“I don’t understand—”
“Today is the day you stopped being under Fletcher’s thumb. Today is the day you began mapping out your own future and started to break free from everything he weighed you down with.”
The image on the screen is of tears streaking down my cheeks, stained paths of persistence on my makeup-free face. My lips are parted. My eyes are looking up beneath a veil of thick lashes. It’s the look of shame coated in defiance, resolve winning over defeat, and determination mastering fear that stands out the most.
“Today is the day you own your wild.”
I don’t tell him he’s crazy. In fact, I don’t even look up at him because I’m too mesmerized by the picture and his declaration.
Jack’s feet clomp on the floor.
The door opens quietly and then closes with a thud.
But I’m standing in my hallway, staring at an image I love and hate all at the same time.
Today is the day I own my wild.
42
TATE
The water sluices over my skin with each stroke.
It’s cool and refreshing and therapeutic.
One after another.
Again and again.
I count each one as a measure of time.
My head tilts to the side so I can draw in a ragged breath.
I’ve settled into a cadence to try to put distance between our fight tonight, the truths I finally told him, and the pain I caused him.
The exertion doesn’t take away the sting that Jack hasn’t answered my texts.
The emotions ate at me, every single one of them.
So, I came to the one place I used to use as my meditation to get through my every day. The place I haven’t returned to since the first night I slept with Jack.
The sun is setting, and the pool is getting dark, but I don’t get out to turn the lights on. I’ve done this enough times to know the length by heart. I’ve found solace here enough times that sometimes the darkness feels so much more inviting.
No one can see my shame then.
No one can see me wear the guilt.
No one can hear my screams underwater.
I do a flip turn and push off toward the other side, still trying to shake Jack from my mind.
When someone jumps into the pool in front of me, it’s the last thing I ever expected, and it startles me so much that I choke on a swallow of water as I find my feet beneath me.
But the cough dies on my lips when I look up to see Jack in the pool with me. His body may be naked, but it’s the apology and the regret and the love in his expression that holds me hostage.
There are no words as we step toward each other or as he pulls me against him or before our lips meet in a tender kiss laced with desperation. His hands roam over my body as if they are mapping every single curve.
We speak in actions. His kiss to my neck, my palms running up the plain of his back. His hands digging into the flesh of my hips, my wrapping my legs around his. His fingertips pulling aside my bathing suit bottoms and skimming over me, my teeth sinking into his shoulder in reaction. His cock slowly pushing into me, my accepting every single, thick, hard inch of him.
“Jack,” I moan.
“Uh-uh,” he murmurs when his lips find mine again. “I don’t want to talk, Tate.” He uses the buoyancy of the water to push my hips back so his crest slides over the rough patch of nerves within me. “I just need to feel you.” He pulls me back against him roughly so I’m forced to take the pleasure. “Feel us.” Another tantalizing withdrawal that has every part of me begging for him to fill me again. “Just this.” And he fulfills my desire by thrusting back into me. “Just us.”
We continue this slow, methodical pace until our nerves are as assaulted as our emotions were earlier, and our actions are as devastating to our senses as our words had been. Until we’re left wanting to be together instead of wanting to be apart.
And so we make up.
And so we make love.
43
JACK
“You’re avoiding me.”
“Lauren. Hello.” All the tension of the day seizes up at the sound of her voice.
“I take it that means you’ve fallen for her?”
I snort and wonder how many times she’s going to ask me before she realizes I’m not going to dignify the question with a response. “Evan said things are good there,” I deflect.
“Have you told her the truth?”
“Not your business, Sis.” I roll my shoulders and dig in for the long haul in this conversation. “He said that the heifers are healthy and doing well so we should expect a good lot of calves this year. It’s always good news when business is good, right?”
“What’s your end game, huh, Jack-Jack? Are you getting off on being the hired help? Is it a turn on to fuck the boss?”
“Have you been drinking?” I ask, her belligerence at an all-new level.
“Nope. This talk is coming to you sober, and sober Lauren isn’t bothered if she hurts your feelings like drunk Lauren is.”
I sigh at her lie but don’t refute it. “Did something happen?”
“Did something happen?” She laughs. “Let’s see. You aren’t here doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Dingo was bucked off a horse when it spooked while riding the fence line and was hurt.”
“But he’s okay.” I know our wrangler is because I already talked to Evan about it.
“The weather’s relentless. It has been raining for days on end, and I don’t care how big this house is, it isn’t big enough with kids and no escape.”
“It’s supposed to let up tomorrow,” I tell her, my phone app still alerting me daily of the weather back home. “And?”
“And this is a lot to do on my own, Jack.”
“What is? Being a mom to your kids? Watching out the window as Evan runs the ranch for me while I’m gone? Last I checked you’ve never really had a hand in the day-to-day there other than having the Sutton name . . . so am I missing something here?” I ask with a frustrated sigh, not caring that I’m going to hit a nerve with the comment. “You reap all of the benefits and don’t have to do any of the work. Do you want to explain to me why any of that gives you the right to be the raging bitch you’re being right now?”
She’s silent, and a silent Lauren is almost worse than a drunk Lauren. “You have no right to judge me.”
“Ditto.”
A tense silence weighs across the connection, and I roll my shoulders in exasperation.
“Look,” she starts followed by a shaky inhale. “I get you’re out there supposedly keeping your promise to Dad, but that promise died the minute he died. That promise has already been fulfilled. So, yeah, I get you need to find yourself or make amends for the shitty things you did in your past business life, but at what point is it too much? He was a bastard, Jack. It isn’t your job to find his redemption.”
“I can’t just walk away. I signed a contract.”
She snorts. “So what? She’ll get over it.”
“That’s enough, Lauren.”
“You fucked her over the moment you slept with her, you know that, right? Women can’t separate this shit like men can. You’re going to make her fall for you and then you’re going to break her heart. How exactly are you making things better for her by doing that, huh?