Last Kiss (12 page)

“You’re right,” she repeated, her expression kind despite the hardness in her eyes. “And I’ve already come to the same conclusion. I have to be true to myself, once and for all. No more running away, no matter how scared I am. Time to ‘grow up,’ as you said. Time to be strong.”

Her speech gathered conviction as it went on, each new phrase sounding more resilient than the one before. I wanted to be proud and assured with her, but the more her confidence grew, the more dread seeped into my veins, and I wasn’t sure if it was me being silly or insightful so I tried not to jump to conclusions.

Then she landed at her finale. “Which means I’ve got to fight for what I want.”

With those words, I didn’t have to jump; I just had to take the next step. “And you want Reeve.” It wasn’t a question. I knew the answer as sure as I knew anything.

“I do,” she affirmed. “Maybe there’s no future for us.”
No future for us
. It echoed in my head. “We have our issues – I won’t lie about that. You’ve heard some of it. He’s nearly impossible. Well, you know him now. He’s controlling and obstinate and difficult.”

“Yeah. He’s all those things, all right.” My words sounded clipped, purposefully so. I had to draw back. Had to close myself off. Had to put up my guard. Because there was no way I’d be able to take her on if I let myself be compassionate.

And I
would
take her on. I was already preparing my attack. My only hesitation was in trying to figure out – did she really not know that I belonged to him? Or was her ignorance an act? If it was an act, did she think her hold on me was so strong that I’d quietly step out of the way just because she’d asked?

If she did believe that, I couldn’t blame her. She was almost right. She did own me like that. Just, he owned me like that now, too.

“I love him,” she said, sounding like she was a million miles away despite her bold declaration. “Love counts for something, doesn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t be here if it didn’t.” My smile was genuine. “You know that’s why I came for you, right? Because I love you?” I hoped she truly believed that before I told her the rest – that I loved Reeve too. That he loved me as well.

“Yes. I do.” She paused, and I was about to give my thoughts on the subject when she continued. “Reeve told me he still loves me, too, you know. So I think we might have a real chance.”

I hadn’t heard her right. I couldn’t have. “He told you he still loves you?”

“Yes. Last night.” In that angel-like way of hers, she beamed.

She might as well have pushed me off the edge because I began to free-fall. Emotionally, anyway. I was still standing in the same place, my feet planted solidly on the roof, but inside, my heart sank like it was on an elevator, descending slowly and steadily, falling with no end in sight.

“What else did he say?” I didn’t know how I’d managed the question, but I heard it, the words circling back to my ears, detached as if someone else had asked it, and I thought briefly how fitting it was that my voice had survived this crash. It was the most recognizable part of me, anyway. I could return to LA, to my life, to my job, and, as long as I could still say my voice-over lines on the set of my show, no one would ever know how completely I’d been destroyed.

This.
This was why I never let myself trust.

“He didn’t say a lot.” Amber’s image blurred in front of me. “Just, he apologized. And said he’d changed – which is probably a good thing. Maybe he won’t try to keep me locked up this time.” She laughed.

When I didn’t join her in her amusement, she sobered. “Anyway. That’s when he said he still loved me. I know love isn’t everything, but it’s more than I’ve tried to build a life on before. So I’m hopeful. It’s the first time I’ve been hopeful in a really long time.”

“That makes me really happy for you, Amber.” It wasn’t a lie, exactly. I did feel happy for her in some strange part of me that could separate us. Separate her man from mine. That part of me was as hopeful as she was. That part of me was so excited and touched that it didn’t seem odd that my eyes were watering.

Even though it wasn’t that part of me that had the tears.

“You deserve it.” I forced a smile.

She met it with a modest smile of her own. “I don’t know that I’d go that far.”

“No. You do. Everyone deserves to have hope.” Even me.

And right now, my hope was that Amber was lying.

After helping Amber back inside and down from the attic, I made some vague excuse to leave her and search for Reeve.

“He’s out with the Callahans,” Parker, the stable manager, told me when I found him out in the shed, putting gas in an ATV. “They’re branding the calves up at the cowshed in the east pasture.”

The doors of the shed were propped open so I squinted out over the property and pointed toward one of the trails. “That one? The one on the north side of the house?”

“Yep.”

I was already heading out when he shouted after me, “It’s a little more than a mile out there. If you want to give me fifteen or so to finish up, I can drive you.”

“In fifteen minutes I’ll already be there.” I didn’t wait for his response, half afraid he’d try to talk me out of going alone. It was already a bad idea to talk to Reeve about this while he was trying to work. At least, I could keep Parker out of it.

And maybe the walk would cool my head a bit.

It didn’t. In fact, if anything, it stirred me up more. There were too many layers of emotions within me, and when I was able to come to terms with one, I’d lift it up to find another, more complicated layer in its place. And there didn’t seem any way to organize them all.

If I started at the beginning, it would be with Amber. After all these years, there was still a bond between her and me. For that reason, I wanted to be able to give her what she wanted. But did that have to be Reeve? She’d left him. She’d said good-bye, and it didn’t matter if she’d gone because she was wrong for him or because she was scared or if she regretted it. She was gone when I’d found him. He was fair game. What’s more, he’d chosen me, and even though I was frightened, too, I was ready to be his.

Unless he’d lied to me. Unless he’d led me on.

Unless he’d chosen Amber, too.

He hadn’t ever told me what he’d said to her at dinner. Only what he
would have
said had I stayed. Had he dodged because he hadn’t wanted me to know what had really occurred? Could he have told her he still loved her – because he didn’t want to hurt her or because he meant it – and then spent the night in my bed?

However hard I tried to stay away from that possibility, it kept circling back to face me. It bullied and chased all other conclusions until it was the only one in my head, and by the time I’d made the mile trek to the east pasture, it inhabited me so completely that I felt like a stranger in my skin. A stranger filled with rage.

I’d only been to the east part of the ranch once before. Reeve had taken me on a horseback ride that had led past the cowshed and the grassy fields that surrounded it. The pasture had been quiet that day, the air filled with the pleasant aroma of wildflowers, with only a few cattle moseying around.

Today it was filled with commotion and cowboys, and the scent of smoke and burning hide was so strong it made my eyes water. The cattle had been gathered into the corral, where they bellowed and snorted as men on horseback rode through the herd, disrupting their formation to round up the calves. Outside the pen, a fire blazed in a large pit. Surrounding the pit were several branding stations, each made up of a dozen or so men and women.

As I pushed through the crowd looking for Reeve, a woman opened up the gate and a horseback rider emerged, dragging a calf behind him with a rope. He pulled the animal toward me and I scurried backward trying to get out of his way, but crashed into a woman who gave me a spiteful look before brushing past me. I stepped to the side and bumped into someone’s elbow so forcefully it knocked the air from my lungs and sent me tripping into the circle of ranch hands that had gathered to pin the animal down. I pitched forward, tumbling toward the end of a hot iron when two strong hands dug into my upper arms and pulled me back.

“Jesus, Emily,” Reeve said, after he’d tugged me a safe distance from the branding station. “What the fuck are you doing out here? Are you trying to get yourself seriously hurt?”

I blinked, too stunned to speak.

Reeve didn’t wait for an answer, clutching me to his chest. “It’s okay,” he said, and it sounded like he was trying to calm himself as much as me. “Just… breathe. Take a few deep breaths. You’re okay.”

I did as he said, staring transfixed at the scene Reeve had rescued me from. One woman used a piercing gun to tag the calf’s ear while another man brought his knife toward the animal’s scrotum. Then came the iron. I closed my eyes tightly, not wanting to see any more, but on the back of my lids I saw the red blaze of the brand coming toward me and the fiery end was a V instead of a K and even though I knew that Amber’s tattoo hadn’t been applied in that manner, it seemed just as vile.

I turned my head into Reeve, as if that would chase the frightening image away.

“Blue Eyes.” He smoothed his hand over my hair, attempting to soothe me.

But the sound of his voice brought me back to reality, and with a jolt I remembered why I’d come out here in the first place.

I pushed away abruptly and hugged my arms around myself.

“What’s wrong?” His voice was edged with concern that was probably left over from the near accident he’d rescued me from.

My adrenaline was still spiked as well, and so instead of starting the conversation in a rational manner like I should have, I pounced. “Do you still love Amber?”

“Excuse me?”

He’d heard me. I was sure of it.

We were face-to-face, far enough away from everyone else that it was unlikely that anything more than a few snatches of conversation could be overheard, and yet we were not at all in private. His warning was silent, conveyed simply in the arch of his brow, the reminder that there were rules and regulations I was meant to adhere to. Picking a fight in public was definitely not on the approved list of behaviors.

And I didn’t give a flying fuck.

I repeated my question, speaking each word slowly and succinctly. “Do you still love Amber?”

“Do
you
?” His words were filled with as much accusation as mine had been.

It surprised me. “That’s not the same.”

“Really? How is it different?”

I opened my mouth to answer and realized I wasn’t sure it really
was
all that different.

I rephrased. “Did you tell her that you still loved her?”

The three seconds between my words and his response were heavy and long.

Then, with his gaze pinned on mine, he answered. “Yes. I did.”

When Amber had told me Reeve still loved her, I’d felt like I was falling. Now, I felt like I was fading. As if I were merely someone in a photograph left out too long in the sun, and although parts of my figure remained, I was no longer identifiable. I was no longer a person at all.

It didn’t matter if there was more to his story or that he’d been honest with me when I’d asked or that he couldn’t really be blamed for loving a person that everyone loved, even me. All that mattered was that he’d said words to her that he still hadn’t officially said to me. I was the one who was supposed to belong to him. I was the one who deserved the sentiment, never mind my inability to say the words myself.

What mattered was that he’d said it to her, and that hurt.

I couldn’t be there anymore. Spinning away from him, I took off.

“Don’t walk away from me!” he yelled after me.

“This discussion is over!” I called back, not bothering to turn my head.

Again I felt his grip on my upper arm as he pulled me to an abrupt stop. “The conversation is over when I say it’s over.” The menacing warning in his tone caused my heart to flip. My breath stuttered, and I wondered if he knew it wasn’t just because he’d startled me or because I’d exerted myself.

The gleam in his eye said that he did.

I couldn’t stand that gleam. Couldn’t bear what it did to me, how it made me sizzle and melt like it was a branding iron on my skin.

I yanked my arm away. “I can’t talk to you right now.”

He grabbed me again, this time at both of my wrists. “You don’t have to talk. You just have to listen.”

Listening was even worse. He’d either say something I didn’t want to hear, or worse, he’d say something that I did. So I struggled to get away.

“Stop fighting me.” His grasp tightened.

But I was fierce. I was desperate. I had more on the line, and even though he would always be able to overpower me, I was determined to make him work for it.

Even in front of all the people around, he wasn’t afraid to take me on. I raised my arm and twisted underneath so that I was facing away from him, my hands trapped behind me.

“Goddammit, Emily, sometimes I want to throw you down and tie you up like you’re one of the calves.” With a grunt, he tugged my back into his chest and crossed his arms around me like he was a straightjacket.

I pushed against him once more, but it was useless. He had me.

He had me in more ways than one. Even though I was upset, his embrace made my stomach spin and my head grow light, and the expert way he’d overcome me begged me to yield.

Yes, he had me.

“Are you done now?”

I huffed but I’d given up struggling. With him, anyway. I was still struggling with myself. Still fighting against my wants.

“Good,” he said, his breath skidding against my ear. Thank God my shirtsleeves were long and he couldn’t see the goose bumps on my arms.

“Now,” he adjusted his grip, and I swore I felt his cock thickening at my ass. “Yes. I told her that I loved her. I told her I loved her but that
things have changed
.”

Things
had
changed. Everything had changed when he said those words to her. And to tell me about it while he was hard against me? It was wickedly unfair.

He was silent for a beat, as if he thought that what he’d said or how his body reacted to holding me should have some impact.

When I didn’t respond, he let out a sigh of frustration and released his grip.

I stumbled forward but managed to stay on my feet. It pissed me off as much that he’d let me go as that he’d restrained me in the first place. And it pissed me off that it pissed me off. I considered taking off again, but what would be the point?

So I stayed put, my back to him, rubbing my wrists, red from how tightly he’d gripped them.

“I told her I wasn’t the man I’d been when she left, Emily.” There was the barest hint of an appeal in his timbre. “And that she couldn’t walk back in here and expect things to be the same.”

I threw back my head and swallowed down a sob. If that had been all he’d said, if he’d left out the part where he loved her, maybe she would have heard it how he meant it.

But there’s something about that four-letter word that’s magical. It can erase everything else. So who could blame her for hearing only that? Who could blame me for noticing its absence when he spoke to me?

I twisted to look at him. “What else?”

He shook his head. “That was it. I didn’t say anything else.” His expression was unguarded. Open. It was maybe the most transparent he’d ever been with me, and even if his lips didn’t say it right then, his eyes urged me to remember he had, in his way, told me he’d loved me too. I could have been moved, if I’d let myself.

But Amber had opened up to me today as well. Either I let her words move me, or his. It was like a tug-of-war with my sympathies. Who could pull harder on my heartstrings? I’d have to choose. And I didn’t want to choose between them.

It was easier to just be pissed.

“Well, congratulations,” I said, sarcasm spilling from my tongue. “You’ve sure created a mess, haven’t you.”

His body tensed as he cocked his head at me. “How exactly do you figure that I’ve made a mess?”

“You led her on!” Behind him, a couple of the ranchers watched our argument with interest.

Reeve kept his focus directly on me, seemingly oblivious to everyone else. “I think I was pretty damn straightforward.”

“
Pretty damn straightforward
would have been you telling her that you wanted me.” He should have been the one to decide. Not me. I couldn’t.

I
wouldn’t.

“After you’d made it abundantly clear that
you
wanted to be the one who told her?” He threw his eyes toward the sky. “Jesus, Emily. I’m damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. There is no winning with you.”

I didn’t have a comeback because he was right – there was no winning. Someone would lose, and I couldn’t stand that it might be my fault.

Crossing my arms tightly over my chest, I pushed my voice past the knot in my throat. “Don’t you dare turn this around on me.”

He took a step closer so that he was practically hovering over me. “Why not, Emily? Because you can’t handle your share of the blame? Because, just like always, you’d rather let things happen to you instead of taking any action so that you don’t have to accept responsibility for the consequences?”

His words slaughtered me with their honesty. “That’s cruel.” My lip quivered with rage. I pointed an accusing finger in his direction. “That’s how you
want
me. To be submissive and obedient. Then, when I am, you use that to blame me for being passive?”

His lip curled upward. “And that’s how you want
me
, now, isn’t it?”

To his credit, he couldn’t hold his smile, as though he suspected he might have gone too far.

But was it really too far? Or just too accurate? It was precisely why men like Reeve were so bad for me – because I
wanted
them to be bad for me. And, when they were, it hurt.

Funny how then I wanted them even more.

“No,” I said, making a decision, for once, on my own. The only one I could. “I don’t want any of this. This is over.”

“This is
not
over,” he said, but I’d already turned away.

He might have come after me again, except, right then, Parker drove up on one of the three-wheelers, the expression on his face clearly upset.

Reeve’s eyes darted from me to his stable manager, as if trying to choose which of us to deal with. Finally, he said, “We are not done talking about this, Emily,” then turned to Parker. “What is it?”