19. Ransom
19
RANSOM
I head back to the bar. I rest my elbows on the bar top and try to ignore this sick feeling churning around in my belly.
“Another pitcher, please, Miss Maeby.”
James’s tall form slides in beside me.
Great. Just what I need .
“And two whiskey gingers,” James adds. This close, I notice he even smells good. This clean, floral scent, like tea leaves. It’s fucking irritating. He pulls his dumb man-purse over his shoulder, and he reaches into it to pull out a wallet. “This round is on me.” He pushes a crisp hundred-dollar bill across the bar.
I can’t help it. I snort a bitter laugh. “Your generosity knows no bounds, chief.”
“It’s the least I can do since you’ve been kind enough to drive us around.”
Every word he says feels like fleas nipping at my skin.
Drive us around . Like I’m some goddamn taxi service.
“Yeah, well. Claire and I go way back. It’s the least I can do.”
“Oh, I know,” he says plainly. “I know all about it.”
I can’t stuff my anger down anymore. I tell him, “You know what people hate more than an outsider? An outsider who pretends he knows it all.”
His blue eyes meet mine. He’s exceptionally, infuriatingly calm when he says, “But I do know it all. I know everything about you, Riley Ransom.”
“Yeah? What do you think you know?”
He tilts in. I can feel my heartbeat pounding in my throat when he drops his voice, low enough just so only I can hear him. “I know you chase married women because you don’t feel adequate. You’d rather take the sure thing than risk rejection. I know the last time you felt like you were worth a damn was your teenage years, and life has been an uphill battle for you ever since, so you long for the things you left behind the way a weened child cries for its pacifier.”
Everything in me goes cold, and the hair stands up on the back of my neck, but he doesn’t stop. He continues. “I know that you’re operating on the assumption that if you can get into Claire’s bed, she’ll remember how good it was with you, and she’ll leave me. But that’s where you’ve miscalculated. In fact, the best thing you can do is keep your mystery. Because once you’re inside of her, you’ll lose that sweet, puppy-love charm. She’ll see you for what you are. A memory made rosier by time. And all Claire is going to think about is me. The man who made her a woman. A woman who likes to get fucked and spanked and choked. By me.”
I jolt as Maeby sets the drinks on the bar with a clink. James straightens his spine, pulling away from me. He takes the two whiskey gingers. “Keep the change,” he tells her and gives Maeby a chillingly polite smile.
The man’s got this haunting, cat-who-ate-the-junkyard-dog smile .
With that, he leaves. My heart is pounding, this heavy, thudding beat that won’t let up.
“Ransom,” Maeby says. Her gaze flickers over me. “You good?”
I watch as James meets Claire back at the pool table. He holds out a drink for her. She takes it, and they sip together.
Thu-thump. Thu-thump.
“Yep,” I tell Maeby. “All good.”
I take the pitcher back to the booth.
“Ransom!” That’s Claire’s voice. When I turn, I see Claire twirling her cue between her fingers. “Are you going to hide in the shadows all night, or are you going to put on your big-boy pants and get up here?”
I get a couple of curious stares from the barnacles at the bar. James watches me from the sidelines, gauging my reaction.
I step up to the pool table. “Don’t you think you’ve played long enough?”
“Can’t handle the competition? I guess you can only take it when it’s easy.”
Claire’s eyes lock on me. A challenge.
I’m pissed, my heart’s all tangled up, and?—
Fuck it. She wants a fight, I’ll give her a fight.
I shrug. “I was just thinking…it’d be a shame.”
“What would?”
“To knock your pretty ass off your very high pedestal.”
Her eyes flash. I’m in.
“You’re welcome to try,” Claire says. She grinds her tip against the chalk, like a swordswoman sharpening her rapier.
I pick out my cue. “You know, you’re a real pain in my?—”
“Chaps?” James interjects.
I click my tongue. “Wasn’t talking to you, Mary Poppins. ”
James has an uneasy expression on his face—but he can get fucked, honestly.
Claire and I are locked in battle, and she’s only got eyes for me right now.
Her pale cheeks have a soft, red glow. The rickety ceiling fan blows a tassel of unrestrained hair against her pouting lips.
What I would do to those lips.
Claire at her worst is, unfortunately, the Claire that makes my heart beat the fastest.
We were good at loving. At fucking. But, damn?—
We were always best at fighting.
I rack up the balls. When she looks at me with those intense, gray-sky eyes, I feel her gaze singe the hair up arms like an electric current.
Being this close to her hurts . In my chest. In my groin. Cock and heart swelling to the limits of their confines. I know better. I know I ain’t doing anything but hurting myself by testing these lines. Yet, like some idiot dog choking itself on its own leash, I can’t stop pulling.
“Bitches break,” I tell her.
She motions to the rack. “Then be my guest.”
I take off the rack, line up my shot, and hit it.
Balls click and go scattering. I’ve got solids.
Claire might have the mean streak of a perfectionist robot…
But I’ve got the slow grind of someone who had nothing better to do with his free time than come down to Maeby’s and play round after round of pool.
And I’m fucking good.
I sink three balls before I miss. Claire rounds the table like a lioness on the hunt. Her fingertips graze the green velvet .
“Wiley, Wiley, Wiley,” she muses. “What should we play for?”
Wiley . I bite back a cringe at the nickname. Goddammit, Jade. Stop helping.
“You tell me.”
She finds an angle that suits her and lines up her shot. “Money wouldn’t be fair. It means more in your pocket than it does mine.”
“Whatever you say, princess.”
Fun fact: Claire’s got a kink for arms.
At least, she used to.
I test my theory by unbuttoning my wrist cuff and rolling the sleeve up over my elbow. Sure enough, her eyes flicker from the table to the dark hair that climbs my exposed forearm.
She hits. It’s a miss. My turn.
As I line up my shot, she asks, “What about Miss Penny?”
The cue jumps in my hand. It knocks the ball out of place, sailing past its target. “You said you wouldn’t get rid of her.”
Claire bends her lithe body over the table. Her chest nearly touches the green, and she threads the cue between her fingers. “I just don’t see the point of keeping the thing around.”
Claire is so focused on the game, when she goes to line up her next shot, she nearly walks straight into me. She catches herself at the last second, her hand on my chest.
Her hair tickles my face. Our eyes meet briefly.
She smells sweet. Like honeysuckle.
“The point is,” I tell her, “Chaucer loves her.”
Her mouth twists. She turns away from me and leans over the pool table. The balls click. Claire sinks her shot. We’re neck and neck now. “It’s an object, not a her .”
My jaw tightens. “Not to him.”
Claire stops playing. She looks up at me, and this time, there’s real fire in her eyes. Cold, black embers. “Studs don’t love,” she says simply. “Chaucer has fucked every mare in Kentucky. He’s not going to even notice she’s gone.”
“He’ll notice.”
She lines up her shot again, ignoring me. But I press on.
“He thinks about her every day,” I continue.
She glares at the end of her cue. “You don’t get to say that to me,” she says, her voice quiet and angry. “You don’t get to stand there and fucking lie .”
“It ain’t a lie, princess.”
Through gritted teeth, she says, “I. Am not. Your. Princess .”
She hits the ball with too much force. It skips and goes flying off the table.
James, eyes still glued to his phone, headphones in his ears, flicks out his wrist and catches it effortlessly in the palm of his hand.
“Play nicely,” he chastises before setting the ball back down on the table.
But Claire doesn’t budge. Her eyes are stuck on James, eyebrows scrunched, her pretty little mouth twisted like she’s trying to solve a puzzle.
“You caught that. Perfectly.” She speaks slowly, like she’s sounding out the words as she goes.
“I suppose I did,” he says.
“You have perfect reflexes,” she repeats.
“They come in handy.”
Her next sentence is a fine, lethal point. “ You let me win . ”
James’s expression flickers the second he realizes he’s made a mistake. “Claire?—”
“Did you,” she seethes, “let me. Win ?”
He weighs his answer on his tongue before he gives it to her. “You’re getting worked up.”
Her jaw goes tight. “Get the fuck out of my sight.”
Claire storms out, her eyes a gray hurricane, taking the fury of all-mighty Zeus with her.
Not gonna lie, I almost feel sorry for the guy.
Almost .
There’s a part of me that wants to enjoy James getting his ass chewed out. But the pain on Claire’s face makes me queasy.
James goes still. When his robot brain is done calculating the damage he’s done, he says, “I think I’d better go after her.”
“Yep.” I nod. “I think that’s wise.”
Fucking dick.
I watch as James follows Claire out. I rest against the abandoned pool table and take a swallow from my beer. Jade sidles up beside me. She’s been uncharacteristically quiet. She’s wearing the face of a princess whose carriage has turned into a pumpkin. We both know: the fantasy is over.
For good.
“I called a car,” she says. There’s no anger in her voice. Just a flatness. “He’s waiting for me. Escort me out, cowboy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I clean my beer and walk her outside.
Claire and James are in the wind. Jade’s black car whisks her away. Back in the bar, I find Rafe playing hook and ring. We kill the rest of the pitcher and close down the bar.
The Kentucky night is cold, dark, and bitter when I stumble outside. If I breath it in deep enough, I can almost get the taste of Claire’s perfume out of my lungs.
I hear the jingle of dropped keys. Rafe curses as he drunkenly fumbles around his car.
I step up behind him. I snatch his keys off the gravel and pocket them. “No, sir,” I tell him.
The sound of a car horn breaks us up. I look up to see Maeby in the driver’s seat of her blue pickup. She jabs her thumb to the back of the truck.
“Degenerates in the bed,” she says.
Rafe and I climb into the bed of the truck. My back hits the hard bottom. Rafe grunts as he collapses beside me like a dead fish. We lie on our backs and stare up at the dark sky scattered with stars.
“Women,” Rafe sighs.
“Women,” I agree.
But I ain’t thinking about women.
I’m thinking about one woman in particular.