Unbroken (12 page)

“Technically you did,” she said, her voice muffled. “I just didn't listen.”

“Then you ignored it this morning . . .”

“I was hoping you didn't remember! I was embarrassed. Good Lord, Cade, I attacked you. I demanded you let me give you a—”

“I know. But it's not like I was too broken up about it, okay?” He shifted in his seat. “So, anyway, this morning when you didn't acknowledge it, I was pissed because . . . you stole my moment of feeling like a man again. You gave it to me, then you took it back. And . . . I didn't mean for things to go that far, but once I touched you, I couldn't stop myself.”

“We've both had a lot of celibacy,” she said, her voice scratchy.

“Way more than our share.”

“And I guess that makes sense. Last night I was just really sad and . . .”

Amber looked down, her face hot. She didn't like the explanation for any of this. She didn't like where the conversation was going. She didn't like the idea that he'd done that with her because it made him feel like a man. Because that kind of meant she could have been anyone.

But then, the alternative was that he wanted her, which made her feel warm and fuzzy in some regards, but also terrified the hell out of her. Because that would change their friendship, and the bottom line was she didn't want their friendship to change.

That was what she'd decided when she'd gone into the bathroom. When she'd scrubbed her face, and other places on her body, and tried to erase the evidence of their sexual encounter.

She'd decided that they couldn't do this. That they couldn't have this between them. That they couldn't have it hanging over them.

So she'd purposed to come out and act like it was nothing. Cade had started that game, after all. But now that little reprieve was over.

And the truth was ugly and painful. And it made her feel like she was being scrubbed raw.

But her own version of the truth wasn't any better.

“I was feeling really sad,” she said. “I . . . I mean, I haven't done that in a long time, but that used to be my preferred method of coping.”

“Sex?”

“Yeah. Because . . . because life is hard, and it's less hard when you can pretend you feel close to someone.”

He frowned. “We are close.”

“I know.”

She could tell Cade didn't like her reasoning. She didn't really like it either. But the alternative was admitting that she'd been seriously lusty for him for . . . a lot longer than she even wanted to admit to herself, and that it had gotten increasingly intense in the past couple of years.

“Let's just . . . look, it happened,” she said. “No denying it, it happened. And it won't happen again. We were both in a bad place, and hey, maybe it . . . helped something?”

“Helped some things,” he said, snorting.

“Physically speaking? Yeah,” she said. She wasn't going to add insult to injury by implying he'd been anything less than satisfactory. Because oh, hot damn, he'd been the best sex of her life by a wide margin—it was almost like what she'd been doing before hadn't even been the same activity.

But then, that was the difference between a sixteen-year-old and a thirty-two-year-old, she imagined.

More convenient excuses for why ten minutes of utter heaven on a kitchen table with Cade had been the best thing to ever happen to her since she'd put peanut butter on Oreos for the first time.

Actually, he was so much better than peanut butter on Oreos it wasn't even funny.

No wonder women had swarmed him like a cloud of locusts back in his rodeo days. And his high school days. At least after he'd lost it to the bartender and she'd spread it around that he was the hottest thing on two legs Silver Creek had running.

All those stories . . . they hadn't been hyperbole.

And heck, she'd had a reputation back in the day too. Sure, guys were often douchey, but the bottom line was, her sexual performance and prowess had been highly praised.

It stood to reason that she and Cade would be combustible and compatible.

They were both excellent in bed. On couch. On table. Whatever.

A slight hiatus had added no shame to their game, clearly.

“So . . .” he said. “I guess we say thanks for the orgasms and move on?”

“Orgasm,” she said. “For me. You're one up on me.”

Heat flared in the depths of his dark eyes and she looked away. Because now she felt like she could read his X-rated thoughts in detail, and she did not need that. “Fair enough observation,” he said.

“And it will stay that way.”

“Yeah, I agree.”

“Because there's no reason for us to go there again. We're both adults. It doesn't have to be a problem,” she said, talking over her own uncertainty. She wondered if he bought her BS. She sure didn't. “We'll just sort of . . . draw a line under it.”

“And put a gold star on it,” he said.

“Yeah, okay. And we'll call it done. It happened; we can't take it back. No reason to regret a nice time, right?”

“Right.”

“But there's no reason to repeat it either, because . . . well, the awkward. And because it already made us fight.”

“Absolutely.”

“I care about you, Cade,” she said. “I don't have a lot of people left in my life. My grandma is dead, my grandpa . . . even if he recovers, I don't have much time left with him. I have you, and your family, but mainly I have you. You're my best friend. Nothing is worth compromising that.”

“I feel the same way.”

“So . . . the sex happened. And it won't happen again,” she said.

“That's the summation.”

“Great. Start your engine, gentleman. I need to get to the hospital and see my grandpa, and you have that bison appointment.”

Cade let out a long breath, then turned the truck engine back on. “Okay. Let's get on with it then.”

And she knew he meant more than just the day. But with life. With their relationship. What had happened . . . happened. But it was over, and they both agreed it didn't need to happen again.

So that was settled. Good. She was so relieved.

And if she kept saying that over and over, she might start to believe it.

Eleven

Nicole didn't know what brought her back to the mercantile.
She blamed the tractor. The little mini-tractor that she had sitting on the nightstand by her bed at Elk Haven.

She also blamed the fact that she still felt totally lost in Silver Creek, and for some reason, John had made her feel a little bit less so.

Things with her family were . . . complicated. Cole was great, if a little obviously uncomfortable with the whole thing. Lark and Kelsey were warm to a degree that made her feel a little twitchy, and Cade was . . . not around.

Because he was being completely, unashamedly self-indulgent over the weirdness that had become all of their lives.

She envied him a little. She envied him more than she was mad at him, to be honest. Because he knew it was a little bit of a freak show and he seemed to have no compunction avoiding it. She, on the other hand, felt obliged to stick it out, since she'd been the one to instigate contact in the first place.

She would really rather hide.

So she was hiding in the mercantile instead of in her little Portland apartment.

“You're back. I thought you might have skipped town.”

She turned and her stomach did a little tightening thing, her heart lurching forward into her sternum. Holy cats, he was attractive. She just wanted to stare at him.

She didn't often make time for staring at men. She didn't often make time for men, period. The more disgruntled she became about her family situation, the less time she seemed to have for them. Yeah, she had trust issues out the ass. She knew that.

Which meant it had been . . . wow,
ages
since she'd been on a date. Longer since she'd done the dirty with a guy.

Okay, she knew exactly how long it had been since that had happened. Her last boyfriend, who she'd made sure was very committed. Not just to her, but to condom use. And she'd taken her birth control pill religiously, along with said condom use.

She just needed time to trust a guy before she went to bed with him. Call them daddy issues, or rather, nonexistent-daddy-who-had-made-her-unintentionally issues.

She would never be that woman. Stuck holding some man's kid. She would never be that woman who slept with a married man without knowing he was married. She had to know a guy very well before she could get naked with him.

Which was why she'd only slept with one guy.

But whatever.

And she didn't know why John and his beard were putting sex on her brain quite so much. Because he was a) a stranger and b) too charming for anyone's good. Which meant she should want nothing to do with him.

“Nope. I have not skipped town.” She was starting to wonder why.

“I see. And has Cade Mitchell succeeded in seducing you?”

Her cheeks heated, a twist of nausea cramping her stomach. Ew. “Uh, no.”

“I had to check. Only because I would like to seduce you. Now, Cade having seduced you already wouldn't necessarily be a deterrent, but I just wanted to know if I was headed for a fistfight or not. Also not necessarily a deterrent.”

“Nice to know. But Cade has barely spent ten minutes in the same room with me. So no worries. Also, we're blood relatives, so unless that's how you hillbillies get down over here, I don't think there's going to be any seducing going on.”

“Holy shit. You're a Mitchell. I would never have known. You're . . .”

“A Peterson, actually. I don't have the Mitchell name. And I have more tattoos than most of them too.”

“And piercings?” he asked.

She clicked her tongue ring against her teeth. “Maybe.”

She knew guys liked the tongue ring. No guy had ever been able to take advantage of her tongue ring. Because the piercing had occurred post-breakup.

Heat flared in John's eyes, and she could tell he knew of tongue-ring benefits. Well, too bad for him. Because . . . stranger. And she was all cautious.

“Interesting. How many tattoos?”

“I'm not telling. But does this count as one?” She held out her arm and displayed her full-color sleeve. Waves and koi, and a chain of mythological creatures that wound their way from her wrist to her shoulder, where a woman sat on the edge of the beach and looked down at everything.

Looked at all the adventure she wasn't having.

She was very like Nicole in that way.

“How long did that take?” he asked, his thumb skimming over her forearm, leaving a trail of fire in its wake.

“A while,” she said. “Anyway, no one gets to see all my tattoos. Some are very . . . personal.” She didn't know what little devil had inspired her to say that. The same one that had spurred her into clicking her tongue ring, she imagined.

“Then I'll make that a goal,” he said.

“What?”

“To count every single one of them. Up close and personal.”

*   *   *

Amber was dreading going back to the house. She was dreading
Cade coming to get her. But she didn't think she could stay in the hospital much longer either. She'd drifted around all the hospital for most of the day, absently holding a can of Diet Coke until it turned lukewarm in her hands.

Her grandfather woke up a couple of times, but he seemed fuzzy and disoriented. And he hadn't been able to talk.

Her eyes felt scratchy from all the tears she wouldn't let herself shed, and her throat ached like it was being squeezed from the inside.

Like she was being squeezed from the inside.

If one more person said “wait and see” to her today, she was going to pick up one of the plastic waiting room chairs and hurl it through a window.

She knew it wasn't their fault. They couldn't read the future. But she wanted them to. She needed them to. Every time a new nurse or anyone in scrubs had come into her grandpa's room today, her heart had stopped.

And she'd just waited for the next words out of their mouth. Afraid they would change everything. Afraid they wouldn't. That they would either say something catastrophic, or that they would say there was a terrible mistake and there had been no stroke, and her grandpa was actually just sleeping.

Neither of those things happened.

All anyone said was “Wait and see.”

By the end of the day she was sick to her stomach from trying to eat hospital food and failing, and from that damned lukewarm Coke.

The phone in her pocket buzzed and she scurried out to the approved cell phone portion of the waiting area. She bounced back and forth on the balls of her feet when she saw that it was Cade, then tapped the green rectangle on the screen.

“'Sup. You bisoned, or what?”

“Uh . . . I'm informed. Are you ready to go yet?”

“Yeah. Just let me run back and tell him bye?”

“Of course.”

She turned and flashed her badge at the guy who was sitting at the door that barred the waiting area from the ICU. He nodded and opened the door. She tiptoed down the hall and down into her grandfather's room.

He was asleep still, his chest rising and falling slowly and steadily. That, at least, made her feel better.

She crept in and took his hand in hers. It was rough from all those years of hard work. And it still felt so strong beneath hers.

He was her family. The first person to accept her when she came to Silver Creek, a busted-up foster kid with a plastic bag filled with old clothes and a heart filled with hurt.

She'd known this would happen. That one day, mortality would catch up with them all. But she'd been very happy to have that day as a distant idea in the future. Staring at it was a very sucky reality.

“I'm going to go home now. I spent the day here with you. Just so you know.” A tear slid down her cheek and she wiped it away. Crap, she hated it when she cried. There was no point in crying. But she was doing it a lot lately.

Freaking life and its badness.

“And I'll be back tomorrow. Cade is at the house still. Keeping me safe from villains and spiders.”
But not from himself.
“So you don't have to worry. He's taking care of things. Like he does. Good night.” She squeezed his hand and turned and walked out of the room, the ache in her throat intensifying as more tears started to form.

By the time she was out in the waiting room again, two gigantic tears had rolled down to the center of her cheeks. Cade had come in to meet her, and she paused and looked up at him. He looked at her, his posture still, his expression that of a man who felt utterly helpless.

And then he moved, tugging her into his arms, against his chest, his hand cupping the back of her head. “I'm sorry,” he said, his voice rough.

“Me too.” She buried her face in his chest and inhaled his scent. And more tears rolled down her cheeks. It wasn't fair. None of it was fair. She wanted to burrow close to Cade and beg him to never let her go.

She wanted to be skin to skin with him, none of these layers of clothing between them. She wanted to press her face against his chest, feel his chest hair and heat on her cheek. And maybe that was weird, but she didn't care.

She just felt like it would make things better. But the sucky thing was, it wouldn't. It would make things worse. Because she would never be able to just lie next to him. She would want to touch him. And kiss him. And then she would want him inside of her, because it would be the only way they could be closer.

She pulled away from him, trying to shake off the bout of insanity that had gripped her.

It was a hug from a friend. And the sex from that morning was why he'd looked stiff and awkward before giving it to her.

And she was abusing his gesture of goodwill by sniffing his woodsy scent and giving in to sexual fantasies.

No more. No more. They'd gone there. And really, who was all that surprised? Everyone undoubtedly assumed they'd already done it. As much as they generally acted like friends of the same gender might, the fact remained that he was a hot guy and she was a woman of reasonable attractiveness, so . . . so . . . she'd forgotten where she was going with the justification, but she felt it was all safely justified.

But it was also in the past. There would be no more. Regardless of how good he smelled. Or how sad she felt.

“Okay, I'm ready. Tell me about your bison stuff.”

He walked ahead of her, his eyes on the ground. “Well, I think I'm going to buy up part of his herd. He's looking to downsize, and . . . I'm looking to buy some bison.”

“I imagine they're a little hard to come by.”

“Apparently not, since I found these guys easily enough.”

She opened the door to his truck and climbed in at the same time he did. “Okay, true enough. So what else?”

“They're a lot more agile than they look. Which, they look like lumbering mountains of shag carpet, so I guess that's not too descriptive. But basically, they can jump like sons of bitches and they can plow right through barbed wire without ever feeling it. So I need special fencing. High, strong. Everything on the ranch will have to be replaced.”

“Do you have the money?”

“Let's just say I'm glad I sold the sports car, but yeah, I have it.”

“Lots of work though.”

“Yep. And it will take time. But this is my full-time job now. Bison ranching. And preparing to become a bison rancher.”

“I'm sorry, it's a really funny word. Bison.”

He turned the engine on and faced her, arching one brow. “Really?”

“Yes. Bison. Cade Mitchell, bison magnate. I like it.”

“Or, that crazy-ass Cade Mitchell. He's turned into a bison man.”

“Bison man?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Like a cat lady but with bison.”

A laugh exploded from her lips, a combination of the hilarity of the image and the stress and weirdness of a day that had started with an orgasm on a table and ended in the hospital.

“Oh my gosh! That's the funniest damn thing.” She leaned forward and clutched her stomach, hooting like a deranged owl. “I'm imagining people dodging you in the grocery store because you have bison hair stuck to your sweater and reek faintly of musk and hay!”

“You're a psycho, Amber; you know that, right?”

“Do they have canned bison food at the grocery store?”

“Probably not . . .”

“You need little rub posts for your bison. And you can put bells around their necks so you can always hear them coming.”

“Amber, did you sneak booze into that can of Diet Coke?”

“No.” She wiped her eyes and sat up. “No, I've just completely lost my mind”—she giggled again—“because today was without a doubt the weirdest day on record.”

“Okay, I grant you it was weird on all fronts.”

She hiccuped. “Sorry. I'm really not drunk.”

“No, I know,” he said. “Are you okay?” He maneuvered the truck onto the main highway and headed back toward the ranch.

Her stomach knotted up tight, making it harder to breathe, everything sore now because of the tension and because of her laughing fit.