Last Chance Rebel (24 page)

Standing there, looking at the woman who seemed so reduced, so dry, Rebecca couldn't feel much regret that she had gone. And she couldn't feel at fault either.

Jessica Bear was immovable. As immovable now as ever. Stubborn. Tragic. Rebecca couldn't have made her leave any more than she could have made her stay.

“You doing all right?” Rebecca found herself asking, a question that her own mother hadn't bothered to pose.

But, she wasn't really Rebecca's mother. Not in any way that mattered. She had given birth to her, but Jonathan was the one who had stayed. He was the one who cared. Then there was Lane, and there was Alison and Cassie, Finn—who had been gallant, even while he was being a little bit of a cad.

There was Gage.

There were people in her life who mattered, who deserved to have more of her than this woman. This woman who had occupied so much of Rebecca's soul for so long.

Whose abandonment had dictated Rebecca's every action and emotion. For too long. For far too long. She didn't deserve it. And Rebecca was tired of giving it to her.

There was no angry outburst, no grand reckoning that would ever restore what was gone. There was only moving forward.

Realizing that the monsters were only monsters in her head.

“I don't need charity,” her mother responded, “if that's what you're asking.”

“I run a store on Main Street, in Copper Ridge,” Rebecca found herself saying. “Jonathan owns a construction company. He does very well for himself.”

The words seemed to bounce off of her mother, like rain against hard ground. Too dry to absorb anything. To let anything in.

“That so?” she asked, finally, no indication of whether or not she cared was reflected in that flat voice.

“Yes. He did a great job of taking care of me.”

“This your boyfriend?” Her mother asked, gesturing to Gage.

Rebecca didn't quite know how to answer that. He wasn't her boyfriend, not really. And even if he were, that word wouldn't seem like quite enough.

“He's a friend,” she decided to say.

Because she was discovering what all her friendships meant to her. How much they had saved her. The degree to which they had supported her over all these years, even when she hadn't given equally in return.

Calling him a friend didn't minimize him at all.

Her mother nodded, taking a drag on her cigarette. “Yeah, I had a lot of those friends.”

Rebecca gritted her teeth. “He drove me here to see you. To support me. I don't know if you have any friends quite like that.”

Her mother laughed. “Did you come here to make up?”

“I can't do that on my own,” Rebecca said.

Her mother said nothing, crossing her leg over the other, jiggling her foot, rocking back and forth as she put the cigarette into her mouth again. “Guess not,” she said, talking around it.

“I wanted to say that I forgive you. And I think I can do that without an emotional reunion. It's not really about you. It's just about what I want to hold on to now, and what I don't.”

Jessica Bear shrugged her bony shoulders. “You can't forgive things like that,” she said, drawing more tightly in on herself. “I never forgave your father for leaving us. There's no reason for you to forgive me.”

“No, there isn't,” Rebecca said. “But I'm doing it all the same.”

“I don't want you to.” Those words were full of spite, confusion.

As if Jessica Bear needed her daughter to be angry at her.

“I didn't ask,” Rebecca said. “I need to do it for me. This has nothing to do with you. But I needed to come here. I needed to let it go. So I'm doing that. My store is called the Trading Post. If you ever want to come see me, you can.”

Then she turned, walking out of the trailer, the first breath of cold, fresh air like breaking the surface of the water after too long under the surface.

She could feel Gage following behind her. She got into the truck, buckling herself, leaning her head against the cold window, willing herself not to cry. She wasn't going to shed any more tears. Wasn't going to let any more anger build inside of her.

Gage got into the truck then, starting the engine. “Do you want me to wait a second?”

“Just in case,” Rebecca said. They waited, but her mother didn't come out of the trailer. Finally, Rebecca took a deep breath. “We can go.”

“I'm sorry,” he said.

Rebecca laughed. “I don't know what I expected. You can't really expect a woman who abandoned her children to receive one of them with open arms after seventeen years, can you?”

“I don't know. I mean, my own family didn't exactly open their arms to me, but it wasn't like that.”

“Yeah, but you're the one that did the leaving. Not them. I know she doesn't feel things quite the same way other people do. Or maybe she does, and she just doesn't know what to do with it. I'll tell you one thing—I think she's angrier at herself than I've ever been at her.”

He nodded slowly. “Accepting forgiveness when you know you don't deserve it isn't easy.”

“If you're talking about yourself again...don't. You do deserve it. We both deserve to move forward.”

“I do accept it. If only because I just saw what rejecting it looks like. And how little it helps.”

“Thank you.”

“So,” he said, his tone lighter, like he was trying to put a Band-Aid on the situation. For some reason that bothered her, and she couldn't pinpoint why. “You want to go see a movie? They have a movie theater here.”

She laughed, reluctantly. “I'm not exactly in a theatergoing mood.”

“Fish and chips?”

“That I would take.”

This hadn't gone quite the same as forgiving Gage had. She didn't feel free or light, not immediately. But she felt like something was changing. Like something important had just taken place. Even if it hadn't been a magic fix.

She looked to the side, at the man she was sharing the truck with. The man who had driven her all the way down here, who had stood there and witnessed all of that. It hadn't occurred to her to be embarrassed to expose that moment to him.

He was the keeper of all her secrets, after all. She just wished that he would give her more of his. Pointless maybe, but something that was starting to make her ache.

“Thank you,” she said, “for coming with me.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I figured it was time I started giving more than I took.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

S
OMETHING
ABOUT
THE
words that Gage had spoken in the truck dug at her all through dinner, and all through the ride back to Copper Ridge.

She wondered if she was just feeling unsettled because of what had happened with her mother. There really was no guidebook for how to deal with that. A strange, unsettling reunion that had put so many fragmented pieces back into place, but had solidified the fact that there would probably never be a magical reconciliation.

But it was more than that.

I figured it was time I started giving more than I took.

She turned those words over until they pulled into Gage's driveway. It was unspoken that they would have sex again. The only question had been which house he would choose to go to. She imagined the fact he had chosen his made it less ambiguous. Made it clear that she was supposed to come in and stay a while.

She wondered if he would want her to stay the night. In which case, she should probably get some things from her house. But, she didn't want to broach that subject. She didn't want to seem needy.

Her thoughts kept on spinning like that as she walked up the steps and into the house. As soon as they closed the front door behind them, he turned, drawing her into his arms, up against his chest.

“Let me fix it,” he said, kissing her on the neck.

And suddenly, everything clicked into place. Exactly why those words he had spoken in the truck hit her wrong. Exactly what was wrong with all of this.

“That's all you've done. From the moment you came back to town. Fix things. Whether I wanted you to or not.”

He released his hold on her slowly, taking a step back. “I came with you today because you asked me. Are you really going to start pretending like you didn't want any of that?”

“Of course I did. I asked for it. But, then you go into this self-loathing space where you start talking about breaking things. About how you've broken me. I don't know why you do it.”

“It's called owning up to my mistakes.”

“No,” she said, slow realization dawning over her. “I don't think that's it.”

“You think you know me? You think you know what I'm doing and why better than I do?”

“I can't answer that. You might know what you're doing. You might even know why you're doing it. But you're not being honest with me. I would bet you aren't being honest with yourself either.”

“Is that what we're going to do now? We're going to have a therapy session? Because I was hoping that we could just fuck.”

The words hit her like a stark slap. And as much as she wished that she could be angry about them, as much as she expected to be, she wasn't. She couldn't be. She realized then that this was what had to happen. He had walked back into her life playing the part of benevolent benefactor.

The contrite and tragic figure that had ruined her life, come to set things to rights. He had cast her in the role of angel, put up on a pedestal, beautiful and tragic. And he had cast himself in the role of villain seeking absolution. But there was no nuance to that. No reality. And it helped no one.

He was comfortable this way. Giving, and giving while taking nothing in return. Calling himself terrible at every turn while never once proving it to her.

“Is that what you need?” she asked.

She cared. She found that she cared desperately. She was on a mission. A mission to exorcise every demon inside of her. And he was keeping his locked up tight inside of him. It hadn't gotten better since she'd told him that she'd forgiven him. It hadn't changed anything for him. It had changed everything for her.

But she couldn't reach him. He made it impossible. She could see that now. That he was somewhere deep inside of himself, behind the walls that he had built up around his soul. That he was more deeply protected than she had ever been. He was willing to come in and call himself all kinds of terrible things. Willing to take the brunt of everything.

But he wouldn't open up. He wouldn't let anyone in. Least of all her. Suddenly, she felt desperate. Desperate to break him open. Desperate to reach him.

“Don't ask me what I need,” he said, obviously angry that she was.

“Why not? Why shouldn't I ask you what you need? You've spent all this time taking care of me, coddling me like I was a baby bird.”

“Right. I treated you so gently all the times I forced my lust on you.”

“Right. All of that horrible oral sex and endless orgasms. You really are a monster.”

“Don't wilfully misunderstand. You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do know what you mean. Better than you do.”

“Stop it, Rebecca. I didn't want to have a fight with you. Especially not after what you went through today...”

“Don't make it about me.” She was filled with anger now, fury, because she was starting to realize just what an illusion their time together had been. She felt like they had been opening themselves up to each other. She had felt like, because she knew so many of his secrets, she knew him too. But she had never reached him. Had never seen him. He was hiding behind his mission—this supposed mission to care for her—to atone for his sins.

He had walked into her life and changed everything. And he was determined to walk back out again exactly the same as he had appeared.

She didn't want that. She wanted him just as destroyed and altered as she was. She wanted him to be irrevocably and completely changed by this. To be healed.

But she could see, even now, in the flat darkness of his eyes that he wasn't going to accept it.

“You wanted to give me the store. You wanted to give me pleasure. You made me dinner. You went with me to see my mother. And still, you act like you have more to atone for. But I can't continually offer you that without you giving me anything in return. It doesn't work. One person can't change while the other one stands there. One person can't give endlessly.”

“Maybe in a relationship, but this isn't really a relationship.”

His words hurt. They cut deep, even though they were true. Even though it was nothing more than what they had talked about.

“Well, you want to fix things. You want to make me happy. What if I told you I wanted more?”

“That won't fix anything for you.”

“Right. Because you're only going to do exactly what fits within your idea of how fixing me works. Only you can do it, and only for a limited time, because then you have to walk away. Because you're so terrible.”

She was digging at him now, pressing against the wound, because it was the only way she was going to get a reaction out of him. She knew it.

“Rebecca...”

“Show me. You keep telling me what a terrible man you are, all while fixing me dinner and giving me amazing sex. Maybe it's time you show me. Stop talking about how awful you are and give me some of it.”

“You don't want that.”

“No,” she said, “you don't want that. Because that would mean showing me something of yourself and you're too afraid to do that. I'm not afraid of how terrible you are. You're the one that's afraid of it. I can handle it. I'm not weak. I never have been. And I'm tired of people treating me like I am. You were the one person that I thought understood. But now, I think you're going out of your way to not understand. If I'm not the victim, where does that leave you?”

She found herself being hauled up against him, his hold hard, punishing. Borderline bruising. “This is what you want? You want to see me being terrible?”

“If it's honest.”

“I don't think you want my honesty, Rebecca.”

“Stop telling me what I want, Gage. I have never been the tragic waif sitting around waiting for you to come back and redeem her. Never. I had a life, and I had to live it the best way that I could. I've admitted that it wasn't actually all that functional. But that had nothing to do with you either. That was all me. So I don't need you to come in here and clean up all of my messes so you can ride out into the sunset feeling good about yourself, or bad about yourself still, or whatever it is you're trying to do.”

She reached up, grabbing hold of his chin, holding his face steady. “Show me what a selfish bastard you are.”

* * *

S
HOW
ME
WHAT
a selfish bastard you are.

Those words ignited something inside of him. Something that he had tried to keep repressed since he had first seen Rebecca. Hell, it was something he'd tried to keep repressed for the last seventeen years.

She was pushing. Because she thought that if she pushed hard enough she would find something good down underneath all that. She was pushing because she thought that she could heal him.

Everything in him rebelled at that thought. She was wrong. And if she wanted him to prove that, then he would.

“Don't you dare ask me if I'm sure,” she said, her dark eyes burning into his. “Don't you dare treat me like I'm broken. I'm not broken. I think I've proven that.”

She might not be broken now, but maybe she would be broken after this. Maybe they both would be. That thought made his chest tighten up, made him feel like someone had reached inside of him and grabbed hold of his heart.

“What's wrong?” she asked, her tone goading. “Do I scare you, Gage?” She slid her hands down his chest, her fingernails raking across the thin material of his T-shirt. “You're such a big, bad man, but I'm the one that scares you.”

He grabbed hold of her wrist, holding her steady, staring her down. He said nothing, taking his other hand and working at his belt, then flicking open the button on his jeans, before tugging the zipper down.

“You want me to be selfish?” he asked. “You want to know what I want? The kind of thing that I fantasize about, that I want only for me? I want you down on your knees in front of me. I want to watch you take me into your pretty mouth before you suck me hard.”

The words hit him hard as iron, even while he felt sick in the pit of his stomach over what this had brought him to. Over what she had brought him to.

Her breath quickened, her breasts rising and falling with the movement, color high in her cheeks.

Tell me to go to hell
, he pleaded silently.

If she walked out the door, away from this, away from him, it would give him time to get a hold of himself. To get a grip on his control. Right now, if she stayed, there would be no going back. He couldn't treat her the way that he wanted to, he couldn't treat her the way that he needed to.

But she didn't.

Slowly, Rebecca sank down to her knees in front of him. She leaned forward, her chestnut hair cascading over her face in a glossy curtain, hiding her from him. Then, her delicate fingers found him inside of his underwear, wrapping around his aching cock, squeezing him tight.

Sweet, slick heat consumed him as she flicked the edge of her tongue along the hard ridge of his shaft.

He grabbed hold of her hair, using it as an anchor, pulling it away from her face so that he could watch exactly what she was doing. She looked up at him, a challenge visible deep in those dark eyes.

She tasted him slowly, without skill, moving her tongue from the head of his dick all the way down to the base, then back up again.

“Stop,” he said, the word a hard command.

She did, her gaze watchful, waiting for the next order.

“If this is for me,” he said, “then take your top off. Let me see you.”

He let go of her hair for a moment, waiting for her to make the next move. She rocked back slightly, grabbing hold of her T-shirt and yanking it over her head, then unhooking her bra and sending it flying across the room.

She placed her hands in her lap, sitting in front of him wearing her jeans and nothing else. He was completely transfixed by the sight of her. By her perfectly formed breasts, that beautiful golden skin.

Selfish. She wanted him to be selfish? She wanted him to be terrible? It would never end. It was a well inside of him, deep and yawning, never satisfied because he never allowed himself to replenish it.

Never allowed himself to admit just how much he needed something like this. How much he needed another person.

For seventeen years he had walked through life without forging any deep connections. Staying one step ahead of the howling demon inside of him that was so desperate, so lonely, if he ever let it catch up to him it would consume him completely.

It had caught up to him now in a raging torrent of need, a dark beast that had sunk its teeth deep into his throat, shaking hard.

He reached out, wrapping her long hair around his fist, drawing her face back forward toward him.

She pressed her hands against his thighs, parting her lips and taking him in, a sweet, shallow tasting that was reflective of her inexperience.

The best part about a blow job in Gage's estimation was the anonymity. It was easy to close his eyes and feel. It allowed him to detach completely from what was happening. At least, that was how it had been in every other situation.

It was impossible to pretend that this was anyone other than Rebecca. And he didn't even want to. He wanted it to be her, down on her knees in front of him, making him feel like this. Need burned inside of him, hot and reckless. And he couldn't see an end to it. He wanted more. More and more, and he didn't think it could ever be satisfied. The deeper she took him, the slicker the slide of her hot, unpracticed tongue, the more that he wanted.

He laced his fingers through her hair, holding her tightly as she continued to torture him. He could stay like this forever. It still wouldn't be enough.

Need consumed him, suffused him. He couldn't remember the last time he had been desperate for another person. Not just for their touch, not just for sexual completion, but for them. Never. It had never happened.