Sheri WhiteFeather - Once a Rebel

She patted the pooch’s head. “And you had no choice but to keep him?”

“Amber wanted him, but Chocolate was too rambunctious around her son.”

She unpacked their lunch. “Your old girlfriend has a child?”

He nodded. “A two-year-old. Truthfully, I miss her little boy more than her. But she reunited with his father, so they’re trying to make a stable home for him.” He stretched his legs and saw how frayed his jeans were. Susan’s, he noticed, were brand spanking new. “It’s what she wanted all along. I was her rebound, but I knew that from the beginning.”

“No love lost on your part?”

“No. How about you?”

“I’ve been in two serious relationships, but my career got in the way both times.” Her voice turned analytical. “I have a difficult time balancing my work and my love life.”

Ethan thought about his mom, then quickly brushed her aside. He didn’t want Susan to know that his mother had chosen her career over her family. Or that his dad had never gotten over her. “I’d like to have a wife and kids someday, but I don’t let it consume me. I’m used to being single.”

“Me, too. But it gets lonely sometimes.”

“Yeah, but it’s better than a crappy marriage.”

“Amen to that.” She fed the dog first, a lunch that he gobbled up in record time, nudging her for more. She obliged, then gave him an apple to play with while she and Ethan filled their paper plates with chicken, fruit and potato salad, keeping the cookies packed and out of Chocolate’s reach.

All too soon, the dog got bored with the apple and begged off Susan’s plate, just like Ethan knew he would. He’d been trying to break Chocolate of that habit, but he didn’t have the heart to scold him. The mutt had forged a cozy spot for himself, resting his head in her lap.

“You’re a bottomless pit.” She fed Chocolate more chicken, and he licked his chops.

“I can hardly blame him,” Ethan said. “This is good.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, making him envy the dog.

She looked pretty in the afternoon light, with her honey-colored hair and green eyes. Chic and sophisticated, even in jeans and boots and her lipstick wearing off.

He glanced at her mouth and wondered if she would let him kiss her when their date ended. Or would that be crossing the friendship line?

“Our timing is off,” he heard himself say.

“Why? Because I don’t sleep around anymore?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He removed bottled water from the saddlebag and took a swig. “I’m impressed with the way you grew up, but I miss you having a crush on me.”

She set her half-empty plate on the blanket. Chocolate was no longer interested in her food. He’d fallen asleep in her lap. “It wasn’t a healthy crush. Nothing I did then was healthy.”

Ethan drank more water, but he wasn’t able to cool his heels. “So now you’re tempering your feelings for me?”

“I can’t go back in time. I can’t become the old Susan, the girl who acted out her pain.”

He longed to touch her, to glide his fingers along her jaw, to comfort the girl she used to be. “I don’t want to go back in time, either. Can’t we separate the past from the present? Start over somehow?”

“I don’t know. Can we? I’ll bet you haven’t forgotten any of those rumors. I’ll bet they’re still occupying your mind.”

“Can you blame me?” He looked up and saw a hawk dive from a tree branch and sail into the air, like a red-tipped angel taking flight. “You were so sweet, so vulnerable, but you were wild, too. It drove me crazy.”

“I was trying to fill the void inside me. The emptiness that wouldn’t go away.”

“I knew you were mixed-up, and I wanted to make everything better. But I didn’t know how.”

She released a deep, emotional breath, stirring the dog, making him open his eyes for a second. “It wasn’t your job to fix me.”

Maybe not, but he was paying the price now. She’d fixed herself, and he was left with nothing but his memories. “I wanted to pound the crap out of every boy who touched you,” he said. “But there were too many names being bandied around. I never knew what to believe.”

“I didn’t have as many lovers as everyone said. The rumors got blown out of proportion.”

“I was so damn jealous, especially when I heard that you were helping some of those guys lose their virginity.”

A mild breeze rustled the leaves above their heads, intensifying the moment. He couldn’t help it. He was still jealous, still primed for a war party. But he knew she wasn’t going to name names.

“There was only one boy who was a virgin,” she finally said. “But at the time, so was I.”

Ethan frowned. “Then how did that rumor get started?”

“Because I pretended that I’d done it before. He was really drunk, so he didn’t know the difference.” She bit the inside of her lip, as if the experience was still raw. “I knew he would talk about it afterward, and I wanted you to find out.”

A lump formed in his throat. “Why? So I’d say ‘to hell with it’ and lose my virginity to you, too?”

She nodded. “It was the only thing I could think of to get your attention. Nothing else was working.”

“I’m sorry, Susan.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It was me. I did it to myself.”

And she’d kept doing it, he thought. She’d kept flaunting other guys in front of him.

Silent, he finished his food and set his plate next to hers, trying to maintain his composure, to ease the sudden tension, the confession in her eyes, the ache in his chest.

“Don’t feel guilty, Ethan. Sleeping with that boy didn’t change who I was. I’d already been messing around before I came to Red Rock.” She gnawed on the inside of her lip again. “Sneaking out of the house, drinking with my friends, learning how to give oral sex.”

“I wasn’t running wild,” he admitted. “But I had a girlfriend before I met you, and we used to engage in some serious foreplay. We just didn’t go all the way.”

She managed a smile. “And here I thought you were a Boy Scout. Proper Ethan.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, you were full of surprises, too. You hardly ever studied, but you got amazing grades. Like a computer nerd or something.”

“Being an honor-roll student was easy for me. But being smart wasn’t what I was after. Not until I straightened up my life and went off to college.”

“Stanford,” he said, then let out a low whistle. “You can’t beat that.”

“Ryan paid for it. I owe him my education.”

Ethan had attended Texas A&M, and he’d been strapped with student loans, debts he’d finally paid off. “I tried not to think about you over the years, but I always wondered how you were.”

She stroked the top of Chocolate’s head, making the big dopey dog sigh in his sleep. “Me, too. Every so often, I’d ask Ryan about you. But I didn’t want to overdo it.”

“And now here we are. On our first date.” He packed up the picnic supplies. “I guess it wasn’t as casual as I promised.”

She looked around. “The atmosphere was casual.”

“But not the conversation.”

“Friends should be candid with each other. I’m glad we talked about it.”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “You wanna tell my libido that?”

She shrugged, laughed, made a silly face at him. “You’ll get over it. Besides, abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“That’s absence, smarty.” And his heart was already fond of her. Or was that his hormones? At this point, he couldn’t be sure.

She woke up the dog and they rode back to the hunting cabin, silence humming between them. Once they arrived, he unsaddled the horses and she offered to let him keep the leftovers, including the untouched cookies.