Maisey Yates - Last Chance Rebel

“The hell I haven’t,” he said, reaching out, wrapping his fingers around her arm and drawing her in closer to him.

His touch burned her, scorched her from the inside out. Her mind was blank, except for one thought. How long had it been since a man touched her? Anyone? She couldn’t remember.

“You can’t buy me,” she said, her voice low, shaking. And she wasn’t really sure if it was from rage, or because of the way he touched her. So firm and sure and completely unexpected. “You can’t throw money at this and expect it to go away.”

“Hey.” Rebecca turned and saw Ace standing behind the counter right next to them, his expression hard. “Is he bothering you?”

Of course Ace knew who Gage was. Ace was his brother-in-law. She wasn’t sure if anyone else in town recognized Gage West yet. And even if they did, they didn’t know the connection she had with him.

She doubted Ace knew either. But then, she couldn’t really be sure of what Gage had told his family, and what he hadn’t.

She pulled away from Gage, taking a step back. “It’s fine,” she said. She treated Ace to a hard look that expressed her to desire to have him go away.

She didn’t want him white knighting. She didn’t want anyone else enmeshed in this at all.

When he was out of earshot, Gage turned to her, leaning in slightly. “I’ve lived with it for the past seventeen years too,” he said. “Whether you want to listen to that or not, it’s true. Whether you think it’s fair or not, it’s true.”

“So, it sounds like you’re a big fan of being punished for your mistakes, then. Enjoy me withholding forgiveness.”

She didn’t even know what this fight was. Hating him for caring. Hating him for feeling some kind of responsibility for it. She shouldn’t know any of it, that was the problem. What she’d said to him earlier was the God’s honest truth.

She didn’t want to know his life. She didn’t want to know if guilt kept him awake. Didn’t want to know if he felt good, bad or indifferent.

This belonged to her. It was her pain. Her own personal tragedy. It had shaped everything she was, had disrupted her entire life in ways no one knew. In ways Gage West certainly couldn’t know.

Him feeling guilty...well, that seemed selfish. He wasn’t scarred up. His body was beautiful. Women didn’t look at him with pitying glances the way men looked at her. He didn’t have to deal with a terrible limp after a long day of physical labor. What right did he have to co-opt any of the suffering?

She should probably tell Jonathan what was going on. At least he could tell Gage to back the hell off. Except, she knew that she wouldn’t. Mostly because she wanted to handle all of this herself. It felt unwieldy and more than a little out of control, but she still didn’t want anyone else getting involved. Because her feelings were too raw. Too confusing. She didn’t know what to do with them.

She didn’t want to talk to Lane. She didn’t want to talk to Alison. She didn’t want to talk to anybody. She wanted to pick up a chair and break it over the back of Gage’s head.

Except she was too sore to do that. Because of him. Which made her want to hit him even more.

“I’ll be at your place tomorrow,” she said. “By six. Because I have to go in and work at the store afterward.”

“You damn well won’t be there.”

“I damn well will be, and if you stiff me out of my pay, I’ll make your life hell.”

“We haven’t even settled on a wage.”

“Make it a fair one!” She turned on 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.