Chapter 13
Sammy
I don’t know what I’m expecting from this so-called ride-along. Christ, I’m not even sure what a ride-along is, exactly, or why the fuck I even showed up for it.
I could have stayed home with Cameron, who’s organizing the shop and making sure he has everything he needs. I could have been planning and playing with my best friend instead of staring at my stepfather as he puts the phone down, his face red hot with anger and his eyes flashing.
Of course, staying with Cameron might not have been safe, either.
My mind touches briefly on that moment in the kitchen last night, the butterfly brush of his lips against mine as his fingers traced my jawline, and the sparks racing through my body at the feel of him.
The deep, terrible ache of need in my belly, which had been both physical and emotional.
A hollowness that wanted nothing but him, overshadowed by the knowledge that I couldn’t have him.
Not like that.
Not ever.
I pull my thoughts from that dangerous place, though, and put it in a box in my mind. That idea holds so much danger, so much risk, that I can barely stand to think about it.
Better to face the danger of Bear’s temper than risk overstepping boundaries with Cameron and burning the bridges that would have taken me home.
“Everything okay?” I ask, seeing that Bear isn’t going to start the conversation.
His blue eyes are sparking when he turns to me, his lips set and his jaw clenched, and for a moment I can see the man he must have been when he was in the Middle East, doing whatever he did there for the Marines.
He’s all sharp edges and hard intensity, like he has one goal in mind and isn’t going to be put to the side, and a shiver runs across my shoulders at the look.
God, he’s beautiful. Soft one moment and hard the next, until you don’t know what to expect of him. His hair isn’t as messy as Cameron’s, but it’s long enough to get in his eyes, and my fingers twitch to brush it off his forehead.
Of course that’s completely ridiculous. I don’t even know where that thought came from, or why I’d want to do any such thing. I barely know this man. He would probably pull his gun on me if I tried messing with his hair.
Actually, that makes me want to try it. Just to see.
I feel the ghost of a smile pass over my face, and see his eyes sharpen on my face.
“What’s so funny, Samantha?”
Uh oh.
Wait.
I cock my head, fury starting to run up my spine. “Did you just government name me? Barrett?”
He stares at me for a long, slow moment, and given the way he’s fuming, I think he might actually come after me. Then the corner of his mouth twitches and he shakes it off. Instead of fighting, he shakes his head and strides quickly past me, toward the exit.
“Don’t call me Barrett. Only my father called me that, and it makes me feel like I’m in trouble. Let’s go.”
“So, what is a ride-along, anyhow?” I ask, reaching up to buckle my seat belt.
Bear’s mouth twitches again, and I watch in fascination, clocking the twist of his lips and the slight depression of one of his dimples. It barely shows when he smiles like that, and I wonder suddenly how much he has to smile to make it appear.
“A ride-along is... a ride-along,” he says, his tone sly. “You’re going to ride... along.”
I stare at him for a moment, too shocked to respond.
“Are you... making a joke? I didn’t realize you knew how to do that.”
He slants his eyes at me, the corners crinkling with another suppressed smile. “I’m sure there are a lot of things you don’t know about me. Samantha.”
This brings a scowl to my face. No one uses that name. Not even my teachers used it in school. Hell, as far as I knew, the entire town thinks my full name is Sammy. Not even my mother called me Samantha.
“Keep using that name and see what it gets you,” I snap. “I won’t answer to it, Barrett.”
He laughs, then, loud and deep and shocking, and it sends a thrill from the top of my head to my toes. I’ve...
Never heard him laugh before.
What in the wild birds of the mountain is going on here?
Is he flirting with me?
He seems to realize the same thing at that moment, because he suddenly gets serious again. “Let’s go. Are you buckled? You may try to kill yourself on your time, but it’s not going to happen while you’re with me.”
I snort. “You’re a cop. Doesn’t that mean you’re in a bunch of life-threatening situations? Shouldn’t that mean that being with you is going to threaten my lie?”
He snorts back. “Not in fucking Wood. Buckle your seat belt.”
“It’s already buckled,” I can’t help sniping.
He just laughs and pulls out onto the main road.
I soon find that he’s right; nothing about this is life-threatening. We go from a house where old Mrs. Wilson, the owner of the bakery, has managed to set her oven on fire, to the fire department itself, where Bear asks the guys why the hell they weren’t responding to Mrs. Wilson themselves.
“I can’t exactly put fires out using nothing but the available fire hose,” he says to Shane Sampson, grinning.
Shane, a shockingly good-looking man about five years older than me, pokes Bear in the chest and grins back. “Not what I’ve heard, Bear. I hear you can walk on water thanks to all the fancy training in the Marines.”
Bear barks with laughter at that, and shakes his head. “A wise man doesn’t believe those sorts of rumors. Next time a call comes in about a fire, do me a favor and roll on it before I have to.”
We rescue a cat who’s climbed up a tree–something Bear says happens at least three times a week, to this exact cat–and then got to Penny Royal’s, where Benny’s had a problem with some of the tourists.
This call confuses me, or rather triggers another thought, and after we leave, I ask about it.
“Seems like those tourists are making a lot of trouble.”
“Mmm,” Bear hums, like his mind is somewhere else entirely.
“The bikers, too,” I push.
At this, he finally turns his eyes toward me, considering. “The bikers who were fighting with Mars and Orion’s crew?” he asks.
“No, the other bikers in town,” I say. “Of course those ones. Rare to have so many strangers in town.”
That part isn’t even guesswork, either. Hawke’s Wood is a small town up in the Adirondacks, and though it’s picturesque enough and draws snowboarders and skiers during the winter, there’s nothing to do up here in spring and summer but hike and camp.
We have a campground that doesn’t draw many people, and yet this year there are more tourists than I’ve had a chance to count.
Given Bear’s reaction, he’s noticing the same thing. And he’s just as suspicious as me.
He’s also not going to talk about it, evidently.
“Fine, keep your secrets,” I huff, crossing my arms.
This earns a grin from him. “I don’t generally keep many secrets, actually.”
My curiosity immediately peaks. “No? You always tell the truth?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” he answers quickly.
So quickly that I immediately suspect I may have caught him off-guard.
“Oh no? So if I ask you questions, you’ll lie?”
He shoots me a surprised look. “I wouldn’t say that either.”
“So you’ll give me an answer and I have to guess whether it’s the truth or a lie,” I conclude. “Interesting. Okay, I’ll play.”
This time he does laugh, though it’s more an explosion of air than anything else. “Play what?”
“The game. Obviously. I thought you were supposed to be smart. Actually, wait. You don’t have to be smart to be in the Marines, do you? Is that why you joined? You weren’t smart enough to stay here and have a real job?”
It’s such an unfair assumption, almost insulting, that I expect him to blow it off. I’m surprised when he doesn’t.
He makes a right at the stop sign, taking us, I assume, toward the next call, and shakes his head.
“I joined the Marines because I wanted to get the fuck out of this town. My father had spent my life up to that point telling me that I was a disappointment, and then capped it off by handing his business to Gunner and telling me there was no place in it for me. I...”
He pauses, the column of his throat bobbing with a swallow.
“I didn’t want to stay and watch Gunner succeeding without me. It would have felt like my father was telling the truth. So I left.”
Shit.
Suddenly I don’t like this game as much as I thought I would. That answer hits a little too close to home.
“But you got married first,” I say, poking at him to take my focus away from how close his answer felt to my own thoughts.
I’m watching him closely enough to see the dreamy look come across his face, and then the flash of abrupt regret.
“Jenny was my high school sweetheart,” he says quietly. “We fell in love when we were only fourteen, and neither of us ever questioned it. When we turned sixteen, we promised each other we’d get married. We did it the day after we graduated, and she was pregnant within a couple of months.”
I blink once, twice, three times.
“That’s awfully romantic,” I whisper.
“Romantic until I decided to sign up for the Marines,” he says. “And leave her and Cameron behind.”
I don’t like this game anymore.
Actually, I hate it.
I stare at Bear, everything I thought I knew about him rewriting itself in the space of seconds.
Rejected by his own father. Shunned by his brother.
Married to his high school sweetheart, who he fell in love with at fourteen.
This man isn’t just a hard-nosed soldier who came and went at will, deserting the people around him.
He’s a romantic.
And if the look on his face is any indication, he has some serious regrets about the way he’s lived his life.
I came on this ride-along expecting to hate every minute of it, and instead I’m...
Hell, I don’t even know what I’m doing. I don’t know what’s going on here. But it’s nothing like what I was expecting.