“I was lucky that it was a manned station and not one of the volunteer houses that sits empty until a fire is called in. There was a very nice fire captain there that took me in for the night. The next day I was dumped with child services and I spent my entire childhood jumping from one foster house to another. She didn’t even have a coat for me. She dropped me off in jeans that were too small, a T-shirt that was stained and torn, and in tennis shoes that were shit for the snow because they were mostly duct-taped together.” He blinked at me as I gasped in horror and that harsh scowl that cut into the pretty lines of his aristocratic bone structure was back. “I was fucking four years old.”
I wanted to hug him. I wanted to comfort the little boy he was and the man that was clearly struggling in front of me. Knowing that I would freak out if we actually made that kind of contact while both of us were so raw, I scooted to the side, careful not to brush up against him, and pulled open the door so I could put my panting, slobbering bundle down in the passenger seat. I kept the door between us as a barrier while all I wanted to do was get away from his desperation and pain. I needed to take a minute to process the fact he had a baby on the way with a woman that had destroyed him and ruined the idyllic life they could have had together. That hurt in ways I didn’t want to pick apart while he was standing so close looking at me like he could see right into the center of my every thought and feeling. I had too much of my own hurt; I couldn’t believe that I was feeling his as well.
“I’m so sorry you had to suffer like that. Good luck with everything, Wheeler.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I would be around if he needed me, even though the words were tickling the tip of my tongue. I slipped into the car and wrapped my fingers around the steering wheel like it was some kind of lifeline. I reached for the door to pull it shut but it wouldn’t budge because his hand was wrapped around the top of the frame. He bent his head to look down at me and I could see a riot of emotions blowing through his cool gaze. He was pissed. He was frustrated. He was sad. He was irritated and he was maybe, just maybe, a little bit excited.
“Gonna need more than luck. But seriously, thank you for thinking of me. I can’t recall the last time someone did that.” If I was someone else, someone stronger, braver, someone fearless instead of fearful, I would have climbed out of the car and given him that goddamn hug. He looked like he desperately needed one.
But I wasn’t someone different.
I was the girl that had almost died trying to make her father happy and win his approval.
I was the girl that let her sister leave without begging her to take me with her when that was all I really wanted.
I was the girl that fell in love with the wrong boy and paid a price so heavy for it that I lost everything.
I was the girl that married a monster, and even though the demon was physically dead and buried, he still lived inside of me, where he haunted me, hounded me, hurt me.
As always, I was afraid, so I didn’t do anything other than shut the car door when he let go and drive away. I really couldn’t fix all the things that were wrong with Wheeler’s life and I wasn’t about to let him close enough to see exactly how broken my own existence was because I’d yet to be able to fix myself.
The puppy whimpered like he knew what I was thinking and disagreed with me. Luckily, he was a lot easier to ignore than the taunting voice in the back of my head that kept up the steady refrain of You should have known better.
Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.
—Lord Byron
Wheeler
What you’re looking for isn’t between the blonde’s legs, Speedy.”
I shifted my gaze away from the blonde that was very obviously eye-fucking me and turned my attention to the bartender that offered up those unwanted words of wisdom. As always they were spoken with a distinct southern drawl. I lifted an eyebrow at him and was treated to one lifted right back.
“You didn’t find it between the brunette’s legs last week or between the redhead’s the week before that.” He put another drink in front of me even though I’d had more than enough. I watched as he leaned on the bar across from me so that I had no choice but to look up at him as I slid the mixed Southern Comfort and ginger ale closer to me. “The fact of the matter is, no matter how hard you try, you can’t fuck away a broken heart. You aren’t going to find a magical cure for heartache spending an hour inside a pretty girl or one spent at the bottom of a bottle.”
I knew Asa was right but I had no intention of telling him that. Instead I took a healthy swing of the drink and flashed a smile that was fake and forced in the direction of the blonde. When I turned back toward the bartender he was shaking his head at me. I didn’t know Asa Cross very well even though I’d sold him a sweet Nova that needed some work a while back. We shared common friends and his boss at the bar was a silent investor in my garage. Something I tried to keep in mind so that I didn’t make an ass out of myself while trying to drink myself numb.
For reasons known only to the overly observant southerner, he’d taken it upon himself to be my voice of reason every single time I stepped into the bar. Admittedly each time I did so I was looking for dangerous distractions. I didn’t want to go home to an empty house with nothing but regret and dread for company. I appreciated that he didn’t want me to chase after my own ruin, but I’d handled my love life so carefully for so long that I was beyond ready to dirty it up a little. Being thoughtful and considerate got me nothing but being abandoned and betrayed. It was time to see what I got when I was careless and reckless.
“I’ve told you before, I’ve been with the same girl since I was sixteen. Nothing wrong with seeing what else is out there now that the shackles are shaken off.” I wanted to sound more excited about the prospect of sleeping my way through the entirety of eligible women in Denver than I actually was. The reality was that women liked me, they always had, but I’d been saying no for so long that saying yes felt weird. Misplaced guilt took the fun out of being a player. That was something I couldn’t even convince myself I was until the third or fourth drink.
“Anybody that takes a little bit here and a little bit there is going to end up hungry at the end of the day, Speedy. You’re a man that’s used to having a full plate, these snacks aren’t going to do anything for you. You’re going to starve.” Asa nodded and pushed off the bar, leaving his convoluted words hanging heavily in the air. He made his way over to a customer at the other end of the bar top, giving the blonde the opening she’d been waiting for to make her move. I tried not to wince when she slid onto the empty stool next to me. Her perfume was strong and sickeningly floral. It was inescapable as she leaned an arm on the bar top and turned her body toward mine.
She was pretty in a very made-up kind of way. I didn’t particularly have a type. I’d been with Kallie for so long that I’d forgotten what my preferences had been before her. Watching this woman’s very painted lips turn up at the edges and her alarmingly long eyelashes flutter flirtatiously at me, I realized that high maintenance and overly done was not high on the list of things that made my dick hard.
Unwanted, an image of Poppy Cruz holding that adorable puppy and looking at me like she was ready to bolt at any second flashed through my mind. Now, her easy and untouched kind of beauty made my dick hard without question. In fact, I could feel it tighten and twitch against my zipper at nothing more than the thought of her.
She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and she didn’t have to do a single thing for me, or anyone else to notice it. She didn’t wear makeup, not a stitch of it. Even without it, her lips were a rosy pink and her eyelashes were long and a flawless fan of inky black. They did a great job of keeping her stunning but sad amber gaze hidden from prying eyes. Her skin had an enviable golden hue that could only be achieved through heritage and blessed genetics. Her hair was an unusual mix of browns that ranged from dark chocolate strands to rich caramel-tinted highlights that I doubted came from a salon. The girl didn�
�t do anything to enhance her stunning looks, which included hiding her slim frame in clothes that were several sizes too big. I’d only ever seen her wearing the most boring, neutral shades that did their best to wash her out and make her look ordinary when she was anything but. She was born to be a hot rod but for reasons that were hard to think about she was living her life like she was meant to be a minivan. Even camouflaged and covered up, the way Poppy Cruz looked totally worked for me in a way this very practiced blonde did not.
“Hi.” The blonde breathed the word out and put the straw sticking out of her drink to her lips in a move that had clearly gotten her what she wanted more times than not.
I took another swig of my drink, turned my head, and inclined my chin in a greeting that was far less seductive than hers. “Hey.”
“You’ve been sitting over here by yourself all night. I thought I would come and see if you wanted some company. It’s never very much fun to drink alone.” She was right. Drinking alone sucked, so did sleeping alone and living alone and doing pretty much everything alone when you were used to having someone by your side.
“I’m Tessa.” She stuck out a hand and I noticed that her fingernails matched the ruby red of her lips. That seemed like a lot of effort to put into catching company for the evening. The most I’d done was put on a clean T-shirt.
I took her fingers in mine and watched as her gaze drifted over the dark spots of grease and oil that seemed to be a permanent part of my skin at this point. It didn’t matter how many times I scrubbed them, parts of the garage were always marking me as a man that got dirty and worked with his hands. She didn’t curl her lip or pull her hand away and wipe it on her very tight jeans. I always considered that a win. “Wheeler.”
Both her eyebrows lifted and a playful smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Is that your real name?”
I grinned back because that was a question I got a lot. I heard her suck in a breath as she watched my face when I smiled. My dirty hands might turn some women off but I’d never encountered one that was immune to my smile. God bless dimples. I’d never understood what the big deal was, but they were the reason Kallie noticed me when she first walked into the wrong class when we were in high school together, so I was always glad I had them. They made the work of going home with a willing woman far easier.
I slammed back the rest of my drink and set the empty glass on the bar in front of me. “It’s my last name.” My auto-shop teacher in high school had started calling me by my last name because there was another Hudson in the class. After a while he’d told me he’d never had a student that was so naturally skilled and adept with cars as I was, so the name became a badge of honor. You couldn’t be a guy named Wheeler and not know your way around all kinds of things that went fast and sounded loud and mean. I’d never had anyone invested in me enough to give me a nickname before. Never had anyone care enough to praise me or compliment me. After high school the name stuck because Wheeler was who I decided I wanted to be. He was someone worth something.
“I like it.” I bet she did. But I bet she liked the way my tattooed biceps flexed under the plain black cotton of my T-shirt even more. I’d started getting tattooed when I was really young. I had more skin that was marked than not. Now that I was single I was finding that women liked the ink and the body it covered almost as much as they liked my dimples. In fact, they liked the way I looked so much I didn’t have to put very much effort into trying to be charming or interesting if I wanted to get them into bed. It made me feel a little queasy when I thought about how superficial and unimportant it all was. I forced another smile to distract us both, which made her sigh.
“Thanks, it gets the job done.” I watched as she sucked on the straw some more, clearly waiting for me to give her some kind of sign that I was good to go. I wanted to be good to go, but the longer she stared at me, the more I silently compared her to the woman that stood in front of me earlier, obviously scared but forcing herself to do something nice for a stranger anyways. There was no question that there was something about the terrified and nervous Poppy that I found charming and endearing. This girl had none of that and it was making everything inside of me slam on the brakes instead of pushing the pedal down to move things along faster.
The empty glass in front of me disappeared and a full one reappeared. “Last one, Speedy.” The southern drawl lost its smooth edge as his gaze shifted between me and the blonde. “You want another one, doll?”
The girl paused like someone had hit a button on a remote that controlled her movements. Her huge fake eyelashes fluttered and dropped in reflex at the sound of Asa’s voice. She’d been so focused on me up until that point she didn’t realize there was other attractive and available dick hanging around. Objectively speaking, Asa was far better looking than I was. There was nothing about him that was difficult or complicated to look at. He hadn’t spent a lifetime covering up his skin in order to keep from being overlooked. There was also none of the edge that I had from being unwanted and left behind that sharpened his gaze. Hell, if I had to pick between the two of us, I would go with the southern bartender myself. He had an easy, effortless way about him that I most definitely did not have. I couldn’t remember the last time anything in my life had felt easy. Plus, he was charming as hell, something I most definitely was not.
“Uh … no. I’m good.” Her painted lips turned up at him the exact same way they had turned up at me and a shiver of unease shot down my spine.
I was tired of being second best and underappreciated. When the blonde turned back to me after Asa moved on to finish his last call, I pushed my untouched drink in her direction and hauled myself off of the barstool. “Last drink is on me. Have a good rest of the night.” She blinked at me in confusion and opened her mouth to say something but I shook my head and walked away from her before she could say anything else.
I really was good at saying no, much better than I was at saying yes. Even after the girl made me feel like a piece of meat, like nothing more than a dick that could be interchanged with any other dick for the night, I still didn’t have it in me to be a total asshole. I didn’t want my rejection or disinterest to hurt her because I was still in the throes of how badly Kallie’s desertion had hurt me. I wasn’t the type that lashed out, which made the fact I’d spilled my guts and dropped all my baggage at Poppy’s feet yesterday super unexpected. There was just something about that beautiful girl with her wounded eyes that made me want to assure her she wasn’t the only one feeling shredded and alone.
It was late fall in Denver, well past the time of year that you could be outside in the dark of night without a coat on. The chill in the air cleared up some of the fog in my head and cooled some of the still-simmering anger in my blood at being disregarded as I walked over to my perfectly restored and lovingly maintained ’67 Eldorado Cadillac. The car was my baby. She was the reason I took shop when I was a teenager and she was the thing that gave me purpose and directed me on the path that would lead to my own business and a way to provide for myself. My Caddy was my passion, the first thing that I’d ever owned that was mine outright, and she was a culmination of everything I’d ever been taught and had learned to apply to something real. There was no way in hell I was getting behind the wheel after a night of drinking. She had a million memories tied to her and I doubted I would be able to recover if anything took them away. I felt like my life hadn’t really had the chance to start until I walked into that tiny, undersupplied garage at Brookside High School and laid eyes on the mangled, dismantled beauty that was the former husk of my baby.
I ordered an Uber and propped a hip on the hood as the cold started to filter through my drunken melancholy. It and the idea of going home to an endlessly empty house made me shiver. I turned my head as the noise from the inside of the bar followed Asa out when he opened the door and did a quick scan of the parking lot. His gaze landed where I was leaning against the Caddy and I saw him let out a breath of relief. He shouted over his shoulder for someone to wa
tch the bar for a second and then he let the heavy door shut behind him. He made his way over to where I was shivering and trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
“I was worried you were going to let the blonde take you home. Didn’t think I had to worry about you taking yourself home when you aren’t in any state to drive.” His breath left little puffs of vapor in the air and he didn’t bother to stop his teeth from clicking together as he rubbed his hands up and down his arms. “I like you, Speedy. Don’t make me take you to the ground for your keys.”
I held up my phone and showed him the map with the indicator that my Uber was only a few minutes away. “Called for a ride. I wouldn’t risk my car by driving drunk.”
He shook his head at me and rocked back on his heels. “You’re worried about your car and not yourself. You need someone to set you straight, Wheeler. I’ve been trying the last few weeks but I’m not getting through.”
I lifted an eyebrow and shrugged at him. “I come by for a drink and the company. I don’t remember signing up for a therapy session.”
He snorted at me and rolled his eyes. “You might not want to hear it, but you should listen anyway. When a man that’s made more than his fair share of mistakes sees another man driving off into the ditch, he isn’t much of a man unless he tries to get all those wheels back on the road. Sometimes it takes a tow truck, sometimes it only requires a little push from some helping hands. I understand your old lady did you wrong, but you aren’t going to make it right by drinking yourself into the kind of man you wouldn’t waste your time on if you ran across him.” He pointed a finger at me just as the Uber pulled into the lot and the driver flashed his lights. “Get yourself out of the ditch, Wheeler. There’s nothing good down there and all you’ll end up doing is spinning your wheels.”
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