by Maisey Yates
“Nobody wants that, trust me.”
“Bull. I want it. Stop pretending you know what I want. Stop pretending you know what I can handle. And most definitely don’t protect yourself by pretending you’re protecting me. I am a grown-ass woman,” she said. “And I might drink hot chocolate and eat pasta out of a can, but I know my own mind. And I know what I can handle. I did not make it this far in life, standing tall, by being weak. Do you think that your problems are going to crush me? I am much harder to break than that. If I was that easy to break, I would be smashed already.”
She was breathing hard after that, feeling drained and elated. “You can tell me things, that’s my point. We should be able to talk. I think we can do that without your being afraid I’m going to ask you to marry me. I just want... I want things, and I don’t really understand them. But I feel a lot. Some of the best things I’ve ever felt. And it’s because of you. I just want to keep doing that and having that. But I need... I need more of last night.”
Alex sighed heavily, and he picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. “Thanks for dinner. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“Aren’t you going to stay and sleep with me?”
He looked astounded. She couldn’t figure out why. “Why do you want me to stay and sleep with you? I just offended you. We just had a fight.”
Silence settled between them and she could see that he was serious. That he really thought he had to leave because she was upset.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to have sex with you. Alex, I want to be with you. Just because we had a fight doesn’t mean I want you to leave.”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Why not? Because when you’re with women, it’s all about good feelings and only good feelings, is that it?”
“That’s all anybody wants, Clara. Nobody wants to deal with bad moods and getting yelled at and putting up with with my crap. Why would they?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“Nobody wants to deal with other people’s problems. They all have their own.”
“Don’t you think the sex is better after you share something that matters?”
He looked completely dumbfounded by that question. “I don’t understand.”
“After I danced for you last night. Wasn’t the sex better?”
“Sex is good. In general. That’s why people make asses out of themselves over it. Why they make bad choices in order to have more of it,” he said. “You don’t need to know someone for it to feel good.”
“It’s better when you care. It’s better when you understand what somebody’s offering you.” She looked down. “At least, it was for me. After I told you all that, after you told me everything about that day with Jason, it was better for me. Because it just feels like more.”
* * *
ALEX WAS AT a complete loss. He had no idea how this woman he’d written off early on as being little more than a girl had rendered him speechless and completely unable to think. She was reckless with her words. She said bold things that could only come from someone who was very brave. Or someone who had never had her heart broken.
She came at him, again and again. And it didn’t matter how much of a dick he was. It didn’t matter that he kept telling her he had slept with other women, using that to hurt her. She still came back at him. She still believed the sex they shared, the physical connection, the emotional connection was special. And the worst part was, he couldn’t even convincingly disabuse her of the idea. Because it was special. There was nothing and no one else like her, and there never had been.
Hot chocolate, honey bees, hatred of vegetables and all.
As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t pretend otherwise. But she should let him. For their mutual sanity, she should let him.
And here she was, calling out something that not even his brothers ever had. Even though he had a feeling they knew. He had a feeling they all knew well that his smile covered up a whole lot of ugly hurt. But they had too much of their own to go digging through his.
It was what he counted on.
But Clara wouldn’t be placated.
“Clara, I don’t think this is a conversation you want to have,” he said, aware of the condescension in his tone and wanting to punch his own face for it.
“Yes, I want to have this conversation. Because I have spent my life not having important conversations. I have spent my life losing people before we could talk about things. If you don’t have the conversations right now, then you never know if you’re going to have them.
“I was supposed to have a whole life to talk to my mother about boys and sex. I was supposed to have a life receiving wisdom from my father and trying to figure out who I wanted to be. He was supposed to see me graduate and encourage me to go forward and be an adult. I was supposed to have more time with Jason. For me to understand who he was, as a man, as a full human, instead of just the way I looked up to him as a little girl. I’m never going to have those chances. I’m never going to have that conversation. You act like I should be afraid of this.” She faced him dead on, those blue eyes completely serious, full of fire. “But I’m not afraid of the conversations we can have. I’m afraid of all the ones we might not have because of time. Because of that bitch called fate that sneaks in and steals everything I’ve ever loved. I’ve lost too much to be afraid of this.”
“The kind of stuff you’re talking about is the sort of relationship that I’m never going to want.”
“Why, Alex? It doesn’t make any sense. Is it your mother?”
“You want me to stand here and talk about how my mother didn’t hug me? How pathetic is that? No, my mother didn’t hug me. But I’m a grown-ass man. I’ve been through the military. I’ve seen more. I watched my best friend die. Do you honestly think that has any bearing on who I am? That it’s bigger than bombs going off around me? I don’t see how the hell it could be.”
“Because all of the stuff,” she said, gesturing wildly, “all of the stuff that we go through builds our lives whether we want it to or not. It’s the foundation. Believe me, I know all about that. I know all about resenting those things that came before, resenting what they turned me into, and trying to change it. What do you think Asher was about? He was a fantasy. A fantasy of everything I might have been if I had gotten to be a normal person my age. But I wasn’t. And I’m not. There’s no use crying over it, but I can’t deny it either. You can’t pretend that just because you’ve been through difficult things since then, what happened with your mother didn’t damage you in some way.”
“Because I don’t want to get married, I’m damaged?”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “Probably. Most people want that. They want to spend their lives with somebody.”
“Do you?”
He felt like an ass redirecting the question like that, but he didn’t know what to do with this direct, full-on line of questioning either. He crossed his arms and waited, watched as the color mounted higher in her cheeks.
“I’ve never gotten to make a choice,” she said, her tone gravelly. “I had to give everything up to do chores on the ranch. And I suppose, to a degree, I’m still doing chores on the ranch. But I’m taking steps toward more. At least, I like to think I am. I wouldn’t say definitively one way or the other if I want to get married.” She looked away from him, licked her lips. And he gritted his teeth against the certainty that she did want to get married. And that it might even be to him.
But that was because she was inexperienced. It was because she was young. It was because she was conflating this thing between them with emotional feelings, since the physical ones were so damned good.
She was lonely. She hadn’t had anyone able to pay her this much attention in years. Her mother had died. Then her father
had been consumed by grief before he was gone too. And Jason had been absent.
Alex had created this space where she needed him, and he had done it for his own ego. He could admit that to himself, at least. But it was sure as hell doing a number on her.
“I already told you. My mother had me so she could make my father stay. He didn’t stay. End of story.”
Clara blinked, and then she looked up at him, luminous blue eyes narrowing slightly. “How old were you when your father left?”
“It doesn’t matter. Everybody else’s life centered around that bastard, and I don’t pay him one more thought than I need to.”
“Liar,” she said.
The word hit him square in the chest like a brick, making it impossible for him to breathe.
“What is this? You think you know all of my inner workings? You think you know more about me than I do? My father was a useless asshole. All he ever did was travel the country knocking women up, as if he didn’t have a concept of basic biology. He would make a show out of staying with them for a while, just long enough that they would hope, and then he would leave. He’s not worth thinking about, it’s not worth missing him or wishing he had stayed.”
“Except you do. You did.”
Anger rushed through him like a tide and he walked toward her, pressed his hands on the table on either side of her, closing her in. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“The problem is that I do. And it is so hard to watch this, Alex. It’s so hard to watch you try to pretend that nothing hurts when I think deep down inside you’re like me. You’re broken not because of war, not because of Jason. I’m not saying those things didn’t hurt you, but they didn’t make you. You’re broken up because of all these things that happened to you when you were a kid, but unlike me, you can’t even admit it.”
“I wasn’t happy when my father left,” he said, pushing off the table and away from her, pushing his hand through his hair. “Are you satisfied?”
“No, I’m not satisfied. I’m not happy that you’re hurt. I’m not happy about any of this. But I want for you to be able to share with me.”
“None of it matters.”
She whirled around, her tiny fist striking him square in the chest. “It does matter. Stop acting like you don’t matter, Alex. Stop acting like your pain isn’t important. Like you weren’t worth Jason’s sacrifice.” She took a deep, heavy breath, burying her face in her hands. “Stop acting like you think you should have been the one to die.”
She looked up at him, her eyes meeting his. “I don’t know what I would do without you. I need you, Alex. And that isn’t a small thing. In a very short amount of time I’ve come to need you. And I don’t need you to smile. I don’t need you to pretend that everything is fine. I don’t need for you to be this strong, rock facade while everything underneath it is falling apart. I need you to be real. I need you to be human. Because God knows I haven’t had enough humans in my life. I haven’t let myself need somebody...” She swallowed hard. “I haven’t let myself need somebody.” She took a deep, shattering breath. “Not for a long time.”
“You picked a pretty damn sorry savior.”
Clara sputtered. “You picked me, asshole. You came storming into my life like a hurricane. You were strong and capable and wonderful. You made me want to lean against you. You made me think it was possible. So don’t go acting like I somehow messed up. It was just you. You came in and became something that I couldn’t live without. If you aren’t worth anything then how would that even be possible? Your pain matters. All of you does. Not just your smile. Not just this everything-is-all-right stuff that you throw around.”
He took a step toward her and reached out, cupping her cheek. He felt ashamed when he realized that her skin was wet. That she was crying because of him. Because of this. “It’s our foundation, right? Like you said. I think I might be built on something cracked. Something broken. My parents left me. My father did physically. My mother did emotionally. My life has always worked out best when I moved around a lot. When I didn’t depend on any one place or any one person. It’s how I survived. I’m not sure I know how to be any different.”
“Are you going to leave? You’re going to leave your brothers, aren’t you? You’re going to leave me.”
“Clara...”
“You can talk all about how you haven’t decided, but I think we both know you have.”
“I wanted to make sure you were taken care of. That’s all.”
“What about you? Who’s going to take care of you?”
“Nobody needs to. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long damn time.”
“Well, it’s the same with me. But it was sure nice to have you here. It was sure nice to have you take care of me. Just because I didn’t need it, doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it.”
“I’m a selfish bastard, Clara,” he said, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. “Because I enjoy your needing me far too much. And I shouldn’t. Because I know I have to leave, so I shouldn’t want you to need me at all. But no one ever has. You want to take care of me? I don’t want that. I don’t dream about that. But let me tell you...having you need me...” He could hardly speak after that, could hardly form the next words past the lump in his throat. He didn’t know why he was telling her this, except she had said she wanted his honesty, and for some reason he wanted to give it. In this small space of time when they were together, he wanted to have this. Wanted to do this. There had never been a single damn person in his life that he had told everything to.
Liam had been a good enough older brother, but he had been distant. His parents...he was nothing but a nuisance to them. Conversations in the army didn’t center around lame-ass childhood trauma. It was more about whether or not you thought you were going to get your ass blown to hell by an IED. How badly you wanted to get some R&R so you could go to McDonald’s to get a burger and maybe later find a woman to screw.
There had never been anyone else he could talk to.
And there had certainly never been anyone who had needed him.
“My mother needed me for one thing,” he said, his voice rough. “To make it so my dad felt obligated to stay. And then do you know why he left? He left because of my ‘teenage bullshit.’ His words. I wasn’t an easy kid, but then I really wasn’t the easiest teenager. Liam always told me I had to keep smiling no matter what, but you know, it got too hard.”
“Well maybe that was easy for Liam to say. Maybe they didn’t treat him like they treated you.”
“No,” Alex said. “I don’t think it was easy for him. But it mattered to him because I think it kept things in the household more sane. Because it...it kept my dad there.”
“Alex...”
“When I was fourteen, I went off the rails. I started getting into fights. Cutting school. Basically anything that got me into enough trouble that my dad had to come down to the school and deal with me. Look at me. Finally one day my dad told me that he couldn’t stand being around me anymore. Liam had been all right. That’s what he said. But me... He couldn’t stand me. Couldn’t stand anything about me. He said he was done with this parenting stuff. He said it was a good thing I was the only other kid he had. And that there was a reason I was the last one. As if any of the others had been planned. But that’s what he said. It’s what he said when he left, and it’s what he told my mother. So me, her last ditch effort to keep her husband with her—I was a total failure. I had the exact opposite effect, so no, no one has ever needed me. And the ones who did... I let them down. So I shouldn’t enjoy this. I shouldn’t enjoy your needing me at all. But I do. God help me, I do.”
Clara made a choked sound and closed the distance between them, kissing him, hard and fierce, no skill inherent in the movements. It was all need. The kind of need that reached into those dark, hollow places inside of him and mad
e him feel like—for just a moment—he might find some light. Might find some relief. The kind of need that he craved like it was water or air.
And he should push her away. He should be a man and stand on his own feet rather than depend on a woman. Depend on this woman, who sure as hell didn’t need a big old soldier leaning against her until she fell apart the rest of the way.
But for now, he wanted to. For now, he wanted her to need him, as desperately as he wanted to allow himself to need her. And whatever the hell came after tonight, whatever the hell came after this moment, didn’t matter so much. At least, he was going to pretend that it didn’t.
Because her kiss was a salvation he couldn’t hope to earn, and he was a temptation that never should have been put in front of her. But somehow, it all worked. Somehow, right now, she seemed to fill all the empty places inside of him, and he was doing it for her, so how wrong could it be?
Pretty damn wrong, probably. But he couldn’t make himself stop either way.
She would always taste like rain to him. His lips had first touched hers when the storm had rolled in and the air was heavy with the promise of thunder. That would always be Clara. New and fresh, far too sweet and innocent for him.
He lifted her up off the ground, held her against his body and walked them both down the short hallway into her bedroom. It was wrong. This was. Maybe. Having her again when he knew she wanted more than he could give in the long run. But he wasn’t strong enough to make another decision. No way in hell.
The only thing he was strong enough to do was push her back onto the bed, settle himself between her thighs and kiss her deep and hard. To strip her clothes from her body and revel in every inch of her naked skin.
Her breasts, so pale and smooth, those irresistible pink tips making his mouth water. He kissed her there, where he needed to kiss her, lapped at her with the flat of his tongue. Her body arched beneath him, and he felt an answering shudder race through his. He had never felt so desperate for a woman in his life. And he knew—he knew—that she was right. That this felt deeper, felt bigger because of all they had shared. That it was more because she knew who he was. Really knew. Because he had seen her strength, her incredible brilliance in the face of hardship. Because he had seen what she had given up. He had watched her dance.
