by Nicole Deese
He lifted his gaze. “You saw me once, at the grocery store, just a year or so after your grandfather passed away. You had a green sucker in your hand and you were supposed to be trading it out for a different color—orange, I think—while your cousin and aunt waited for you in the checkout line. But you forgot about the candy when you saw me. Do you remember what you asked?”
She’d asked him a question? It took her the better part of a minute to access the memory, but it was too out of focus. Too cloudy. Too covered in the dust of an emotion she couldn’t understand. “I don’t remember.”
He waited, his stoic gaze probing through her as if time could erase his transgressions.
She needed to get away from him, escape whatever kind of manipulation game he was playing. She scooted along the wall toward the door.
“Secrets don’t keep forever.”
Panic stitched the length of her spine. Was he talking about Levi? Was Ford planning on exposing them? She pinched her eyes closed and fought against the pain jabbing between the slats of her ribs.
She yanked open the door and fled down the porch steps, slicing through two beams of moving light. A truck door slammed at her back and a familiar voice called out her name.
No, she wouldn’t stop, not for the man who’d just trapped her in a house with Ford against her wishes.
Despite the quickening thud of Levi’s footsteps, she continued to propel herself toward the safety of the fence.
“Rayne, will you please stop!”
She kicked each of her legs through the narrow fence boards. In her haste, her blouse snagged on a raised nail, shredding the fabric at her side and exposing the flesh from her rib cage to her hip bone.
But unlike a blouse, repairing trust wasn’t an easy mend.
The instant both of her feet were planted on Shelby soil, Levi hurled himself over the barrier, avoiding the bob and weave altogether. Chest heaving, he gripped her shoulders and blocked her path.
“Mind telling me why we just competed in an after-dark obstacle course?”
She jerked away from his hold. “How could you! How could leave me with him?”
Through narrowed eyes, he swiveled his gaze between his cabin and her. “What happ—”
“You left me asleep. In your house. With Ford!” Despite the warm pocket of smoky air surrounding them, chills broke out over her arms and legs.
“Ford talked to you?”
“Oh, don’t act like you didn’t know. Don’t act like you didn’t set this up tonight. You told him—about my grandfather, about things I’ve shared with you in confidence.” The tears in her voice leapt out in a hoarse, angry cry. “How could you?”
“Think, Rayne.” When he reached for her again she stumbled back. “Why would I plan that? What could I possibly gain by cornering you with Ford before you were ready?”
“That’s just it!” She thrust a finger in the air toward his chest. “I’m never going to be ready, and yet, you’ve wanted to change my mind about him from the beginning.”
“Of course I have, but not by ambushing you. Give me a little more credit than that, please.” He trapped her wrist, pressed her hand to his heart. “I was only gone for fifteen minutes. Seven minutes down the road to deliver a receipt and then back. I’m sorry if Ford startled you, but I won’t apologize for him. He belongs in my life, Rayne, just like you.”
She shook her head, backed away, broke contact. “Just because he means something to you doesn’t mean I can forget everything I know about him—how he’s hurt my family, how he used my grandfather! How can you overlook everything he’s done? How can you be okay with the way he acquired the farm? You’re building your future on a stolen inheritance!”
He seemed to process every word out of her mouth, every accusation she threw at him, and yet, he skipped over her questions to ask one of his own in a tone much too quiet, much too calm. “What did he tell you, Rayne?”
She pressed her fingers to her temples as if to prevent Ford’s words from leaking out. The memories. The nicknames. The sadness. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Ford doesn’t waste words. It matters.”
“Secrets don’t keep,” she snapped. “That’s what he said. He’s planning to go to Cal. He’s planning to expose us both.”
Levi’s eyes shimmered in the moonlight, his tone only a few clicks away from patronizing. “Sweetheart, Ford confronting Cal would be about as out of character for him as this display of irrationality is from you. Believe me, Ford has his reasons for keeping a low profile around your uncle.”
Levi’s lack of alarm was maddening. How could he be so calm when he’d put them at risk? All of their careful planning, their sneaking around, their playing it safe . . . all of it had been in vain.
“You think I’m being irrational? That all our time staying under the radar has been some kind of joke? If my uncle finds out about us he’ll . . .” Squash her dreams. Cut her off. Take the lodge away from her forever.
His expression hardened. “I don’t know how many ways I can tell you this, but I will not fear that man. I will not cower under him like everyone else in this town. And frankly, I’ve grown tired of being your closet boyfriend. I’m done with all the hiding, Rayne. I’ve been done for weeks now.”
Done. A plunge in the icy river couldn’t have shocked her system more—then again, maybe she was still in shock. Maybe waking up to Ford Winslow had not only stripped her inhibitions and shattered her excuses, but maybe it had also given her something else . . . the strength to say what she must.
“So let’s stop, then.” Her gaze shifted to the glow of the lodge in the distance, to the shelter, to the community she longed to serve. The pull was as strong and steady as a heartbeat, a constant companion she’d felt even as a young girl working alongside her grandfather. Her dreams were only just beginning, only just being realized. The lodge was her passion. The lodge was her future. “We always knew this would be temporary.”
“Don’t twist my words. You know that’s not what I meant—not what I want. I said I’m done with all the hiding, not with you. Not with us.”
Her heart pounded in her throat, in her ears. “I tried—I promised you I’d try, but—”
“But what? You’re only willing to feel something for me when we’re alone? When there’s no chance we’ll be caught? That’s not trying. That’s convenience.”
She shook her head. He was missing the point. “This is bigger than your pride, Levi.”
“My pride? You think this is about my pride?” He strode toward her. “If this were about my pride, I’d have thrown out the rules the first day we met. If this were about my pride, I wouldn’t have bent my life to fit around your ever-changing schedule.” He stared her down. “None of this has been about my pride, Rayne. It’s been about you. About us. About this moment right now.”
Her body short-circuited the instant his fingertips grazed her skin. He skimmed the top of her shoulders and then the length of her arms. He wasn’t confining her, wasn’t holding her captive, yet she couldn’t move away. Couldn’t fight the ache in her throat. Couldn’t beg him not to speak the confession she read in his eyes.
“It’s about how I fell in love with you.” His breath caressed her lips, each syllable stretching out for an eternity until another crashed into it. “So let me.” He traced the curve of her spine until her legs felt as unsteady as her ability to reason. When the warm breeze blew her torn blouse like a white flag of surrender, he moved his hands to the bare skin at her waist, and a feverish heat climbed her torso. “Let me love you, Rayne.”
Tender. So unbelievably tender. His eyes, his mouth, his voice, his touch. She fused her lips together, hoping her refusal to speak would make the truth less true. Would make her heart less pained. He brushed his lips across her cheek to the base of her ear, breaking her down kiss by kiss, touch by touch.
Only, if she broke down, so would her dreams.
So would her future.
Their extended curiosity had
landed them in an inevitable quicksand, and the only way to climb out was to let go of each other.
She’d allowed this to go on too long.
A rasped reply squeezed from her throat. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?” he murmured through lips pressed to her neck.
Hot tears gathered on her lashes as she pressed her palm flat against his chest. She pushed, gently at first, and then not so gently. “I can’t do this anymore.”
As if waking from a deep sleep, Levi lifted his head, his expression changing from confusion to clarity in a single blink. “You’re scared.”
More than he realized. Did he not understand the position she was in? The choice he wanted her to make? The plans he wanted her to deny? “You’re asking me to choose—between you and my dream. Between you and my family.”
“No, I’m asking you to open your eyes, to see Cal for who he really is—”
Her shoulders tensed. “That’s just it, Levi. To you, Shelby Lodge will always be about the man who signs my paychecks. But to me . . .” She gestured to the building behind her. “To me that lodge represents everything I’ve loved since I was a child—every hope I’ve ever clung to despite my shortcomings as Governor Shelby’s daughter. You were right when you said I don’t fit in with my family. I never have. But I fit there. I belong there. That lodge isn’t just my grandfather’s legacy—it’s mine too. I won’t leave it.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face and blew out a sharp breath. “You actually believe this fire shelter will change him, don’t you?”
“Things are changing.”
“Come on, Rayne. The only reason Cal agreed to open those doors to the community was to suit his own agenda—you know that.”
Her temper ticked higher. “It doesn’t matter how it happened, the lodge is open, and people are being helped because of it. It’s a whole new beginning there—I can feel it.”
On a half rotation, he shoved his hands through his hair, the labored sound of his breathing as unsettling as the look on his face when his eyes found hers again.
“There are things you don’t understand about the past, things I’m not at liberty to share—”
“Not at liberty? Who is stopping you? Ford?”
His hesitation was answer enough.
Unbelievable. “You have no problem accusing me of taking sides with Cal, and yet you’re doing the same thing with a man who isn’t even your blood.”
He flung his arms out wide. “You want to know about my blood, Rayne? Fine, I’ll tell you. My mom overdosed in a pay-by-the-hour motel south of Tacoma before my fourth birthday. My dad was a low-level dealer who scored most of his sales by hanging out in high school parking lots. I grew up on borrowed couches and expired groceries and thought father-son time meant sorting out his dirty wads of cash—that is, before he ended up in prison and I ended up in the system. So, no, Ford isn’t my blood, but he is the best thing that could have happened to me as an eighteen-year-old kid hell-bent on screwing up my future.”
Sickness sloshed in her belly at his confession, at the pain in his words, at the prick in her conscience. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your pity. I want you to trust me.” He thumped his chest with the flat of his hand. “Trust me when I tell you your dream will never be a priority to Cal. He doesn’t see you, Rayne. He doesn’t understand your heart. He doesn’t care about your ambitions. Your uncle is no better than my father. No matter how hard you slave, or how much you sacrifice, he will never choose you.”
Hurt gnawed through her back and clawed into her chest as an unspoken truth seeped through the cracks of her stubborn heart: Levi would never choose her either . . .
She could fall on her sword for him, expose her disloyalty to Cal, reject her dream, and hand Levi her heart, but he would never do the same for her.
Levi would always choose Ford.
She’d compartmentalized the truth for weeks, placed Levi on a mental pedestal detached from his employer. Time and time again she’d ignored her better judgment and pacified her guilty conscience by embracing a desire as futile as her justification.
But everything was clear now.
Ford and Levi were joined, welded together. Not only by a farm but by a bond he treated as family.
He would never cut ties with the man who’d cheated her grandfather.
The same way she would never cut ties with the home her grandfather had cherished.
All at once, the double lives she’d lived for months merged into a single, focused resolve.
She didn’t need to be chosen. She needed to be the one to choose.
“I’ll never walk away from the lodge,” she said with a strength not quite her own.
His expression sobered. “But you’re willing to walk away from me?”
She distanced herself from the shadows that danced between them.
“Don’t do this, Rayne. Don’t shut me out again.” His voice caught and she swallowed against the pressure building in her throat, against the pain blazing in her chest.
“From our first night together at the Falls to this moment right now—nothing has changed. We are still two people torn between our loyalties, and we always will be.” She formed the words in her head, careful to avoid a collision with her heart, and forced them out on a single breath. “You were wrong—what you said before. We haven’t been done for weeks, we were done before we ever began.”
Like a coward, she retreated, unwilling to watch the repercussions of her decision unfold, unwilling to feel the pain she’d just inflicted.
Unwilling to change her mind for a man who would never change his.
She couldn’t escape the stale night air or the burn in her lungs, and neither could she escape the rejection that pulsed in her wake with each lonely stride back to the lodge.
And unlike every other time she’d walked away from him in the past, this time, Levi didn’t follow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Rayne had hoped to sneak through the back kitchen door unnoticed, but Gia had other plans. Her cousin eyed her from the counter.
“You totally owe me for skipping dinner. I had to play crossing guard with all the children—and you know how much I love sticky fingers pawing all over me.”
Rayne cleared her throat and angled her shoulders to hide her puffy eyes behind a wall of windblown hair. Unfortunately, she hadn’t remembered to hide the tear in her blouse.
“Uh, excuse me, were you attacked by a wolverine since I saw you last? What’s with the wardrobe malfunction?”
“It’s nothing. Thanks for helping with dinner.” Rayne’s robotic voice matched her robotic movements. Out of habit, she pulled the drapes over the back door closed and flicked off the porch light before sneaking a glance at the clock above the stove. Had it really only been three hours since she’d stood in this kitchen making a plate of cookies for Levi? The thought made the tip of her nose tingle.
“Hello? Earth to Rayne. Why does your shirt look like it could have been worn on an eighties rock band album cover?”
Rayne said nothing as she moved across the kitchen, keeping her shield in place, her emotions in check.
“Come on, that was funny.”
Rayne shuffled to a stop before she reached the end of the counter. “I’m not in the mood for funny tonight. And I’m not in the mood for a game of twenty thousand Gia questions either. So please . . . not tonight.”
Geesh, how many more people could she tell off in a single evening? First Ford, then Levi, now her best friend. Had her entire personality changed over the course of just three hours?
“Sorry,” Rayne murmured. “That was rude.”
“Hey, I’m rude to people every day. Of course, I’ve got the whole fifty-percent-Italian thing going on. But still, I couldn’t imagine having to be sweet day in and day out. You’re pardoned.”
“Thanks.” Rayne almost smiled, but the weight bearing against her chest wouldn’t allow it. She plodded toward the service door to check in
with Cal and Celeste before—
“I saved you a piece of Delia’s coconut cream pie.” The only sentence that could give Rayne pause. A customized dangling carrot.
She slowed. “No questions?”
“Scout’s honor.”
“You weren’t a Girl Scout.”
“Yeah, but I sold their cookies.”
“No, you pushed their red wagon down the hill into the Pattersons’ pond, and then Cal had to give a large donation to the troop leader to cover the cost.” And to clear the family name.
“Well,” Gia huffed. “For being in such a sour mood, someone has an excellent memory.”
Rayne pivoted at half speed, exposing her face to her cousin’s full examination, as if each one of the dried tears on her cheeks were a map of tonight’s events.
She could almost hear Gia’s drama detector dinging. She was likely regretting her fake Girl Scout pledge as much as the time she bleached her hair in eighth grade.
Rayne slumped onto a barstool and staked both elbows on the cold granite.
“Please note that I’m happy to converse with you about that which shall not be asked, if you change your mind.”
“Noted.”
Gia opened the refrigerator, took out a red plate with a single slice of coconut pie ready to be devoured, and then slid it down the counter.
Rayne dipped the prongs of her fork into the peak of the triangle, the way she had a dozen times in her life, but before she could bring it to her mouth, the fork slipped from her fingers and clinked against the porcelain. Unbidden, her tears came again—only this time, they couldn’t be coaxed away.
“Okay, screw this Girl Scout crap. What the heck is wrong with you? Why are you crying on your favorite pie?”
“It was never supposed to get this far. I was never supposed to feel like this about him.” Her shoulders shook in unison with her muffled vibrato.
Gia shuffled around the counter. “Uh, okay . . . just stay there. I’m gonna close the door.”
The swinging door whooshed closed.
“So there’s a guy?” Gia asked.
“Was a guy. It’s over now.” The words knifed through her insides.
