Chapter 6
6
C innamon splashed cold water on her face and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. She looked like a raccoon. Or something straight from a horror movie. She lifted her shirt over her head. Her side didn’t hurt half as much. Neither did her thigh. The doctor said the stitches could come out in five days. She’d passed that.
She shimmied out of her jeans and ran her hand over the wound on her leg. Flashes of Pete coming at her with a knife filled her brain. She’d never been so scared in her life. She honestly thought she was going to die and all because she had used the computer.
She pressed her hands against the vanity. She needed to tell Austin the truth about what happened. Why Pete lost his shit so bad that night and a few other things. She also wanted these stitches out. They itched like hell.
Sucking in a deep breath, she opened the bathroom door and entered the master bedroom.
Austin was sprawled out in the bed with his back propped up on pillows and a book in his hands. He glanced up and his eyes went wide. He cleared his throat and lowered his novel to his lap. “Are you aware you’re not wearing anything but a bra and a thong?”
“I want you to take these stitches out.” She sat on the edge of the bed.
“Excuse me?” He blinked.
“I’ve seen you do it on horses and other animals before.”
“But I’ve never done it on a human.” He set his book on the nightstand.
“It can’t be that much different.”
He ran his hand across her midsection, fingering one set of stitches and then the other before moving to the set on her leg. “I suppose your wounds look as though they are entirely closed.”
“They’re driving me crazy. Please, take them out.”
“All right. Let me see if I’ve got something small enough. What I use on horses will be too big.” He pulled back the covers. “But could you at least put on some shorts? There are boxers in the top drawer of my dresser. I’ve been able to keep my hands to myself while you’re sleeping in my bed, but that thong is going to change things real quick.”
She laughed. “I thought you liked this style.”
“That’s the problem and there’s only so much a man can take. I’m going to need a cold shower now before I go to bed.” He made his way to the bathroom.
While he rummaged through the medicine cabinet, she found a pair of his boxers and hiked them up to her hips. They were a little too big, so she rolled the elastic down, hoping that would help hold them up. At least for a little while. She hoped that after she told him the truth, he wouldn’t be too mad—at least he shouldn’t be. If anything, he should be flattered.
And then maybe they could deal with what was obviously happening between them. Her feelings were real. She knew that deep in her soul. They had never died and she wanted to explore them. It didn’t matter that she’d just left her husband because that marriage had died the day they buried their daughter.
Maybe even before.
Her heart had always belonged to Austin and Pete knew it. That fact had made him go crazy.
“Okay.” Austin strolled into the bedroom carrying a small pair of scissors and some ointment. “This should do the trick.”
“You don’t sound very confident.”
“Hey, you’re the one who asked me to do this, so lie down and let me work.” He pressed his hand on the center of her chest and gave her a playful shove. Pinching her stomach, he tugged at the stitches and began removing them one by one. “Let me know if I’m hurting you.”
“It feels so good to get those things out of my body. I just want to scratch like mad.”
“Don’t do that. I’ll put this cream on when I’m done. That should help. It will also help with scarring, so use it a couple of times a day.”
“I’m not worried about the battle wounds. They are reminders of what I escaped.” She lifted her head and glanced down.
He’d removed one set and was rubbing the warm cream on her stomach. “I’m so sorry about what you had to endure. I’m also sorry that I scared you tonight. But you should have been more frightened of him.”
“Trust me, he terrifies me. But I didn’t want you to get into a fight and land yourself in county lockup. I know you, and you don’t hold back when your buttons are pushed. I also know Brad and he wouldn’t hesitate to slap cuffs on you, especially if it was for your own good. But that would have left me alone and that scares me more.”
“I’m here for you.” Austin moved to the next set of stitches. “I’ve grown up a little in the last fifteen years. I have more restraint.”
“Perhaps, but your rage was palpable.”
He leaned over and kissed her scar. “Can you blame me? Look at what that asshole did to you.” He pinched her thigh and tugged at the stitch with his fingers before making the first snip.
“Tonight could have been really bad for you.”
“Me?” Austin jerked his head. “What about you? All that man was focused on was getting his hands on you.”
“That’s only part of what he wanted.”
“What do you mean?” Austin finished rubbing the ointment on her leg. He stood and pulled out a shirt from his dresser and handed it to her. Climbing onto the bed, he fluffed a pillow and eased in next to her.
She sat up and let out a long breath. “I didn’t accidentally call you that night I said I meant to call JW.”
“Then why did you say that?”
“I’d managed to lock Pete in the bedroom after he beat the shit out of me. I called the cops, and then I called you.”
Austin closed his eyes. “Why did you hang up on me?”
“Because Pete managed to get out.”
“What happened when the cops got there?” He blinked, taking her hand and kissing the back of it.
“I told them it was a mistake and that I fell down the stairs. They tried to separate us so they could talk to me alone, which they did. But I kept to my story because if I didn’t, I was afraid he’d go crazy and kill me because of you.”
“He knew you called me?”
“Pete had found a journal I had been writing in, which had many references to you, about how I missed you and made a mistake in marrying Pete.”
“Jesus,” Austin muttered. “All your texts now make sense.”
“In my phone I had you listed as Audrey. I don’t know when he figured out Audrey was you, but he did.”
“Did this have anything to do with me?” He waved his hand over her body.
Tears stung the corners of her eyes. “This isn’t your fault.”
“I know that. But I still want to know what happened.”
“You stopped texting and for some reason that crushed me. It had been years since we talked and getting those random texts brightened my day. When they stopped, I felt more alone than I had in years. I risked journaling again. He found them, as usual.”
“What kinds of things did you write?”
“How I missed Whiskey Ranch. My cousins. You.” She swiped at her cheeks. “He had taken my phone and shut off the internet when he was out of the house. I wasn’t allowed to work and my only friends were the ones he approved of, which were like none. I would sneak down early in the morning while he was in the shower to use the computer and google you.”
“You did what?” He jerked his head.
“I know that sounds crazy.”
“No.” He took her chin with his thumb and forefinger. “It’s sweet.” He brushed his lips across hers in a tender, romantic kiss. His tongue darted into her mouth.
She gripped his shoulders. Her muscles filled with heat.
“Continue,” he whispered.
“I was reading about what happened with Charity when I realized Pete was standing right behind me. I have no idea how long he’d been there. But I had googled your name and other things about you, so when he checked the search history, at least a dozen items had Austin Sawyer in it. But what was worse, he had my journal in his hands and that’s when he went nuts. He slammed my head into?—”
“I don’t want the details of the beating.” Austin ran his thumb across her cheek. “I can see what he did to you and that’s enough.”
“For fifteen years Pete has been insanely jealous of you. There were times he’d asked me if Rosy was yours because she had blue eyes while his were brown.”
“You have blue eyes.”
“I know and Rosy couldn’t be yours because of the timing. Besides, I did a paternity test to prove it to him because I was so tired of listening to it.” She pressed her hand on Austin’s chest. “This was before he started beating me. While he was always possessive, it took a while for things to get this bad.”
“Don’t make excuses for him.”
“I’m not. I’m telling you what it was like. My marriage was never good. In the beginning Pete used to say there were three of us in our bed and the reality is that sometimes he was right. I never got over you. I tried. I focused on Rosy and believe it or not, Pete was a good dad.”
“How can you say that if he questioned if he was even her father?”
“He did that to hurt me. He never treated her badly. Only me. When she was diagnosed with cancer, he was at her bedside the entire time. He was attentive to her but blamed me for her getting sick. He would say that if I wasn’t thinking about you all the time, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Austin pinched the bridge of his nose. “I understand how hard it is to leave an abusive relationship, so this question is hard to ask. But why didn’t you leave him back then? Why didn’t you contact me if you still wanted to be with me?”
“Do you remember exactly what you said to me after you offered to raise my baby with me?”
“You mean after you told me to go to hell? Yeah. I remember. I told you that if you went through with the marriage never to contact me again and to enjoy your life.”
“It was a little harsher than that. But I took it to heart and did my best to make things work with Pete. When Rosy died, I was devastated.”
Austin took her hand and squeezed.
“I went into a deep depression and so did Pete. He was drinking heavily and I could barely get out of bed. All I wanted was to come back to Whiskey Ranch. To see my family. To call you. I tried to find you. I reached out to all my cousins, but no one knew where you were. When Pete found out I had been looking for you, that’s when the isolation really began and because I was in such a bad headspace, I didn’t even see it happening.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“Again, I’m not doing that. But there was a part of me that felt as though I deserved to be punished. I know that’s not true. However, you have to understand that when I realized what a huge mistake I had made, in my young mind, I believed that I somehow brought on all the misery. A few years went by. I sought counseling, first with Pete’s blessing, but when I started to get better and gain confidence, he took that away from me. Eventually, I became numb to it all until I couldn’t take it anymore. But even then, I couldn’t commit to leaving for a couple of years. He threatened to hurt my family. To destroy you. He told me he knew where you were and that he’d make sure you’d suffer.”
“How did you get my phone number? Because I changed it. And you never changed yours, which I find odd because I would think Pete would have wanted you to.”
“He allowed it to keep my family from freaking out, but he controlled the communication and it’s not that hard to find cell numbers these days. Besides, I asked Irish for it once I knew you were back at the ranch.”
“Irish never told me that.”
“Because I begged him not to.”
“That man does know how to keep a secret,” Austin said. “All this time, I thought you wanted nothing to do with me.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you. I was young and made many mistakes, but I can’t say Rosy was one of them.”
He kissed her nose. “I’m so sorry about her passing. It breaks my heart that you had to go through that. I wish I could have met her.”
“She was a sweet little girl.”
“I’m sure she was.” Austin pulled her close. “I don’t know if this is bad timing or not, but I feel compelled to tell you that I’ve spent the last fifteen years thinking about you too. Every woman I’ve ever dated was never good enough because they weren’t you. I can’t tell you how many times some chick broke up with me because I was still hung up on you. The only one who didn’t was Charity, but she was cheating on me anyway.” He laughed. “Funny thing though, the second she walked onto this ranch, she bitched about all the things here that were all about Cinnamon, including the box I have under this bed.” He leaned over and pulled it out. “This has all the stupid little notes you used to pass me in the hallways at school. Some of the cards you sent me in college. Pictures. All sorts of sappy sentimental stuff. I had to hide it so she wouldn’t burn it.”
“Shit, Pete did burn mine.”
“Now I wish I had hit him,” Austin said.
Cinnamon lifted the lid off the box and pulled out one of the notes. “I can’t believe you kept all this stuff. You were always sentimental and little sappy, but I would have never expected this.”
“I’ll be honest, there were a couple of times I thought about getting rid of them.” He held an old birthday card in his hands. “But every time I tried, it felt like I was tossing away a piece of my heart.”
She continued to thumb through some pictures. “Oh my God. This was from my freshman formal. You look so handsome in that suit.”
“I hated it.”
“I know. You bitched about it half the night.”
“We did make a good-looking couple though.” He took the image from her hands, stuffed it in the box, and set it aside. “Is it crazy that I still care about you?” He palmed her cheek. “Dare I say, even love you.”
She swallowed her beating heart. “I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving you,” she said. “I worry, though, that all my feelings are past memories. I don’t know the man you are today and you don’t really know me anymore.”
“That’s easily remedied.” He ran his hand through her long hair. “Whiskey Ranch is your home. I’m certainly not going anywhere. There’s no reason why we can’t start fresh.”
“That sounds so cliche.”
“Don’t you believe it’s possible?”
She leaned in and kissed his sweet lips, letting them linger for a long, delectable moment. It truly was like she’d returned to the very place she’d always belonged. “We’ve hurt each other in ways many could never come back from.”
“And yet we’re in each other’s arms right now.” He arched a brow. “Outside of running into Pete, I had a great time tonight. I don’t think I’ve felt this alive in years and that’s all because of you.”
“I know what you mean, but I don’t want to rush things because of our history, which is a total switch from when I walked out of that bathroom, because I had every intention of trying to seduce you.”
He chuckled. “I wasn’t born yesterday. I figured that out when you weren’t wearing much. But I take it you’ve changed your mind.”
“It’s not that. I still want you. I’m just wondering if maybe it might be better if we wait.”
“Like until morning?”
She slapped his shoulder.
“Okay, tomorrow night?”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m kidding,” he said. “I never thought I’d ever have a second chance with you, so if waiting a week, two, or a month is what you need, I can do that.”
“Oh my God. This reminds me of the first time you tried to have sex with me. You were so patient.”
“Only you didn’t make me wait for more than three days.” He held up three fingers and waggled his brows. “You texted me after football practice and asked me to meet you at your place. I didn’t know your dad was gone for the night.”
“The look on your face was classic when I met you at the door in a tiny nighty, holding a box of condoms.”
“You were sixteen. Way too young to be having sex.” He smacked his head. “What was I thinking?”
“You were a horny teenager who hadn’t had sex yet yourself.”
“This is true and imagine my surprise when my girlfriend turned out to be a sex addict.”
“I was not.” She scowled. “I just liked sex with you.”
“I had no idea what I was doing.”
“You could have fooled me.” She yawned. “Is it okay if I still stay in here with you tonight? If it’s too?—”
He pressed his finger over her lips. “I’ll sleep better with you at my side, especially until I get word that Pete is tucked back into a jail cell in Idaho Falls.”
“What happens if they let him out again?”
“Babe, we’ll deal with it if they do, but trust me when I say, I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you’re safe.” He pulled back the covers and pulled them over their bodies. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow we can take a nice leisurely horseback ride and have a picnic.”
“That sounds like a little piece of Whiskey Ranch heaven.” She rolled to her side, tucking her back against his chest, and closed her eyes. For the first time since she arrived home, the tears didn’t come.