Jacked - The Complete Series Box Set (A Lumberjack Neighbor Romance)

by Claire Adams

  “Ma…” We hadn’t had the talk yet. Neither of us had admitted to the other that we knew she was going to die soon, that there likely wouldn’t be another Christmas, certainly not another summer, no more of the Fourth of July celebrations that she loved so much. Every time I’d sensed she was going to bring it up, I veered us away from that. Life was not fair, I knew that, but the whole situation with my mother was so far beyond fair I couldn’t really even think about it without becoming enraged. The doctors didn’t confirm it, but I knew her lung cancer was from breathing in all that secondhand smoke from my father, who had died just a few years earlier in a car accident. He was controlling and abusive, and even a blind person could see the immense weight that lifted from my mother’s shoulders once she was free from ever having to deal with him again. She was able to smile and mean it. She didn’t have to account for her whereabouts every second of every day. She was actually enjoying life. And then she got the news she had cancer, it was incurable, and she was going to die. There was nothing anyone could do about it. I didn’t want to have that conversation just yet. There was still time. It was running out, yes, but there was still time.

  She smiled. “I know,” she said. “We can talk about it another time. No need to be a Debbie Downer on your birthday! I better get to bed; I’m exhausted.” She looked at me once more, evaluating the shirt. “But that shirt sure does look nice on you.”

  “Thanks, Ma. I love it. I’ll wear it out tonight and show all the guys.” All the guys would give me a gigantic heap of shit for wearing such a thing, but I didn’t care. They’d have a laugh about it, and my mom would go to sleep knowing that I’d gone out in the gift she’d given me.

  The Watering Hole was the hangout for all the locals, and because I’d grown up around here and had been working for Garrett Wilson since I was eleven, I was allowed into the bar even though I wasn’t twenty-one yet. And, as expected, there was a whole lot of hootin’ and hollerin’ from the guys when I walked in, wearing that pink shirt.

  I went over to the bar and the bartender, Lauren, slid me a bottle of beer. “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” she said with a grin. “Almost legal.”

  “Where the fuck did that shirt come from?” Alan, one of the guys I worked with on the ranch, asked as he came over and slung an arm around me.

  “Gift from my mother,” I said. “Told her I’d wear it out tonight and impress you all.”

  Alan grinned. “Figured something like that would be from your brother. But I guess it takes a real man to be able to wear pink like that out in public.”

  “How is your mom?” Lauren asked.

  “Hangin’ in there,” I said.

  “Tell her we’re thinking of her.”

  “I will.” I took a sip of the beer, cold and bitter as it went down my throat.

  Aside from it being my birthday, though, there wasn’t much different about tonight. It was Friday night, so the place was pretty busy, but I recognized almost all the faces—all except for a girl sitting at a table with a couple guys I went to high school with. Her back was to me, but when she turned, I saw her profile, and she wasn’t anyone I recognized.

  I sat at the bar and listened to Alan tell me about chasing down a few escaped heifers that almost made it into town. My phone was in the front pocket of my jeans, and I felt it vibrate against my leg. I pulled it out and flipped it open to see who was calling. Carolyn. She’d want to know where I was, and if I told her I was here at the Watering Hole, she’d first give me shit for being at a bar when I wasn’t twenty-one, then she’d come down there and hang out.

  Carolyn was always after me to do the right thing. She’d want to leave the bar and go drive somewhere, somewhere that it could be just the two of us, and we could talk and she’d slide closer and closer to me and then we’d be kissing, and we’d probably have sex again. It had only happened once so far, just last week, actually, because Carolyn had wanted to wait. Only after did she tell me that she’d decided to do it this time because she knew that we’d eventually get married. Since then, there’d been several more opportunities to do the deed, and she certainly wanted to, but I couldn’t, not knowing that what I really needed to do was break up with her.

  I closed the phone and slipped it back in my pocket. “Carolyn,” I said.

  Alan smirked. “You hit that shit yet?”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “’Cause if she was my girl…”

  “Really, Alan, shut up. You couldn’t fuck your way out of a wet paper bag.”

  “You gonna meet up with her tonight? She takes one look at that shirt and she’ll be on her back pronto. A shirt like that... That’s what they called a ‘lady killer.’”

  “Then I better take it off right now and give it to you, since we all know you need all the help you can get in that department.”

  “Someone buy this man another beer!” Alan shouted.

  I drank the second beer, ignored another call from Carolyn, and endured more good-natured shit about my pink shirt. It was nice that everyone wanted to celebrate, but I wasn’t really in the mood. I hung out for a while, but then decided to call it a night. That way, I could get up nice and early and get over to the ranch and help Garrett repair the fencing and then get back home to spend some time with my mother. Maybe I’d even take her over to the ranch to see the horses; being around them always seemed to lift her spirits.

  I heard something as I walked to my truck, though, a scuffling and then a girl’s voice saying, “No, stop it.” She wasn’t shouting or anything, and I almost kept walking, but then she said it again, a little more forcefully, but I also heard a note of fear.

  I turned to my right and saw that it was Isaac Wentworth, one of the guys I’d gone to high school with. He had graduated a few years before me, and we’d actually been in shop class together, but we were never what you’d call friends. He had a twin brother, Evan, and they had their little group of friends that always stuck together. You got the feeling that they were always planning something, scheming, devising some sort of plan to try to take over the world. Now, though, he had that girl pinned up against the truck. There was just enough moonlight for me to see that he’d pulled her shirt up, exposing her stomach and the top of her jeans. Her hands were pushing his away.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He ignored me.

  “Hey,” I said again, louder.

  Isaac turned his head, the bulk of him blocking the girl from my view. “What?” he said roughly.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Something that doesn’t require an audience. We’re fine, Ollie; we don’t need a chaperone.”

  “I just want to go home,” the girl said.

  Isaac laughed. “The hell you do,” he said. “Don’t worry, sweetheart; you’ll get to go home, just not quite yet.”

  “Leave her alone,” I said.

  Isaac sneered. “Or what?”

  “Or nothing. Just get off of her.”

  He rolled his eyes like he couldn’t believe that I would actually be saying that to him and yanked the girl’s shirt up even higher. She shrieked.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I said, yanking him back.

  “Fuck off,” he said. “This ain’t got nothin’ to do with you.” He started to turn back but let his gaze linger on me first. “Nice shirt, pussy.” He reached for the girl again, who was cowering against the truck, her face shrouded in the darkness.

  “I don’t fucking think so, asshole,” I said, and I grabbed him and threw him back. He stumbled a few steps but didn’t fall; when he regained his balance, he ran at me swinging, one fist connecting with my side but I barely even felt it. My own fists were clenched, and every time I swung, I felt my knuckles make contact with his soft flesh. Even where I hit bone, it felt soft, and it seemed it took only seconds for us to go from standing to him flat on his back, me above him, pummeling his face. At first, he tried to get his arms up to hit me, then to just block me, but I couldn’t stop. Who the fuck did he thin
k he was, trying to ruin some girl’s night by doing something she didn’t want him to do? But it wasn’t just for that reason I kept hitting him; all the stress and guilt and anxiety I’d been feeling ever since my mother told me she had cancer, the unfairness of it, that just when she’d finally been freed from my father and was starting to actually enjoy life that she’d find out she was dying... It wasn’t fair.

  I kept hitting him because of all of that, and because it also felt good to have a release for the stress, for the anger, for all of that, and by the time I stopped, my arms ached, the girl was gone, and I was alone in the parking lot. I didn’t have to look at Isaac’s bloodied, pulpy face to know that he was dead—that my own two fists had just beaten the very life out of him.

  PART ONE

  Seven Years later

  Chapter One

  Wren

  It was just like out of a movie.

  The couch, me reclining on it, facing away from Dr. Michael Carter, who sat in a brown leather wingback chair, one leg crossed over the other, yellow legal pad in his lap, pen scribbling away. Mike, he’d told me to call him during our first visit if that made me feel more comfortable.

  Nothing was making me feel comfortable lately, which was why I was here in the first place. I’d been dealing with it pretty well, or so I’d thought, but that had now changed. I’d made the first appointment with Dr. Mike—almost a year ago now—under the guise of wanting to get a control of my “serial dating.” I’d gotten into the bad habit of sleeping with guys and never returning their calls, even the ones that I actually did find myself liking. I’d become a “real bitch” as one of the guys had so kindly phrased it after we’d slept together and I then refused to see him again. Worse, I was starting to get a reputation around town, which, as a small business owner, I did not want, but I didn’t seem to know how to stop it.

  Talking with Dr. Mike was helpful, sort of. I didn’t feel as though I was any closer to actually untangling the knot that was my problems, but just speaking out loud about them really did seem to help.

  “So, these dreams,” Dr. Mike was saying. “You’ve been having recurring nightmares.”

  I stared at a speck on the ceiling. “Yes. But that’s not that strange; I’ve been having those dreams for the past seven years now. I’m used to them.”

  “What’s changed, then?”

  The speck moved; it was actually a fly. “Because I found out that person is getting released from prison.”

  “And how did you find this out?”

  I hesitated. There was always this awkward moment when I had to admit what I’d been doing all these years. “I called the prison he’s at. I’ve been… I looked him up online. He had a MySpace profile that I found, and he’d started a Facebook one, but then…but then the incident happened and…” I let my voice trail off. I was stalking him online, although it’s difficult to stalk someone in this way when they’re in prison and can’t actually access the internet. I’d learned his name from the newspaper article, which I could recite verbatim:

  Carmel resident, Isaac Wentworth, 20, was killed last night in

  an altercation in the parking lot of the Watering Hole. Oliver

  “Ollie” Boardman, 18, also a resident of Carmel, has been detained,

  charges pending. An unidentified female was also at the scene,

  but she left before police arrived. Authorities would like to speak

  with her, so anyone with information regarding her whereabouts

  or who she is, is asked to come forward.

  No one knew me was the thing. I had seen the article, so yes, I could’ve come forward; I could have driven myself down to the Carmel police station and answered whatever questions they had. But I didn’t. Instead, I stared at that article, reread it so many times that I eventually had it memorized. I didn’t come forward when Oliver plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and, because they’d avoided a trial, the district attorney offered him ten to twelve years. And now he was getting out after seven. I told myself that my coming forward wouldn’t have changed anything. It would not give Isaac his life back; it would not make Oliver’s statement any more or less true.

  “The incident,” Dr. Mike said. “We haven’t really touched upon that much in your sessions. Do you feel ready to talk about it?”

  Dr. Mike knew the broad details: something had happened about seven years ago, something that had made me mistrustful of pretty much every guy I’d ever been around, and that someone had ended up in prison because of it. I’d been purposefully vague with him, and he’d been completely accepting of my vagueness. There was no way I would’ve been able to stand something like that—I would need to know, right then, the specifics of whatever the hell it was the person was talking about. Not Dr. Mike, though. He’d probed a little, trying to extract more information, but when I wasn’t forthcoming with it, he let it drop, maybe knowing that this day would eventually arrive.

  Did I feel ready to talk about it?

  “I think I do,” I said.

  “Good. Tell me what happened.”

  “Well…” It had been seven years ago, yet I could remember it as though it had just happened. I could still feel his weight pressing against me, the terrible helplessness when you realize you are overpowered. “The thing is…nothing happened to me. Because Oliver showed up. If he hadn’t though, I don’t know what would have happened. That is something I think about. A lot.” And that was stupid; I knew it. What was the point in wasting all this energy playing out bad scenarios that could have—but didn’t—happen? People did it all the time, but no good was coming from me thinking about the fact that Isaac Wentworth could have raped me, or beaten me, or killed me if Oliver hadn’t been there.

  “Something did happen to you, though,” Dr. Mike said.

  “I just feel so stupid. I still feel so stupid for being so naïve. It was my first weekend in Carmel. I’d gone out to that bar alone, and when Isaac and his group of friends asked if I wanted to sit with them, I actually felt happy because I thought that the locals were including me, that I must’ve looked like I belonged.” The shame still burned red hot when I thought back to how pleased I’d been at the invitation to sit with them. I was so proud of myself! Moving to this town all by myself, going out to a bar alone, getting invited to sit with some guys at their table. How could I not have seen how foolish I was being?

  “It’s a very natural response to want to be accepted, especially when you’re in a new environment.” I could hear Dr. Mike scribbling something on his yellow legal pad. I wondered what he was writing. Clearly beyond help. The whole thing was obviously her fault. She deserved it.

  “And Isaac asked if I wanted to go smoke a cigarette. I don’t even smoke, but I said yes. I thought he was cute. So, we went out to the parking lot, and he said he’d left his lighter in his truck, so we walked over there, but he didn’t even bother with the lighter. He just sort of cornered me against his truck and tried to kiss me.” I paused again, not wanting to continue because to admit that a small part of me had, for a split second, felt thrilled that someone was this interested in me, to admit that would be to suggest that I had invited the whole thing to happen. That I had somehow been sending some sort of subconscious signal that he’d picked up on. Which I knew was bullshit, but at the same time couldn’t help believing, too.

  “How did that make you feel?” Dr. Mike asked after a few long moments had passed and I hadn’t said anything.

  “I felt…” There was no point in lying or withholding the truth. I was paying him to listen to this, after all; he wasn’t someone I was trying to impress. There would be no hope of the nightmares ever letting up if I wasn’t honest about it all. “I felt surprised. I couldn’t believe it, and yes, there was a part of me that was excited because he was kissing me. I might have kissed him back. I can’t remember. But then…but then, he started trying to take things further, and I told him to stop.”

  I had laughed as I said it; the idea that he wouldn’t s
till not occurring to me yet. That was the sort of thing that happened in movies, or to girls who dressed in short skirts and tight shirts and had too much to drink. It wasn’t supposed to happen to me, not during my first week in my new town, my first night out on my own.

  “He wouldn’t stop, though. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I said it; I felt like I said it dozens of times, but maybe it was only once or twice. I don’t know.”

  “Would it make a difference? How many times you said it?”

  “Wouldn’t it? If I only said it once or twice, maybe he didn’t hear me. Or maybe he didn’t think that I really meant it.”

  “It shouldn’t matter if you said it once or a hundred times. You shouldn’t need to say it one hundred times. The fact of the matter is: he was doing something to you that you didn’t want him to do.”

  That was probably the most opinionated I’d heard Dr. Mike get about anything I’d said so far. He’d given me slippery non-answers in my previous sessions when I detailed the guys I’d been with, wondering aloud if my ability to just turn my emotions off was an ability that I’d always had or if it was a result of the night in the parking lot. It didn’t seem as though Dr. Mike was going to give me any of the answers I was looking for, despite the exorbitant amount of money I was paying him. It was as though he was expecting me to figure out those answers on my own, which didn’t seem like something I was going to be able to do any time soon.

  After my appointment, I went back to work. I usually scheduled my appointments with Dr. Mike during the lull between breakfast and lunch, so when I returned, the place was mostly empty, and my main waitress, Lena, was re-setting the tables with clean silverware and napkins.

  It still made me feel giddy sometimes to think that I owned this restaurant. I didn’t have much in the way of accomplishments to my name—no college degree and no husband or children to speak of—but after the previous café had been put up for sale, I used the inheritance money my grandma had left me and bought the place, shut it down for a few months while it was renovated, and re-opened it under a new name: Ollie’s.