by Maisey Yates
“Yeah, a new day where you decided you were going to be completely unreasonable,” he said, putting his hand between her thighs and stroking her through the fabric of her panties.
“A new day where I made you turkey sandwiches and you rejected them,” she said, her breath hissing through her teeth as he stroked her.
“I didn’t reject your turkey sandwiches.”
They were fighting for something right now, and he wasn’t entirely sure what. It wasn’t as simple as dominance or submission, it was something else entirely. Starting with the picnic and ending up here.
You know what you’re fighting for.
Yeah, he did. And he had a feeling he was on the side of wrong here. But he wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to do about it. Because he didn’t see a life full of picnics for them. In fact, he didn’t want that. He wanted stability, and she had something else in her picnic basket that went way beyond stability and into territory he wasn’t comfortable with.
It became clear then why he had put his hand between her thighs. Because he was trying to prove to her that this was enough. That sex, sharing a life here in this house, filling the empty spaces was enough.
Not just for him, but for her.
He had a feeling that she was using sex for an entirely different reason. And he wasn’t sure who would win.
“Do you want me, Sierra?”
She bit her lip, nodding.
“Even when you’re mad at me,” he said, marveling, not questioning.
“Sometimes especially then.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the only way I feel like we aren’t on a different planet.”
“Definitely not on a different planet,” he said, undoing his belt and drawing down the zipper of his jeans.
He moved into position, thrusting inside of her. His breath hissed through his teeth, his arousal climbing higher as he watched her eyes glaze over with pleasure, watched the flush deepen across her skin.
He could see how much she wanted him. Could see it clearly over every part of her.
After all that, he wasn’t sure he deserved it. No, he was sure he didn’t deserve it. But he would sure as hell take it.
“You feel that?” he asked, his cock pulsing deep inside of her. “We’re here. We’re together.”
She nodded, looking away from him.
“Look at me,” he said. Her eyes widened, her focus going to him. “Watch,” he commanded. But he realized, even as he issued the command that it was mostly for himself. And, as soon as he became conscious of that fact he wanted to look away. He didn’t want to meet her eyes. But the fact that he didn’t want to made him more determined to maintain eye contact. There was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing there in Sierra West’s clear blue gaze that he should have a problem with.
She was just one small, bouncy blonde. There was nothing to be scared of here.
She gripped his shoulders, her fingernails digging into him. But it felt like it went much deeper than that. Like it hooked all the way down into his insides. Somewhere much deeper than he wanted her to go.
That should be enough to get him to pull away. But he found he wanted to push it further. To dare himself. To dare her to see how far he could go. To see how far they could go.
He felt the need to put distance between them when she had shown up with the picnic basket. And now, he was fighting against that. Trying to prove to himself he didn’t need it. Because he knew that he couldn’t have her like this and have his distance, too.
Intensity built inside of him, a fist tightening around his stomach, making it difficult for him to breathe. He closed his eyes.
“Look at me.” Sierra’s voice jolted him, and he obeyed.
He watched her the whole time, as he drove them both to completion. She cried out when she came, her eyes still on him, a tear rolling down her cheek.
“Oh,” she said, her words registering dimly as his own orgasm took him over completely. “This would be so much easier if I didn’t love you.”
Those words echoed in his head, mixing with the pleasure that had grabbed him by the throat, shaking him like he was a rag doll. He was at the mercy of both. Of the bomb that Sierra had just dropped into his chest and of the release that had full and total control over every part of him.
And he knew for a fact that he would never be able to separate the two things again. Knew that never again would he experience sexual pleasure without those words ricocheting through him.
This would be so much easier if I didn’t love you.
She wasn’t supposed to love him at all. He had told her that it couldn’t be like that. And now...
He moved away from her, his heart pounding. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to figure out what to say next. Trying to figure out what to do next.
“I have to get showered,” he said finally.
“Oh... Okay.”
He turned away from her and started to walk toward the bathroom.
“No,” she said, “wait.”
* * *
SIERRA HAD NO IDEA what she was doing. All she knew was that her heart was pounding and her entire body was still humming with what had just happened between them. In the middle of all that, the words that she had just spoken were echoing in her mind. For a moment, she had been about to let him slink away. She had been on the brink of allowing him to just pretend like she had never said she loved him. Because she kind of wanted to pretend she hadn’t said it.
That was the easy thing. But she was suddenly overtaken by the realization that she always did the easy thing.
It was easy to pretend that she didn’t. That somehow she had been brave in running away from the issues with her family. That striking out on her own was the more noble thing, rather than what Colton and Madison were doing. Keeping with the status quo. Trying to keep the peace.
But it hit her then that she was avoiding dealing with the hard things. She was avoiding the opportunity to unpack the messy things, to see what kind of relationship could be made now that she realized the father she had always looked up to was far from perfect. That her family life wasn’t a fairy tale.
She had bailed on that life. The moment she had found out it might not be perfect.
“I told you I love you and you just want to go take a shower?”
He stopped, his posture going rigid. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Well, I know what people usually say. I’m not sure what you want to say.”
“Why do you think you love me after we fought like that?”
“Because I realized that you not wanting to have a picnic with me upset me enough to have a fight like that. If I didn’t love you why would I want to have a picnic with you?”
“I don’t know. There are a lot of reasons to have a picnic that don’t necessarily involve love.”
She let out a long breath. “To be fair. I realized I love you couple of weeks ago.”
“What?”
“At the brewery. You know, after that time.”
A slash of dull red color bled across his cheek bones. “That was just...”
“If you say it was just the sex I’m going to throw something at your head.”
“Sierra... You know what this is. You know what this was supposed to be.”
“Yeah, and that’s really actually very stupid, Ace. You think we’re somehow going to make a marriage without love? We’re going to make a family without love? Ace, people get a dog and love it. How did you think you are going to get a wife and never have to contend with loving her?”
“It’s not like that. I mean, I expect that we should care about each other. I do care about you.”
“You want us to not love each other. I don’t even think that’s possible. We’re supposed to sleep together. I
n the same bed every night. Stay together forever and... On what foundation?”
“You didn’t have a problem with this when you agreed to marry me.”
“Well, I was afraid. And there were a lot of new things happening. And I... I was a different person. You know, I almost let you walk away. I almost didn’t press the issue. I need to press it. Because I’m not just going to take it easy. Not anymore. That’s what I do, Ace. I run away from home when I get angry at my parents. I don’t apologize when I hurt people’s feelings. I just let it kind of smooth over. I take the path of least resistance because the path of least resistance has always had pretty good results for me. Because my life has been easy. And I haven’t known what to do when it got hard. Well, for the past couple of months it’s been hard. But there’s more to me than I thought. And I... I’m not going to be my father.”
“Of course you aren’t. I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”
The moment she said the words it was like a dam had burst open and everything, feelings, clarity, poured out like a rushing river. “I told you I like games,” she said. “Light flirtation and happy smiles and nothing too real because it gets down to the bottom of things and makes you have to show who you are. Not just the name on your birth certificate, but who you really are and everything you can and can’t be.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything! That’s what he does—what he did. He preserved the mask so that no one would ever see what was under it, and I... That’s why I was so angry at him. It’s why I am so angry at him. It’s why I’ve been so determined this whole time to do the right thing. When he told me why he didn’t tell anyone about Jack. When he told me why he went to such great lengths to cover it up... It made sense to me. That was my first response. If I could make something that painful, that difficult go away... I would be tempted to. And that moment of identification horrified me. So I got angry. I yelled at him. I told him there was not any reason on earth for him to do something like that. I couldn’t understand. When the truth is I can understand. Because it’s me. I don’t do the hard thing. I never have. Well, right now I’m going to do the hard thing. I’m going to be real. I don’t... I don’t know how to do anything. I don’t know how to be a wife, or be a mom, or be a waitress, but I love you, Ace Thompson. And I’m standing here with no protection, not my name, not my money, not anything to fall back on, and I want you to see my heart. I want you to love me. I want this marriage to be real. Not just legal.”
He was just staring at her, his expression blank, his eyes dark and haunted. She could already see this wasn’t going her way. And still, she wouldn’t take the words back. It was killing her by inches, tearing strips off of what remained of her pride. Killing each new surge of confidence the moment it rose to the surface. But still, she wouldn’t take it back.
This, she realized, was the lesson. This was who she needed to be. To become the woman she wanted to be. To be the kind of mother she wanted her child to look up to.
She had to stand. She had to fight. She had to do the hard thing, she had to stop hiding.
But oh, as he kept on looking at her with those tortured eyes she wanted nothing more than to hide. To take it all back. To stuff the words down back inside of her and pretend this had never happened.
“I already told you. I can’t do that.”
They were the words she had expected, but still, they hit her with the force of the slap. So harsh, so painful that it took her breath away.
“I mean, I know you thought that we shouldn’t. But it just seems like things have changed.”
“Nothing has changed for me. I never promised you anything other than this. I will be faithful to you, Sierra. I’ll be a good husband...”
“And freak out when I bring you picnics. Because, Ace, it isn’t that you can’t love me, it’s that you don’t want to. You’re afraid to love me. That’s why you wouldn’t just eat a sandwich with me.” She realized how true that was as the accusation came firing out of her mouth. He was afraid. That was why he was doing this. It explained the entire afternoon. “You had to put distance between us because you feel this, too. You feel it changing. You know you can love me, and that scares you a whole lot more than any inability to love. If you just couldn’t love me it wouldn’t matter if we had picnics, or if I was upset. You wouldn’t feel desperate to break the bond between us, then immediately try to rebuild them again.”
“You’re attributing a whole lot more thought to the situation than I gave it. I was annoyed because I had a schedule planned for the day. It included getting some work done, going back to the house and taking a shower, then having sex with you. And I had to squeeze all that in before work, and I’m sorry, but a picnic ranks somewhere below sex as far as I’m concerned.”
His words were designed to be as hurtful as possible. To reduce what they had to the physical, and physical only. She gritted her teeth. This was where it got harder. Not just that initial revelation, but sticking to it. Somehow, she was doing it. Somehow she was determined to go on. To continue what she had started. Stand firm in her desire.
“That’s a really great narrative you have going there,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s true. You told me that we were going to hold hands...” Her throat tightened. “You told me that we were going to make something happy. Build something together. For our child and for each other.”
“And we can do that without love.”
“Why does love bother you so much?”
“Because it doesn’t mean anything! Nothing. I already made vows to one woman. I promised to love her until the day I died and she promised me the same. Knowing the entire time that she was deceiving me.”
“Are you going to make me pay for her sins forever? Because I didn’t commit them. It wasn’t me. It was never me. I’m not the one who lied to you.”
“You don’t understand. If I can’t... If the man I was then can’t make that work, then the man I am now sure as hell can’t.”
A tear slid down her cheek.
“I didn’t even know the man you were then. The man you are now... That’s the man I love. That’s the man I’m having a child with.”
“This isn’t going to work.”
“Why?”
“We can’t do this. You’re right. It was never going to end any other way. It was never going to be okay. I was an idiot for thinking different.”
“Are you... Are you breaking up with me?”
He looked at her, the expression on his face completely unreadable. A muscle in his jaw ticked, his mouth pressed into a firm line. “I don’t think marriage is going to protect us. Not in the way that I hoped it would. Not in the way that we agreed.”
“Because I love you?” she asked.
“Because it will end. Because you love me. Because you’re going to want something that I can’t give you. And I know where that ends. Trust me. I know a little bit too well.”
“Stop acting like I’m your ex-wife. You’re only doing it to protect yourself. You know I’m not her.”
“Maybe not. But the problem is the same. Because I’m still me.”
“You don’t want to marry me,” she said, her tone flat.
“I don’t think it’s going to solve anything.”
She closed her eyes, a wave of misery washing over her. “Tell me that you don’t love me. Tell me you never will.”
“I don’t love you. I’m never going to. I’m never going to love someone like that. I don’t need it. I don’t want it. I know people say that love is great and it changes you. But it didn’t change me for the better. I’m nothing more than a drunk manwhore, Sierra. And I’m going to have my hands full figuring out how to be a good father the way I am now. Forget being a husband. So all this just confirms that marriage shouldn’t be in play here. I’ve been having doubts for a
while.”
“No, you haven’t,” she said, the words desperate, torn from her. “I don’t know about any of those other things you just called yourself, Ace Thompson. But you are a liar.”
“I’m guilty of everything else. Why not that, too?”
She felt suddenly empty. Just as a wave of pain had threatened to buckle her knees, to send her straight to the ground, warm, tingling numbness overtook her from her head down to her toes.
She was grateful for it. Without it, she had a feeling she wouldn’t make it through the next few minutes. She had a feeling she wouldn’t make it through the next few days. Maybe weeks. One thing was for sure, the pain wasn’t going to go away immediately. There was no easy fix to this. She had chosen to take the hard road, and she was going to pay for it during each agonizing step.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
And she knew that if he didn’t try and stop her, then there was no reason for her to stop.
“Okay.”
She gritted her teeth, locking her jaw to keep herself from howling in pain. And then she turned away, straightening her dress and walking toward the door.
“I’ll get my things later,” she said.
“All right.”
He sounded hollow. Far too casual and way too okay with the fact that she was about to walk out the door and out of his life. She wasn’t okay with it.
But the fact that he was... That reinforced her decision to go.
So she did. She kept her head held high. And she didn’t start crying until she got behind the wheel of her truck. Didn’t start sobbing until she was out on the road, putting more and more distance between Ace and herself. It occurred to her then that she didn’t tell him she wouldn’t be coming in to work that night. But she figured he should pretty much guess that.
She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t want to go back to Colton’s because he would probably lead the townspeople to Ace’s with pitchforks, which seemed fair enough at this point. But she wasn’t ready to lead a ragey mob against him.
What was she doing? She was leaving behind the man she loved for what?
