Broken Ground: (Broken Series Book 1) (27 page)

I recounted Spencer's warning and the promise I'd made to him, laid out the terms of the contract we'd all signed. Told her how angry he was when he realized she and I were involved. She dropped her eyes then, and I reached out to touch her cheek — thankful when she didn't pull away. When she met my eye, I told her, "It's not your fault he thinks I broke my promise. And it's not mine either. He's wrong for being angry." My voice fell to a whisper. "I never promised not to fall in love." Tears welled in her eyes, threatening to spill over as she shifted closer and took my hand.

She deserved better than what I'd just done. I'd been weak enough to tell her how I felt, to saddle her with my affection when I knew how it would end.

My love was a fucking curse, why didn't she see that?

Blinking rapidly to clear my suddenly blurry vision, I released her hand and stood, stepping to the water's edge as I told her, "You're everything I never thought I wanted. I made avoiding emotional attachment into a damn art form. It's no wonder Spencer thought..."

She spoke at my back. "Thought what?"

"He thought I'd made you into one of my whores." My jaw clenched, and I remembered the sickening crack of my fist making contact with his face. "But I didn't change you. It was you who changed me. You changed everything for me. Everything about me. When he said that, when he assumed that's what you were to me, I was so pissed, I couldn't see straight."

She stepped up behind me, tugging my sleeve until I turned to face her. "What did I tell you before? He doesn't know you like he thinks he does."

I tipped my head back and stared up at the sky, the sun peeking from behind a puffy cumulus cloud, the sudden brightness causing me to squint. "I'm pretty sure he figured that out when I decked him."

Ali's gasp sounded pained. "Oh, God. You didn't."

"I did. He assumed you meant nothing to me and when he said I'd made you my whore, I fucking lost it. It just happened, I remember looking at him and not caring that I'd made him bleed, maybe broke his nose." I looked at her, the enormity of what I'd done making my throat constrict. "How could I do that? After I'd just found out my stupidity may have ruined his life, how could I have the balls to hit him? Why wouldn't he assume the worst of me? It's not like I haven't been a fuck up all my life, and he's had a ringside seat for all of it. He should have been the one kicking my ass." Only I could take a bad situation and make it a hundred times worse in a matter of seconds.

"You're shaking," she murmured as she ran a hand down my arm.

"I'm fucking pissed. I didn't want any of this." I ran a hand through my hair, willing myself to calm down.

"You're angry because you don't want to love me?"

The hurt in her voice only compounded my anger. I spun around and faced her. "I'm angry because I
shouldn't
love you. All my love will bring you is pain. Look at how much I've hurt you already. I knew I was falling for you, and I was too goddamn selfish to walk away. And I knew telling you how I felt was only going to make it worse but I fucking told you anyway." I placed my hands on her shoulders. "Because I wasn't thinking about you. I was thinking about me. It's who I am. I'm a selfish prick who continually hurts the people he cares about. Don't believe me?" I raised a brow and nodded toward the path. "Go ask Spencer just how toxic I am. Maybe he can fill you in when he stops fucking bleeding all over the floor."

I released her and stepped away, turning my back to her and staring out over the glassy surface of the lake.

The shove at my back was so unexpected I nearly fell in. I stumbled a moment and spun, expecting to find Spencer there, ready to take my head off.

But it was still just me and Ali.

She'd shoved the hell out of me.

What the...?

I looked down into her gorgeous face and found a look of defiance. She stood on her tiptoes poking me in the chest. "I thought you might need a quick dip to cool off. You're obviously not thinking straight because what you just said is utter bullshit. You don't get to decide whether you're good for me or not, you arrogant ass. I do. And I happen to think we're amazing together. I think you're amazing. You're also still my friend, and I've already warned you about talking shit about my friend." She took a deep breath and continued. "Love is pain, hasn't anyone ever told you that? The only ones in this life with the power to truly hurt you are the ones you truly love. Everyone knows that." She shook her head as if exasperated. "You and I are fine unless you're telling me it's over. Are you?"

"Not a chance." I bleated out without hesitation.

I leaned down to meet her lips with mine and she put her hand between us, effectively halting me. "Whoa, boy. I didn't finish. You and I are fine but what happened with you and Spencer? That's bullshit, Clay, and you know it."

Ali grasped my hand, cringing when she saw that my knuckles were bruised and crusted with Spencer's blood. I'd been so intent on finding her, I hadn't realized. She blinked slowly, as if the sight disturbed her. "Please don't ever do that again. Not for me and certainly not to him." She held my hand up so I could see my raw knuckles. "We're going to find Spencer and fix this mess. These marks on your hand are going to be the only evidence of this horrible damn day. You're going to work this out with your friend. Then, when it's all over, we are going to go back to the cabin and get shit-faced drunk because this is going in the record books as the shittiest week ever. We clear, Mr. McGavran?" She tugged me along behind her.

This woman continued to amaze me. "Yes, ma'am."

I CHECKED MY
watch as we started back toward the path. "We need to hustle. The crews will be back any minute."

Ali came to a stop, looking guilty. "Actually, I sent them home for the day." She glanced around worriedly. "I um, wasn't in the mood for spectators when I got here, so I told the crew leaders that I was shutting everything down for the day." The corner of her mouth turned up slightly. "Everyone cleared out in five minutes flat. I guess none of them wanted anything to do with an agitated, crying woman."

I chuckled at the remark, but my chest tightened knowing how humiliated she must have been. I grasped her hand and brought it to my lips. "I'm sorry to have put you through that."

She leaned into my side and let me wrap an arm around her. "I'm sorry I didn't let you explain. I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions."

We reached the end of the path and turned toward the driveway, stopping in our tracks when we spotted Spencer's truck there beside mine. Ali pulled away and frowned, as we both scanned the area.

Out of nowhere, Daniel came running from the front of the house, laughing as he bounded over to us. "Hey, Uncle Clay." He held his hand out for his customary high-five and watched Ali from the corner of his eye, looking suddenly shy.

I turned to Ali. "Ali, this is Daniel." Looking back to the blushing boy, I said, "Daniel, this is my friend Ali."

He peeked up at her from under his lashes and held out a shaky hand. Ali met my eye and grinned. She had a fan. She took his hand in hers and crouched down to his level. "It's very nice to meet you, Daniel." She glanced around. "What do you think of this place? Pretty cool, huh?"

He beamed up at her. "Yeah, Gran told me there's a lake where I can go swimming, and I forgot to ask but I bet there are fish there too. I hope there are. I like to fish."

She smiled at him and nodded. "So do I."

He looked mystified by that. "You like to fish?" He glanced at me like he wasn't sure. "Do you bait your own hooks? My mom doesn't like to touch worms. Dad says worms shouldn't bother her since she's a nurse and spends half her time wiping people's asses."

"Daniel!" Vanessa's voice rang out across the yard, causing him to spin around in fear. Thankfully he had his back to us as Ali and I cracked up at his statement. He waited as his mom approached, his posture that of a man standing before a firing squad. She pointed at him as she descended the small incline. "What did I tell you about using grown-up words?" I could tell she was fighting for composure as she stepped around him and offered her hand to Ali.

"Excuse my son; it's not entirely his fault. His father is a bad influence." She swept Ali with an appraising look. "I'm Vanessa, daughter of Gran and mother of potty-mouth." She dropped Ali's hand and glared at Daniel as she lit a cigarette.

Ali smiled at her politely. "Ah yes, the nurse." She gave the cigarette a pointed look and laughed.

Vanessa glanced at me wryly. "You've obviously spent a lot of time with Clay. He's been on my case for years to quit and loves to point out the irony of a nurse puffing on a cancer stick." She smiled at Ali. "One of these days, I might even listen."

I frowned as I looked around. "Where are Gran and shithead... er... Spencer." I looked at Daniel and cringed, mouthing 'sorry' at Vanessa.

She looked between Ali and I. "They're having a little chat..." There was a loaded pause then, "probably about the house or something."

"Uncle Clay, did you know Uncle Spencer ran into the door at your cabin?" Daniel announced. My eyes flashed to Vanessa. "He had blood all over his shirt from his nose, so Gran made him take one of yours. It bled for a long time but now it just looks puffy."

Vanessa placed a hand on his shoulder. "Come on, buddy. Let's go check out the lake. We can see if we spot any fish swimming around in there." She held my eye as she ushered him away, giving me a sad smile. She knew how close Spencer and I have always been. Was she disappointed in me? I knew I was.

Just as Vanessa and Daniel turned to walk away, it occurred to me that she didn't know about the tree.

Shit!

I spun on my heel and called out to Vanessa, not wanting her to discover the tree the way I had. My mom had been her sister and I couldn't let her go to the lake without preparing her for what she'd find.

Gripping Ali's hand, I walked over to them and dropped my voice, not knowing how she would react. "Before you go down to the lake, there's something I should tell you about."

"You mean Rebecca's willow?" She took in my stunned expression with a lopsided grin. "Gran told me about it months ago."

"She what? How did she know about it?"

Vanessa told Daniel to go on ahead but to stay away from the water until she got there, watching him hurry down the path she smiled and turned to me. "Gran found it back in January. She and her cronies were bored one afternoon and decided to scour Google Earth looking for nude beaches." She grinned at Ali, who was chuckling. "They thought they'd be able to see some naked hotties if they looked long enough. Typical Gran. Anyway, after a while they gave up, and she started looking at places she'd been, locations that stood out in her memory." She shrugged and tipped her head toward the lake. "Eventually, curiosity got the better of her and looked this place up on the map. That's when she found the tree. She told me it was enormous and beautiful. Said it was time to bring this place back to life. That's around the time she started talking about building the house."

I couldn't believe she never told me about the tree.

She just sent me out here without any warning.

I'd have been pissed off about it if it weren't for the mess I'd made of things today. I couldn't really call her out for not telling me when I'd done something far worse.

Vanessa excused herself to check on Daniel, leaving me to clean up my mess.

After she had vanished down the lake path, Ali and I climbed the hill toward the house. Construction was coming along nicely though there was still a long way to go. The weather forecast wasn't good, heavy rain expected pretty much all damn week next week thanks to a slow-moving tropical depression creeping up the coast, so that was sure to bring things to a crawl. While bad weather sucked for the project, the idea of having lazy afternoons at the cabin with Ali sounded like heaven.

We heard voices off in the distance and watched as Spencer and Gran made their way to his truck talking quietly amongst themselves, their backs to Ali and me. Spencer hopped into the back of his truck and opened the large toolbox, meeting my eye over the diamond-plate lid. He glared at me stonily as I approached; Ali was clinging to my arm as I went. His nose was horribly swollen, and his upper lip matched its purplish tint.

Fuck.

He didn't speak to me as I stopped beside the truck. I'd purposely chosen the opposite side from Gran in hopes that I could avoid her for a few more moments. His expression shifted to a pleasant smile as he looked over at Ali. "Hey there, Ali. Nice to see you again." He looked guilty as he said, "I'm sorry for the scene you walked in on earlier. I want you to know that none of that was about you."

I couldn't help wondering if he'd said that to keep himself from looking like an asshole or if he was trying to defend me. Not that he owed me a damn thing after how I'd acted. I waited to see if Ali snipped at him over his earlier comment, but she just smiled up at him sweetly. "I know. Clay and I talked everything out." She looked at him and back at me, her voice pleasant, but her expression stern. "Now it's time for you two to talk." She stood on her tiptoes and peeked over the truck bed at Gran before turning to me. "I'm going to go introduce myself, maybe take a walk with Gran and you guys are going to make this right." When Spencer looked like he wanted to argue, she cleared her throat and interrupted him. "Please come down here so I can talk to you without getting a crick in my neck."