“Ten more minutes and we’re out here, pretty girl,” Rex tells me as he takes my dirty cup and flips it upside down in the small bar dishwasher.
Chase brushes past me with a grunt of annoyance and suddenly I’m tired of the dark cloud he always seems to carry around him when I’m near so I throw my hands on my hips and follow him down the bar.
“Why don’t you just spit out what you really want to say, Chase? It’s just the four of us here now. Say what you need to so we can move on.”
He slams the next bar stool onto the top of the bar causing Rex and Luke to shoot him looks and then turns to face me, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Yeah, let’s do this right now. It’d be good if we can head this disaster off before I have to clean up another mess you make.”
My mouth drops open in shock and Rex barks his name in warning but Chase just barrels on.
“You might have had good reasons for leaving but you weren’t the one who had to deal with the fallout. I’m the one who had to watch them fall apart. I’m the one who had to watch them leave when they couldn’t stand to be here where your memory haunted us at every turn! Now you’re here again, back and claiming that you’re going to stay. Well, just fucking great. What are you going to do now, Rain? Are you going to finally figure your shit out and make a fucking decision on which one of us you’re going to be with? And then what? Who’s going to put the other two of us together when that breaks us again? Me, that’s who - and I’m not going to let you do that to us again!”
I stare at him in complete disbelief. He’s blaming me? Making this all my fault - like they aren’t grown men capable of owning their own shit? Somehow, that’s for me to manage? It’s so fucking ridiculous that I start laughing. I turn away from him and spot Rex behind the bar.
Instead of looking pissed at his jackass twin, he’s looking at me with concern and a hint of accusation and that just makes me laugh even more. Luke stares at Chase with a narrow-eyed look full of anger and that lets me catch my breath enough to tamp down the hysteria that’s overtaken me. I swipe at the tears my laughter brought to my eyes and suck in a deep breath and then face Chase again. I pull all the emotion out of my expression and tone.
“Did it occur to you for even one minute that I’m not here because of you? That I’m not staying for you? That me being here has absolutely nothing to do with you and your issues with me, you egotistical asshole?”
I say it with zero inflection like he’s not worth even my anger and it hits him hard. He flinches back and I start to nod slowly.
“That’s right, I’m staying for me. My whole life I’ve pushed myself into a box to be what others wanted me to be or what I thought they wanted from me. I’ve been pretending for so long that I don’t even know how to be me anymore or who that even is but I’m figuring it out step by step.” My voice finally chokes a bit at that but I push it down. “I’m not here to fix you or them or even us. I can’t BE anything for any of you because I’m too busy fixing ME. I need to focus on that before I can even think about being anything for someone else.”
I slam my hands into my hair and clench my finger into fists out of frustration as anger flares up inside of me and I set it loose on him.
“And fuck you! If along the way to me figuring my shit out I want to fuck Rex or Luke or…” I narrow my glare at him because he’s sure as hell not on that list anymore, “or anyone I choose to fuck, that doesn’t make me a whore! It just makes me horny and that’s my goddamn right as a single woman.”
Chase rocks back on his feet again like he never did consider any of that and I almost laugh at the dumbfounded expression on his face but I’m still too mad at him to switch it off.
He steps toward me with his hand out.
“I…I know…that. I never meant to call you a…Fuck, Rain, I just meant…dammit! You left and everything fell apart. Things have been shit for so long and then you came back just when I thought we were starting to get better and it threw me for a loop. There was never any…closure. Everything was just so…broken. I don’t know how to fix it.”
My anger starts to drain away and I’m done. I’m just done with this tonight. I dig in my purse and pull out my keys and clutch them in my fist. I spare a glance at Rex and then back to Chase.
“Sometimes, Chase, sometimes you don’t get closure. Sometimes you just have to accept what’s been broken needs to stay that way and move on.”
I turn my back to him, throw up a hand at Rex who says my name in a pleading tone, and hold my keys out to Luke.
“Will you drive me home?”
He keeps his hard look directed at Chase but unfolds his arms from across his chest and reaches out to take the keys from me. His warm hand is on the small of my back as he guides me from the bar and over to my car.
Tonight I’m glad for Luke’s quiet demeanor. I have no desire to rehash what just happened. Halfway home he reaches over and takes my hand, and holds it for the rest of the drive. When we pull up in front of the trailer and he shuts off the car I turn to him but I’m out of words tonight so I just turn back, open the door and slowly walk to the stairs.
Luke follows me right up the stairs to the door and I turn back to tell him thank you for the ride and that I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to sleep here tonight but the words die on a gasp as his hand comes up and wraps around my throat to hold me gently against the door.
I swallow hard at the intense look in his eyes and my lashes flutter half closed when he sweeps that warm thumb down my throat.
“Look at me.”
It’s a tone I’ve never heard from Luke before. Strong, confident, commanding. My stomach flips as I raise my eyes back up to meet his. All the words he could say could never be as powerful as his gaze and his silence. I sink into his silence, drowning in his ocean-blue heat until I can’t breathe from the need I have for him.
I take a staggered breath when his hand flexes on my throat and says, “I’ll take anything you’re willing to give to me. Anything. I’m yours and I’ll always be yours.”
That’s it. I’ve hit my limit. It’s all I can take. Everything inside me is screaming for this to happen. I scramble for the knob behind me to get the door open and drag him into the house with me. His forearm slides under my ass and he lifts me with one arm until I can wrap my legs around him. He kicks the door closed behind us and then my back hits the wall and his soft lips brush across mine. He does it again and again and those kisses heat my core more than any deep passionate one could because it’s so…Luke. That kiss is the boy I’ve been in love with for more than half my life. My hands come up and cup his face.
“Take me to bed, Luke, and take…everything,” I whisper to him and that must break his control because his mouth finally comes down on mine, hard – as a growl rumbles up from his chest. It’s a soul-destroying kiss that has me grinding myself against his hard stomach. His hands grip my ass harder as he surges up to hit the apex of my thighs with his hardness and I moan at the contact.
