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.
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.
And you think this is the best way to mend fences?
It didn’t matter. He wasn’t exactly here to mend fences. Just to make the scales balance. Rebecca was never going to like him, and he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over that. There were a lot of people who were never going to like him. He hadn’t earned it.
“Good morning,” he said, swinging the ax down so that the head was resting on the ground and leaning his weight on it.
Rebecca startled, jerking backward and looking up, her eyes clashing with his. “What are you doing out here?”
“Chopping wood.”
“Clearly. But, why are you out here now doing it?”
“I’m going to help you with your work.”
She scowled, her expression turning feral. “The hell you are.” She grabbed hold of her long dark braid and whipped it over her shoulder. “You seem to misunderstand the point of what I’m doing here. This is not leisure time for me, neither is it some kind of therapeutic thing where I put myself in the path of the one person that I can stand the least. I can’t owe you.”
“Or,” he said, taking a step toward her, “you just want to be pissed.”
“Yes,” she said, her tone dry, “I live to be angry. And I certainly enjoy investing all of my thought and energy into you.”
“Then why won’t you just take it? I could get out of your life a hell of a lot faster if you would just accept my help.”
“I’m not going to,” she said, breezing past him and heading toward the stable.
“Are you always this stubborn?”
“Yes,” she said without turning around.
“Why is that?”
“It may surprise you to learn that I have dealt with a little bit of adversity in my life.”
“I’d like to ease that.”
She stopped, whipping around. “Not your privilege.”
“Does standing on principle ever get uncomfortable?”
“Standing in general is uncomfortable, asshole. Why is that?” She turned away again, her words hitting their target even as she continued on toward hers.
She disappeared into the stable, and by the time he entered behind her she was already holding a pitchfork.
“Are you going to stab me with that or are you going to start cleaning stalls?”
“It’s up for debate.”
He grabbed a hold of his own pitchfork, heading to a stall at the opposite end. “I’m still going to help. You have to get to work, and so do I. This is my property, and if you’re going to work for me, then you’re going to help me in a way that makes sense to me.”
She nodded once, her expression fierce. She seemed much more able to take orders than she was able to take charity. Even though, in his estimation, it would never be charity.
How could it be?
“Does Ace know?”
The sound of her voice on the other side of the stall surprised him. He pushed the pitchfork down into the shavings. “Does he know what?”
“Does he know that