Last Chance Rebel (5 page)

“I'd like to come by in the evenings and ride too,” she said. “To make sure that they're getting some exercise.”

“How often do you work your store?”

“Five days a week,” she said.

“And you want to come here every day and do some work?”

“I was working in the store seven days a week until recently. The fact that I get time off at all is kind of a strange new situation.”

“It seems like a lot.”

“Are you concerned for my well-being?” If he said yes, she was going to kill him.

“No,” he responded, hard and fast. “Just don't want you to drop dead on my property.”

“Your concern is touching. With my last gasping breath I'll send a text to one of my friends and have them drag me over the property line, would that help?”

“Yeah, if it makes you feel better.”

“I don't know how to do this,” she said.

“You don't know how to do ranch work? Because that presents a problem for our arrangement.”

“No, I don't know how to talk to you like there isn't something huge hanging between us. I don't know how to talk to you like you're a person.”

“You just do it, I guess.”

“Or,” she said, “I don't. We could always pursue that avenue. One where I just get to work and you go do your work and we don't have to try and communicate.”

“Works for me. How long are you planning on staying today?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “I don't have to work today. So I figured I would feed them, clean them and take them out for a ride. So, I imagine I'll be done around one or two.”

“Okay.”

Then, he turned and walked away from her, leaving her standing there in the middle of the muddy drive all by herself.

Well, that was what she wanted anyway. Now, she could get to work.

* * *

G
AGE
HUNG
UP
with his business manager and leaned back in his chair. It was strange to be in a house like this. Someplace permanent. He was accustomed to motels that catered as much to roaches as they did to their guests. He was also accustomed to doing a little bit more hard labor than this.

Letting Rebecca handle anything on his property went directly against his usual mode of operation. He needed physical labor to deal with his shit. Otherwise, he started to go stir-crazy. He had a good head for investments and money management, but it was boring as fuck.

It had also made him rich, so he supposed he couldn't complain.

He heard a knock on the door downstairs and he abandoned his desk, taking the steps two at a time as he headed to the front entry. He half expected it to be Rebecca, so when he opened it and saw his sister Madison standing there, the shock hit him like a bucket of cold water over his head.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Hello to you too, jackass,” she said, pushing past him and walking straight inside. “Nice place,” she said, looking around. “Colton didn't mention that. I imagine his general rage and anger at you prevented him from saying anything nice at all.”

“He's mad at me, huh?”

She snorted. “Do bears poop in the woods?”

“I assume.”

“Then assume he's pretty mad.”

“Everyone else?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking back on his heels.

“Sierra is young. She's also much nicer than I am. Colton is... Well, he's as decent as cornfields and apple pie. Mom is as emotionally compromised as she ever was, and I think she's...shocked. Yes, she's surprised you came back.”

So Colton had decided to fill her in, Gage assumed. But she wasn't asking to see him. He couldn't blame her.

He was as surprised as anyone that he'd come back. But when he'd gotten that phone call, he'd known there was no other choice. Because he already knew there was no end to the running.

He'd been doing it for long enough that if there was an end, he would have found it. So he'd decided that maybe the only way to fix it...the only way to end that gnawing, desperate ache in him, was to go back.

So here he was.

“And you?” he asked. “How do you feel about me being back?”

“I'm reserving judgment.” She took another step, looking around the room, her eyes sharp, the same blue as his own. He remembered Madison as a little girl, and he could see nothing of the little girl in her now. “I didn't exactly make it to this point unscathed. And believe me, there was a point in time when I really wanted to run away. Sadly, I couldn't, because you already had. You realize, it puts a lot of pressure on the remaining children to stay put when someone else has already scampered off.”

“I imagine,” he said. He also imagined that whatever Madison had been through, it wasn't exactly his situation.

“But, even saying that, I get it. I get why you left. I don't know what happened, but I understand that sometimes things are just too hard. That this place—this place where everybody knows you—is just oppressive sometimes. I was seventeen, and I got involved with my dressage trainer. When I say
involved
, I mean I was having a relationship with his penis.”

Those words, so flippant and hard, had been chosen carefully, he could tell. To distance her, to distance him.

“Sure,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as hers. “Those kinds of relationships make the world go round.”

“Indeed they do. And, when you're a woman, they can make things stop altogether. He was married. Which, I knew, but of course I bought into that tried-and-true line about how he was going to get divorced, and she didn't love him and she didn't understand him like I did.” She laughed, but the sound didn't contain any humor. “The only reason it's even remotely forgivable is that I was so young I didn't realize what a cliché it was. Anyway, I came out of it with a big scarlet letter, and he ended up doing just fine. In fact, he even stayed married. So, I was clearly the villain.”

“How old was he?”

“He was almost forty,” she said. “It's entirely likely I have daddy issues.”

“That fucker is lucky I wasn't here,” he said, meaning that down to his soul.

“But you weren't. Anyway, the point is I have my own stuff, and my own reasons for doing the things that I do. That means that I'm probably your best bet as an ally in this family.”

“You said Sierra was nicer than you.”

“She is. And she'll forgive you. Trust me. She'll probably even hug you. But she's not going to understand you. I have a feeling you and I were created out of the same end of the gene pool.” She looked at him, her expression expectant. And he wondered if she was waiting for him to pour out his heart. To confess all. To say exactly what he'd been up to for the past seventeen years, and what had sent him running in the first place.

Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. Not today.

“How is Dad?” he asked.

“The same. Still in the hospital.”

“I've been going over the finances.” He watched her expression closely, and it remained smooth, impassive.

“We're broke.”

“You aren't,” he said. “Your business is doing very well. In fact, most everything that centers directly around the ranch, around what you and Sierra do, works very well. It's just that overall the family is in a lot of debt. And if I want to save the ranch, I have to manage all of that as best I can.”

“Right,” she said. “But I don't understand why you have to do it. I don't understand why not Colton, or me. Not Sierra, because she's about to produce progeny. But the rest of us. Why aren't we doing it?”

“Because I'm done running. This is my responsibility, and I'm going to see it done.”

She swallowed hard, nodding slowly. “And after that?”

“Well, then I start running again.”

“That particular brand of denial is probably good for your quads, anyway,” Madison said.

“Well, that's good to know.” He cleared his throat, a strange uncomfortable sensation filtering through his chest. “I'll walk you out.”

Madison's pale eyebrows shot upward. “Wow. Direct. I suppose I had better let you get back to all that brooding you seem to be so fond of doing.”

“Do you have anything else to say?”

“I always have something else to say, Gage. It's best not to leave that door open.” Then, Maddy turned and walked out of the house. He followed after her, standing on the porch and watching her as she walked toward her sporty little car.

“No truck?”

“Do I look like I would drive a truck?” she asked.

“Colton and Sierra do, don't they?” He recalled that from the hospital when he'd been there visiting his Dad.

“One of these things is not like the others. But I thought that maybe we might be.” She squinted. “I'm not entirely convinced we aren't.” Then, she got into her car and backed out of the driveway. He watched her until she was gone.

Having his family around was...strange. It did weird things to his mind and his body. Leaving him feeling stretched and brittle.

There was always a vague sense of something pressing at the back of his mind. A part of himself that he had left behind in Copper Ridge. It was inescapable. It had proven to be so in all his years of wandering. It was one reason he was back now. One reason he was so determined to settle everything once and for all.

But this... This was different. Now, his family was real, not just a vague impression of a thing left behind. His siblings were right in front of him, the adults they had grown into and not the children they'd been when he'd gone.

And some jackass had taken advantage of Madison.

That made his chest feel tight, the sensation spreading up to his throat. He hated that. Hated the thought of her feeling alone. Feeling broken because someone had treated her carelessly.

Yeah, he'd always had that sense that part of him was still here in Copper Ridge, but in his head, those parts of him were young and innocent, and still under the protection of his parents. For all their father was flawed, he took care of his children, even if it was only to prevent scandal from spreading.

At least, he took care of his legitimate children.

Even when they didn't deserve it.

He gritted his teeth, curling his fingers into a fist and slamming the side of it against the support post on the porch.

It didn't take much to remind him exactly why he had spent so long avoiding this place. It was easy to be a martyr in isolation. To self-flagellate without the consequences of your abandonment staring right at you.

Hell, there was nothing he could do about it now. What was done was done. All he could do now was fix it, and then get the hell out of Dodge.

He looked toward the barn, toward where Rebecca Bear was currently working to pay off debt that in his mind she didn't have. She didn't owe him anything. But she was stubborn, and she had pride. He had taken enough from her. He wasn't going to take that too.

He had left a hell of a mess in this town. He wasn't sure it was possible to clean it up.

But, if he died trying, at least it wouldn't be his problem anymore.

CHAPTER FIVE

S
HE
HURT
EVERYWHERE
. There was nothing like a day of manual labor to remind her that she had once shattered her kneecap. And broken her femur. And that doing too much seemed to tighten her muscles up around the bone and make everyplace that had ever been fractured ache.

She had never hated Gage West more than she did in this moment. Actually, that was a lie, she had hated Gage West plenty of times over the years. Too many to list.

But, she could clearly picture him while she hated him now. She hobbled over to the bar, leaning against it, trying to get as much weight as she could off of her leg.

“Beer me, Ace,” she said, pressing her hand to her forehead.

The bar was crowded. It was Sunday night, and no one was looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. So, instead of getting a good night's sleep, they were obviously out playing darts and riding on the mechanical bull that Ace had installed about a year ago.

Recently, Ace had opened a more upscale place, but he could still often be found here at everyone's favorite dive. The fact that he wasn't here some of the time was strange though. Copper Ridge was a constant. A small, slow-moving community that didn't often see change. But the last few years had brought quite a bit of it. Tourism was beginning to become a major industry, and while she was definitely grateful for that, it was also changing her beloved landscape.

Just a year ago Ace had been single, and flirting with everything that moved. Now, he was married and about to be a father. Not that it bothered her. She had never been interested in Ace that way. It was just... Watching other people, people like him who had never even seemed interested in such a thing moving on with their lives and finding a companion made her feel hollow. Unsatisfied in a way she rarely was.

The fact he had married a West made her feel even weirder. Because the Wests made her feel weird in general. It was like they were infiltrating everything.

Not that she held anything that had happened to her against Sierra, Ace's wife. Sierra was at least five years younger than Rebecca and wouldn't remember anything about the accident, much less have any culpability in the events surrounding it.

Still. It was the whole thing.

“You feeling okay, Rebecca?” Ace asked, setting her preferred brew down in front of her. She hadn't even had to specify what she wanted. He knew.

“Just worked too hard,” she said.

“I'm not sure I've ever talked to anybody who suffered from that affliction before,” he said, winking.

“What can I say?” she responded. “I'm a glutton for punishment.” As she said it, she had to wonder if it was true. She nodded once, picking up the beer and lifting it to her lips as she turned away from the bar and headed toward the table where Lane and Alison were already sitting.

“Is Cassie coming?” she asked, sitting down at the table slowly, her muscles screaming at her.

“No,” Alison said. “Something about date night.”

“As if that sexy mechanic she's married to is better company than we are,” Lane said, grabbing hold of the toothpick in her drink and lifting it to her lips, plucking one of the impaled cherries from it and eating it.

“That's a fancy drink,” Rebecca said, looking down at her beer. “What's the occasion?”

“Wanting to feel fancy.”

Rebecca doubted a cosmopolitan with an entire handful of cherries could make her feel fancy after today. “Well, I guess that's fair enough.”

“You're limping,” Alison said, her expression concerned. “Are you okay?”

She was annoyed that they'd noticed. “I'm fine.”

“Except this is probably related to the work you were doing today?” Lane asked.

“Maybe.” She looked resolutely at her drink and not at Lane.

“What did he have you do? Were you riding the horses or bench-pressing them?”

Rebecca scowled. “There was just more lifting than I anticipated.”

“What's happening?” Alison asked.

Rebecca shook her head, and Lane shot her a sharp look, then spoke anyway. “Rebecca is working for the guy who caused her accident.”

“You're what?” Alison asked.

Rebecca reached across the table and grabbed hold of the remaining cherry on Lane's toothpick, then took the unnaturally red fruit and popped it into her mouth.

“Hey!” Lane groused. “Cherry-stealing bitch.”

“Loudmouth.”

“What is going on?” Alison asked, clearly unamused by all of the antics.

“Exactly what I said,” Lane said. “Rebecca has decided to work for the guy who caused her accident, and clearly she has put herself under physical duress doing it.”

“Why?” Alison asked. “Rebecca, do you need money? If you need money, you can ask us. I would much rather give you some. Or, put you to work mixing frosting.”

“I don't need money,” she said, feeling like a cat that had been backed up against the wall. “There's a specific thing that I have to work out. And it requires working for him.”

“Could you possibly be more cagey?” Lane asked.

“If I tried,” Rebecca said, her tone deadpan, “I suppose I could be.”

“I just don't get it.”

“It's complicated. I owe him money.”

“How do you owe him money?”

“It's complicated!” A prickling sensation assaulted the back of Rebecca's neck, and she looked up just in time to see Gage walking through the door of the bar. “Oh, great,” she muttered.

“What?” Alison asked.

“Nothing,” Rebecca responded. She stood up, taking a long drink of the last of her beer. “I need another drink.”

She made her way back over to the bar, too late remembering that everything hurt and walking across the space was an assault. “More beer,” she said to Ace, setting the glass on the countertop.

“What happened?”

She turned around, her heart thundering hard against her chest as her gaze clashed with Gage's stormy blue eyes. “Nothing,” she bit out.

“Then why are you limping?”

Rage poured down through her like an acid rain. “Oh, I have a little bit of a problem sometimes with my joints. My bones ache. Not because I'm old, mind you. But because I sustained a pretty serious injury to my leg and sometimes after I work, the muscles tighten up and everything goes a little bit nuts.” She gritted her teeth. “I feel like you might know something about that.”

“The work is too much for you,” he said, his voice flat.

Ace came back over to the bar and set the glass down in front of Rebecca.

“Put that on my tab, Ace,” Gage said.

She grabbed hold of the beer, her heart hammering hard. “Don't do that, Ace.”

“Don't listen to her,” Gage said.

“I'm going to pay for the beer if you can't figure it out,” Ace said, turning away from them and going to help another customer.

“I'm trying to work off my debt to you,” she said, “not accrue more.”

“I can't buy you a beer?”

“I'm confused about why you're talking to me.”

“I don't like you limping like this. I don't like that the work hurt you.”

“I didn't ask for your charity.” She scowled. “In fact, I think I've made it pretty clear I want to blot your charity from the record.”

“You're not doing the work anymore. That's it. Not going to have you limping around town because you're trying to repay something I didn't want you to pay for in the first place.”

He was just so large, hard and imposing, looming over her, his face a whole thunderstorm. He made her feel small and vulnerable. Like she was out of control. And she hated it.

“It isn't your decision,” she said, her voice hard. “I have some say.”

He shook his head, and she found her eyes drawn to the grim line of his mouth. She was fascinated by it. By the deep grooves around it that proved this firm, uncompromising set was the typical expression for him. She wondered what he had to be uncompromising about.

She shouldn't wonder. She shouldn't wonder any damn thing about him.

“Sorry to say,” he said, not sounding sorry at all, “But you don't.”

“I don't understand why you're doing this,” she said, keeping her voice low. The last thing she wanted to do was draw attention to them. They probably already were drawing attention. Pathetic, scarred-up Rebecca Bear talking to the tallest, hottest guy in the room. People were probably pitying her. Or wondering if he was asking for directions.

Heat washed over her skin, leaving a prickling sensation behind. Humiliation. Anger.

“You don't think I feel bad about this? Do you think you're the only person who lost sleep over it?”

“Well, I know I lost sleep. Recovery is a bitch.”

“I want to fix it. I want to make it right.”

“You can see the way that I'm walking today, can't you? There is no making it right, Gage. There's no fixing it. You can't just make it like it didn't happen. I'm not something you can just walk into town and put back together. I'm broken. That's the beginning and end of it. And it's my burden to bear, it isn't yours. It isn't fair. To wander around acting like you've been shouldering some of this for the past seventeen years when you just haven't been.”

“The hell I haven't,” he said, reaching out, wrapping his fingers around her arm and drawing her in closer to him.

His touch burned her, scorched her from the inside out. Her mind was blank, except for one thought. How long had it been since a man touched her? Anyone? She couldn't remember.

“You can't buy me,” she said, her voice low, shaking. And she wasn't really sure if it was from rage, or because of the way he touched her. So firm and sure and completely unexpected. “You can't throw money at this and expect it to go away.”

“Hey.” Rebecca turned and saw Ace standing behind the counter right next to them, his expression hard. “Is he bothering you?”

Of course Ace knew who Gage was. Ace was his brother-in-law. She wasn't sure if anyone else in town recognized Gage West yet. And even if they did, they didn't know the connection she had with him.

She doubted Ace knew either. But then, she couldn't really be sure of what Gage had told his family, and what he hadn't.

She pulled away from Gage, taking a step back. “It's fine,” she said. She treated Ace to a hard look that expressed her to desire to have him go away.

She didn't want him white knighting. She didn't want anyone else enmeshed in this at all.

When he was out of earshot, Gage turned to her, leaning in slightly. “I've lived with it for the past seventeen years too,” he said. “Whether you want to listen to that or not, it's true. Whether you think it's fair or not, it's true.”

“So, it sounds like you're a big fan of being punished for your mistakes, then. Enjoy me withholding forgiveness.”

She didn't even know what this fight was. Hating him for caring. Hating him for feeling some kind of responsibility for it. She shouldn't know any of it, that was the problem. What she'd said to him earlier was the God's honest truth.

She didn't want to know his life. She didn't want to know if guilt kept him awake. Didn't want to know if he felt good, bad or indifferent.

This belonged to her. It was her pain. Her own personal tragedy. It had shaped everything she was, had disrupted her entire life in ways no one knew. In ways Gage West certainly couldn't know.

Him feeling guilty...well, that seemed selfish. He wasn't scarred up. His body was beautiful. Women didn't look at him with pitying glances the way men looked at her. He didn't have to deal with a terrible limp after a long day of physical labor. What right did he have to co-opt any of the suffering?

She should probably tell Jonathan what was going on. At least he could tell Gage to back the hell off. Except, she knew that she wouldn't. Mostly because she wanted to handle all of this herself. It felt unwieldy and more than a little out of control, but she still didn't want anyone else getting involved. Because her feelings were too raw. Too confusing. She didn't know what to do with them.

She didn't want to talk to Lane. She didn't want to talk to Alison. She didn't want to talk to anybody. She wanted to pick up a chair and break it over the back of Gage's head.

Except she was too sore to do that. Because of him. Which made her want to hit him even more.

“I'll be at your place tomorrow,” she said. “By six. Because I have to go in and work at the store afterward.”

“You damn well won't be there.”

“I damn well will be, and if you stiff me out of my pay, I'll make your life hell.”

“We haven't even settled on a wage.”

“Make it a fair one!” She turned on her heel and hobbled back to her table, her heart pounding hard. She had no idea where all that had come from. All of that anger, all of that effortless rage. She wanted to stand there and scream at him forever.

She remembered her dreams then. She'd had all kinds of dreams after the accident. Some of them were about pain, and about more surgery. But then, after those dreams had faded had come the other dreams. Dreams of standing in an empty room, in front of a man whose face was hidden in shadow. And she would scream at him. Yell at him and hit him until all of her anger had quieted.

She would shout every detail of everything he had done to her. Emptying all of the toxic pain from her chest and pouring it into him.

She wasn't going to do that in Ace's bar. But she had a feeling she had it in her.

“Who was that?” Lane asked when Rebecca sat back down at the table. She had sort of forgotten that her friends were an audience for that encounter.

“That was him,” Alison said, “wasn't it?”

“I don't want to talk about it.” She was starting to feel a little bit like a broken record. And like a terrible friend. She had never confided everything with them. She had never really confided everything with anyone. She didn't like anyone knowing she was vulnerable. Didn't like anyone to know that she was affected by what had happened all those years ago.