by Lexie Ray
My stomach dropped out from underneath me. “What? When? For how long?”
“I’ll leave right now,” she said. “And I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“What are you needing to do that necessitates you leaving here in the middle of the night.”
“It’s not even nine o’clock, Hunter.”
“Why can’t you just go at first light?” I asked. “Or never?”
“I need more clothes, for one,” she snapped. “And to think about whether doing this is going to ruin my life.”
I softened. “I know this is hard. I’d never want to force you into doing something you didn’t want to do. But I feel you’d make a good life here, if you wanted to. I would want you to stay here, if you thought you could be happy. Do you think you could be happy with me?”
Hadley was silent for so long I almost regretted asking her, but then she gave me a small smile. “I am happy with you, for better or for worse,” she said. “Now give me the space I require and stop complaining or else I’ll make you do one of the exercise circuits, right here and now, before I leave.”
“You’d better just go,” I said. “I don’t think I could manage a circuit right now. It would probably kill me.”
“I’m not going to be gone long,” Hadley promised.
“You’d better not be running away,” I warned her, only half joking. I didn’t know how I would be able to cope if she was, if she drove away to Dallas and never returned. Would I slide backward into oblivion again, preferring to drown my pain in substances? Or would I find some new vice to quell my self-loathing?
“Just some new clothes and some space to think…I promise you.” She kissed me lightly, and I promptly deepened the contact, doing what I could to compel her to stay. That trick didn’t work on Hadley, though. When she had an objective in mind, she apparently couldn’t be swayed.
“You have all the clothes you need here,” I complained, breaking the kiss with a great deal of regret. I would’ve said anything at this point to get her to stay here longer, but she just shook her head at me.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” she said. “Late tonight. Maybe I’ll surprise you in bed.”
A smile crept slowly over my face. “Go on…”
“Maybe I’ll dig up an old but kinky set of lingerie I got as a gag gift one year but never used,” she said. “Maybe I’ll wear that underneath a trench coat and surprise you that way, in the wee hours, when everyone is sleeping in the house. You’re going to have to be the one to be quiet this time.”
I broke out into a grin. “You should’ve led with that.”
“Just go to sleep,” Hadley said, standing up. “I’ll wake you up when I get back, and it’ll be like no time has passed at all.”
“Be safe,” I told her, then walked into the darkness at the side of the house. I couldn’t watch her leave me, even if she promised to come back. Maybe I was too attached to her, but there was a lot to be attached to. Hadley was the perfect woman. Even if she wasn’t sure of her future here at the ranch, I was. She could open her own branch of physical therapy practice out here. People from town could come. She’d probably make a killing from all the other ranchers in the area, treating all their various maladies earned from a hard life working both cattle and the land.
A pair of arms wrapped around my shoulders as I stared out across the ranch, imagining a very happy future. I smiled.
“I knew you couldn’t stay away from me,” I said, turning and kissing Hadley on the mouth.
“I came here as soon as I heard you were back to normal, Hunt.”
It was only through a last minute pause that I was able to resist dropkicking the woman in front of me.
It wasn’t Hadley at all.
It was Eileen. I tossed the rest of my beer in my mouth to wash the taste of her out and choked on it.
Chapter 7
“What are you doing here, Eileen?” I asked when I was finally done choking on my beer and coughing up a lung.
“I’ve come to see you,” she said, the very picture of innocence. I could only guess at how long it took her to get ready, straightening every strand of her white blond hair, applying every type of makeup she could possibly own, picking out the skimpiest little dress from her closet and pairing it with the tallest heels I’d ever seen in my life. Well, that was a lie. I’d gone to a strip joint with some buddies before shipping off to Afghanistan, and there had been some pretty tall shoes in there.
I took a deliberate pull of my beer while contemplating that fact. “You’ve seen me. Why else are you here?”
“Come on, don’t be like that, Hunt,” she wheedled.
“It’s been a long time,” I said. “I think I’ve earned the right to be however I want to be like.”
She bit her bubblegum pink lips and looked at the ground that her stilettos were doing their best to punch a hole through. “You’re right. It has been a long time.”
She’d changed a lot, but to be fair, I had, too. She’d lost a good fifteen pounds since I last laid eyes on her, but she had never been very heavy to begin with. She was supermodel thin, now, and I wondered where she put the food she did eat. There couldn’t be organs in that waistline, which I was pretty sure I could span with my hands.
“Why did you just show up here, unannounced?” I asked. “This isn’t exactly a pleasant surprise, Eileen.”
“You weren’t answering my texts,” she said, pouting prettily. “I wanted to talk to you. To see you.”
“I don’t know what you have to say to me. I don’t have anything to say to you.” I had been getting texts from an unknown number, so that mystery just got solved. Either Eileen had gotten a new phone recently, or I’d had the good sense during a drunken night to delete her contact information. I wasn’t sure which was true.
I also wasn’t sure I could put into words just how acutely Eileen had hurt me. I’d already been injured, just hanging on in a stateside hospital. Her horror at my wounds had been my first indication that things weren’t going to just go back to normal now that I was back home. Things would never be the kind of normal I was used to again. The girl who’d professed her love to me before I shipped out couldn’t stand the sight of me, of what I’d become as a result of my tour.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking,” she said. “Can I sit down?”
“You can do whatever you like.” I never thought I’d see her again, not after she ran screaming away from me. I didn’t know how I was supposed to react to her now, what I was supposed to do or say.
“I mean inside. Can we talk inside? Maybe over a drink?”
With her here, all I wanted to do was drink. It registered in my mind that not too long ago, I’d dropkicked Eileen’s picture out of my house and my life, and no image of her remained in there. Would it curse the house if she re-entered? It was just the kind of thing that Hadley would joke about, and I wished she were here. I could hear her chanting “piece of shit” over and over again.
“Fine,” I sighed. “You can say your piece, and then you need to leave.” I decided I couldn’t deal with this without another beer.
I put Eileen in the sitting room and went for the beer in the refrigerator. I thanked God for small mercies—all of my brothers were in parts unknown, probably sawing logs.
I dragged my heels going back to the sitting room, but I might as well get some closure, I figured. I gave Eileen her beer and made a move to sit down, but she stopped me.
“Could I also trouble you for a water?” she asked. “It’s been so damn dry, this air. It leaves me parched.”
Another long shuffle to the kitchen and back again. Eileen had taken it upon herself to open both of our beers.
“I guess I should come right out and say it,” she declared, accepting the glass of water from me. “I still love you, Hunter Corbin, and if you’ll take me back, I’ll make you a happy man.”
I laughed at her and downed my beer in one long chug. There wasn’t enough beer in the world to make this b
earable.
“You really need to leave, Eileen,” I said.
“I made mistakes. I did,” she said. “But I was scared to see you like that. Seeing you like this, now, standing on your own two feet.”
“Only one of them’s mine.”
She swallowed hard. “I thought you were going to die, and I couldn’t watch that happen.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I didn’t feel quite right.
“Hunter, what’s wrong with you?” Eileen’s voice was teasing, quiet, far away.
“I don’t feel very good,” I admitted. Had I overdone it today? I was still fairly new to ranching, even if I did feel good about everything. Right now, though, all I wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep. That was good though. If I went to sleep, Hadley would be here before I knew it.
“We’d better go upstairs, Hunt, and get you put to bed. You’ll let me take care of you, right?”
I needed some help getting up the stairs, maybe, but I’d done that before, in worse shape. I was so much stronger now, but so weak. The room swam and tilted unpleasantly, making me feel like I was drunk. Was I drunk? I’d only had a couple of beers.
“Come on, baby. Let mama take care of you.”
I was only vaguely aware of clomping up the stairs, all of it off somehow.
Something was wrong.
Something about this was all wrong, but I was having a lot of trouble understanding what it was.
My first thought was that I’d accidentally gotten drunk, but where would the accidentally part come in? I’d been aware that I was drinking, I hadn’t meant to drink more than a couple, and yet I had trouble forming coherent thoughts, or useful movements, or any words at all. I even had trouble opening my eyes completely.
I was lying down. That much I could tell. Something was on top of me—no, someone. I was lying down in bed and someone was straddling my waist. My prosthesis was still on; it dug into my thigh painfully. It wasn’t meant to be worn lying down. Why hadn’t I taken it off?
“You like this, Hunter?”
The voice was far away and only vaguely familiar, as if I’d just met it. I tried to peer up at who it was; I tried to figure out what was happening, but my vision swam, and I closed my eyes again.
“You’re very sleepy, aren’t you?”
I tried to nod to that; I tried to do anything, but it was so damn hard. I should’ve felt more than bemusement at my state and situation, but I couldn’t even summon up a tendril of panic or anger or anything else.
“I know this is what you’ve wanted for a long time, isn’t it?”
A hand squeezed my cock suddenly. Christ, I hadn’t even realized it was out! My head lolled as I tried to pick it up and take stock, but there was just nothing to do for it. I didn’t know if any blood was making it to my member. I couldn’t really feel anything except for that vice-like grip.
I tried to speak, tried to lodge a protest, or perhaps just ask what was going on. All I could manage was a faint rasp, wind rattling past my dry lips.
“Yes, that feels good, doesn’t it?”
I mustered the strength of will to put my hand up, to try and touch the person on top of me. The last person who’d been on top of me was Hadley. But this person—slender thighs, tiny waist, painful grip—this person couldn’t be Hadley. The shape was all wrong. And Hadley was in Dallas. She wasn’t here. But someone else had been here.
I had to fight and fight to push my mind to remember whom I’d been interacting with. Someone from a long time ago.
My head lolled again, and I studied the door abstractly. I was in my room. That was fine, right? I was in my room, and Hadley was standing in the door, her mouth in the shape of a perfect “o.”
“Oh, would you please close the door? We’d like a little privacy.”
All I could do was watch as Hadley stood frozen in the open door, a tote bag I knew was full of fresh clothes, the reason she’d gone back to Dallas, so she could enjoy some new looks here. She’d come back here for me, and I was in my room, my cock out, beneath someone.
I forced my eyes upward again and tried to zero in on the face framed with shockingly blond hair. I understood with a growing sense of dread that I knew that bubblegum pink mouth, that I’d known its owner in the very recent past.
It belonged to Eileen.
The door clicked shut, and I looked back, but Hadley, if she’d ever been there to begin with, was gone. I decided I was done struggling, done trying to figure out whatever this was. I was just done. I was very tired.
But even the blackness I plunged into, as I turned my head away from Eileen, couldn’t disguise the fact that something bad had happened.
***
“Are you taking pills again?”
I blinked awake, groggy, unsure of myself or my surroundings.
“Hunter, answer me.”
I pushed myself up, something gnawing at my insides. Tucker stood at the side of the bed, his arms crossed over his chest.
“What time is it?” I asked, my mouth feeling like it was full of cotton.
“It’s already past noon, but you need to answer my question.” He was doing his best cop demeanor, the one where he pressed you for information until you gave in. Tucker always got the information he wanted.
“Of course I’m not taking pills again,” I said.
“Why were you asleep so long?”
“I don’t…” What had happened? I couldn’t dismiss this nagging feeling that something really bad had happened.
“Hunter, you’re not doing yourself any favors right now. Answer my question.”
“Stop with the bad cop routine!” I burst out. “I don’t remember what happened. I feel like shit, and I’m confused.”
“I found this in the trash can.”
I shielded my eyes from the sun flooding in through the window to see a pill bottle in the palm of Tucker’s hand.
“It has your name on it,” he said. “Same kind you used to take, too.”
“I don’t take those anymore,” I said, my stomach rolling. “Why would that be there? I haven’t taken any of those since Hadley flushed all of them down the toilet.”
When I said her name, I had a flash of recognition. She’d been here last night. Her mouth perfectly round.
“Where’s Hadley?” I asked, stricken. “Is she here?”
“Her car’s not here,” Tucker said.
The door had closed. I’d been gummy with something; I’d thought it was too much booze, but it had been something else entirely, hadn’t it? Something I used to take but hadn’t taken in a long time. Something that had caused me a lot of pain even though it was supposed to be helping with the pain.
“Eileen,” I growled, narrowing my eyes.
Tucker raised his eyebrows at me. “Eileen?”
“This fucking reeks of Eileen.” I pushed the heels of my hands over my eyes and made a move to stand up. The prosthesis was still strapped on, and my thigh ached because of it.
“Are you sober?”
“Eileen had to have slipped me something,” I said, feeling sick. I thought of the perfect “oh” of Hadley’s mouth and the door closing. She had been here. She had seen what had happened.
“How did she even get the prescription, Hunter?”
I threw my hands up in the air. “Should I call her? Demand to know how she set everything up and why? There was probably another prescription ready to be picked up at the pharmacy in town. I made sure it was always filled, always available so I never ran out.”
“But why would she do this?”
“Another question you need to ask Eileen, Officer Tucker,” I said, glowering at him. “Fuck! Hadley saw everything. That’s why she isn’t here. She saw everything, and she left me.”
I wanted to smash something, to smash everything, to feel pure pain in my fists if only to distract myself from the pain in my heart.
“Don’t do anything stupid, brother.”
“Everything is stupid,” I groused. “
Everything was going so well, and now I’m in the middle of a raging shit storm.”
“Call Hadley,” Tucker said, his tone reasonable, “and then call Eileen. Get to the bottom of this.”
Hadley’s phone rang once, twice, three times, and went to voicemail. It didn’t even ring the second time I called, telling me she saw who was trying to reach out and touch her and booted me away. How had everything gone to shit so suddenly? Hadley and I had been really good. Life had been good again. Why had Eileen tried to insert herself back in it?
“Hey, lover,” Eileen crowed, answering my call before the second ring. “How are you today?”
“Explain yourself,” I muttered.
“What?”
“You heard me. Explain yourself.”
“I don’t know what there is to explain, Hunt.”
“Why were you here last night?”
“To see you, of course.”
“We aren’t seeing each other, Eileen. You made it clear how you felt about me, about my leg, when my brothers brought you to the hospital that day. You wanted nothing to do with me.”
“Baby, I’m sorry about that,” she said, her voice contrite. “I was just in shock, seeing you so hurt. It was selfish of me, I know that. I’m going to spend a long time making up for how I was, but I don’t mind. We can be together now.”
“We’re not going to be together, Eileen. I’m not interested anymore. I’ve moved on.”
She was silent for a beat. “But that’s not what you said last night.”
“You drugged me. Whatever I might’ve said last night is off the table.” Even as I said that, I did a panicked inventory of my brain. Had I spoken to her? What had I told her?
“But you said you forgave me for everything,” she said. It was her pouting voice. I could practically see that bottom lip protruding.
“I don’t forgive you for this. In what right mind would anyone tell you that slipping me a bunch of pills was acceptable behavior?”
“I just wanted you to listen to me,” she said, and I screwed my eyes shut. Everything that had felt like a fever dream last night had been real. Eileen astride me, Hadley watching from the door. I’d fucked up royally.
