by Maisey Yates
He kept hearing her say that she wanted to make a mistake. That she wanted to be bad. And that bothered him in a way he couldn’t quantify.
Or hell, maybe he could. Maybe it was because he’d always imagined that Cassie saw more to him than that. And now he could see she was just like every other woman he’d ever screwed. Into the tattoos, into the motorcycle, into the idea that he had some kind of secret bad-boy magic hidden in his wang.
Not that he was complaining, since that got him so laid it was ridiculous, but as he seemed to be getting feelings all over this little interaction with her it was more disconcerting than usual. Again, it was this place. This place and this woman, and all of it made him feel like what he really needed to do was get the hell out of Dodge.
Which was why he’d left her apartment this morning, really. He’d been running. Because he was a coward who’d gotten his feelings hurt. And it was not a nice look on him.
“Sure. Right, condoms.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then clasped her hands in front of her, looking a bit like a nervous little mouse. “Very important. Seeing as I’m not on the...pill. Because of things. Reasons. Celibacy mainly.”
“Were you looking for me?”
Cassie bit her lip. “Yes, I was looking for you. Because I don’t really do the sex-and-dash thing. And I’ve decided it’s not my thing.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Then maybe I’m not your thing.”
She wrung her hands. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“You said you wanted to screw around with the bad boy, Cassie. And if there’s one thing bad boys are good at, it’s a fuck and run. So if that isn’t what you want then maybe you need to revise your idea of how you want to conduct your little rebellion. Maybe carrot cake with raisins is more your speed.”
“First of all,” she said, drawing up to her full height, which put her just beneath his chin, “raisins are awful. A rebellion should be about having fun, and there is nothing fun about eating the lowest form of dehydrated fruit. Second of all, I did say that I wanted a bad boy. But I lied. I think I’m naive, and my idea of what a bad boy is is somewhat skewed. Or maybe I was just being flippant. You’re not an asshole, Jake, no matter how much you might pretend you are. Sorry, I guess now your secret is out.”
Jake felt the shock of her words all the way down to his toes. “What is it you’re saying exactly, Cassie?”
“I don’t know!” She threw her hands up above her head. “I don’t know, Jake. The thing is, I feel like I said the wrong thing to you last night. I’m afraid that’s why you left this morning.” She put her hands back down to her sides, her breathing hard and uneven.
“What, you think you hurt my feelings?” Even as he said the words, dismissive, like they were crazy, he wondered if they might be true. Or maybe hurt feelings was a step too far. But it was just too close to the bone, all things considered.
“Look, whatever I said...”
“Cassie, don’t worry about it. This place messes with my head. I was pissed at myself, because I shouldn’t have touched you. Nothing can come of this so there’s really not much point in continuing, and you said yourself you’re inexperienced. You haven’t been with anyone in a long time and I took advantage of you.”
Her dark eyes flew wide. “Don’t feel like that! I mean, I wanted you, I wanted this. I don’t want you to go regretting it now because you think somehow I didn’t know what I was getting into. I was married for years. It’s not like I don’t know about sex.”
“I know you know about sex, it’s this part you obviously aren’t too familiar with.”
“Maybe the problem is that we’re not at the part you think we are.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, maybe we aren’t at this kind of awkward morning-after-we-shouldn’t-be-speaking-of-this-let’s-never-talk-again moment you think we’re at.”
“Are you telling me how to do one-night stands?” he asked. “Because I’m more familiar with those than I would like to admit.”
She took a deep breath, her eyes going particularly wide. “Last night was really special to me.”
“Cassie...don’t do this.” He wasn’t trying to stop her from talking so she wouldn’t embarrass herself. No, he was trying to stop her from talking because he was afraid of what she might say. Of what it might make him feel.
“No, you do not get to tell me to stop it! You do not get to control this.”
He had never seen Cassie so worked up before. And here she was, all worked up over him. He shouldn’t like it, but he did.
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve lived my life for other people?”
“Probably about as long as I’ve lived life for myself.”
“If not longer! Jake, last night was special to me. Because you’re special. When I said I wanted a bad boy, I didn’t mean to insult you. I meant that you amaze me, the way that you just did what you wanted. The way you left Copper Ridge because it was the best thing for you—”
“Whatever you do, whatever it is about me that you like, don’t let it be that. There was nothing admirable about the way I left.”
“What you mean?”
He let out a harsh breath. “Did you think I just left? Did you think I just got it in my head that it was time to skip town, so I did?”
She lifted her thumb to her mouth and started gnawing the nail. “I guess... I guess I sort of did.”
“Well, that isn’t what happened. I did something really stupid. Like really stupid. Illegal. I am not some kind of figure for you to pattern your rebellion after. You shouldn’t admire anything that I did.”
“Jake...”
Before his brain could reason it out, his mouth made a decision. “Why don’t you come out to the ranch with me?” he asked.
Cassie nodded slowly. “Okay, I can do that.”
“I’ll just get your helmet from my place.”
Jake turned slowly and walked back toward his apartment. He wasn’t in a hurry to get to the ranch. After this she would understand who he was, and why he’d had to leave. And anything admirable she had seen in him would be destroyed. And no matter how much he knew it had to happen...he was in no rush.
* * *
CASSIE LEANED AGAINST Jake’s back as he maneuvered the motorcycle over the back roads that lead to his father’s property.
Last night had been a revelation for Cassie. She had felt uninhibited in a way she’d never felt her entire life. She hadn’t done anything to please anyone but herself. And still she’d somehow managed to please Jake.
Waking up and finding him gone had put something of a dent in that confidence. But regardless of whether he’d been able to establish a physical distance, there was no emotional distance. Not really. There was a bond between them, no doubt about it. No matter that he’d shown up to Copper Ridge without so much as a smile for her, from the moment she’d seen him again she’d known it was still there.
It was a strange sensation to be so certain of something. To feel like she wanted to hang on to something. She’d realized something this morning as she was lying in her empty bed, missing Jake and wishing he hadn’t left. She’d realized that she had never fought for anything. Lord knew why. But she hadn’t. Maybe it was because of the way things had been with her mother.
She hadn’t felt like she had the right to fight with her, because she’d always known that her existence had made her mother’s life difficult. Oh, Maria Ventimiglia would never say that, and she never had. But she implied it in new and interesting ways all the time. From the time Cassie was about six years old she could remember the story of the one man her mother had loved. The story of how he had wanted her to choose between having a child and having him. And Cassie had always known what the choice had been. Because she was with her mother, and her mother didn’t have a
husband.
That was why her mother had always put so much importance on making sure she got married before she got pregnant. Why Maria had always put so much emphasis on the need to find a husband. Because when you were a working single mom finding one was nearly impossible. When you’d had your heart ripped out by the father of your child, who wanted you to make an impossible choice, you knew how precious that relationship was.
So Cassie had felt obligated to make her first relationship work. To give it the respect her mother wanted her to give it.
Her mom had been instantly attached to Allen, and in fact still was. Cassie had never felt like she had any other option but to follow that relationship to its conclusion down the altar. And she could see now what a mistake it had been. But she had simply gone along with the path it was easiest to walk.
And when Allen had wanted a divorce, she had complied. She hadn’t even fought for her damn house. Who did that? Eight years of marriage, and she had simply walked away. She hadn’t asked him for counseling, hadn’t asked him to keep trying.
The sad part of that was that she had loved him enough. But she was starting to wonder if she had loved herself enough.
Spending a few years alone was an interesting thing. She’d had the benefit of starting a business, of fighting her way through financial uncertainty, of making things happen for herself. Of being with a man simply because she wanted him, not because he was an ideal prospect for future husband, or someone who would make her mom proud.
Those experiences had changed her, and were changing her still.
And when she realized all of that this morning, she had also realized that she was prepared to stand and fight for Jake.
Because she wanted him, because the feelings that she’d always had for him had never truly gone away, but had only been dormant.
And he had brought her out here to discourage her. Of that she had no doubt. But he was about to discover that she was a lot stronger than he was giving her credit for.
She hoped she was about to discover that she was a lot stronger than she had ever given herself credit for.
It occurred to Cassie as the motorcycle pulled into the property that she had never been to Jake’s family ranch. By the time she had started doing business with his father, the older man had been in a nursing home. So she wasn’t certain what exactly she had expected. But it wasn’t what she saw. The house was run-down, old cars, tractors and other farm implements littering the lawn in front. Slowly corroding, halfway between a man-made creation and dirt at this point.
There were wire fences, with chickens running through gaping holes, and goats wandering around in the muddy enclosure. All of the foliage had been stripped within a two-foot radius around the fence, compliments of the voracious hoofed creatures.
“Wow.” She tugged off her helmet and dismounted the bike.
“Yeah,” he said, following her lead, his boots sinking into the mud. “It’s basically a shithole.”
He sounded almost ashamed, and she didn’t want him to. She wanted to make it better. “It’s really not.”
“No, Cassie, it is. You don’t need to be nice. It wasn’t all this bad when I was growing up. But things have really fallen apart since.”
“I just imagined, since your father owned other properties in town...”
“Yeah, you imagined that this would be nice. That we had money or something.”
“I’m starting to realize how little I knew about you.”
“Which is what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Well, stop trying to tell me, and just tell me.” She looked at the man who last night had become her lover. She felt inextricably linked to him, and she would be lying if she said it was because of the sex. Because she had felt inextricably linked to him since she was seventeen years old.
He had always been there. In her heart, in her mind. She had always been drawn to him, fascinated by him. And now that they’d slept together that pull had only grown stronger.
She looked around, searching for something to say, since he was not responding to her prompt. “So, you’ve been fixing the place up?”
He chuckled. “Why? Can’t you tell?”
“Not really.”
“It’s a testament to how bad it looked before. I don’t really know who was taking care of the animals, but obviously someone was. Now that I’m here they seem to have stopped. So I’ve been managing them.”
“This is where you grew up?”
“Yeah, unhappily.” He put his hands on his lean hips and looked around. “I never missed it. I never missed it once after I left.”
“And you were going to tell me why you left.” She took a step out of the muddy patch and to the side. She fixed her eyes down on the green, stepping on a weed that popped, a milky substance oozing out of the stem.
“Yes, I guess I was.”
“Are you still going to tell me?”
Jake was silent for a moment, then he took a deep breath. “Look at me again.”
His request was firm, loud in the otherwise silent front yard. She obeyed. “Why?”
“Because I want to see you looking at me one more time before you lose your respect for me.”
“Jake, being perfectly honest, you’ve come here, endangered my livelihood, had sex with me and left my apartment before I woke up. If that hasn’t damaged my opinion of you, I think it’s safe to say nothing will.”
He looked away from her, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “You say that, but you don’t know.”
“No, I don’t know. So stop with this mysterious crap and just tell me.”
“It’s in the bad-boy handbook. We’re supposed to be mysterious and brooding.”
“Yeah, well, knock it off. We both know you don’t particularly like the label, so stop living up to it.”
“I haven’t lived up to it. That’s the thing. I’m not the same person I was when I left here. I’ve gotten a handle on my shit. I’m not just going off half-cocked, letting my anger bleed out on everything. That’s what I was doing back then. My version of managing my temper was to release it and let it savage whatever got in my way. There’s nothing sexy about that. Nothing attractive about it. I needed to get punched in the face, I did not need to get blow jobs as a reward for my bad behavior.”
Heat prickled her face. “Get a lot of those, did you?”
“A few,” he said, deadpan.
She cleared her throat. “You’ve got a handle on your anger now,” she said, looking at him, at the rage that was evident behind his blue eyes. It was funny he was saying that, because she felt like he was still angry. Felt like there was an endless well of it inside of him that he’d simply covered up. But it was leaking out, escaping, maybe because of where he was, or maybe because she had gotten too close to his emotions. For whatever reason she was more conscious of it now than she ever had been.
“Yeah, I’ve had a handle on it. I got out. I did what my father said I could never do. I got a job, I kept it. I earned the trust of the owner of the business. I learned a skill. I’m a mechanic, and I’m a damn good one. I know that for a lot of people that wouldn’t seem a big achievement, but for a kid who was told he would never do anything but serve jail time? It’s huge. When I left, I found something I could do. I found a way to be constructive. There’s a whole lot of power in learning a skill.”
“I imagine there is. I own a coffee shop, I’m not going to look down on you because you’re a mechanic. I respect it.”
“Yeah, I respect it. I don’t especially need anyone else to. My dad never would have, he owned land. That was somehow better than anything I could ever live up to.”
“What did your dad do to you?”
Cassie thought of her own mother, of how fraught their relationship could be at times. Though she had to admit, her mother prob
ably wasn’t aware of how difficult it was. Her mother excelled at manipulation, at guilt, and creating a running tally of debts owed. She rarely shouted, but she would cry, get upset. And for Cassie that was a lot more damaging than a screaming match.
“Doesn’t matter. After my mom died I just don’t think he could figure out what to do with me. I was about twelve when that happened. I’d never been close to my dad, but it only got worse. We didn’t grieve together, because he didn’t grieve. And as a result neither did I. At first he just stopped paying attention to me, so I would do stupid shit to make him look in my direction. And eventually the neglect turned into resentment. I couldn’t do a damn thing right in his eyes. Not my chores, not my schoolwork. And I admit, I didn’t do any of it particularly well. I had a hard time in school, I was never going to graduate at the top of the class—you’ve seen my work so you knew that.”
“It isn’t that you weren’t smart, Jake. That stuff just isn’t easy for everyone.”
“I know that, objectively. Now, as an adult. But as a kid? I just believed him. I was dumb, but I couldn’t do anything right. And since I could never do anything right anyway, I decided I might as well embrace it. So I was always pushing things. Always trying to make him angry, because he was always angry anyway. The more I pushed it the angrier he got, the angrier he got the angrier I got. And eventually I stopped trying to control it. So we would have shouting matches, and that never ended well. Usually with me getting punched in the face.”
“Jake,” she breathed, feeling like all the air had gone out of her lungs. “That’s not okay.”
“I know it. I know.” Cassie’s stomach tightened, anxiety coursing through her, pain wrenching her chest. “What happened, Jake?”
“The night after you and I studied in the library, I came home. He was pissed about something, something I had done wrong on the ranch. Something I had missed because I had gone to get some extra tutoring, because I was failing school. Which was just typical. Because I couldn’t do anything right. I couldn’t do the chores right if I was trying to do school right, but if I was smarter I would’ve been able to just do school, instead of needing all that extra help.”
