True-Blue Cowboy Christmas (20 page)

“Summer.”

“Water? Juice. I have grape juice. I like…grape juice.”

He pushed himself into a sitting position, trying to get any kind of handle on the situation. They'd had sex. She'd been fine afterward, all sweet and pliant. And then he'd asked… Something wasn't right, and it made a knot tie in the pit of his stomach because he didn't think it was about him.

If it wasn't him, he couldn't fix it. “Tell me what's going on.”

She shook her head back and forth, but the light of the lantern caught her eyes and he could see tears shimmering there. Without even thinking, he was on his knees on the mattress, moving so he could be closer.

“Summer, tell me what's wrong. You can't be walking away and about to cry and not tell me what's wrong.”

She shook her head again, and this time a tear spilled over. “I don't want you to think differently of me.”

“How could I think differently of you? You're…” He got to his feet. It felt a little foolish to be trying to have a serious conversation completely naked, but this seemed too important to take a second to go searching for his clothes. “Summer, what happened?”

“It's complicated,” she said in a raspy voice.

“I'm pretty understanding of complicated. I am intimate with complicated,” he managed to say, his voice only a shade too tight. But even if his voice didn't betray his tension, everything else had to. He felt like he'd been dipped in cement.

He couldn't stand to be naked any longer. He located his jeans and tugged them on and tried not to feel claustrophobic in this bizarre little place. How had it gone from cozy and
her
to dark and scary and…

Complicated. Tears. Hell if that's what he needed.

Summer didn't look at him. She stared at the floor, those delicate eyebrows drawn together in a riot of pain, confusion, and fear. But she didn't open her mouth to tell him what any of it meant, and that was almost more than he could bear.

“Do you…” He had to clear his throat or his voice would break completely. “Do you want me to leave?” It would kill him. In fact, even if she said yes, he wasn't sure he'd be able to leave her alone right now. Maybe one of the Shaws…

But her arms came around him, a tiny sob escaping her mouth as she held on to his neck so tightly he almost couldn't get a full breath. She pressed so tightly that the clothes she'd clutched to herself were stuck between them.

“Please don't leave.”

He held her against him, trying to find his equilibrium, trying to find his strength. He wielded it so much that he couldn't let it desert him just because he hadn't expected this.

“Then you have to explain it to me, all right?” He held her tight, rubbing circles on her back, tucking his chin onto her shoulder, trying to give her strength even as his was faltering. “You have to tell me what's wrong. I can't guess, and you can't let my terrible imagination fill in the blanks, because I have dealt with a
lot
of terrible.” It probably wasn't fair to throw that out there, but it was honest.

Hell, if whatever they were starting here in the mess of his life, and apparently hers, was going to go somewhere, it had to begin with flat-out honesty. That's what had gotten them here in the first place.

“So, you have to tell me what's wrong or what I can do. If you can't…”

Her grip tightened. “Don't finish,” she said, her voice little more than a squeak. “Please don't finish.”

“Summer.”

“I just need a minute. This wasn't about you. Or us. Or even sex.”

“It was about my question.” He unwound her hands and slowly pulled her body away from his. He grabbed the shirt she'd dropped and pulled it over her head. She finished by pushing her arms through the armholes. It was long enough to skim her thighs, so he didn't bother to pick up her skirt.

She looked impossibly young, and he felt like a complete and utter failure. Yeah, it wasn't about sex maybe, but it wasn't… It was
something
, and he hadn't handled that something correctly.

“There were a lot of decisions that weren't mine,” she said faintly, not meeting his gaze. “In my life before I came here. I don't like to talk about it.”

“I don't particularly like to talk about all the crap that's happened in my life, but I did.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to turn away, but he kept her rooted with his hands on her shoulders. “Tell me about your life before Blue Valley.” He waited until her gaze met his again. “Tell me. I want to understand. I need to. You want this to be something, don't you? As much as I do?” He needed her commitment here, and he knew it wasn't fair to need it. She was young and inexperienced, but he had a daughter and he simply couldn't afford to be fair—no matter how much he'd like to.

She finally nodded, even though she looked terribly pained.

“Then you have to let me in. I have too much at stake.”

Her eyes studied his, some kind of war going on behind them. He wished he could soothe it, take it all away, but he'd learned the hard way that he didn't have that kind of power. No one did.

“Do you mind if I get a drink first?” she asked.

He let out a whoosh of breath. “As long as that's not code for running away.”

Her mouth almost curved, and he realized how desperately he wanted to see her smile again. She had so many different smiles, and he hadn't noticed how dependent he'd become on them until now.

He reached out and touched his thumb to the corner of her mouth, and it lifted farther. “Whatever it is, it won't change how I feel,” he said, knowing he shouldn't make promises he couldn't guarantee. But he couldn't help himself or deny that light, jittering feeling lurking around his heart.

“My mother was very…controlling,” she began, fingers twisting together, eyes looking longingly at the door, at escape. But then her eyes met his again, and she seemed to square her shoulders, determination shadowing over all that fear and doubt. “Will you say…say the part about wanting this to be something again?”

“You mean, that I want this to be something?” She nodded, and he slid his thumb over the line of her lower lip. “I want this to be something. I want you. I…
care
for you.”

She swallowed, and he felt like he
could
guarantee that what she said wouldn't change this feeling. Not as he watched her shore up all that strength, all that determination, and give a piece of herself she was scared to give.

No, nothing could change this feeling ricocheting in his chest. He just hoped that meant nothing could stand in their way either.

Summer was shaking. The last thing she wanted to talk about after the first time she had sex was her mother. She wanted to be curled up on that bed in the warm afterglow, or maybe even moving toward a round two.

Instead she was crying and shaking, and she didn't totally understand why or what had happened. She'd enjoyed it. Thoroughly. It had been everything she'd hoped for, physically
and
emotionally. He'd been sweet and sexy, and it had felt
equal
.

She'd felt like a queen when they'd lain there snuggled together.

Then he'd had to ask the question that ruined everything. The one that made all those before things come crashing back, invading her mind like little evil spirits driving the two of them apart.

“Your mother was controlling,” he offered, pushing her along.

She didn't want to be pushed. She didn't want to do this. Not
now
. But, she couldn't get over him saying he had too much at stake. He did—she so understood he did—but didn't she have things at stake too?

“Summer.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to block out everything except a deep breath in. A deep breath out. He couldn't spend the night here. Not with Kate back at the Lanes'. Even if Mr. Lane and Mrs. Bart were watching Kate, Thack was not the kind of father who would take spending the night elsewhere easily.

She had to hurry up. She had to…

Why was she doing this? She couldn't
tell
him. She couldn't share all those gross, wrong things that she'd allowed to happen to her.

She couldn't stop shaking. She couldn't do this. “I can't. I can't.”

There was a silence, a dead kind of silence that could only preface bad things to come. This wasn't the silence before he said he understood and pretended the last ten minutes hadn't happened. This was the silence before things shattered.

“Then
I
can't. Then I have to go.”

There was another silence. She didn't open her eyes, but he wasn't moving. He was standing still. Was he waiting for her to change her mind? She didn't think she could.

But the sound of him rustling around for the rest of his clothes, the sound of his footsteps moving out of her tiny room…it was worse. The thought of losing this was so much worse than the fear of showing him the ugly parts of herself.

“Wait,” she choked out, following him.

“I'm sorry, Summer, I can't stand around and—”

She stepped between him and the door, placing her hand on his chest, keeping him away from the exit. “Wait,” she said forcefully. “Wait, please. I don't want you to leave.”

“I don't
want
to leave,” he said through clenched teeth, and it hurt that all the tension was back in him, the weight on him, and she'd put it there.

“Thack.” She meant to talk, to tell him everything. She meant to, she really did, but her hands slid up to his neck and she tugged him down until his mouth was on hers and she gave everything to the kiss.

She just needed a moment. A moment of this, his mouth on hers, his arms wrapping around and holding her. A moment to pretend that his words were true, that nothing she could say could change how he felt.

But when she wanted to cling, to be held tighter, he loosened his grip, reached behind his neck, and loosened hers. “Don't…” He shook his head. “This isn't the answer. I wish it could be. I wish it could be easy. But my life is too complicated to fit in something ‘easy.'”

“Well, if it's already complicated, why add more?”

“Because that's how life works. You care about someone, and their complications weave into yours. If they don't, then what's the fucking point?” He watched her. Waiting.

She tried to say something, to tell him some glossed-over version of the truth. Something that would explain vaguely without putting a black mark on everything that had happened here.

But she waited too long, because he shook his head. “I'm sorry,” he said in that gravelly, world-weary voice, and he reached for the knob and turned it, pulling the door open to the dark night that surrounded the caravan.

“When I was little, we'd move from house to house based on who Mom was seeing,” Summer blurted out, not sure where she was going or why she was starting all the way at the beginning. She stared at the little colorful dots reflected from her Christmas lights onto the snowpack. Maybe if she focused on something good…

Thack slowly closed the door, with him still inside. So, she had to keep talking.

“We'd stay a year or two—I managed third to sixth grade in the same school district, actually. But, basically, she'd find a guy to live off, and that's where we'd be.”

Summer hadn't realized how odd her upbringing had been until she'd gotten older, managed a few friends of her own, and had that weirdness pointed out to her in glaring detail. Oh, she'd never liked it, but she just thought that was life in the way kids simply accepted their circumstances because what else can you do?

“Mom considered it a service. Like a paid companion. She was a hostess of sorts. Moved in the same circles of wealthy men who had certain…tastes.”

“Tastes?”

“Um…” Because this was where it got sticky. Weird. Uncomfortable. This is where she always worried people would realize she was tainted. Because she was. Mom had said she was marked.

Because Mom was always so damn honest?

Summer clutched her hands together, pressing them to her chest, where the pressure was too much, where pain and fear swirled and threatened to ruin this. But that would be letting Mom ruin what she'd only just begun to build.

No, she couldn't let that happen. “They were always involved in these parties. Lots of drinking. Lots of sex stuff. I don't remember it when I was really young. I think Mom kept me away from it for a while, but once I was old enough to be useful—”

His hands were gripping her arms before she had even registered him crossing the distance between them. “What do you mean
useful
?”

“No. No. Not like that. I mean, like serving drinks and cleaning up and things like that.” She swallowed, the intensity in his gaze, the strength in his grip, the barely restrained fury making her feel hollow and weak, but also…she desperately needed to soothe him, to take away his sudden hurt. “She didn't bring me into that other stuff…” The
until
hung on the tip of her tongue in the air between them. She
had
been a virgin. She could keep that part forever secret—the things she
had
done. The things her mother had tried to auction off.

But Thack didn't seem like he'd be satisfied unless she gave him everything. He wouldn't trust her if she didn't give him the dark parts of herself, because she knew the dark parts of him.

“Until I was thirteen. And it was never sex. It was gradual. Things got…more involved as I got older.”

His grip never loosened, his tense jaw never relaxed, and that blazing fury in his eyes never receded. She had to force the words out and fast, so he didn't misunderstand. So he didn't think it was worse than it was.

God, how had she gotten here?

“Sometimes she would want me to listen to them say things. Sometimes I had to…watch things. Be touched a few times, but it was all very peripheral.”

His hands on her arms loosened and slid up, over her shoulders, up her neck, cupping her face with a gentleness that had fresh tears forming behind her eyes. “They touched you?”

“Just…a little.”

He pulled her in to him, until her cheek was pressed so hard against the wall of his chest that she wouldn't be able to enunciate words. “Oh, baby,” he said on a pained whisper, brushing a kiss over the top of her head.

It hurt to tell him, it hurt to cry, it hurt to remember, and it somehow hurt to have him hug her and kiss her. But it wasn't all hurt there. There was an odd cleansing feeling. Where she'd always thought saying it all out loud would make everything dirty, tainted,
marked
, it somehow felt more like a winter blizzard.

Dangerous. Scary. Painful like the cold could be if you stood there for too long, but…clean. Austere.
Powerful
.

She felt…new. And she hadn't even laid it all at his feet yet.

* * *

Thack felt sick to his stomach. Everything in him revolted at the idea Summer had had to
see
any of that, let alone be
involved
. That her mother would
do
that to her. He wanted to hold her here, where she would be safe, for as long as he could.

“There's…more,” she said softly, a little slurred, he assumed because he was clutching her too tightly to his chest for her to be able to speak properly.

He loosened his grip, steeled himself. It was something of a shock to realize that not only had he isolated himself from other people—and their issues—but that he'd gotten to the point where he'd assumed he had it the worst of anyone. Hard to beat a dead mom and wife, right?

But he was struck by how foolish it was to think the tragedies and travesties that befell people could be measured against each other that easily.

Her eyes met his, still watery with tears, but filled with so much damn determination and bravery that it humbled him. Had he thought
he
carried the entire world on his shoulders? Because he wasn't the only one dragging around baggage. He was just the only one between the two of them who was letting it drag him down.

Not anymore.

“Um.” There was distance between them now, but he couldn't let her go. His hands still gripped her arms, and her palms rested on his chest. It was becoming something of a familiar gesture. Her hand on his heart.

She shook her head, and it was odd how it made no sound without her usual tangle of jewelry jangling. “So, the more.” She took a deep, shaky breath, but he could sense something easing in her. Something like he'd felt after talking to Kate.

This was terrible. It would never not be terrible, but sharing the terrible with the right person somehow made it easier to carry.

“My mother was…entertaining offers for…me.”

“You?”

“Um, there were two men who wanted to…” Her deep breaths became shallower, so he tightened his grip, trying to give her the strength she'd given him.

“They wanted a virgin. She was pitting them against each other for more and more money. She didn't tell me, but one of them did. And…” She tried to turn away, but he wouldn't let her. Couldn't let go.

“Hold on to me,” he offered, voice feeling scraped raw.

She looked at her hands on his chest, then slowly curled her fingers into his shirt and held on.

“I confronted her, and she told me to play along. That this could set us up for a long time, and I was lucky she hadn't sold it off earlier.”

“Sold…it…off.” He couldn't make sense of the words, even as he spoke them. How could… How… How?

“I told her I wouldn't. She said I would, whether I wanted to or not. And I… So much had happened against my will, but without me ever really fighting back. A few times I resisted or backed away, but mostly I just let her, let
them
.”

It killed him that her gaze dropped, that she looked ashamed, that she sounded as though she were confessing to something she'd done. Only none of this was her doing.

He grasped her chin, tilting it so she would look him in the eye. “You didn't
let
anyone do anything. Your mother… She should have protected you with everything she had. You never should have been a commodity. You shouldn't have been put in that position
to
feel as though you were letting anyone do anything.”

She blinked at him. “Do you…do you really think that?”

“Of course I do. The thought of my child in that situation… I'd never allow it, Summer. Not on my
life
. What she did to you is on
her
. Her. It's unconscionable. It's
hideous
.”

Her eyes were wide, but her hands clutched tighter into his shirt. “It's how I felt. I… She always manipulated me into thinking it was okay, it was my job, but the…selling me off… Basically, I
felt
it was wrong. In my gut. In my soul. I couldn't let her do that. I couldn't let whoever she chose…” She shuddered and he gentled his grip on her chin, cupping her face with both hands, hoping it would keep her anchored. Keep her here, with him, in this little room.

“I couldn't. So, I started planning. I saved any money I could that Mom didn't know I had, which wasn't much. And the night it was supposed to happen, I ran. I guess it was lucky I'd never fought back before. Mom wasn't expecting it, and she couldn't catch me.”

“And you made it here.”

The first glimmer of a smile moved her mouth. “Yes, I did.”

Emotion swamped him. Deep, powerful, scary as hell, and he knew he didn't have the words. Not for her. So, he dropped his mouth to hers in a kiss that sang in his veins, so gentle, so reverent. Because she was such a precious gift that even a few
days
ago, he didn't think he could have.

She pulled away, but her slim fingers circled his wrists. Her eyes met his, that fierce determination emanating from somewhere so deep inside that he could only be in awe of her.

“So, when I said you were a choice, I hope you know how much that means. How important it was to me. Because it was everything I wanted and was afraid I'd never get.”

He had no words for that. For the responsibility she was placing on his shoulders—some piece of her heart, her experience—for the privilege to be the one she'd chosen.

He had no words for the realization that she was the same for him. She was everything he thought he wouldn't be afforded again: a chance he'd want to take with a relationship, with another person. The belief he
wasn't
cursed, that bad things didn't have to always end the good.