This wasn’t friendship plus benefits. That implied the friendship remained untouched and the benefits were an add-on. Easy to stick there, easy to remove. But that wasn’t the case.
Everything was different. The air around them had changed. How the hell could he pretend the friendship was the same?
“I’m just—” She smiled sheepishly and pulled her shirt up over her head. “Sorry.” Then she unhooked her bra, tossing it onto the floor. He hadn’t had a chance to look at her breasts the last time they’d had sex. She’d kept them covered. Something that had added nicely to the tease back in the shop. But he was ready to drop to his knees and give thanks for their perfection now.
“Why are you apologizing for flashing me?”
“Because. In the absence of pajamas I need to get comfortable now.” She stripped her shorts off, and her underwear—those shocking black panties that he simply hadn’t seen coming, much like the rest of her—and then she flopped down onto his bed. He didn’t often bring women back here.
Sometimes, depending on the circumstances, but if they had a hotel room, or their own place available, that was his preference. So it was a pretty unusual sight in general. A naked woman in his room. Anna, in this familiar place—naked and warm and about as inviting as anything had ever been—was enough to make his head explode.
His head, and other places.
“You never have to apologize for being naked.” He stripped his shirt off, then continued to follow her lead, until he was wearing nothing.
He lay down beside her, not touching her, just looking at her. This was hella weird. If a woman was naked, he was usually having sex with her, bottom line. He didn’t lie next to one, simply looking at her. Right now, Anna was something like art and he just wanted to admire her. Well, that wasn’t all he wanted. But it was what he wanted right now. To watch the soft lamplight cast a warm glow over her curves, to examine every dip and hollow on the map of her figure. To memorize the rosy color of her nipples, the dark hair at the apex of her thighs. The sweet flare of her hips and the slight roundness of her stomach. She was incredible. She was Anna. Right now, she was his.
That thought made his stomach tighten. How long had it been since something was his?
This place would always be McCormack, through and through. The foundation of the forge and the business...it was built on his great-grandfather’s back, carried down by his grandfather, handed to their father.
And he and Sam carried it now.
This ranch would always be something they were bound to by blood, not by choice. Even if given the choice, he could probably never leave. Their family... It didn’t feel like their family anymore. It hadn’t for a lot of years.
It was two of them, him and Sam. Two of them trying so damn hard to push this legacy back to where it had been. To make their family extend beyond these walls, beyond these borders. To fulfill all of the promises he’d made to his dad, even though the old man had never actually heard them.
Even though Chase had made them too late.
And so there was something about that. Anna, this moment, being for him. Something that he chose, instead of something that he’d inherited.
“I like when you look at me like that,” she said, her voice hushed.
“I like when you take control like you did back in the shop. I like seeing you realize how beautiful you are,” he said. It was true. He was glad that she knew now. And pissed that she was going to take that knowledge and work her magic on some other man with her newfound power. He wanted to kill that man.
But he could never hope to take his place, so he wouldn’t.
“You’re the first person who has made me feel like it all fit. And maybe it’s because you’re my friend. Maybe it’s because you know me,” she said.
“I don’t follow.”
“I had to be tough,” she said, her tone demonstrating just that. “All my life I’ve had to be tough. My brothers raised me, and they did a damn good job, and I know you think they’re jerks, and honestly a lot of the time they are. But they were young boys who were put in charge of taking care of their kid sister. So they took care of me, but they tortured me in that way only brothers can. Probably because I tortured them in ways that most little sisters could never dream. They didn’t go out in high school. They had to make sure I was taken care of. They didn’t trust my dad to do it. He wasn’t stable enough. He would go out to the bar and get drunk, and he would call needing a ride home. They handled things so that I didn’t have to. And I never felt like I could make their lives more difficult by showing how hard it was for me.”
She shifted, sighing heavily before she continued. “And then there was my dad. He didn’t know what to do with a daughter. As pissed as he was that his wife left, I think in some ways he was relieved, because he didn’t have to figure out how to fit a woman into his life anymore. But then I kind of started becoming a woman. And he really didn’t know what to do. So I learned how to work on cars. I learned how to talk about sports. I learned how to fit. Even though it pushed me right out of fitting when it came to school. When it came to making friends.”
He knew these things about Anna. Knew them because he’d absorbed them by being in her house, being near her, for fifteen years. But he’d never heard her say them. There was something different about that.
“You’ve always fit with me, Anna,” he said, his voice rough.
“I know. And even though we’ve never talked about this, I’m pretty sure somehow you knew all of it. You always have. Because you know me. And you accept me. Not very many people know about the musicals. Because it always embarrassed me. Kind of a girlie thing.”
“I guess so,” he said, the words feeling inadequate.
“Also, it was my thing. And...I never like anyone to know how much I care about things. I... My mom loved old musicals,” she said, her voice soft. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to watch them with her.”
“Anna...”
“I remember sneaking out of my room at night, seeing the TV flickering in the living room. She would be watching The Sound of Music or Cinderella. Oklahoma! of course. And I would just hang there in the hall. But I didn’t want to interrupt. Because by the end of the day she was always out of patience, and I knew she didn’t want any of the kids to talk to her. But it was kind of like watching them with her.” Anna’s eyes filled with tears. “But now I just wish I had. I wish I had gone in and sat next to her. I wish I had risked her being upset with me. I never got the chance. She left, and that was it. So, maybe she would’ve been mad at me, or maybe she wouldn’t have let me watch them with her. But at least I would’ve had the answer. Now I just wonder. I just remember that space between us. Me hiding in the hall, and her sitting on the couch. She never knew I was there. Maybe if I’d done a better job of connecting with her, she wouldn’t have left.”
“That’s not true, Anna.”
“She didn’t have anyone to watch the movies with, Chase. And my dad was so... I doubt he ever gave her a damn scrap of tenderness. But maybe I could have. I think... I think that’s what I was always trying to do with my dad. To make up for that. It was too late to make her stay, but I thought maybe I could hang on to him.”
Chase tried to breathe past the tightness in his chest, but it was nearly impossible. “Anna,” he said, “any parent that chooses to leave their child...the issue is with them. It was your parents’ marriage. It was your mom. I don’t know. But it was never you. It wasn’t you not watching a movie with her, or irritating her, or making her angry. There was never anything you could do.”
She nodded, a tear tracking down her pale cheek. “I do know that.”
“But you still beat yourself up for it.”