Chapter Thirty-One
I HAVEN’T BEEN very brave in my life.
I’d always hide when my daddy came around.
When he did catch me, I’d cower and crouch.
I’d beg him to leave me alone. I’d beg him to leave my mother alone.
I never just stood up and said enough. Granted, I was a child, but even when we left Wildfire and I became relatively safer, I still chose to hide behind things.
My clothes. My books. My insistence to never be like my mother, so I shut myself off from every experience and adventure.
I even kept my dream, that I wanted to help women like my mother, a secret for the longest time.
Because I kept telling myself if I couldn’t stand up for my mother, how was I going to stand up for anyone else?
He was the first person I told, and he was also the first person to tell me I’m brave.
So I want to be brave for him today.
Which is why I’m in the barn, up in our makeshift bedroom where I’ve spent every single night since I got here.
Well, except the very first one, when he left me alone in his room because he misguidedly thought I should stay away from him.
I’m glad I didn’t. Because I never would’ve known this kind of love existed.
His thudding footsteps on the creaking stairs alert me that he’s here. He’s walking up and my heart starts racing. The moment he reaches the landing, his eyes lock with mine, and I lose my breath.
He’s in his usual attire, a soft-looking dark T-shirt, a pair of washed-out jeans, and muddy boots, along with his brown Stetson.
He usually also has leather chaps on when he’s working with the horses, which he probably was.
Given that he’s been trying to break that bronc Axton was riding the first day we came in.
He’s made some progress with it, but the horse is still skittish and gets spooked easily.
Anyway, my husband removes his chaps before coming to me.
He also washes his mud-streaked hands and arms.
I asked him about that one day, and he said, “Can’t put my filthy cowboy hands on your flower-soft skin now, can I?”
I swear I almost blurted it out then. That I love him, and he can put his hands on me any way he likes. Bloody, dirty, filthy. I’ll take whatever he’ll give me.
“You okay?” he asks, walking toward where I’m standing by the window, a frown creasing his brow.
I fist my dress and nod. “Yes.”
He comes all the way over to me and frames my face with his hands. “Is it your period?”
I have to chuckle at this. “This is the first time you’ve used that term.”
“What term?”
I grab his shirt at the sides. “Period. You usually just say ‘on the rag’ or something equally cowboy-ish.” Then, “Actually, ever since we got here, you sound more like a cowboy than you ever did back when we were in the woods.”
It’s true. His drawl is more pronounced, and his words have a lazy pitch that wasn’t there when I initially met him. Probably because this is his home, his place in the world.
His frown stays in place, telling me he doesn’t find any of this amusing. “So is that it? You in pain?”
I shake my head, my heart clenching at his concern. “No. It’s all over now. As of this afternoon.”
The pads of his rough fingers dig into my cheek. “So then, what is it? Ax said he dropped you off here sometime before lunch.”
After our little foray into Marsden’s office and what I found in his safe, I told Axton to bring me to the barn.
He didn’t ask me what I read in that file, even though he was standing right there.
He didn’t even take a peek while I was reading it.
I guess he really was serious when he said I was entering sacred territory.
That he would steal money from the safe but not touch anything else.
These three brothers are something else, aren’t they?
“They’re different,” I say.
“What?”
“Your names,” I explain. “Marsden, Arsenal, Axton.”
His frown keeps deepening, and I don’t blame him for that.
I’m not making much sense to him. I’m not making much sense to myself either.
All I know is that I want to find out everything about him.
Every little thing. I want to get so close to him that nothing can ever tear us apart.
Not even his thirst for revenge. Or his love for another woman.
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” he growls.
“Was it your mom?” I ask instead. “Who named you all?”
He opens his mouth but closes it a second later.
He searches my eyes, and I’m too overwhelmed right now to hide anything I’m feeling.
I don’t know what he sees in them—restlessness, heartbreak, panic, love—but whatever it is, it makes him pull me even closer, his palms splaying open on my cheeks, his fingers burying in my hair, his thumbs stroking the sides of my lips.
Then with a low, rough voice, he replies, “Yeah. Off these books she used to read. All about cowboys and gunslingers.”
“Your mom used to read books like me?”
“Clearly, I got my type from my ma.”
Fisting his shirt, I swallow. “Your name’s my favorite. Out of all your names. Out of all the names actually.”
“Yeah?”
“It reminds me of fire. You know, like arson. A crime but I don’t care.”
His fingers flex on my face. “Darlin’, you gotta tell me what’s—”
“I know why you lied about it. In the beginning. But I wish you didn’t need to.”
I wish you didn’t need to do what you’re doing. I wish you were free.
“Baby, what’s—”
“I love my name too,” I say, cutting him off. “But I don’t know where my mom got it from. She never told me.”
He presses his fingers to my face, clearly getting impatient with me and my ramblings.
“The only thing she did right in this life was makin’ you and then givin’ you that name, yeah?
The only fuckin’ thing. She didn’t deserve your love when she was alive and she don’t deserve it now when she’s dead, you understand? ”
I nod, my eyes stinging. “Yes.”
I do. Along with being brave, he somehow taught me that too. That I’m worth protecting. I’m worth saving. I want him to know that he’s worth protecting too. Worth loving. Because I already do.
“I’m leaving,” I blurt out.
His frame tightens, his features going hard. “I know.”
My fingers twist in his shirt. “In one week.”
Something flickers through his features, quick like lightning, that I have no hope of understanding. “Yeah.”
“I don’t want—”
He squeezes my cheeks to shut me up. “No.”
“But I’m going to m—”
“Fuck no.”
I go up on my tiptoes and in his face. “You can’t stop me from saying it.”
He fists my hair. “I can.”
I pull at his T-shirt. “You can’t stop me from feeling it either.”
His nostrils flare with anger and he snaps, “I can and I will. The only thing you need to feel right now is how you’ll be free in a week.
How you’ll be goin’ away, doin’ this beautiful thing you wanted to do.
How you’ll help people. Save women from men like me and your daddy who make this world a shitty place.
” He fists my hair harder, pulling my head back.
“The only thing you need to remember is that you’re going to live your life.
That nothin’ they did to you, nothin’ I did, mattered in the end.
Because you’re beautiful and brave and so fuckin’ stunning you take my breath away. Do you understand?”
My breaths are all choppy now, my heart a mess.
In fact, I’m worse than I’ve been before.
All day, I’ve been crippled with a kind of restlessness I’ve never felt before, and now he’s made it even worse with his sweet, infuriating words.
So much so that I don’t know what else to do but smack him.
Scratch his neck and punch his chest. I don’t know what else to do but rain my fists down on his mountain-like body and take my frustration out on him while screaming, “You make it so h-hard. God, you make everything so hard, Arsen. It’s so h-hard to hate you but I should hate you.
I should. You’re the worst man I-I’ve ever met.
You’re bossy and controlling and dominating.
And it’s always your way or the highway and God, you make m-me so angry. You stupid, asshole cowboy. I wish—”
And just like that he’s swallowing my words with his mouth.
He’s kissing me so hard and so deep that it feels like my head is spinning.
My entire body is spinning, and I have no choice but to hold on to him and kiss him back if I want to find my balance.
I have no choice but to climb his body like the mountain he always feels like, strong and large and so steadfast, but also rocky and treacherous.
I wrap my legs around his slim waist and wind my arms around his neck as I kiss, kiss, kiss him.
And as he kisses me back, he takes me to our bed.
The bed where I gave him my virginity, and as soft as that bed is—and it is soft—and as poetic as it would be to do this here, I still push him away with my hand on his shoulder. I still break our kiss and whisper against his mouth, “Not here.”
Panting, he frowns too. “What?”
“M-mirror.”
Our chests are clashing together as if fighting with each other. I bet our hearts are pounding in a way that could be called a war too. Drumming against our rib cages in a violent beat. Our blood could be kerosene, and this thing between us could be the match that lights everything on fire.
Him, me, this world.
“I want to see,” I whisper when all he does is stare down at me with fiery eyes.
I’ve never asked this of him before.
He’s the one who always initiates sex in front of the floor-length mirror that he put in himself just like the bathtub.
The first time he insisted on having sex in front of it, I kept my eyes closed the whole time.
I wasn’t going to see all my thick curves jiggling and shaking with his deep, pounding thrusts.
He let me, but then to punish me, he laid me down in front of it while pointing out all the places on my body that are his favorite.