your dad, but it isn’t as bad as dealing with you.”
“Why is it so bad to pay my dad?” She could tell the question was leading, and she found that obnoxious.
“Because you’re all awful. Don’t think I don’t know that. Don’t think it doesn’t bother me that your dad gave my family a massive payoff to keep our mouths shut. Because protecting you was so important, but screw everyone else.”
He laughed, a hollow, humorless sound. “It was never about protecting me, Rebecca. It had everything to do with protecting himself. He’s a master at that. He always has been.”
“Next you’re going to tell me that you’re not bad, you’re just misunderstood. Because you have daddy issues.” She gritted her teeth, resolutely adjusting a small display of scarecrows.
Suddenly, she found herself being hauled backward, pushed until her back was pressed against the wall. And in front of her, six foot plus of hard, angry man. She wasn’t afraid. Instead, she felt exhilarated. This was what she wanted. She wanted a fight. She wanted the chance—the excuse—to haul off and hit him.
Tension swirled inside her chest, begging for release. Physical release. She just wanted to throw herself at him. To fling herself against the hard wall that was Gage West and inflict as much damage as she possibly could. To make him bleed, like she had done. She wanted him to feel even a fraction of the uncertainty, the pain, that she had spent the past seventeen years dealing with.
“Is this what you do with everyone? You push them away with your bad attitude, and then you blame everyone else for the fact that you don’t feel like you can get close to people? Is it my fault that you’re like this? Or is that just what you tell yourself?”
She planted her hands on his chest, momentarily shocked into immobility by the feel of his hard muscles beneath her palms. But then she shoved him back. When he didn’t budge, she was infuriated.
“You don’t get to come in here and comment on my life.”
“What would happen if you stopped fighting for a second, Rebecca? What would happen if you used a little bit of common sense and accepted some help?”
She didn’t like that question. She didn’t like it at all. And it had nothing to do with the fact that she thought he was terrible, and that he had no right to know anything about her life—though, those things were true. No, it had everything to do with the fact that it scratched at the door that she kept locked tight, concealing all of the strange and terrible vulnerable things deep inside.
“I can accept help,” she lied. “I just don’t want to accept it from you.”
“We went from an agreement to this pretty quickly.”
“Oh, you mean to you manhandling me again?”
As soon as she said the words, she became incredibly conscious of the fact that her hands were still planted on his chest, that he was still so close to her she could feel the heat radiating from his body. That she could feel his breath fanning over her cheek, and that it wasn’t off-putting or disgusting in any way.
How long had it been since she’d been close to someone? Anyone? Gage. It had been Gage these last few days. Why was it that this man seemed to just crash through all the walls that she had put up around herself? Everyone else respected them. Leave it to him to knock them down. To get right up in her face, where no one else ever dared to get.
He didn’t pity her. That was the weird thing. He should. Of all the people in Copper Ridge, Gage should pity her. It was his fault. All of it was. From her scars, which he was directly at fault for, to the abandonment of her and Jonathan’s mother after all of the hush money from his father had gone through to their bank account, which he was indirectly responsible for.
But that look on his face wasn’t pity. It was hard as granite, uncompromising and anything but sympathetic. She had gotten pretty good at keeping people from being invasive. Either through her prickly behavior or the way she relied on them not wanting to retraumatize her by pressing for anything.
Gage didn’t seem to mind retraumatizing her at all.
Jackass.
But, right in that moment, the anger inside her turned like an hourglass, the sand suddenly running an entirely different direction. The flip side seemed to be no less