Oh.
Before I could begin to form a rational response that didn’t involve asking him to make us even more late, Sawyer brought the truck to a stop in front of Brewed . . . in the middle of the street.
“Uh, we’re . . .” I pointed to the street, unable to continue as I watched him take off his seatbelt and reach for the handle of his door.
By the time my brain was able to catch up with the fact that he was actually stopping his truck in the middle of the street and leaving it, he was already opening my door and holding a hand out toward me.
“Street,” I said brilliantly. “We’re in the middle of it.”
“I know. Let’s go.”
But it’s difficult to do much of anything, including walk or put sentences together, when you can’t comprehend what’s going on. So, I sort of stumbled out of the truck and behind him, allowing him to lead me to the bar section of Brewed as I stared at his truck . . . doors open, keys in the ignition, engine running.
In the middle of the fucking road.
“You know this isn’t . . . a thing,” I said distractedly. “Someone’s going to steal your truck.”
“No one’s gonna take my truck, Rae,” he said as if the idea was amusing.
I dragged my attention to him, blinking slowly as I did. “How do you—you can’t—it’s asking to be taken.”
The corners of his mouth tipped up in an adoring smile as he curled his hands around my face and leaned in to kiss me. “It’s Amber. My truck is fine.” He glanced over his shoulder when a guy called out to him, and yelled back, “Yeah, Em told me. Give me a second, my truck’s out front.” With a playful look at me, he winked. “Waiting to be stolen.”
I gaped at him for a second but gave up before I could remind him that it was a new-ish, extremely nice truck, sitting in the middle of the road with the keys in the ignition.
But, what did I know? I lived in big cities and had an overactive imagination.
I’d already played out this encounter a half-dozen times in my head.
Every time it ended in his truck being stolen and smashed into some type of barrier after a high-speed chase.
Sawyer’s eyes bounced between mine, his eyebrows pulling tight. “Where’d you just go?”
“Just watching the demise of your truck play out. Wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be. The guy who stole it did a lot of hit-and-run damage, hurt a few people . . . and I’m not about that.”
That earlier glimpse of a smirk turned into an unrestrained smile with those damn dimples as he studied me. “You’re adorable,” he whispered before planting a soft kiss on my lips.
And then he uttered the sexiest question in the world.
“Coffee?”
“Always,” I breathed against his lips.
“Thought so.” With another chaste kiss, he stepped away, already grabbing his wallet from his back pocket and slipping it into my hand.
I stared at the leather, once again slow to understand what was happening. But, you know, I was still back in the truck, trying to figure out why we were leaving it in the first place.
Or maybe I could blame my whole slow-to-keep-up on the mind-blowing orgasms I was still coming down from.
“Um . . . what is this?”
“It’s a wallet,” Sawyer said slowly, amusement dancing across his face.
“Right, but it’s yours.”
In an instant, his amusement was replaced with fear before his entire expression went blank. After a few shallow breaths, he reached forward to lightly grip my wrist. In any other moment, the touch would have been wholly soothing.
“Just a wallet, Rae. I buy you coffee all the time.”
Right. But he’d never handed me his wallet without a second thought.
As if this was something we did all the time.
As if he knew me well enough to trust me with everything inside there.
That was something couples did—right? And we weren’t a couple. I’d never been part of a couple.
I couldn’t think of a time where I’d held anyone’s wallet but my own. And from the way Sawyer was watching me as if he were waiting for the panic to fully kick in, he was assuming as much.
“Black coffee for me,” he said softly. “Please. I have to help Brady load up.”
I might have said okay, or maybe I nodded . . . or maybe I just walked away. I wasn’t sure.
I was oddly distracted by the small trifold in my hand that felt incredibly significant and seemed to weigh a hundred pounds.
I couldn’t even remember what I ordered, because I was terrified that the barista was going to notice I was holding Sawyer Dixon’s wallet and paying with his credit card, and demand to know why.
Or assume it meant something it didn’t and tell the rest of the patrons as soon as I left. Come morning, the town would have us headed to a chapel.
How the hell had I gone from a stolen truck to getting married to Sawyer Dixon in the span of a few minutes?
A shuddering breath ripped from me when a hard, muscled chest pressed to my back and long, sure fingers wrapped around my own.
“Just a wallet, Rae,” he repeated in my ear, his voice soft and filled with an intoxicating mixture of comfort and desire that made my eyelids slip shut.
I relaxed into him and unlocked my other arm from around my waist to pass off the wallet in question, and admitted, “No one’s ever done that.” I opened my eyes to stare ahead at the espresso machines. “Handed over a wallet. Or a card or money—anything. It seemed . . .”
Intimate.
I swallowed back the word, refusing to let it free, and continued with a forced laugh. “But this is Amber. You’d probably hand over your wallet to anyone, right?”
There was a long, charged pause before Sawyer answered, “Right.”
I didn’t let myself reflect on the way his voice so clearly betrayed his lie. I didn’t let myself go back down the road I had been on earlier.
Because it was as he said—just a wallet.
We thanked the barista for the drinks and went back to the truck, that now had a bed filled with alcohol, and climbed in.
And I hated that the energy filling the cab was so different than it had been earlier—hated that I was the cause of it.
I wanted to go back to how we’d been when we first left Blossom. Even to how we’d been when we arrived at Brewed. I just wanted this weighted fear that clung to my skin to leave.
Leaning as far over the center console as my seatbelt would allow, I said, “So, tell me what it is we’re headed to.”
“Right,” he mumbled, blinking quickly. “Sorry for making you think it was something else.”
“I told you it was fine.”
He nodded, but the movement was delayed, no doubt due to whatever still lingered from the wallet encounter.
“Tonight . . . tonight’s a tradition,” he finally said. “It began when Beau was in high school—an end-of-school-year thing on our ranch. After I graduated, it should have stopped. There were no plans for it to continue . . . but then a developer showed up the next year, trying to take the ranch.” He cast me a long, meaningful look. “Now, every year when the developer shows, a bunch of us have a night on the ranch in case Hunter sells.”
I swallowed back the thoughts that raced forward, fighting so hard not to relay what Nathan had told me. And wondered if Beau and Savannah had heard that part of our discussion—if it was moot to keep it from him.
But I knew then, just as I had earlier, I couldn’t be the one to get their hopes up in the chance Hunter decided to sell.
“What exactly is the tradition?”
“It’s changed a little over the years,” he said with a shrug. “There’s a bonfire by the lake.”
“There’s a lake on your property?”
“Yeah.” That one word showed his surprise that I hadn’t known. When he continued, the uneasy tension seemed to slip slowly away with each word that left him. “It’s small, but it’s there. Anyw
ay, everyone stays all night—passes out in trucks or on the grass. Some people bring tents. The last few people to arrive get calls to do a run for food, drinks . . . you name it.”
“How do you know who’s still coming—who will be the last?” When his brows lifted, I made a humming sound in my throat. “Amber?”
“Amber,” he agreed. “Whoever’s already at the ranch will make a call somewhere, and whoever does the run has to pay for whatever they ordered. So, you don’t wanna be one of the last ones to arrive.”
“But I had your wallet . . .”
He breathed out a soft laugh. “Yeah, Emberly’s mom opened up special tabs for a few of us a long time ago. They close out at the end of each week, and we get charged for everything then.”
I’d gone still at the mention of Emberly’s mom but somehow managed to retain what he’d said. “So, you’re saying I didn’t need your wallet for the coffee.”
He offered me a teasing grin. “I think the entire town would’ve felt your panic if I’d said you could use my tab.”
“I don’t know,” I said in mock hesitation. “Unlimited sex and coffee kind of sounds like the best deal ever.”
His darkened stare darted from my eyes to my mouth before focusing on the road again. His voice lowered, but the playfulness still lingered. “You saying you only want me for coffee and sex?”
“Yes,” I said immediately.
Even though that word had dripped with sarcasm, I regretted it almost instantly.
The way Sawyer’s jaw tensed and ticked under the pressure he was putting on it. The way he released his hold on me and shifted his weight in the seat so he was leaning away.
All of it made me want to take back what had so clearly been a joke—one he’d prompted.
Why does it feel like we’ve gone back so many steps tonight, and why does that bother me so much?
When it felt like I would scream from the silence and the unknown and the suffocating tension pressing down on us, he spoke.
“If only that weren’t true.”
Just a handful of words, but they were enough to reach into my chest and take hold of my heart. Gripping and squeezing until it felt like I would crumple under the pain. Until it felt impossible to take a breath.
He couldn’t think that . . . he couldn’t truly believe that.
Could he?
My mind ran wild with thoughts of these last days and tonight . . .
God, tonight.
I wanted to ask if this was because of the wallet—because of the way I’d started slipping back into that place of needing to get free. Except I’d handled it better than anything else with Sawyer, I hadn’t lashed out or tried to push him away. I’d pulled him closer.
I’d let him in.
I wanted to ask if this was about Nathan, about what Sawyer or the others may have overheard, but I was afraid to bring it up if they hadn’t heard it.
“And you’re still telling me that your relationship with a Dixon has nothing to do with you taking up against me?” Nathan had teased after conceding that what they planned to do with the Dixon land would destroy the town of Amber.
“We aren’t—no. It has nothing to do with Sawyer,” I’d said adamantly before reminding him, “And we aren’t in a relationship.”
“You say that, but . . .” He’d lifted a knowing brow, a playful smile on his face. “You forget I’ve seen the two of you the last couple days.”
I’d sat there for a few moments, denials on the tip of my tongue before finally relenting. “I don’t do relationships. I never have.”
Nathan had nodded, his forehead creasing as he considered what I’d told him. “Does he know that?”
“Yes.” The ache in my voice had been unmistakable, but there was no point in trying to dismiss it. I’d glanced around the kitchen, making sure we were alone, before admitting, “If I were a different kind of person, I think I would find that a relationship with him would be the only one to ever matter.”
“But?” he’d asked when I didn’t continue.
“But I’m not that person, and I’m leaving soon anyway. So, what’s the point in anything more?”
I wanted to ask Sawyer so many things, and that alone proved those last words to Nathan had been bullshit.
They were my words, and I needed them to be true . . . they would have been true with any other man. But everything with Sawyer was different—had been from that first day.
This tension crashing around us had served as a sign in the past that I needed to leave. That the man had fallen too deep. That whatever arrangement we had needed to end.
Now, all it did was terrify me with what it could mean for us, and I wanted to fix it.
I was so consumed in my worry and the foreign ache in my chest that I didn’t notice when the truck slowed, or when the pavement turned to grass. I was unable to take in anything about the ranch I’d been fighting for, or the crowd of people and mass of vehicles when they came into view because my every focus was on the man next to me and his shocking statement.
“If only that weren’t true.”
“You really think that’s true?” I asked when the truck rolled to a stop, voice soft in the bubble of silence that had yet to be pierced by the people or the music waiting just outside.
A huff laced with frustration and amusement heaved from Sawyer as he dropped his keys in the cupholder and rested a forearm on the steering wheel. “Why wouldn’t I?” he asked after a moment, cutting me a look filled with accusation and pain. “After all, we’re just friends. I’m just your current convenient fuck before you move on to the next place. Right?”
My next breath stalled in my lungs.
Denials ripped through my soul, only to be hushed by every scar on my heart that had made me who I am.
“Right?” he demanded in a low, pleading tone, leaning closer to me as he did.
My chin wavered and the backs of my eyes burned with the threat of tears I refused to let build.
Just when it felt like my chest would burst, I managed to respond with the last remnants of air in my constricted lungs.
A simple, destructive word.
“Right.”
Chapter 28
Rae
Sawyer went still at the agreement, wounded stare locked on mine for tortuous moments before he released a sad laugh. The look he offered as he stepped out of the truck said everything . . . that he’d expected my answer but had been craving something different, and didn’t know how to navigate around the disappointment.
That made two of us.
The moment he closed the door behind him, that bubble we’d been enclosed in popped. The noise from the party filtered in and drowned out the sound of my pain and confusion as it wrenched from my soul.
And I was thankful.
Thankful that it hid my traitorous emotions. Thankful for the distraction of other people as I slipped outside and started back the way we’d come.
I wasn’t sure how far onto the property we were.
Or how to get back to Blossom from the ranch.
But I would’ve rather walked around lost for hours than stay there, surrounded by Sawyer and his friends, when I was drowning in this confusing pain and regret. When all I could see was the accusatory stare I’d been the cause of.
“Damn it,” I muttered when the tears I’d kept at bay in the truck began spilling over and hurried to wipe them away . . . but they just kept falling.
“Is this what it feels like?” The deep, gravelly voice came no more than a minute later.
I paused, swaying slightly as I glanced over my shoulder at where he stood.
With the way they’d set up all the cars and trucks, headlights on to light up the area, I could see him perfectly.
Chest heaving. Arms trembling at his sides and hands clenched tight. Expression devastating and handsome in a way I could only dream to describe, just to fail.
The hard set of his brow and jaw. The way his mouth formed a tight line. And his eyes . . . darken
ed from the night sky, but burning with pain and anger and longing that I felt deep in my stomach.
“What?”
“You leaving,” he ground out. “Is this what it feels like?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said as I turned to fully face him, words strained with emotion.
“Well, this?” He lifted his arms out before letting them fall. “Turning around to reach for you, and you not being there. Going to look for you, only to find you walking away . . . it fucking hurts.”
“Sawyer, I—what did you expect me to do? Stay?” I choked out, forcing something that hopefully resembled a laugh. “We couldn’t even make it halfway here without everything getting uncomfortable between us, and then it all went to hell.”
“Because of this,” he nearly shouted. “Because I’m constantly afraid that whatever I’ve just done or said will have been what makes you leave, and it’s exhausting.”
I jerked back as if his words had been a physical blow. From the way I clutched at my stomach, they may as well have been.
I nodded absentmindedly, unable to find or form the appropriate words, then started backward. “Well, I can make that easier for you.”
“Rae,” he called out when I hurried away. When he spoke again, his voice was directly behind me. “Jesus, Rae, stop.”
“You stop,” I yelled when he grabbed for me, whirling on him and wrenching my arm from his grasp. “I never wanted you to walk on eggshells around me. You knew I had baggage, and I thought you understood what that meant.”
“I did too until I kept fucking things up with you.”
I drove my hands into my hair, a harsh laugh bursting from me. “Who said you were?”
“When haven’t I?” he countered. “Everything I do has you panicking. Everything I do has you shutting down or shutting me out and reminding me that I can’t keep you.”
A tremor rolled through my body at those last words. At the way they terrified and thrilled me.
But it didn’t take away the stabbing pain from the rest of what he’d said. He’d so perfectly shown how I hadn’t been doing better with him when I’d just been thinking I had.
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