Broken Creek (The Creek #1) (9 page)

“Nope.” He removed his boots and socks.

Grateful he didn’t try to drag me into his bed, I took my juice and sat down on the floor by the fire in the living room. I could hear the distant sound of the shower running and him singing along to his iPod. That boy loved his music.

Hearing the water made me remember how we’d often taken showers together. My skin tingled at the thought of him seducing me. When we’d been together, he could barely touch me, and I’d be on fire for him. Intimacy was never our problem.

I studied my surroundings as if seeing it new. One of his winter coats was hanging by the back door. I wrapped the coat around me and walked outside on the deck. There was a small fire going in the chiminea pot, so I stood beside it and leaned against the railing.

The cold north wind was bristling through the trees, and I could hear the limbs talking to one another.

Nature’s dialogue, Mom called it.

No, no, no. Please don’t hit me again. Please stop.

You dirty whore. You shame our family. You’re good for no one now.

No!

Whip. Slash. Crack.

Startled, I woke up with the covers tossed to the floor, yet I wasn’t cold. The fit of my dream had me drenched in sweat. The secret trying to scratch its way out of me, layer by layer.

I woke up again at the first sign of daylight peeking through the small slit in the curtains and the sound of rain outside. Without a clock in the room, I had no idea what time it was. The cabin was quiet, and I was sure Stephan was at work already.

I opened the door and started to walk out into the small hall that divided the two bedrooms. The master bedroom door was open.

“It’s still early. Go back to sleep,” his voice soft and whispery. Comforting.

“What time is it?” I asked from the hall, but rather than wait for an answer, I went into his room.

“Six o’clock.”

“You not going to work?”

“Raining all day, no guide trips today. Not gonna complain though, we need the rain. You want to come lay down with me?”

Without thinking things through, I curled up beside him in bed. He always slept in the nude, and this time was no exception, but I didn’t care. I needed the security he could give me. I craved the sense of belonging somewhere in the world.

My mother had ripped the last ounce of affinity from me.

The next time I woke up I was wrapped tightly in Stephan’s arms as he spooned me, and I could hear the sound of rain hitting the metal roof. It was a sweet sound, like a mandolin playing softly in the distance, and one of the reasons he had chosen to build it that way.

“Hungry?” he said softly against my ear.

“No.” I rolled over to face him.

We stared at each other for endless moments. Our lips clashed—I don’t know how they did or why. Who initiated the kiss was a mystery, but the passion was fire within me and reverberated through me—through us. One thing led to another, and soon my clothes were on the floor, and we were tangling between the sheets.

So familiar, so wrong.

“We shouldn’t do this,” I said, trying to stop the heat wave.

He didn’t stop. “I know what you need,” he said crawling down my body, leaving nibbles and delicate bites during his journey.

He remembered what I liked, and he pleasured me until I was smiling and satiated, all memories of my painful past retreated to a distant fog.

After which, lying within the capacity of his arms and embracing heart, I heard his slow inhalation, while his nose was buried in my hair.

After a shower together, guilt ravaged me. We hadn’t had sex, if you go by Bill Clinton’s standards, but we were intimate, just the same. It was wrong. I didn’t love him the way he loved me, and I didn’t want a relationship with him to be rekindled. I didn’t trust him not to hurt me again the next time he was jealous and angry.

The person may change but the sight of rage in one man’s eyes is clearly equal to another.

After getting dressed in my old clothes, I joined him in the kitchen. He was making bacon and egg sandwiches, one of his favorites and also one of the few things he knew how to cook during the time we were still together as a couple.

“We need to talk…”

He put his knife down and faced me. “Don’t say it. I already know and understand. It just happened, but it meant nothing.”

I was gutted by the expression on his face, bewilderment seeping from his eyes. When my gaze drifted down his shirtless chest to the counter, I noticed his hands trembling. I’d put him in a nervous spot, and from all my years with him, that was something that rarely happened since confidence was one of his strengths.

I focused on his eyes again. He may have been a big guy, but at that moment, he appeared fragile. His gaze left me and found a new home on the bacon in front of us.

With his hand in mine, I kept my voice warm. “It meant more than you will ever know, but in a way you won’t understand.”

“Friends with benefits?” His question was more like a statement, and he half-heartedly laughed.

“Friends who are there for each other in ways people can’t comprehend.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Last night, I heard you whining in your sleep. Another nightmare?”

“Yes.”

He immediately went quiet and rubbed at the two-day old scruff on his jawline. His eyes closed tightly. He struggled with what he’d done because he knew what my father had done to me as a young girl in the barn that day—the secret I’d kept from my mother, the pain I’d hidden away. The scars that were only visible to the one man who had intimately known my body.

“It’s not your fault, and it’s not from being here. Probably because of the stress with my mother. I almost blurted it out to her.”

His head leaned toward the floor, and he raised only his eyes to me. “He beat you because he found out you’d slept with me. He called you the worst names ever, and I’d killed him myself if someone else hadn’t. And then I hurt you and…”

I ran to his side of the counter and wrapped my arms tightly around his waist. “There’s a difference. He intended torture; you didn’t. What you did, when you pulled me away from Jacob and I fell over a chair, wasn’t intentional. You didn’t mean to hurt me, Stephan. I told you I’ve forgiven you. It. Was. An. Accident.”

He held me tightly and threaded his fingers through my hair. With my ear against his chest, I heard the beating of his heart. Life, passion, love lived there. He was my savior. He was my friend.

We ate and talked about the deer in the canyon and his plans for adding a few more guys to his fishing guide business. As a professional fisherman, he traveled a good bit, and it would help to have some more fishermen to offer services, while he was away at a tournament. He taught me to fish with something other than a cane pole, and the first large bass I’d caught was mounted on a plaque in his small office in town.

It was afternoon before I realized I’d left my purse in my car. When I finally found the temperament to look at my cell phone, the damn thing was dead. I knew Mom would be sick with worry, but I didn’t care and going home still hadn’t taken a slot on my agenda.

Stephan and I had similar phones, and his charger fit mine, so it wasn’t long before the alerts started sounding. Message after message populated the screen.

Here it was three days until Christmas, and I was unprepared and not in the spirit.

I finally caved and listened to Mom’s messages. Most of them were asking me to call or come home, not one in which she said she was sorry. There were two from Ben thanking me for the lunch and then the next one asking about which bank we used.

Ben’s words were full of encouragement and excitement, and my gut wretched in response. I would have to tell him the new
truth,
and I wasn’t sure how to do that.

“Trouble?” Stephan asked beside me at the bar.

“Just Ben wanting to know what bank we use. I don’t know how to tell him.”

“You don’t. That is for Mary Ellen to do. Her secret, her truth.”

“I wonder if he would take just the hundred acre parcel.”

“Depends on the need of his herd. Also depends on the bank. They may hold all of the money toward the debt, and you’re still no better off.”

“Makes me so freakin’ angry.” I slammed my phone against the laminate.

After lunch, I drove home, assuming Mom would be at work, but when I pulled up close to the house, I saw her car in the carport. The idea of fighting more with her wrecked me physically, and nausea roared within me, fighting space and as my blood pressure made swooshing sounds in my ears.

I found her asleep on the sofa. The house was cold once again. As I crossed the living room floor, the croaking wood gave away my intrusion.

She sat up quickly. “I was very worried. I didn’t know if you were at Stephan’s or went back to Dallas, so I drove out to his place and saw your car. Are you two getting back together?”

“First, we’re just friends, and second, my relationship is not what we need to be talking about. Ben called. You need to call him and tell him the truth. Then you can decide how you’re going to make this broken place work because I’m leaving on Saturday and—with my new job and school, I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“This weekend is Christmas.” She pouted.

“No, Thursday is Christmas. Saturday, I’m leaving.” I wrote Ben’s number on a piece of paper and handed it to her before going to change clothes.