Chapter 37
GEMMA
Then
After settling on going to prom together, Colt walked me home.
He didn’t try to kiss me. He didn’t even try to hold my hand.
We just walked, neither of us really talking because what is there to say?
His sister and I are locked in the sort of feud that can only take hold between people who’d once cared for each other and I publicly call his twin brother out for being a spineless coward.
Buying me a corsage and picking me up in his stepfather’s Porsche isn’t something he should be doing and we both know it.
I asked him why and his answer was simple.
I hate bullies.
I didn’t ask him who he was talking about. What he meant. I already know.
Leaving me at the bottom of Dent’s driveway, Colt says good night with a promise to call me in the morning so we can work out the details before he watches me make my way into the house before he continues on to his own.
Inside the house is dark. Quiet. Usually, Dent’s up, watching TV, waiting for me to get home so he can go to bed. Tonight, I’m alone.
Heading upstairs, I take a quick shower, rinsing off six hours of fryer grease and spilled soda before changing into a pair of soft sleep shorts and a worn tank that’s seen better days.
Intent on making myself a cup of tea, I head downstairs, but something pulls me past the kitchen and down the short hallway, toward the sunroom. Standing in the doorway, I can see him.
Not Dent.
Riggs.
I know it’s him. Even if his massive frame didn’t give it away, I’d know by the way I suddenly can’t breathe.
He’s sitting in one of Dent’s old rockers, staring through the screened-in window, at the place where the river has been swallowed by the dark, like it’s the only thing that matters. The only thing he can see.
He doesn’t fool me. He knows I’m here.
“What are you doing here?” I ask it quietly, not wanting to wake my grandfather.
Riggs doesn’t answer me. He just keeps staring out the window.
“I want you to leave.” It’s a lie. I don’t want Riggs to leave. It’s been months since I’ve been this close to him. Months since I’ve seen him in more than just passing in the halls or walking by the diner with the people he calls friends in my brother’s absence.
He still doesn’t answer.
“I’m serious, Riggs.” Charging across the sunroom, I round the chair he’s sitting in and plant myself directing in front of him.
“Get out. Now—before I start screaming for Dent to come down here with his shotgun.” It’s an empty threat and we both know it.
Even if my grandfather did come charging down here with his shotgun, he’d see Riggs, roll his eyes, and tell me to quit my caterwauling before he went back to bed.
“Dent already knows I’m here,” he says, cutting me a quick, unworried look.
“Why do you think he went to bed?” Something flickers across his face.
Something that says he knows as well as I do that Dent’s trust is misplaced.
“You’re going to prom with Colt Montgomery.
” He says it he’s accusing me of an unspeakable crime. Like he’s waiting for me to deny it.
“How…” The question dies on my lips because it’s a stupid thing to ask.
Because I know. “You followed me?” When he doesn’t deny it, I take it a step further.
“You’ve been following me.” It’s true, I know it’s true because even though I’ve been walking home in the dark on my own for months now, I haven’t felt alone. I haven’t been afraid.
“Answer the question, Gem.” He glares at me. Even though he’s sitting, we’re nearly nose to nose.
“It wasn’t a question, though, was it?” I hiss back, leaning into the space between us to drill a finger into his chest. “It was a statement—because you already know that I am. Because you were there, probably hiding in the dumpster, spying on me like some kind of?—”
That’s as far as Riggs lets me get.
Shooting up out of his chair, he’s towering over me, his huge hands latched around my biceps, lifting me off my feet, to haul me even closer.
“What aren’t you getting, Gem? I promised Beck,” he growls down at me, dark gaze blazing with temper and something else.
Something that should terrify me but doesn’t.
“How the hell am I supposed to look out for you when you won’t even?—”
“Look out for me?” Bare toes scrambling against the worn floorboard I’m dangling over in Riggs’s grip, I start to try to fight and twist my way out of his grip.
“Is that what you were doing when you scared Russ Tompkins into backing out on me today?” I seethe up at him, reveling in the fact that my verbal punch landed exactly where I wanted.
“Gem.” He growls my name in warning but it’s a warning I ignore.
“You know what I think?” Still trying to twist myself from his grip, I give him a grim, humorless smile. “I think you’re just pissed because you know Colt Montgomery is probably the only guy in the county you can’t scare away.”
When he hears the venom dripping from my tone, Riggs lets me go like touching me burns.
Good.
I hope it does.
“This isn’t about Beck. This isn’t about some stupid promise you made him.” I keep coming at him, so angry it’s made me reckless. “This is about the fact that you don’t want me, Riggs—but you don’t want anyone else to have me either.”
Staring down at me, the hinge on his jaw softened like I punched him in it, chest heaving, like he doesn’t understand how he got here. How he keeps letting me drag him back to a place he never wanted to be—and then he’s gone.
Leaving me where I am, swaying on watery knees, I hear the back door slam. Turning, I watch Riggs stalk his way across the backyard to disappear into the trees, dizzy with anger and the sort of frustration that can turn to blind rage if you let it.
I let it.
Following him, I tear through the back door, not even bothering to slam it shut, before I’m flying across the yard and thrashing through the trees after him.
Pulling up to a sudden stop on the trail, I look left and then I look right.
Both sides are empty. “How many, Riggs?’ I hiss out loud because I know he’s here.
He’s in the trees. Watching me like he always is.
“How many guys have you chased off while telling yourself you were doing it for Beck?” Turning to scan the trees, I think I see something shift.
A shadow flickering in the darkness, visible for less than a heartbeat before it melds into the black.
“What’s wrong?” I taunt him. “Can’t count that high?
” Focusing on the place where I saw the shadow, I take a step off the trail and into the trees, my anger making me reckless. “Or maybe you?—”
Somewhere, down the trail, I hear voices—male and female.
Voices I recognize. Whispering giggles and hushed words.
There’s a place down the river that kids use as a party spot.
I’ve never been. Beck wouldn’t allow it and once he was gone, the situation with Cam and Sera made it impossible.
Hearing them, I feel a momentary jolt of panic that bleeds into terror when I feel a large, heavy arm snake around my waist and a wide, callused palm slap over my open mouth to haul me deeper into the trees.
“Shhh,” Riggs breaths in my ear before he turns me away from the trail.
Hand still covering my gaping mouth, he pushes me against a tree trunk with his hips, shielding me from prying eyes with the width of his shoulders.
“Be quiet.” He barely breathes it, head dipped, the crown of it pressed into tree trunk he has me wedged against.
That same rage that pushed me out the door and flung me into the trees to chase after him catches hold again.
Glare blazing up at him, I sink my teeth into the meat of his hand, biting down hard enough to break the skin.
Riggs doesn’t let go. Just glares down at me and pushes his hand even harder into the set of my jaw with a low warning grunt that tells me I’m going to regret my own stubborn impulsivity.
The voices on the trail get louder as they draw closer.
I don’t just recognize them. I know them.
Cam and Sera, walking home from a river party.
Cade is with them, his deeper tones punctuating their higher-pitched chatter.
Hearing them, I relax my jaw, easing back on my bite, without pulling away completely.
Riggs doesn’t say another word until they’re gone, down the trail, walking in the direction of Cam’s house.
As soon as they pass by and their voices fade into the dark, he loosens his grip on my mouth but doesn’t pull away.
“That’s the second goddamned time you’ve bitten me,” he growls down at me, his tone still quiet.
Turning my head, I twist my mouth out from under his palm and he lets it fall to my chest, his long, thick fingers wrapped in a loose bracket around the base of my throat. “What a coincidence,” I snap back, still glaring up at him. “That’s the second goddamned time you’ve tried to manhandle me.”
Still pressed against me, Riggs makes a low, frustrated sound in the back of his throat.
“What the fuck do you want me to do, Gem?” he says it like he’s the one who’s being reasonable.
Like everything he’s done and said to me over the last thirty minutes has been completely rational.
“You’re out here, half-naked, thrashing around and screaming like a lunatic?—”
“I’m not half naked and I wasn’t screaming,” I hiss at him, anger still feeding my poor judgment. “I was?—”
“Screaming.” Something about the way he says it—the way he looks at me while he does—makes me suddenly aware of the way his hips are pressed against mine.
Of the fact that his arm is still wrapped around my waist and his fingers are digging into my hip.
That his mouth is inches from mine and I know what it tastes like.