by Anna Sugden
“Wes.”
He’d never understand how that sweet, mystified way she said his name could make him feel both like king of the world and terrified at the same time.
“That is...” She shook her head, eyes looking a little shiny.
He wanted to back away, but he didn’t have anywhere to go. “We don’t have to. I can think of something else and—”
She cut him off with a kiss, a squeeze—that easy, exuberant way she had with people that he could never begin to match. The way that had been missing the past few days. Now it was back.
“You are the sweetest thing.” She released him and grabbed a sparkly black purse off the table, then slipped into some really high-looking heels that somehow managed to make her legs look even longer. “Let’s go.”
“But you said—”
“I was wrong. Time to emphasize the success and forget the mistakes.”
“Wow, you can do that?”
“I’m sure as hell going to try.”
He followed her out the door. If she was going to try, so was he.
* * *
CARA HAD NEVER felt so nervous and out of place on a date in her life. She didn’t do tiny little niche restaurants with food on the menu she’d never even heard of. She was lucky if a guy took her out to Applebee’s instead of the local bar.
This date felt so much more real and adult and important on its own than any other crap date she’d been on prior, she didn’t need the added out-of-her-realm ambiance. She might be sick.
Luckily, Wes didn’t look any more comfortable. Totally adorable in his khaki pants and flannel shirt all buttoned up and clean and crisp. He even looked as if he’d trimmed his beard a bit.
What she needed was a drink, but the locally brewed beer had been exorbitantly expensive. So, she’d ordered water. And a weird salad with locally grown dried peaches.
She pushed the greens around on her plate, then leaned forward when she noticed Wes was poking at the beet thing he’d ordered.
“I am so out of place here,” she whispered.
“You? That guy over there is wearing skinny jeans and has a handlebar mustache.”
She had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing too loud. Yeah, they were sticking out like two sore thumbs, but something about doing it with Wes was kind of fun. Awkward fun. That had to be a Wes specialty.
The waitress appeared with their slices of pie. Her pie. She’d made this morning with her own two hands. She glanced at Wes, who was grinning at her. A real grin.
Gah, he was the sweetest. And not for you. She pushed that thought away. She was celebrating her successes, like Mia had told her to do. All her gooey unacceptable feelings for Wes would have to take a backseat.
“This is our locally made and baked pie,” the waitress explained. “Made by a baker from a nearby small farming community. They were a real hit last night and going fast tonight. If you enjoy, make sure to come back next weekend, when we’ll be serving them again.”
Cara had to bite her lip to keep from giggling as the waitress disappeared. She was a baker from a small farming community. She was being served to all these strangers. A real hit.
“Okay, this is kind of dumb, but, um—” she dug her phone out of her purse “—take a picture of me with the pie?”
“Not dumb,” he said, taking the phone from her and snapping a picture before handing it back.
“Now you.”
“No. No, I am not photogenic.”
“Oh, come on, you’re adorable.”
“Great. Adorable. That’s manly.” But he smiled uncomfortably, holding up a forkful of pie.
She hit the button then giggled because his eyes were half closed, and his smile was more of a grimace. Yeah, not exactly photogenic.
“You put that on your refrigerator, I’ll kill you.”
She grinned at him. “It gets a special place of honor. A magnetic frame right at eye level on the freezer.” She looked around the restaurant real quick, then pulled her chair over to Wes’s side. “Here. Selfie time.”
She held out the phone until she got both of their faces in the frame, then clicked the button. “Hey, that’s not half-bad!” And it wasn’t. His eyes were open with a kind of kill-me-now almost smile on his face.
“You must be magic.”
She laughed, but then she kissed him on the cheek because it was so wonderful and scary that he could make her feel like magic. Easy, girl.
Her phone chimed, and she looked at the text from her friend Mackenzie. Come out tonight. Please, please, please, please.
“Everything okay?”
Belatedly, she realized she was frowning, so she focused on smiling and moving her chair back to her side of the table.
“Oh, my friends, they usually go to Juniors on Saturday nights. A friend of mine was asking me to come.” Cara waved it off, not wanting to explain how much she didn’t want to go, how much she didn’t want to pretend things were fine when they weren’t. Which was the only thing Mackenzie would want from her tonight. “I’ll get there next time.”
He fidgeted, clearing his throat like he did when he was nervous. “We could go. If you wanted to.”
She didn’t. At all, but... “You want to meet my friends?”
He shrugged, scooping up his last bite of pie. “If that’s what you want to do.”
Cara had to blink at him for a second. She couldn’t imagine him fitting in at the bar. It was loud and crazy and her “friends” would have something to say about her and Wes. He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy she routinely dated. He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy any of them hung out with, like, ever.
But she was trying to be the fun date. Maybe that’s what Wes needed. Some normalcy. A bar on a Saturday night with a group of people. Maybe she could help him loosen up and make some friends.
And maybe a little selfishly she could rub Wes in Kevin’s face. Prove to her friends that their brand of friendship no longer needed to encompass her Saturday nights.
So, she grinned. “Okay. That sounds fun.”
* * *
IT WASN’T HIS first mistake of the night, but agreeing to meet Cara’s friends at a bar was definitely the biggest.
It was smoky and loud. His hand was numb, his head throbbed, and he felt even more out of place than he had at the restaurant.
There was drinking. Lots of drinking. Lots of laughter, but the part that kept his shoulders tense and his fists clenched was the way these people all talked to each other. It was worse than the army, worse than high school. The constant ragging on each other, arguing, slapping—arms, butts. And it wasn’t just her friends. Cara was part of it. Ridiculing and pushing and acting like it was fun.
He wanted to go home. Badly. But most of the time Cara was plastered to his side. Once she’d even sat on his lap for a few minutes. So, maybe he could endure for a little while longer.
“Wes. Darts, man?” The guy he liked the least thus far held out a few darts, but Wes shook his head.
“I’ll, uh, have to pass.”
“What kind of pussy did you bring us, Car?”
“Oh, my God, Kevin,” one of the girls, he’d lost track of their names, said, slapping the table. She was definitely the drunkest of the four, though, and, he thought, possibly engaged to Kevin and definitely giving Cara many an evil eye. “He was, like, hurt in the war! Don’t you pay attention to anything?”
Kevin shrugged. Cara squeezed his arm. “Ignore them,” she said into his ear.
He’d love to ignore them. In the comfort of his cabin.
“You know, I’ve never known Cara to go for the uptight military type.” Kevin tossed the darts onto the table, all but sneering. “Usually it’s more of the fun, rebel type.”
Which earned him a death glare from his drunk fiancée, and if Wes didn’t feel so awful, he’d laugh at this moron thinking himself some kind of rebel.
“I could have been in the army. Look, no offense,” another guy—C.J.?—said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms b
ehind his head. “But it doesn’t take brains or anything.”
“Yeah, and you’re so well known for your brains. Someone needs to cut you off.” Cara nudged his half-drunk fifth or sixth beer away from his reach.
“Oh, don’t be such a sensitive bitch,” he snapped back, giving her arm a push.
Wes shoved away from the table and ignored the driving need to take a swing at the guy. “Okay, I’ve had enough. Let’s go.”
She blinked up at him from her seat all surprised. “Oh. Okay.” She grabbed her purse and said something to the table, but Wes was already walking away.
“I’m sorry you’re upset, but it’s fine,” she said, grabbing for his arm. “Really. This is our norm. It’s fun.”
He stopped in his tracks. Was she serious right now? “Fun? This is how you treat friends? How you let them treat you? I know I don’t have friends, but that is not friendship.”
“Well, we’re joking around. Look, it’s fine. I’ll tell them to lay off the army stuff and we can go ba—”
“He called you names and pushed your arm. I go back there, I’m going to clock the guy.”
“He doesn’t mean anything by it. These are my friends. We’ve been friends forever.”
“Your friends suck. And they’re bullies. And you’re kind of one, too, when you’re with them. I’m not going to stick around and be a part of that anymore. So, I’ll see you later.” He didn’t want to be angry with her, not when her friends were so awful.
But they were her friends. And she was defending them. He couldn’t deal with that. So, he stalked out of the bar. Outside he could breathe again, though the thumping of the music still reverberated through his head.
He needed a few minutes of quiet, then he’d go back in and apologize and ask if she needed a ride home. But he was not going to go hang out with those people again. Not for another painful minute.
At the sound of crunching gravel, Wes looked back. Cara was stomping toward him, eyes blazing.
“I am not a bully.”
“Could have fooled me,” he muttered.
“They...they have been being jerks to me for...months. So, maybe I dished it right back out tonight. But...that has nothing to do with you.”
“Then I will get home and get out of your way. Because you know what, Cara? My idea of a good time isn’t being jerks to people who are jerks to me. There are plenty of jerks in the world.”
“Yes, and you prefer to hide from them instead of build relationships with them.”
“At the risk of sounding like the girl with her tongue down the other guy’s throat 75 percent of the time, duh.”
“And that’s somehow better? Ignoring the people who’ve known you forever. Who are supposed to be you friends. Who are supposed to care.”
“They. Don’t.”
She looked as if she’d been slapped, and he didn’t know what to do about that. How could she not see that her friends did not give a crap about her?
“What do you know about caring?”
That grated, and if he wasn’t so angry with her and them it might have hurt, but with the haze of anger boiling in his blood, he didn’t have to dwell on that. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe I care about you. And not one person in there treated you with an ounce of respect.”
“Maybe you’re projecting your issues onto my friends.”
She was right. Kind of. This group reminded him all too much of Mom’s old boyfriend. The guy had been an asshole, and Mom had taken the insults like some kind of due.
Which wasn’t any different than what he’d done with Liz. Or any of the guys in the army who’d ragged on him, although that had never been as bad as high school or Rick the Dick.
“You know what? If you’re going to snipe at me when I don’t do exactly what you think I should, I don’t want to date you. Or sleep with you. I know I’m not perfect, but I get enough of that kind of judgment from my mother, thank you very much.”
“You’re not perfect, but I’m not going to... I’m not going to try for something that scares me with someone who refuses to see herself.” How could she see how wonderful she was and let those people treat her like dirt?
“I don’t know who the heck myself is, how can I see it? We keep having this same fight, and I don’t want to anymore. I want to have fun, and that is not going to be us. So, go home.”
She started stalking past him toward the road.
“Let me drive you.” He didn’t want to spend time in a car with her, because she was right. He wasn’t fun, and this was a failure. But at least it was an honest failure, not Liz basically setting him up to fail and be a laughingstock. This was just something not working.
“Go to hell.”
Really not working. “Cara, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.” Why couldn’t he ever keep his mouth shut around her? For five years his best skill had been pretty much not saying anything that wasn’t completely necessary. To Mom. To customers. To doctors. He’d kept it all in.
Why did it leak out around her?
“No shit. I thought we’d have some fun. Not you getting all self-righteous on me.”
He was not going to say anything to that. He was learning his lesson. No more telling her she deserved better, because she didn’t want to believe it. “Please, let me drive you home,” he forced through gritted teeth.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “But only because I’m wearing these stupid heels.”
In silence they walked to his truck. In silence he drove to her apartment. In silence she opened her door and hopped out. He started to do the same.
“You don’t have to walk me to my door. It’s, like, ten feet.” She slammed the door behind her.
She was right. He got the rest of the way out anyway. He didn’t want to leave things like this. He didn’t know how to fix it, but he didn’t want to leave it, either.
What had he been thinking?
She jammed her key into her door, muttering to herself about the old lock, and he stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching her like some kind of creeper.
“Cara.”
“What? Want to tell me my door opening technique is wrong? Or... Or...” She kicked the door.
Yeah, he couldn’t leave it like this because as much as parts of it were about him, obviously some of it was about her. She wanted to blame him, but that wasn’t really it.
He climbed the stairs while she jiggled her key, finally getting the door open.
“I just don’t like most people,” he started, having no idea where he was going. But he kept saying dumb things without thinking, so why not keep at it? “I haven’t felt compelled to be with anyone, even just hang out with anyone, in years. So, you’re different and you’re special, and listening to people treat you like crap, it really bugs me.”
It came out of nowhere. No forward thought. No planning or prep. He tipped his head down and kissed her. He kissed her all the way into her apartment.
“What are you doing?” she asked, wide-eyed. She was clutching his shoulders, holding on, not pushing him away.
It was that that kept him going. “I have literally no idea.” But his mouth was on hers again, and she was kissing him back so, well, that’s what he was going to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THIS WAS CRAZY. She was mad at him. He was annoying and judgmental and right. And so freaking hot she could barely stand it. She pulled at the buttons of his shirt.
His hands were in her hair, ruining the time she’d spent making it look casual and touchable. Who cared, when he was kissing her with a kind of bold, completely not stuttery desperation that made her think about being pushed against the wall and dirty, dirty things.
Anything was better than the heart-clenching feeling of him thinking she deserved to be treated better. Coming to that conclusion herself was one thing, having someone who’d known her a matter of weeks confirming it was something so huge and encompassing she didn’t know how to act.
So, she’d do this instead. She finally got
all his buttons undone and tugged at the shirt until it fell off. Without her even having to ask or do it herself or dare him into it, he reached behind him and pulled the T-shirt over his head.
“Take me to your bedroom.”
“Are you giving me orders?”
“Y-yes.” Then he scowled, presumably at himself. “Yes,” he repeated, not stuttering this time.
Hot. She kicked off her shoes, then took his hand and led him down the hall to her bedroom. He stepped inside, but instead of tossing her onto the bed like she’d hoped, he stood in the doorway.
“You should...” He swallowed, then crossed his arms over his chest. Determined. Determined to be Mr. In Charge. Yeah. It was hard to remember why she’d been mad. “Take off your dress.”
She reached behind her and undid the button at the back of her neck, then grabbed the hem of her dress, lifting it slowly up and over.
“Wow.”
Man, one minute he was tearing her ego down, the next—zoom. Through the roof. He looked at her was as if she was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen, and that was addictive.
Then he propelled her back to the bed, covered her, kissed her, touched her. No hesitation. No second thoughts.
Apparently, tonight had really flipped his switches.
“You have condoms?”
She nodded to her nightstand. “In the drawer.”
“Good.”
“Do I ruin the moment and ask how we went from arguing and being mad to this?”
“Do you want to?”
She took in the long, lean torso. Muscles and a very happy trail and oh, they could fight and be done later. She began unbuckling his belt. “Nope.”
“Good.”
His gaze stayed glued to her hands. Unbuckling, unbuttoning, unzipping and then she tucked her hand into his boxers and found the long, hard length of him.
Oh, hello again.
She stroked, watching the muscles of his left arm flex as he held himself above her. He gently took her wrist and pulled her hand out of his underwear, then crawled off the bed. She was about to protest, but he tugged off his boots and opened the nightstand, then pulled a condom out of the box she kept there.
He handed the packet to her, standing at the edge of the bed.
