* * *
We decided to meet at The Thirsty Mule to have our “talk.” Dane had suggested his place, but I wanted somewhere public where the conversation couldn’t get too intense. I didn’t want to cry again, and there was a real possibility of it happening if we were alone.
I had that annoying trait of crying when I was feeling any strong emotion, including anger—which had made living with my emotionally deficient aunt even harder. I had a feeling Dane would make me angry again before the night was over, and if I had an audience, I might be able to hold myself together.
He’d also offered to pick me up, another suggestion I’d refused because, depending on how much he annoyed me, I might want to get the heck out of there in a hurry, and I didn’t want to be in the position of telling him to stick his apology, then get trapped with him in his truck while I fumed and cried uncontrollably all the way home.
I pulled up in my green Toyota Camry right across from the bar, behind Dane’s bike, and sat there for a moment gathering my composure. I wanted to hear him out. I wanted him to tell me something that would take this pain away, that would give us back what we had. But I wasn’t sure there was anything he could say that could ease that awful, hollow feeling of being left behind by him.
My phone started ringing, and I quickly checked it. Aunt Julia. She called several times a week, and lately her favorite topic of conversation was when I was coming home to visit. I’d been home a month ago and wasn’t in any rush to go back, not this soon anyway.
Things had always been strained between us, but the massive argument we’d had the day before I left her ranch—after she found the phone Dane had given me years before and she’d spent hours reading our messages—had been the final straw.
The tension between us had been unbearable, and it was the push I’d needed to take that step to accept Cassy’s job offer.
Guilt shot through me when I let her call go to voice mail and put my phone on silent. I couldn’t deal with her. Not tonight.
Shoving my door open, I climbed out and headed across the street. Even though I knew Dane wouldn’t notice what I was wearing, I’d taken extra care getting ready. He needed to know I wasn’t the same girl he’d been protecting for so long, that I was a woman who made her own decisions.
My ankle boots had a spiked heel and I’d paired them with a cute black skirt that was light and floaty. I liked the way it swayed as I walked. It was a hot night, so the red tank with spaghetti-string straps was perfectly acceptable, especially for a bar.
I felt confident. Ready for the emotional game of badminton Dane and I were about to have. Determined to protect myself, keep my guard up.
Music floated out, and through the windows I could see the place was fairly busy. I’d never walked into a bar on my own before, even though I’d hit the legal drinking age close to a year ago. Before moving here, I’d never touched a drop of alcohol. My aunt would never have allowed that. I’d been expected to follow her rules, which meant I hadn’t done a lot of the things other teenagers had been doing.
When my friends had been talking about their boyfriends and what they got up to in the back seats of their cars, I’d had nothing to contribute to the conversations, not until a few years later, and I’d felt like a total freak.
I’d kind of just hung out with my horses. I’d only ever been permitted to go on one date when I was asked by our pastor’s son, Clayton.
And halfway through it, Dane had beaten the crap out of him.
I pulled the door open, not giving myself time to overthink it or back out, and stepped inside. Heat hit me, along with the sound of voices talking and singing to the jukebox playing in the corner. I scanned the room, turning to the bar.
Dane was standing, leaning casually against the large rustic wooden surface, a beer in front of him, talking to his cousin Bull who owned the place.
Again, Dane’s shirt was black, but this one had Bunker’s Tattoo and Piercing in red across the back. His jeans were darker than the ones he’d been in that morning but were still worn looking. A black belt was threaded through the loops and there was a chain dangling from the front, attached to something in his back pocket. Those jeans hung low, not skintight but still managed to hug his very nice butt to perfection.
My ex-best friend was gorgeous. I already knew this. He was also a chick magnet—always had been—and he’d made the most of it.
He lifted his bottle, about to take a drink, then paused and his head twisted on his neck like he’d sensed me standing there.
His gaze came straight to me, eyes hitting mine before they dipped, taking me in from top to toe. He straightened, bottle forgotten in his hand, and I could see, even from here, that muscle in his jaw was jumping.
If we were ever going to be friends again, he needed to stop with the overprotective stuff. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what that look meant—he’d never looked at me quite like that before—but I’d seen variations of it, and they all usually ended with Dane in a fight with someone for looking at me wrong.
God, he really was beautiful.
And annoying.
Nerves hit me low in the belly. I wanted him to make this right between us so bad it hurt, but I didn’t think he could.
I inwardly sighed and walked toward him.
Chapter Three
Dane
I straightened, cursing under my breath, gaze sweeping over Everly from head to toe. My body reacted instantly, a weird tightening in my gut, shit going on behind my ribs in the center of my chest.
If it had been humanly possible, I was pretty sure my eyeballs would have been bugging out of my damned head on stalks like a fucking cartoon character.
Bull whistled low behind me and chuckled when I growled.
“Everly looks nice, huh, Dane?” he said, sounding far too fucking happy.
I, on the other hand, was not. Not at all.
My best friend moved toward me on spike-heeled fucking ankle boots. I’d never once seen her in shoes like that. Ever. She usually wore cowboy boots or flip-flops.
My gaze dropped to the little floaty skirt flaring out from her small waist over her extremely round hips and skimming the tops of her tanned curvy thighs. It swished as she walked, giving glimpses higher up, drawing the eyes right there.
Add to that the way her top clung to her chest, showing just how full and soft and round her tits were, and it created a seriously fucking impossible dilemma for every pervert in the bar. Which part of Everly’s banging body should they look at first? I’d watched old Baywatch reruns, and her chest was giving every Pam Anderson slow-mo jogging scene a run for its money as she walked.
“You say something fucking stupid and she’ll walk right back out,” Bull muttered as she got closer.
He was right, of course.
Her eyes were on me, and she bit her full lower lip, looking nervous.
My dick stirred.
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
I looked away so quick I almost gave myself vertigo.
No fucking way. Stand the fuck down, asshole, I mentally yelled at my dick. This is Everly.
My dick didn’t seem to give a shit who she was right then, though. Everly had filled out a lot. I’d noticed, of course, since I’d been back. Fuck, seeing her in my old tank this morning had done something to me. Yeah, I’d liked it way too much.
But the last time I’d spent real facetime with her, before everything went to shit, she’d been wearing a floral button-down shirt, a matching cardigan that her aunt had picked out, and a shin-length skirt. Occasionally she was allowed to wear khaki pants or jeans for riding.
I mean, I’d always known she was beautiful on the outside as well as inside. Of course I had. I wasn’t fucking blind. I’d just programed my brain to ignore that fact. That didn’t seem to be working anymore, though.
And then my mind went blank because she was standing beside me, head tilted back, looking up at me. Not in my eyes, though—my ear.
“Hey,” she said.<
br />
I swallowed several times, ignoring Bull’s low chuckle—the prick—and forced my body to relax. “Hey.” I sounded like I’d been smoking ten packs a day for the last forty years. I cleared my throat. “Wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Bull crap,” she said, lips tipped up on one side.
I grinned.
She rolled her eyes. “Shut up.”
“Didn’t say anything. Would your aunt wash your mouth out with soap for that kind of language?”
“Definitely. Good girls don’t curse,” she said, a soft smile on her lips.
The way she was looking, no one here would mistake her for a good girl. She was, though, through and through.
“Hey, Bull,” she said.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Bull said and smiled. “You want a drink?”
She turned toward the bar, eyeing her options, and while she wasn’t looking I aimed a hard stare at the other side of the room. At the fucker who hadn’t taken his eyes off Eves since she’d walked in. If he looked at my girl one more fucking time, I’d remove his balls with a rusty knife and force-feed them to him.
He quickly looked down at his beer.
“What do you suggest?” Everly was asking Bull. “I’ve only had wine with Cassy at dinner or when Quinn comes over and we watch a movie. But I’m not sure wine’s my drink.”
“Beer?” Bull said.
“Um…” She turned to me. “Let me try yours first.”
She took my bottle from me, and I watched as she lifted it to her lips, dark pink and glossy from whatever she had on them, and took a sip. A shiver moved through me, pins and needles dancing up my back and over my scalp.
Fucking. Hell.
My gaze shot back to the fucker sitting behind her, and I narrowed my eyes at him when I caught him looking at her again. He quickly ducked his head, pretending to look at his phone.
Everly was smiling. “Yeah, okay, I’ll have a beer, thanks.”
I grabbed her drink and mine and moved in behind her, blocking her from any dickhead that might look at her ass, and pointed to a table at the back of the bar where we could have some privacy.
I had some serious explaining to do, and I preferred to do it without an audience. She was being polite in front of Bull—Everly was always polite—but I was under no illusion that she’d suddenly forgotten or forgiven me.
I’d hurt her, and somehow I had to make it right or at least try.
I put our drinks down and held out her seat. She sat and I took the one across from her.
I leaned back and stared over at her, my gut tightening, knotted. Fuck, I’d missed her. Everything about her.
“You’ve changed,” I said before I could bite my damn tongue.
She toyed with the label on her beer. “How so?”
Don’t say it. “The way you dress.” Nope, do not say it. “You’re…you’ve, ah…filled out.”
She flushed. “Well, my aunt’s not dressing me anymore seeing as I’m an adult and all,” she said, sounding exasperated. “So have you…filled out, I mean.” She gnawed on her lip again. “You’re…bigger.”
I nodded. “The Ramblers have a gym with a ring.”
Her brows shot up. “A ring? Boxing?”
I took a sip of my beer, stalling, not sure how she’d take this next bit. “I fight.”
“What?” she whispered, horror transforming her beautiful face.
“Not like that. Organized fights with a referee and everything.” I rubbed my hand over my cropped hair. “It’s taught me discipline, control, given me an outlet for all the aggression I’ve been carrying around. It’s been good for me, Eves.”
Her eyes were still avoiding mine. “I thought I was good for you once,” she said, voice soft and husky.
“You were…fuck, are.” I gripped my bottle harder. “But I wasn’t good for you, not the way I was back then, not where I was heading. I was this…this black shadow over you, blocking your sunlight, not letting you shine.”
She was shaking her head.
“You know it’s true. I was too involved, Eves. I was getting in your way. I knew I needed to step back, but I couldn’t, and then after what happened, when I lost control the way I did, when I scared you that night…” Fuck, this was harder than I thought. “You wouldn’t talk to me right after…”
“I was in shock. I didn’t know the full story…that he’d planned to spike my drink, what he was going to do to me—”
“Don’t,” I bit out. “Don’t talk about that fucker and his sick, twisted plans. I can’t talk about that, Eves, and not lose my damned mind.”
Her eyes were on her drink in front of her, again not on me. “I needed a couple of days to clear my head, that’s all, not a year and a half.”
When I swallowed, it was so hard it actually hurt. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“For me?” she said, eyes flashing, lower lip quivering.
Fuck. Everly cried when she got emotional. This could have been sadness or she could have been getting ready to brain me with her beer bottle.
“You thought making that decision for me was the right thing to do?” she said.
I wanted her to look at me, but she wouldn’t fucking do it. “I needed that time to get my head on straight.”
“Away from me? You couldn’t work things out and still send me the odd text to tell me you were alive and well? You had to completely walk out of my life?”
I’d thought I was a stain on her life. “I was in a bad place. And when you walked back into that diner and found me beating that fucker…” I took a steadying breath. “The look on your face—fuck, Everly, you were afraid of me.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“I saw it in your eyes, and I don’t blame you, I deserved that look. I shattered something between us that night, and I thought…”
“I was better off without you?”
I swallowed. “Yeah.” I reached out and took her hand resting on the table. Her fingers were closed tight, and I rubbed them with my own, coaxing her to loosen them. “Can you forgive me? Can we be friends again, Eves? ’Cause I fucking hate this, not being able to call or text you, come see you whenever I want. It’s torture. The last eighteen months have been fucking torture.”
Her jaw tightened. “You chose it, not me. You didn’t give me a choice.”
I stared across at her, heart in my damned throat, feeling her slipping away from me. “I don’t know how to make this up to you, how to fix it.”
She looked down at the bottle in her hand, again not looking me in the eyes. I fucking hated it. “Neither do I. I’m not sure how to get past it, how you made me feel, how much it hurt, how much you hurt me when I never thought you’d ever do that to me. Not you.”
I felt like the shittiest piece of shit on the planet. I deserved it, every word of it. The look on her face, the sadness—fuck—it took me right back to our foster home. The couple we were given to, who were supposed to protect and care for us, Wayne and Sonya, only cared about getting wasted and partying.
Eves would come to my room every night and climb into my bed because she knew she wasn’t safe, especially when they had people over, and they always had people over.
“So what?” I said. “You don’t want to even try?” I felt like my heart was being ripped from my chest.
“I don’t know where to start,” she said. “I don’t know how to let you back in, how to trust you again.”
Her words cut right through me. “What do you want me to do? Tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it. Anything, just name it.” I’d crawl over broken fucking glass to have her back in my life again.
“I need to think about it.” She glanced away, then back. “Honestly…I’d convinced myself that I’d never hear from you again, that maybe I’d see you at the ranch one day and you’d act like you didn’t know me, that I didn’t exist. I’d prepared myself for that. This…what you’re asking for, it’ll take some time to get my head around.”
I deserved
that as well. “How much time?” I was pushing, but I was done being apart from her. So done.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Then she stood.
“You’re leaving?” I wanted to snatch her up and make her stay with me.
“I think we’ve said enough for now.”
I didn’t want her to leave. I’d rather sit there having my heart torn out repeatedly with her than be without her, or worse, with fucking Riff and his commentary on my shitty life choices.
But she headed for the door, so I followed her out, again doing my best to block her from the fucking assholes in the room looking at her.
She glanced at me over her shoulder. “I don’t need you to walk me out.”
I ignored her and held the door open. She headed across the street to her car, getting her keys ready like she was going to jump in and speed off, like she wanted to get away from me as fast as she could.
She unlocked the door and was about to pull it open, and I couldn’t control it; I grabbed her hand, stopping her.
“Dane,” she said in that soft, sweet voice I’d been dreaming of, that I’d still heard every day even though we’d not been talking. Her eyes were aimed at my throat, chin dipped, and I couldn’t stand it one more fucking second.
“Look at me, Eves.”
She shook her head.
I cupped her jaw. “Why won’t you look at me, baby girl?”
She shook her head again.
“Look at me, Everly.”
“I don’t want to,” she whispered.
I bent at the knees and, taking her chin, tilted her head up. “Fucking look at me,” I said without heat, just fucking desperation.
She started to tremble.
“Tell me why?” I pleaded.
Suddenly her head shot up, intense mahogany eyes colliding with mine, and my fucking knees nearly buckled.
“Because if I look into your eyes, my Dane’s eyes, I’ll cave. I’ll forgive you.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” I said, throat working, dry as fuck.
“Yes, because we wouldn’t be us. It’d be a lie. I’d still have that hurt deep inside, and I still wouldn’t trust you.”
Meant For You: Rocktown Ink, Book 3 Page 3
