Make Me Crazy (Loco, Texas) (18 page)

Rand recovered slowly, pushing herself to her feet and facing Jake. “What I was going to say was, you don’t have to worry, because I’m on the pill.”

His skin pallor darkened finally until red stained his cheeks. He seemed at a loss for something to say, so she decided to help direct the conversation. “I’ve been on the pill since I was fourteen because of…my time of the month. It helped with some of the symptoms.”

Silence stretched again until he softly said, “Well, that’s, ehem, good.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” She could feel her blood boil inside, the flames of humiliation and anger making her skin burn. “Is it kids in general you want to avoid or just with me?”

“It has nothing to do with you. It’s just a personal preference. People don’t stay together or stick around, and I just don’t want to bring a kid into that.”

“And that’s everyone, right? Cause Red’s mom and dad haven’t been together for thirty plus years or have five perfectly sane kids.” Sarcasm oozed out with her words and she was beyond caring. All her hopes that Jake was really with her, that he felt the same way she did, had been dashed with his stupidity.

“Look there are exceptions to every rule, but you and I both know the reality. Parents don’t stay together, and some even leave. Divorce, separation, abandonment. I don’t want it for mine.”

It killed her, destroyed every ounce of her pride to ask, but she had to know. “Is that where we’re headed, Jake? When that year is up, are we going to be done?”

His hands slipped through the short strands of his hair before he answered. “I don’t know, Rand. I’ve been taking one day at a time, seeing how things go.”

“But you don’t really think this is going anywhere, right? This is just a fun little experiment for you.”

His whole demeanor turned defensive as he snapped. “What about you? Weren’t you just using me as a test subject until you found someone who suited your wants and needs? I’m used to being that guy, but let’s not pretend this hasn’t been just about you finally getting your rocks off.”

Rand had never been a delicate flower, but she’d also never been a brawler either. She had no idea she had swung her fist and caught Jake right on his chin until she was cradling her throbbing fist, staring at Jake’s surprised face.

“Get out.” She snarled, squinting her eyes to keep the tears at bay.

A dark scowl marred his handsome face, a face that only an hour before had been filled with tenderness. “Gladly.”

He spun away from her and walked out of the bedroom, the front door slamming behind him. Choking on her grief, she flung herself on the bed and lost it. Cries escaped with each wracking sob, and for the third time in her life, she felt like her world had been ripped apart at the seams. Her mother. Her grandfather. And now she’d lost Jake too.

Chapter Eighteen

Rand had gotten up to feed and gone right back to bed. She’d skipped the spaghetti feed, telling Jamie to let everyone know she didn’t feel good. By the time Thursday night rolled around, the whole town was abuzz that the newlyweds had gotten into some kind of row and were no longer living together.

Rand was curled up on the couch with a plate of nachos, Scout hanging over her shoulder, both watching the movie Serenity, when Red came walking through the door.

Rand glared at him. “What happened to your new knocking habit? I was growing fond of it.”

“I came by to check on you.” Red’s narrowed gaze drifted from the nachos to her disheveled, puffy appearance. “I’m going to kick his ass and drop him in the swamp. He’s gator food.”

Rand set her nachos down on the coffee table and promptly burst into tears. She felt Red’s weight on the couch before he wrapped her up against him. “Honestly, I told him that if he hurt you, we were going to have it out.”

She sniffled and hiccuped. “He’s your best friend.”

“So are you.” He squeezed her.

“You like him better,” she argued.

“No, I fight with him less, but I share more with you.” He nudged her and she looked up at his smiling face, “You’re the glue, Rand. Jake and I could have ended up not being friends after that thing with Candace Seasons in eighth grade.”

Rand snorted. “You were both being idiots.”

“Yeah, but if it hadn’t been for you, we might not all be friends. And let’s be honest, you know if that fight had gone the other way, you would have taken my side.”

She smiled. “At this point I’m going to go with yes.”

“But not just because Jake is acting like a giant douche right?” Red said it teasingly.

 “No, not just because of that,” she said, her laugh sounding slightly soggy.

Silence stretched between them for a minute before Red asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

She laid her head against the back of the couch. “No.”

 
“Then do you want to know a secret,” He asked, smiling brightly.

She turned her head to the side and said unenthusiastically, “Sure.”

His eyes gleamed. “I wrote a novel.”

She lifted her head and her eyebrow. “You?”

He looked affronted. “Hey, I’ll have you know I am pretty kick ass at English and Writing. Got A’s every term except for that one I had mono.”

“Okay, so what kind of book is it?”

He blushed as he muttered, “Romance.”

She started laughing, she couldn’t help it. “Really? What’s it called?”

He was blushing so hard his skin matched his hair. “Kiss Me Again. It’s about a girl who has loved her best friend forever, and he’s never seen her like that. Then, just when she starts seeing someone else, he realizes he loves her.”

She lost her laughter and tried to tamper the sadness the description brought her. “That’s great. So are you going to have it published?”

 “I sent it off a few weeks ago to several publishers, just waiting to hear back.”

“That is amazing. I am so proud of you.” Rand stood up. “Well this calls for a drink. Want a beer?”

Red followed her into the kitchen and took the beer she offered. She popped her beer and held it up to his. “Here is to my best friend Alfred Reginald Calhoun, becoming a best-selling author and changing the world, one throbbing member at a time.”

Red laughed and they drank. Red held his beer up and said, “And here’s to you and Jake. May he stop being a fucking idiot and come crawling back to beg forgiveness. Without an ass whoopin’.”

Rand took a drink of her beer, trying to hide her wince. She missed the idiot, so much it was killing her not to find him and beg him to come back. She wasn’t going to do it though. Whatever else she might have believed in the past, she knew that she wasn’t going to settle for less than the love Earl and her mother had, and she definitely wasn’t going to subject herself to a one sided love.

“You want to watch Serenity?” She wasn’t really in the mood for company, but left alone, she might cave and call Jake.

“Hell yeah, I love that movie.”

Rand followed Red into the living room to watch the movie, but it didn’t feel right without Jake’s arms around her.

“I raised you better than this!”

Jake woke up bleary eyed with a pounding head from too much whisky the night before, only to find the shouting Harrington wasn’t a nightmare but his own sweet mother.

“Jesus, Mom-

Smack! His mother had hit him full in the face with a pillow so hard it stung.

“First of all, you do not take the Lord’s name in vain, and second, can you explain why you are in your old apartment that I thought you gave up instead of at home with your wife?”

The last thing Jake wanted to talk about at-Christ, 6:30 in the fucking morning- was Rand. “We just had a fight, it will be fine. And the apartment hadn’t been rented yet.”

He started to lay back down, but she hit him again. “Oh no, you get your ass out of this bed and into that shower, young man. What you need is a little perspective and a whole lot of God’s grace.”

Jake looked his mother square in the eye and snapped, “The only thing I’m doing this morning is sleeping and there isn’t a damn thing anyone is going to say to change that.”

Turning his back on her was his first mistake. He had barely closed his eyes before he was doused with a bucket of ice water, and when he flew out of bed, coughing and spluttering, he wiped the water from his face and shouted, “Get the hell out, Mom!”

Instead of listening, his short, kind-hearted mother sent him the same terrifying expression that had made him race to do her bidding as a kid. Now, he just found it mildly irritating.

“Jacob Michael, I want you to remember something. I brought you into this world, I can take you out, and there is a special place in hell for boys who don’t respect their mothers.”

Worried he would say something he’d regret, Jake stomped towards the bathroom, and slammed the door.

“And be sure to shave! I’m not letting you leave the house looking like an unkempt heathen.”

“I’m not talking about it Earl, so just mind your own business.”

“It is my business when that lily livered dog has you crying so hard you look as puffy as a marshmallow that done sat on the fire too long.”

Rand was sitting at Earl’s kitchen table with a mountainous plate of pie and ice cream, glaring at him.

“Hey, I’m just stating facts. You look like hell and I don’t like it.”

Shoving a massive bite into her mouth, she ignored his prodding. The last thing she needed was Earl getting involved in her marriage and making things worse than they already were.

Jake kept trying to drum up the nerve to drop by and see Rand, but he was afraid she’d simply slam the door in his face.

Granted it wasn’t the first time Rand had kicked him out of her house or even told him to go to hell, but it was the first time he’d ever felt like she meant it.

He wanted to apologize. He’d missed her like crazy, laying in his old bed and thinking about her soft body curled into his. He missed kissing her awake in the morning and having her bat at him and grumble. But when she finally opened her eyes and they focused on him, she’d give him this sleepy smile…

Jake saw Earl standing in front of the store, pacing angrily at seven am on a Monday, and
 knew he was in trouble.

“Howdy Earl! What brings you?” He tried to sound casual but the narrow eyed rage he saw on the older man’s face took him back a step.

Earl marched forward and growled, “I warned you what would happen if you hurt that girl.”

Jake, on the defensive, said, “I don’t know what Rand told you but…”

Earl cut him off. “She didn’t tell me anything, but I could tell she was miserable by looking at her. I’ve known her since she was a little sprout, and the girl could never hide when she was hurting.”

Jake relaxed. “We just had a little argument.”

“A little argument that has you sleeping away from home instead of your own couch? Must have been some spat to keep you away from your own wife for six days.”

Jake gritted his teeth and ground out, “It’s between Rand and me, Earl, not you.”

Earl didn’t back down, not that Jake thought he would, but damn it, he didn’t want to be arguing with the man in the front of his store. “Look Earl, I’m going to go home and talk to Rand tonight. I just needed a couple days on my own.”

Earl snorted. “Next time I see her, she better be happy or you and I are going to have it out.”

Earl walked to his old beat up truck at that parting comment and roared off, leaving Jake in a worse mood than he’d already been in.

The bell on the door rang and Kim walked into the store, carrying a paper bag. Her pretty face was stretched into a wide smile as she set the bag down. “Hey there, Jake. I just came by to bring you some lunch. Thought maybe you could use a little comfort food since you and Miranda are having problems.”

He didn’t buy her innocent, sweet act for a minute and cursed the loose tongued gossips in this town. “Thanks Kim, but I’m actually fine. And so are Miranda and I.”

She reached out and patted his arm sympathetically. “Of course Jake, you are such a good man. I can’t imagine its easy being married to Miranda.”

Jake reached up to yank her hand off of his arm and caught movement out the window. Rand stood on the sidewalk, looking in at the two of them. She met his eye through the glass and gave him a disgusted look before she turned away.

Miranda heard Jake yell her name from inside the store but she didn’t want to look at him. He’d been gone for six days and while she’d been miserable and missing him like crazy, he’d been getting back to his old self.

She grabbed for the door handle of her truck and a very male hand slammed down on the window and she could feel the warmth of Jake’s lean body against her back. “Rand, it’s not what you think. She stopped by and I was just getting ready to tell her to leave. You know I can’t stand Kim.”

She let go of the handle and gathered her pride, as tattered as it was, and turned to him. His green eyes looked so sad, she wanted to believe him.  Wanted to so badly.

Fool me once…

She steeled herself and said as casually as she could muster. “I really don’t care, Jake. Do whatever you want, but it was your idea to help me keep the Double C. I’m going to need you to come back to the ranch and live there, like we planned. I don’t want the gossip to spread to Mr. Cranston that we aren’t following my Granddaddy’s wishes and have all of this be for nothing.”

He dropped his arm from the car and said, “I wanted to apologize for what I said. I didn’t mean it, I was just…”

“I don’t really care Jake, okay? I just want to get through the next year without a hitch. We’ll just try to stay out of each other’s way.”

He grabbed her arm and his voice was pleading, “Rand, that’s not what I want. I was just freaking out.”

“I know, Jake, but actually, it was probably a good thing all this happened. Otherwise, we would have gone on pretending that you wanted me and we were happy, and things would have just gotten more complicated.”

He grabbed her other arm and argued, “I do want you! I was happy! I’m still happy with you, I just didn’t want…”

She finished for him. “You didn’t want to stick around longer than you had too. I get it. Marriage with perks for a year and then we get a divorce and go back to being just friends. That was the plan. But I can’t just go back to the way things were.”

“Rand, I am so sorry…”

She waved his apology off. “It’s fine. I’m trying to forget about it. But I hope you can respect the fact that I want to go back to my original plan for a marriage in name only.”

His eyes narrowed and his face turned purple. “You want to just pretend what we had never happened?”

She hoped she was giving him a blank expression when she answered, “Yes, that’s what I want.”

“What about what I want? I handled everything badly, Rand, I know that. I fucked up big time, but can’t you forgive me?”

Fool me once…

She shook off his hands and reached for the door again. “I forgive you, Jake. But I can’t just go back. Sex just complicates things and we promised Red we’d leave this thing as friends.”

She was just getting inside when he asked, “Are we still friends, Rand?”

She couldn’t look at him or he’d see the tears she was trying to hold back. “I don’t know.”

He didn’t stop her from closing the door to her truck and driving back to the Double C, and a part of her wished he had yanked the door open, pulled her off the seat and kissed her into submission.

Later that night, he came back to the ranch and she laid in her bed, listening to him come through the door and walk down the hall. She waited for him to try the door, come inside and beg her again to change her mind.