her heel and hobbled back to her table, her heart pounding hard. She had no idea where all that had come from. All of that anger, all of that effortless rage. She wanted to stand there and scream at him forever.
She remembered her dreams then. She’d had all kinds of dreams after the accident. Some of them were about pain, and about more surgery. But then, after those dreams had faded had come the other dreams. Dreams of standing in an empty room, in front of a man whose face was hidden in shadow. And she would scream at him. Yell at him and hit him until all of her anger had quieted.
She would shout every detail of everything he had done to her. Emptying all of the toxic pain from her chest and pouring it into him.
She wasn’t going to do that in Ace’s bar. But she had a feeling she had it in her.
“Who was that?” Lane asked when Rebecca sat back down at the table. She had sort of forgotten that her friends were an audience for that encounter.
“That was him,” Alison said, “wasn’t it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She was starting to feel a little bit like a broken record. And like a terrible friend. She had never confided everything with them. She had never really confided everything with anyone. She didn’t like anyone knowing she was vulnerable. Didn’t like anyone to know that she was affected by what had happened all those years ago.
It was important that Jonathan not know how badly her injury still hurt sometimes, because he was already too protective for her sanity. It was important that her friends not realize what a ridiculous sad virgin she was.
It was just as important that everyone stayed a good distance away from the black hole of horrific nonsense that was the epicenter of her life.
“It was him.” Lane frowned. “He’s younger than I thought he would be.”
“How old did you think he was?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t know. I just didn’t expect...that.”
Rebecca knew exactly what she meant. The tall, broad-shouldered, hard-bodiedness of him that just didn’t seem to be right or fair.
“It’s always the handsome ones,” Alison said, her tone decidedly bitter. “If evil men looked like the trolls they were inside, it would be much easier to avoid them.”
“I don’t know if he’s evil,” Rebecca said, not sure why she’d said it. He might as well be. What he’d done had changed her life forever. Ruined her life. If that wasn’t evil, she wasn’t entirely sure what was. Still, he wasn’t evil in the way Alison’s ex-husband was, and she couldn’t even pretend he was. “But, not exactly a nice guy.”
“Just be careful,” Alison said. “I know a little something about getting drawn into unhealthy relationships.”
“We don’t have a relationship. In fact, that’s why I’m working for him. I told you I owe him money. Apparently, some of the payout that I thought was from insurance came directly from him. I’m not comfortable with it. I want to make sure that I don’t have any kind of debt to him, and he doesn’t feel like he gave anything to me.” She was going to go ahead and leave off the complication of the store and the fact that he wanted to give it to her.
“That makes sense,” Lane said, frowning as though it absolutely didn’t.
“It does to me,” Rebecca said.
“I guess that’s what matters.” Lane looked down at her drink. “You owe me a cherry.”
Rebecca looked back over at where Gage was, leaning against the wall and brooding. He lifted a bottle of beer to his lips, and she felt the long slow sip inside of her. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why.
“That’s all that matters,” she said, trying to convince herself.
She was going to show up at six o’clock tomorrow morning and she was going to work her ass off.
And nothing Gage West said or did was going to stop her.
CHAPTER SIX
JUST AS SHE’D said she would, Rebecca walked around the side of his house and toward the stable at exactly six in the morning. Gage was already out there, chopping wood and ready to jump into whatever work she thought she was going to do.
If she insisted on doing this, then she was going to have assistance. Whether she wanted it or not.
And you think this is the best way to mend fences?
It didn’t matter. He wasn’t exactly here to mend fences. Just to make the