Chapter Sixteen
HECOULDN’TSEESTRAIGHT, couldn’t think straight. He knew that he was acting like a wounded animal backed into a corner, and he knew he wasn’t being fair. He had wanted to make her feel threatened the same way that he did, but she wasn’t backing down. Instead, she was standing there, staring at him with clear green eyes, breathing hard and heavy and making him feel like there was no other option.
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t do anything but feel. And what he felt was rage. Rage and a deep, calling need that he had never felt before.
Because there had never been a specific woman. Not for him.
There had been generic desire and sex, the satisfaction of a few hours well spent in a stranger’s arms.
But he had never wanted any one person specifically, and he had sworn to himself that he would leave her alone for a variety of reasons, all of which were valid, all of which were good.
But she had pulled the pin in the grenade that was just barely holding the two of them back.
It was an explosion now, and he didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do about it. Didn’t know if he wanted to do anything about it. Hell, he knew that he didn’t. What he wanted right now was her.
What he wanted was to prove that he was better at something.
He hated that. Hated that all the shame still lived inside him, that he hadn’t really worked it all out.
Hated that he still felt broken and wrong, and frankly, dumb sometimes.
Especially when compared with her.
Especially when he tried to do things that were beyond him.
But this wasn’t beyond him.
And so he closed the distance between them and wrapped his arm around her waist, and finally, it wasn’t just to hold her in a pond or lift her up onto a horse. Finally, it was so he could do this.
He lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers, and she was frozen, immobile for a second, before she wrapped her arms around his neck and started to kiss him back.
Her movements were tentative at first, hesitant, but they were sweet. So damned sweet.
And this was the question in her eyes answered, this was the provocation down by the pond fulfilled.
It had been nothing but this. This heightened, angry awareness that was trying to keep them away from this. Trying, and failing. Because he had told himself that he wasn’t going to do this. He had told himself that he wasn’t going to run roughshod over all of her sweet, young beauty.
He had told himself he didn’t even like her, and honest to God, he didn’t. But that wasn’t what made him angry. Her hair was loose, and he took advantage of that, letting his fingers sink into the silky strands as he cradled her face and kissed her harder. Deeper.
She did not pull away. In fact, she gripped his T-shirt, arching her body against his and whimpering as the kiss went on and on. As he parted her lips and let his tongue slide against hers. The little sound she made was more like a whimper, and for some reason, he thought of her socks.
Those little white socks.
He was so hard he thought he was going to die from it, and he couldn’t recall feeling that way before.
He could remember the first time he’d gone out on his own to find a lover, the kids all packed away at sleepovers, and the sense of freedom giving him a little bit of a high.
But this wasn’t about the act of sex, which he was familiar enough with. It was about Quinn.
It was just about Quinn.
He backed her up against the side of the house, pressing his body hard up against hers and moving his palms over her curves. He brought his hand up to cup her breasts, and she gasped, arching hard into him, filling his hand with her.
Then he slid his thumb over her nipple, and she wiggled against him, and he knew that she must be able to feel the obvious evidence of his desire for her pressed right up against her.
She pulled away from him, breathing hard, and he couldn’t figure out if she was trying to angle her body closer to him, or if she was trying to escape, so he released his hold on her.
“I...” She was panting hard. “You don’t like me.”
“No, carrot, I can’t say that I really do.”
“Why did you kiss me?”
“The same reason you kissed me. You might not like me, but you want me. You can’t help yourself.”
She didn’t look away. Instead, she met his gaze. Full-on and clear. “I don’t think that you’re stupid. I’m not ashamed of being attracted to you—I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand how I can want somebody that I can’t say two words to without making them furious.”
“Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe it’s the spark.”
It was as true as anything, probably. At least as he figured. “I am sorry,” she said. “About invading your privacy. I didn’t mean to do that. Well, I did. But I didn’t mean to upset you.”
He breathed out hard. “You sure you don’t just want to keep kissing?”
She laughed, a kind of frantic, helpless-sounding laugh. “Sure. The kissing is nice. But I can’t keep kissing you as long as you think I’m trying to hurt you. Or that I look down on you. It was never about you. It’s about me. I had to make myself feel important because otherwise I just feel...” Her chest hitched, a cross between a sigh and a sob. “I must not matter that much.That’s what I feel. My dad might have sucked, but he was also the one person I wanted to please most in the world. I didn’t have friends because I wanted to make him proud on the ranch and I worked the land instead of playing with other kids. And he...he chose a new life over me. A lover over me. He...he made me feel like I didn’t matter and I had to make myself matter, Levi. I had to prove I was good with ranching, and I’m never going to be the strongest, am I? So I had to find a way to convince myself I was the smartest. It was never looking down on you. I look down on me.”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said, feeling heavy with tension, and with some of his own shame. Because he had been hard on her. He had assumed the worst to try to push her away. And he didn’t even think he believed any of it. Because absolutely nothing that she had said to him today had been condescending. Absolutely nothing that she had said had been in that vein. She had not acted like he was less because of the dyslexia. He had simply felt it.
And he had felt it because he didn’t know how to talk about it. He didn’t know how to be vulnerable about it.
He hated being vulnerable more than anything, so even if he did know how to be vulnerable about it, he didn’t want to be. Not with her, not with anybody.
Because what he’d said to her the other day was true.
Vulnerability led straight to victimhood.
Because it let people get in. It let them get under your skin. He would be damned if he ever did that again.
And then there was the sole carrot.
Up in his grill, up in his life, who drove him absolutely crazy... And maybe that was the key.
Because he didn’t feel especially vulnerable to her. She wasn’t somebody who was tangled up in his life. So why not share with her? Why not? He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to dump her in a pond. He wanted to drag her upstairs and take her to bed, even though Camilla was here.
He wanted her.
And that could never be anything more than desire, because he just didn’t do anything deeper than that, and he never would.
The truth was, he didn’t have it in him. He didn’t want to have it in him.
He wanted his freedom.
And maybe that was part of the problem. He had only ever experienced personal affairs when he was young. When he didn’t understand that sex didn’t have to be meaningful or connected. That it didn’t have to matter.
He had only ever signed a contract for the use of his land back when he’d been naive.
He wasn’t naive anymore, and he wasn’t inexperienced.
And he had first realized that he had a problem with letters and numbers in school, back when he’d been a kid, and all the teachers had given him a very specific vocabulary to deal with that. Lazy. Lazy was the big one.
No drive. Doesn’t apply himself.
So that was what he believed.
And in the years since, he had clawed his way to a new understanding of all of those things.
None of these things with Quinn needed to be personal. And none of them needed to make him feel bad about himself.
Not at all.
“I’m dyslexic. I learned that a few years ago. I know it’s stupid, but I didn’t know... For a while, I didn’t know there were names for all the things wrong with me. I just thought I wasn’t smart.”
“Levi, I am so sorry.”
“Don’t pity me.”
“No, I didn’t mean that I was sorry for you—I’m sorry for me. I’m really sorry that I didn’t listen to you. And that I judged you. And that I thought somehow going to school for four years meant that I was smarter than you. When you have been running this place since you were eighteen years old, and I don’t know very many people who would’ve had the inbuilt instinct and ability to do that. You are clearly incredibly smart. Incredibly strong.”
“Well, don’t go crazy with the compliments. I signed a contract that I couldn’t read, because I listened to the guy who was talking to me. Not only did I not do a lot of digging, I let my skimming and my own reading comprehension be the guide to signing a ten-year lease for my field. It was stupid. I knew my own limitations, but because I wasn’t willing to ask for anyone’s help, because I wasn’t willing to expose myself, I got myself into a heap of trouble. I worked hard after that. To never be dependent again, while at the same time understanding what my own limits were. That’s why I don’t find deals anymore, Quinn. I just... I made a big mess out of it. And I never wanted to go through something like that again.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she said.
She did look sorry then.
And he didn’t want her to look sorry. He wanted her eyes to be full of desire again. He wanted her to want him.
He really wanted her.
“I think I might also have sequencing disorder. And also maybe some dyscalculia. Basically, the grab bag of learning disabilities. And you have no idea how pissed off that makes me. I thought my whole life that I just didn’t want to work hard at school. All these things that other kids could just do easily, and I knew I couldn’t do them. I knew it was harder for me. My parents were consumed with my mom’s illness. In hindsight, I think my dad had some of my same issues, so he didn’t really care about school. The teachers would tell him I didn’t apply myself, but my dad saw a hard worker, so he thought they were liars. At school I got told I wasn’t trying. I knew that I wasn’t lazy when it came to doing real work. Work on the ranch. I wanted to get away and go to the rodeo, where all that would matter was how good I was on the back of a horse. Where nobody would give a shit whether or not I could read a crusty old novel about a man on a fishing boat.”
“The Old Man and the Sea?”
“Moby Dick.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Men really do like to write about travails on the water, don’t they?”
He laughed. “I guess so. And when you showed up, it seemed like a game at first to go ahead and play down to what I knew you thought. But eventually...”
“Eventually it got old.”
He nodded slowly. “Eventually. Apparently I don’t possess the ability to toy with you indefinitely.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said. “But especially as I’ve gotten to know you, I really wouldn’t have assumed you struggled with that. Because of the way you talk.”
“Audiobooks,” he said. “Nothing has ever made me feel more smug than the ease of access that you have to all kinds of information on audio nowadays. And video, too. Videos online were how I found out about the different learning disabilities I probably had, how I figured out how to set up my computers so that I can do most of it through voice. And have it read things to me. It isn’t that I can’t read. I can. But it takes a hell of a long time, and a lot of times I don’t retain some of the things. It’s just easier to have a little bit of help, and to not turn everything into a mission.”
“I definitely understand that.”
She was silent for a long moment. “Why didn’t you want me to know?”
He didn’t have a ready answer for that. Not really. Except...
“Remember what I said to you about vulnerability?”
“You don’t want anyone to use it against you.”
He shook his head. “No. And... Quinn, I learned a long time ago I had to take care of myself, and the people around me. I can’t be vulnerable. I have to be in charge. In control. For Dylan, Jessie and Camilla. At least if people think I’m dumb, I’m in control of that. Because I know I’m not dumb. So I can do things like I did with you. I played with you. It was easy enough to do. When someone’s underestimating you, it’s pretty easy.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I get that. And also...I bet me being a Sullivan...”
“At first,” he said. “But it doesn’t now. So now you know.”
“I meant what I said. If you still don’t want to do the easement, I am more than willing to look at the paperwork anyway.”
And he looked at Quinn, and he realized that he was just... He wanted to give her an award. For being the stubborn little cuss that she was. For sticking it out through all of the different tantrums he had at her, and for going right at him and having several tantrums right back.
She was the only person that he had ever told about the dyslexia. She was the only woman that he had ever kissed in this house. She was something, whether he wanted her to be or not.
“The easement is yours,” he said. “Because I do trust you, Quinn. Even if I don’t particularly like you all the time.”
He was lying. He did like her.
He liked her a whole lot.
She nodded slowly. “Right. Well. I appreciate it.”
“You have to finish working for me this week.”
“I will. And I’ll work on the papers, too... I...” And then she leaned forward, and curved her hand around the back of his neck, and kissed him. It was deep and lingering, and he returned it, desperate for more of her.
He wasn’t familiar with this feeling. With it feeling so necessary to have a particular woman.
To have her.
But he wanted her. Quinn Sullivan. Lord Almighty.
It was a different kind of want. Something that had more to do with the fire in his blood than the purely physical.
Something indescribable, incalculable.
And not just because he had difficulties with math.
But because it was part of a great universal mystery.
Chemistry.
He’d never taken chemistry.
Maybe that was it.
Maybe she had.
Maybe she understood it better than he did. But when they parted, he could see by the confusion in her eyes that she didn’t.
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Yeah. All right.”
And tomorrow Camilla wouldn’t be here. Tomorrow, he would be back to the kind of freedom that he had always wanted.
Tomorrow, he would be alone with Quinn Sullivan.
And he already knew what was going to happen.
He didn’t say anything, though, and neither did she.
She gave him a slight smile, then moved away from him. “See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow. I’ll share my coffee with you, Quinn.”
She nodded.
And then she went back inside, closing the door behind her.
He leaned back against the house and let out a long, slow breath. He tried to walk himself slowly through all of this, every step of the way from the moment she had first appeared at his house to now, and he gave up. Because everything was just an explosion.
And he was going to keep on standing in the rubble.
Regardless of the consequences.