Suspicion leading them all.
“What are you doing here?”
A puff of air left him as he scratched at his temple. “You keep asking that like it might not hurt so bad the next time.”
I wasn’t sure what he expected.
We went months without seeing each other. Weeks without even talking. And this was the third time he’d come to Amber in less than two weeks.
Not to mention he was under the impression, more than ever, that we were gonna get married despite my refusals.
Why wouldn’t I wonder why Kip was there?
“What are you doing here?” I repeated, earning a forced laugh from him.
“Hey, babe might be a better way to start things off next time.”
I jerked back, my expression pinching with frustration. “First, I’ve never called you pet names. Second, I have every right to know why you’re in the back of my shop and in my office. Especially when you were just here, and I was telling you again that I didn’t want anything with you.”
“Technically, I was at your house.”
“Kip.”
“I was giving you time,” he shot back, his ease and casual air immediately slipping away. “I was giving you time to think and realize you were wrong.”
I stared for a few moments until I was sure I had heard him correctly.
A huff made up of disbelief and irritation punched from my chest. “Wrong?” One of my hands lifted to my head, pressing against the sudden pounding there before I flung my hand in his direction and shouted, “How could I be wrong about what I don’t want? I don’t want a life with you. I don’t want a relationship with you—Jesus, what is wrong with the guys from this town?”
His voice and presence were pure dominance when he growled, “Nine years, Emberly.”
“Hardly!” I cried out, the word almost a laugh because I felt like I was so close to going crazy from this and Brady and everything Cayson. “And you say that like that gives you the right to me—like you own me. You have never had me, Kip.”
The tick of his eyebrow was his only response, but it said everything.
He didn’t agree. He had years of nights to prove it. And they were all flashing through his mind if the smirk shaping his lips was any indication.
Sex with Kip had always been incredible . . . I would be lying if I said otherwise. Intense and rough and fueled by the pain of my soul no longer being whole. But it had always been just sex. Never a connection. Never anything more.
It couldn’t touch the earth-shattering experiences I’d had with Cayson.
“You’ve never had me,” I repeated, the words slightly shaky. “I have defended you so many times. But if you honestly think you have the right to me because we hooked up a few times a year—yes, for a lot of years—then I feel like an idiot for ever standing up for you.”
“To who?”
A sharp laugh left me at his demand. “That isn’t what’s important. You won’t even deny—”
“Who?”
“—that you feel like I owe you the rest of my life by your side because—”
“Cayson?” he continued, once again as if I hadn’t been speaking.
But that one caught me off guard.
Stopped me short.
His anger seemed to escalate at my silence, stunning me and making my voice nearly inaudible when I asked, “What?”
“It was Cayson, wasn’t it?” His jaw worked a few times before he sneered, “Fucking Dixon. Shoulda stayed gone.”
“What are you talking about?”
He dragged his hands through his hair, inhaling deeply before releasing it all. “What did that piece of shit say about me?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit, Emberly! What did he say?”
“Nothing!” I cried out, genuinely struggling to remember all of what Cayson had said when I’d never seen Kip like this.
I’d seen him mad, sure.
But this?
This was Beau territory. The kind of anger you wanted to get far away from. Explosive and violent.
The only reason I wasn’t trying to figure out how to run past Kip and out of my office was because I knew exactly where his anger was directed, and it wasn’t at me.
Still, it filled the room.
Crawled across my skin.
Made it hard to breathe.
“Kip . . .”
His narrowed stare shifted to me. His nostrils flared with his sharp breaths. When he spoke, his voice was a low, terrifying sort of calm. “What did he say?”
“Nothing,” I lied. “It wasn’t Cayson.” Technically not a lie.
I’d been defending Kip to Sawyer and all of our friends for years.
He scoffed, eyes rolling before settling on me again.
“He hasn’t been here for years, how could it have been him?”
“Good question, Emberly.” His jaw ticked as he studied me. “How could it have been him?”
I tried to figure out what he could mean, my head moving faintly when I came up with nothing.
“Tell me how it could be him that you wanted.”
My blood went cold.
My breaths got caught in my throat.
“After everything he did, how could you want him?”
I tried to figure out what to say . . . what not to say. Whatever Kip had heard, since news spread almost as fast as it happened in this town, it was moot at this point because Cayson and I were done.
It didn’t mean Kip was wrong.
Lying about that felt like another crucial blow to my wounded soul.
Confirming it felt dangerous.
But then he went on, changing everything. “Tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do when you’re in my bed, and the first time I ever hear I love you from you, you finish it with his name.”
I shakily reached out to grip my desk as shock swarmed me.
“Tell me what I’m supposed to do when I risk pulling you into my arms, and you sigh his goddamn name in your sleep.”
Everything felt like it was spinning as he turned it all around.
Words I’d known I couldn’t have said to him—situations I’d agonized over at the thought of having put Kip through them.
And none of it was real.
“That’s why you’re here,” I said softly, unevenly, and glanced up at him.
Up, because I was in my chair.
I wasn’t sure when I’d sat.
“That’s why you keep coming back, isn’t it? Because he’s here.” The hardening of his features was confirmation enough. But I didn’t give him time to respond anyway because that’s when I realized . . . “Oh my God.”
I stood and turned, taking a few steps away from him as I gripped my head.
Kip had started calling nearly every day after the last time I’d gone to visit him. I’d forgotten all about that in these last months of trying to get him to understand that I didn’t want to marry him.
I remember regretting going there at all because of the number of times he called following that weekend. The calls never lessened, even after he visited me a few months later. I just stopped answering most of them.
The next time he came was the night he’d had to leave almost as soon as he got there. That was the night he’d first mentioned a relationship. Marriage.
“That’s why you wanted to marry me,” I whispered, horrified, then turned to look at him. When I continued, each rushed word was louder than the previous until I was screaming at him. “You were trying to trick me into marrying you because you realized I was in love with Cayson Dixon?”
“He’s an asshole, Emberly.”
“You’re psychotic!” I bit out, matching his tone. “I said I loved him . . . I said his name . . . what was so significant about the first time you told me you were gonna marry me? Was it because we hadn’t had sex? Were you that worried about someone who was so far removed from my life that you scrambled to propose?” A bitter laugh fell from my lips. “It wasn’t even a proposal, you
told me you would marry me the next time you were in town. And if you remember, you laughed when I refused then too.”
“I wasn’t gonna lose you to that piece of shit. You’re mine,” he said, the claim at once pleading and informing.
“No, I’m not.” An exasperated laugh bubbled up at the absurdity and betrayal of it all. “If I had said anyone else’s name, would you have reacted the same?”
“Of course I would’ve.” The words were there, frustration and passion still fueling them. But the careless way he tossed them out made it hard to believe him.
This was all only because of Cayson.
The other day in my kitchen, I had believed Cayson’s claims. That he hadn’t been behind some of the worst moments in my teenage years. That he hadn’t known the boys from the baseball team had been doing any of the things they had.
But with each passing second, Kip was lifting a veil. Revealing the rest, revealing the parts I’d refused to let myself think about even though Cayson had clearly stated who he’d thought had been behind it all. I’d taken it as a biased opinion.
A mistaken one.
I’d had to.
Kip had never been there for any of it, and his name hadn’t been casually tossed around the way Cayson’s had so many times.
“Who started the rumor about me not going into the lake my freshman year?”
His head jerked back at the abrupt change in conversation. “What?”
“Who started the rumor?” I repeated, voice taking on a slightly frantic tone. “Who got the baseball team to throw water balloons filled with red dye at me?”
“Cayson.” He gave an easy shrug. “I told you.”
“He wasn’t there, Kip,” I said quickly, my body shaking from the mixture of awful memories and the possibility that I’d had everything wrong on such a massive scale. “He wasn’t at the lake.”
“Maybe you’re just blocking him out, it was a long time—”
“Don’t lie to me!”
“Babe, I’m—”
“Stop calling me that,” I cried out, driving my fingers through my hair as I shakily asked. “Who got the team to trick me into going into the gym that same year? Crowding me and touching me and wanting to find out why Cayson called me Duck?”
“Fucking Cayson, you know this.”
My body was trembling.
My blood was pounding a fierce thrum through my veins.
But Kip was staring at me with a hardened mask made up of cold warnings. As if the low threat to his tone and severe expression would make me back off. As if it hadn’t already revealed everything.
“The party where they grabbed me and took pictures?”
“Cayson,” he growled. “The rumor about you being a guy. The corn maze. All of it was him—it’s classic Cayson.”
Cold fingers trailed down my spine and left a chilling, ominous air in their wake.
“I never told anyone about the corn maze,” I said numbly.
Even Sawyer.
By the time it happened, I’d wondered if I’d somehow brought it all on myself. If I was too gullible. Too naïve. Too inattentive.
Because what girl gets herself in that many situations in a little over a year?
I’d clung to Sawyer and our friends only. I’d made sure not to wander to other cliques. Tried desperately not to flirt, even with Travis Kesly when we started crushing on each other our freshman year.
Still, there was always a pack of three to seven upperclassmen guys waiting to ruin me a little more. And who would believe that those things kept happening? Especially when I was being followed and cornered and told to prove I was a girl on a near-daily basis.
Sawyer, Gavin, and some of the guys had been my saviors a handful of times over the year. But there were all the other times when no one was around.
Then it was simply me telling the story again and again. But after a while, I’d started sounding like a broken, annoying record, even to myself. Wondering if people viewed me as the girl who cried wolf. Because after so much in such a short time, that’s what I’d felt like.
So, I’d stopped telling Sawyer and Leighton. I’d stopped telling my mom.
The last Amber Fest I’d taken part in before committing to only working the Brewed booths had ruined me.
It’d started off fun and innocent with Leighton, Sawyer, and the rest of our friends. Taking part in everything we could. Making a whole weekend of my birthday and Amber Fest, as we always did, even though my birthday fell a couple days after the festival that year.
As the night had worn on, we’d headed to the “haunted” corn maze for our favorite Amber Fest tradition.
Running in one at a time, thirty seconds apart, for our annual, epic game of tag.
When my shoulders had been grabbed just a handful of minutes in, I’d screamed. Naturally. The corn maze was scary as shit.
Except my scream had been cut off. More hands had grabbed me. Pulling me deeper into the stalks of corn. Pulling me closer. Holding me still as one of the boys who was so obviously not one of my friends unbuttoned my pants enough for his hand to fit inside.
“The faster you come, the faster you go,” he’d said as the others laughed.
I’d screamed.
I’d bit at the hands trying to quiet me.
I’d sobbed through it all, and it had taken so, so long. Whether from the fear or simply because that was how my body worked, I wasn’t sure. But I’d wanted it to end before it began, and it seemed to go on forever.
“Took longer than he said you would,” the boy said when it was over, his voice lowering when he continued, “Still feel like heaven.”
He.
It was the first time they hadn’t said his name, but I’d filled it in. Except, for the first time, it truly hadn’t made sense.
I’d only ever been kissed. Once.
And Cayson Dixon hadn’t even been the boy who kissed me.
“How did you know about the corn maze?” I asked Kip, suspicion dripping from each word.
Kip gave a jerky shrug as his jaw hardened, looking all defensive. “I was on the team. I know what he told them to do.”
“Bullshit!” I yelled, my stomach knotting and churning and threatening to get rid of anything I’d put in there recently. “He wasn’t friends with any of you—he hates you. I know what he caught you doing that night on the ranch.”
Kip’s expression fell. “The hell did you just say?”
“You’re the one who told them what to do.”
His head moved in firm shakes. “No.”
“You told them to say it was Cayson.”
“No.”
“You did it to get back at him for that night.”
“I said—”
“Tell me why you chose me,” I shouted over him and jerked back when his booming voice filled the office.
“Because that piece of shit had it coming!”
A harsh breath burst from me. My knees shook and I struggled to remain upright. “What does that have to do with me?”
He flung a hand in my direction, sneering, “You came to the high school, and Cayson set his sights on you. Yeah, he did a lot of stupid shit to a lot of people, but you were Duck. Duck this . . . Duck that. Like you were this special fucking person he pretended not to give a shit about. But if he really hadn’t? You would’ve been no one like everyone else. And I thought if I pushed you, one of two things would happen. Either you would make sure he was taken down, or he would know who was behind it and come after me, screwing himself that way. Because I was the varsity pitcher, and he was just a fuckup who got off on pranking people.”
I fell into my chair, trembling as everything came crashing down around me.
“But I pushed and pushed and pushed, and you let that piece of shit go no matter what I did. And then to make it worse? You fell in love with him.”
My hands were pressed to my chest. Trying to ease the pressure Kip’s confession had placed there. Vainly hoping to feel my chest contract.
>
And then it hit me, and everything went still.
“Why were you outside my shop?” The words came out slow and jilted and forced a sigh from him.
“Em, I’m here for you.”
“No. No, that night. The night I got wasted, and you helped me. Before we had ever done anything. Why were you outside my shop?”
In an instant, his guard and his anger disappeared and were replaced with panic. “Not what you think.”
“Tell me why!”
“I wasn’t even outside your shop,” he answered quickly. “We were driving back from somewhere else and just saw you walking down the middle of the street. I hadn’t thought about you in two years.”
A disbelieving laugh burst from me. “Right. And now you’re gonna tell me that you weren’t fucking me all this time to get back at Cayson.”
“I wasn’t,” he ground out. “Don’t forget, you came to me the first time.”
“I wouldn’t have if I had known what you’d done.”
“Who even cares at this point? It was years ago.”
“I care!” I shouted. “You told them to torment me and touch me and molest me, you sick fuck.”
“It—” He reached for me, but formed his hand into a fist as he ground his teeth. “It got out of hand. I was a kid—I was an idiot.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered in equal parts exasperation and disbelief. “You call that out of hand?” He started to respond, but I continued over him. “What about these past few months? What do you call those? What excuse do you have for them?”
“Not wanting to lose you.”
A breath of a laugh left me. “Again, you never had me. But even if you had, you would’ve lost me a long time ago.”
“Em—” He dragged a hand over his face, mumbling curses and other unintelligible things before slamming his hand against the door and setting his desperate stare on me. “So, you can forgive Cayson when you think he’s behind it all? You can fucking fall for him?”
“I spent years agonizing over the fact that I was in love with someone who could do what I thought he’d done to me. I was sure there was something wrong with me. And that feeling grew worse as my heart shattered a little more with each year that passed because I felt so incomplete without him.”
His jaw ticked. His breaths came a little rougher.
Whiskey (Brewed Book 2) Page 34
