shed. He moved away from her and she rolled onto her side, curling into a ball, tucking her knees up against her chest.
She closed her eyes tightly, listened to the sound of him cross the room, going into what she assumed was a bathroom. She just lay there, counting her breaths. She had done that. She wasn’t a virgin anymore.
She’d had sex with Gage West.
She sat up, breathing hard, an adrenaline surge pouring through her. She had to go. She had to get out of here or she was going to completely lose her mind in front of him.
She swung her feet over the side of the mattress, pressing her hand to her chest, feeling her heart raging beneath her palm.
“You don’t have your truck.”
She turned, seeing the vague silhouette of Gage standing in the bathroom door. “I know,” she said.
“I don’t think you did. You had the look of a woman about to run out on a man.”
“I’ll just walk home,” she said, ignoring him.
“Like hell. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll drive you back if you need to leave. Or, you’re welcome to spend the night here.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
He let out a heavy sigh, crossing the space and moving to the foot of the bed, where he retrieved his jeans. “Have it your way. I don’t exactly want to go outside again, but if you need your space...”
“I need to go home. I told you. One time. That was it. It’s done.”
He started to pull his pants on slowly. “Right. And you were a virgin. You just...wanted to lose that really quick?”
“There was nothing quick about it. I’m twenty-eight.”
“Sure. But I think you know that’s not what I meant.”
“Hey, could we skip the heart-to-heart, postmortem thing?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” Suddenly, the sound of a phone vibrating on a hard surface cut through their conversation. He crossed to the nightstand and grabbed hold of his phone, looking down at the screen. He answered it. “Hello? Yeah.” He paused. “Is everything okay?”
In spite of herself, Rebecca felt tense listening to the single-sided conversation.
“I can come down there.” There was another pause. “Right. All right. Some other time then.” This pause wasn’t longer than the others, but it felt thicker, heavier. “Tell her I said... You know what, don’t tell her I said anything.”
He hung up the phone, setting it slowly on the nightstand again. Then he turned, walking toward the window and bracing his hands on the windowpane.
Her breath caught as she looked at his powerful physique, outlined by the pale moonlight. She felt exposed, she still wanted to escape, but that didn’t make him any less beautiful. It didn’t make her any less captivated by him. Or any less concerned about what was happening, even if she shouldn’t be concerned about him at all.
“What happened?”
“My little sister,” he said, his voice like gravel. “She had a baby.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“IS EVERYTHING OKAY?”
He wasn’t accustomed to Rebecca looking at him with anything like compassion or concern, but she definitely showed both at the moment.
He nodded slowly, his heart thundering a dull, painful rhythm in his chest. A lot like a boulder hitting up against a bruise. He had barely recovered from what had just happened between him and Rebecca, and having this thrown over the top of it when his orgasm was still buzzing through his blood was all a little bit much.
“Yeah, everything’s fine. Madison wasn’t sure if Sierra would want me to come down to the hospital.” And why would she? Until that first day he’d come back, he hadn’t seen her since she was six years old.
Damn.
Suddenly, he felt the weight and importance of every single year he’d been absent. Sure, he’d been close enough to an adult when he’d left, but his siblings had been kids. Those years mattered. They had changed things in inestimable ways. He could never have that time back. Ever.
He had missed everything. First dates and inches grown and all the shit that Madison had gone through. Colton was married, and in his mind his brother was still a skinny sixteen-year-old, not a man. Not someone’s husband.
He had missed Sierra getting married, and now she was a mother.
All in all, he had changed the least.
His years hadn’t been full of this kind of change. He had just wandered on down empty roads, rolling into towns where no one knew him and then rolling back out again when they knew him a little bit too well.