Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RHETT
O livia heads home to shower and change with a promise to be ready in an hour. Anticipation is a ravenous monster inside me, and my mind spins around the thought of her getting ready for me . I might have kept up a confident front in that barn with her, but the truth is that everything about her makes me feel wildly out of control.
I mean, goddamn, the woman flat out asked for sex .
It takes some convincing to get Wells to cover my shift tonight—he worked last night, and I know he wants to spend some alone time with his girl after Mom gets back home and can take the boys. But I think his general curiosity about whatever the fuck he thinks I’m doing with Olivia wins him over.
I try to make quick work of my own shower, scrubbing myself raw in my cabin to get the sweat and dirt off of me. I’m hard the entire fucking time, mentally creating and cataloging every single thing I want to do with her. Every position I want to see her in.
Knees spread wide on all fours, baring herself open for me so I can get a nice, long look.
Hands bound high above her head, her loss of control so sweet.
The way her hair might skate across bare shoulders, chin tilted up as she kneels for me. Eager and hungry as I slide into her mouth to see the shape of me swell through the outside of her cheek.
I wonder, badly , if she’s just as stubborn and argumentative with the rest of her body as she is with that mouth. How hard I might be able to push her. If she’ll let me break her the way I want to, if her desires might match mine.
Careful , I warn myself. Olivia isn’t some random kinky woman I found in a bar.
She’s warm. Soft. Pure.
I need to take care of her. To show her how fucking special and good she is. She’s the first person who’s ever looked at me like . . . like I’m a human being who fucking matters. And the last thing I want to do is ruin it. To prove her wrong.
Hazel eyes shine bright in my mind, looking up at me with so much of that trust I know damn well I don’t deserve.
I don’t even realize I’m pumping myself until I’m already coming.
* * *
Olivia barrels out of her house like a bat out of hell, and my amusement splits my face open in a wide grin. Her hair is mildly damp, her cheeks flushed, and I do my best to memorize every detail as she springs forward down the front steps, nearly knocking her head against a plant that hangs from the overhead beam.
“Can I put this in one of those bags?” she shouts over the bike’s engine, holding up her purse. I nod, shifting my leg so I can open the one on my right because the left one holds our food. She tucks her purse in next to the backpack I’ve already shoved in, and then stands to look at me with a rushed smile. “Thanks.”
If she’s nervous, she doesn’t look it. She looks . . . happy.
“You ready?” I ask, eyeing the orange dress she wears beneath a white denim jacket. Its skirt is going to be hell for her on this bike, but the image of it has my blood pumping.
“Yep.” She takes the second helmet from my hands and buckles the strap beneath her chin. And then the weight and warmth of her surround me as she assumes her position on the seat behind me.
We take off down the road in front of her house, turning at the first stoplight. I open the throttle and send us soaring down the long stretch of open road as Olivia’s arms squeeze tight around me. In the minute or two we stay like that, life feels as damn near close to perfect as it’s ever felt.
Soon I’m slowing us back down, easing carefully off the shoulder and into the dirt lot that stretches far in the distance, surrounding a chain-link fence that circles the water tower reaching into the sky. Olivia’s lips ghost my ear, testing my restraint as she asks, “What are we doing here?”
“You need to eat.” I push out the kickstand with the toe of my boot and lean the bike on it, turning off the engine. Olivia climbs off, looking around, her hair a mess of gold beneath the stark black helmet. I stand and reach for her wrist, pulling her to me. Look at you , I think, on the verge of voicing the words.
Her smile is soft, her eyes bright, and I have to push down the sharp impulse to do something with all this want. Not yet , I add as she patiently lets me unfasten her helmet and pull it off. But soon . “Is there an invisible restaurant?” she asks. “Maybe a gateway to Narnia?”
I roll my eyes, resting both of our helmets on the seat before pulling out the canvas bag of food. “What planet do you live on?”
She laughs. “Your imagination is sorely nonexistent, isn’t it?”
If she only knew how savage my imagination has been. “We’re going up there.” I point to the large tank that holds the town’s water, a chipped red SF painted in thick strokes across the middle.
She faces the sky, propping a hand over her brow to shield against the dying sunlight. “You’re joking, right?”
I smile. “Nope.”
Thankfully, she follows behind me as I lead us toward the steel ladder. “I thought we were . . .” Her voice trails off, dropping somewhere in the loose rocks beneath our feet.
“Fucking?” I ask.
I don’t need to turn around to know I’ve made her blush. “Well . . . yeah. Are you an exhibitionist or something?”
My hard laugh surprises me. “Or something,” I say, turning to look at her when we reach the bottom of the ladder. “You haven’t eaten all day, and after our last date you said you wanted me to show you more of myself. I guess what you saw today at the ranch is a big part of it, but there’s also a lot of other things about me no one really knows, not even my family. I figured I’d feed you in one of my favorite places before we . . . move on to other things.”
I’m right: her flush stretches from her neck to her cheeks. And it’s beautiful. She looks from me to the ladder and frowns. “Are we going up?”
“Yep.” I move out of the way, giving her access to go first.
“What if I fall?” Worry bunches between her brows.
“I’d never let that happen,” I say. And I mean it. “Plus, the ladder is caged, so even if you slip a little, you’re really not going anywhere.”
The look she shoots me is full of daggers, but then she’s moving to hook her palms around the rung at eye-level. She takes a deep breath. “You’re gonna have to live with it if I die, you know.”
I shake my head. Smack her ass. “Get up there.”
She yelps and laughs. And then she starts to climb.
I make sure to stay only a couple rungs below her so that if she does somehow manage to fucking fall and the cage around us doesn’t break it, I will. She must realize how safe she is because she climbs with confidence, even as the ground beneath us gets smaller and smaller.
The caged chute opens through the floor of the five-foot balcony that wraps around the whole water tank, and Olivia clears through it with ease. “You know we’re trespassing, right?” she asks, pointing to a sign bolted to the railing as I climb onto the balcony behind her.
I give her my best smirk. “Highly doubt Sheriff Joe is pulling any kind of surveillance on this thing. I’ve been up here probably a hundred times and never run into anyone.”
She eyes the bag still clutched in my hand. “What did you bring?”
“Hungry?”
She nods. “Starving.”
“Ranch work will do that to you.”
“I mean, if you call hanging out with your cute nephew and petting a few horses ‘ranch work,’ then, yeah, I get why it’s so hard.”
I laugh. “We like to pretend it kicks our ass, but really it’s just cuddles and kids.”
“And here I thought it’s where all that muscle was built.”
I cock my head. “You like my muscles, peaches?”
She rolls her eyes as she sits on the floor of the balcony and dangles her legs over the edge. “I think we’ve established that I do.”
I sit next to her, try hard to pretend like that doesn’t light up every nerve ending inside of my body. “Here,” I say, handing her a burger.
“Where did you get these? The only burgers we have in town are from my mom’s café.”
“There’s a greasy hole-in-the-wall in Foxborough I like.”
She eyes me. “You went to another county to get burgers ?” I nod. “Why didn’t you just get them from June’s?”
“I would bet at least ninety percent of your meals are from that café. And when I take you on dates, I want to make sure you actually enjoy the food. Plus, as a general rule, I try to find what I like in places that don’t exist in Saddlebrook Falls.”
I watch her take a bite, see the pleasure of it splash across her face. “Oh my god, this is so good.” She takes another bite, this time bigger, and it leaves a smear of mustard on the corner of her mouth.
I swipe it away with my thumb.
Put it in my mouth.
Her eyes track the movement, but she shakes her head as if to clear it. “You really hate Saddlebrook Falls, don’t you?”
I shrug, turning my attention to my own burger, unwrapping the paper around it. “The history between my family and this town is long as hell and pretty fucking messy. But yeah, I guess you could say that I hate it. Or at least what the people in it have done to us.”
“What have they done?” she asks, genuinely curious.
I can’t help the anger that flares. It’s always right there, just waiting for the tiniest reason to ignite. “Those sons of bitches have been trying to dig my father’s grave for years , Olivia. People have wanted to see him—us—fail, for as long as I can remember.” My thoughts trail to the lawyer this morning, the unease on Kasey’s face. I have half a mind to think it might be something Mayor Moore is up to—he’s been trying to chase us out of town since he was elected, even when his son was Wells’s best friend. “Look. Bringing me into your life in any public way is something you won’t be able to take back when shit hits the fan. And trust me, it will hit the fan. People around here hate me too. It’s bad blood that runs both ways, and I don’t want to see you get caught up in shit that has nothing to do with you.”
“I don’t care what people think, Rhett. I only care about the truth.”
“What truth is it that you’re looking for?” It comes out harsher than I mean it.
She shrugs. “You haven’t exactly been a real likeable guy.”
I scoff. “Understatement of the century.”
“Well, then you can’t be mad that people have opinions.”
My gaze snaps to her. A light breeze dances through her hair, her face glowing in the sunlight that remains. She’s a force of nature. So brutally honest in the way she effortlessly calls me out.
I like it. More than I should, probably.
I tilt my chin toward her burger. “Eat.”
She smiles like my attitude doesn’t faze her. I watch as she lifts the burger back to her mouth and then I do the same.
It’s quiet between us for a while. But the urge to explain myself eventually becomes unbearable, so I try again. “Bennetts aren’t exactly known for being warm and fuzzy—especially the men. We’ve had the ranch for six generations—Liam and the boys will be the seventh. My brothers and I grew up when our grandparents were still running things, and my grandpa was tough. He babied Wells a little bit—I think he got softer in his old age—but the rest of us learned how to work really hard pretty early on.
“My dad, though—” I stop. Wait for the rush of frustration to pass, and then force it back down. “My dad took the ranch over when I was nine, and it was like a bomb dropped on the way of life we’d always known. Where my grandpa was strict, my dad was ruthless. He was already pretty deep with a drinking problem, and things derailed fast. My mom used to be good friends with some of the women in town—Mayor Moore’s wife was one her best friends actually. But my dad would prowl around town like he owned the place, like the ranch and the bar were some sort of proof of his superiority. And it didn’t help that he was drunk all the time. Her friends eventually stopped seeing her.”
Olivia watches me, patient. Gives me the room I need to find the right words to explain something that feels so complicated.
“When I was thirteen, my dad competed in a rodeo—it was normal for him. Another way for us to make money. But he was wasted when he got in the saddle that day, cocky in thinking he could handle a bronc in that state. He was thrown off in the first three seconds, and he didn’t move out of the way fast enough before the horse stomped over his back. His spine was shattered and he lost the use of his legs. Brooks and Kasey were still kids, but they were forced to step up and run the ranch. To train all the horses that came in. And my mom had to take over working the bar. Constantly facing people who’d essentially abandoned her. And my dad just . . . kept drinking, and he became more miserable than he’d ever been.
“I guess somehow I figured out that if I could get people to talk about me, they wouldn’t talk about him. It wrecked my mom, the way people spoke so poorly of her husband. The way they laughed at him. And I just couldn’t—I couldn’t see her hurt like that anymore. So, I started doing stupid shit. Fights at school. Drinking a lot. Causing scenes I knew would fuel the gossip. And it worked, for the most part. People still talked about him now and then, but mostly, they were talking about me. It’s . . . it’s how the gazebo happened,” I admit.
Her eyes flash wide in surprise.
I throw her a half-cocked smile, like it’s not a big deal. “Everyone thinks it was about a girl who stood me up.” He shrugs. “There was a girl, I guess. And she did stand me up that night, but I was already three sheets to the wind looking for trouble, because I’d found out earlier that day that my dad got caught stealing from the hardware store. He was arrested and everything.”
“Rhett,” Olivia murmurs, a look of agony on her face.
“I’d been sulking in the dark in that gazebo, and at some point, I dropped a bottle of whiskey. It shattered on the floor, spilling everywhere, and . . . I guess I wanted to see the whole thing burn.”
She squeezes her eyes shut, blowing out a breath. “You were . . . suffering.”
I nudge her shoulder with mine. “Hey, none of that. I’ve made my bed. Done plenty of shit to hurt the people around me. And I can’t lie and say I never enjoyed it.” I take another bite and chew. Watch the tops of trees sway yards below us. “No one ever cared to help us. Like, sure, my dad was an asshole. Is an asshole, even sober now. But my mom is one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet, and we were all just kids, you know? But no one wanted to help. We almost lost the ranch. Almost couldn’t make ends meet. Even had to borrow from the devil a few times to stay out of the red.” I decide that’s not a truth I’m willing to share right now. Maybe not ever. But whether Kasey realizes it or not, there’s a reason I started playing cards with the Rustler boys.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “That must all be so hard.”
“I’m not looking for you to be sorry, peaches. But I guess it’s good for you to know who you’re dealing with before things go any further.”
She takes the last bite of her burger and rubs her fingers free of crumbs. “I know who I’m dealing with,” she says after she swallows, giving me a wry look.
I chuckle, and it feels good. “Have to say, I was surprised when you showed up today.”
Her expression falters. “I really should have called.”
“You still don’t have my number,” I tease. “I’ll give it to you today. And for the record, I’m glad you came. But that note I left you was more about your letter than it was about me.”
She stays silent. I don’t miss the way she turns her focus to the ground far below.
“You want to talk about it?”
“What’s there to talk about?” she asks. “It was a really nice letter from a half-sister I’ve never met, who for some reason wants me to be there for her wedding. There’s just no way I could hurt my mom like that though. I’ve gone this far in my life without knowing my father and I . . . I guess I thought once I became an adult, his attempts to communicate would end. I thought it was all based out of guilt, anyway. He has this whole other family, you know? But Céline kept saying how hopeful he is, and I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with that.”
I bunch our trash together and toss it in the bag, pulling out bottles of water for both of us. “What does your gut say?”
She looks at me. “All roads lead to this hurting my mom.”
I shake my head. “That’s what your brain is telling you. What does your gut say? Your heart? What do you actually want?”
Her gaze moves to her bent knee. “I want to understand. I want . . . I want to see what they’re like. For myself.”
I nod. “Perfectly acceptable, normal response. There’s nothing wrong with you wanting to know your family, Olivia.” I reach my hand toward her and tug on a piece of her wind-blown hair so that she looks at me again. “Your mom will understand.”
She blows out a breath. Like she’s come to the same conclusion, but she’s still scared.
I push myself up to my feet. “Come on,” I say, holding out a hand to pull her up.
Her eyes track up the length of my arm, a slow smile creeping along her lips as she palms my wrist. “Is this where we move to the ‘exhibitionist’ part of the date?”
I help her up to her feet and give her a smile that spells trouble. “I’m not opposed to fucking you in public, but I have another bag of tricks in mind.”