile for so long, it was hard to find what lay beneath. All she had was words, and they wouldn’t be pretty.
But he was right. He’d been nothing short of wonderful to her, and she was falling for him. This miracle of a man who’d dropped into her life deserved to know all of her. The broken parts as well as the sunny side she let everyone else see.
She took a deep breath. You have to. You owe it to him. “I’ve…I’ve never told anyone. That’s partly why this is so hard.” She studied a button on his shirt. “Keeping it inside made it easier. It avoided people knowing…people gossiping…probably judging.”
He moved back to sit next to her and took her hand. His face remained calm, patient. God, how did he do that?
She squeezed his hand for strength. This was it. She had one little sentence to utter, and she may as well have been flying a fighter plane way up in the clouds, ready to drop a nuclear bomb.
Would they survive the fallout?
like she was leaping off a cliff. “When I had the wreck…” Tears popped into her eyes as she made herself speak. “I was pregnant.”
Chapter 26
Tears cascaded down Rosie’s cheeks. Her shoulders shook and she couldn’t bear to look at Cruz.
