A Perfect Mistake (5 page)

“You want
honesty, Boone? How about this for honesty? I would have been better
off if I had never laid eyes on you. Never gone to that graduation
party. It was a mistake!”

Her words cut me and
hurt. “What does that have to do with me?!”

“You slipped
Ecstasy into my drink!”

I actually stepped
back as if her words were blows. The news hit me with the force of a
baseball bat, leaving me incredulous, a little dizzy, a little sick.
My jaw slack, my hands clenched into fists, I leaned in and growled.
“What? No I didn’t.”

“It had to
have been you. You were the only one close to me and you were
distracting me all night.”

“What? What
did you just say?”

“Nothing.”

“It sure is
something.” I clenched my fists my gut on fire.” I can’t
believe I’m hearing this! I would never do that! I would never
take away someone’s choice. First, I know what it’s like
not to have choices. Secondly, Verity, I don’t need to slip a
girl anything to get her to sleep with me!”

The horn sounded
again as if to punctuate my statement. I stalked to the edge of the
porch and slashed my hand across my throat.

“It had to be
you,” she said in a small, broken voice.

I turned around. “It
wasn’t me.” I said through clenched teeth. “I can’t
prove it, and you don’t really know me well enough to take my
word for it, but you better be looking at someone close to you.
Because you’re wrong about me. Dead wrong.”

She must have heard
the raw emotion in my voice, because her expression softened. “I
can’t be wrong.”

My heart pounded so
hard I thought it might explode out of my chest. It was beyond belief
that she could ever think I would do something like that. I thought
she was different, and here she was, just the same as everyone else.
That’s when the anger tightened inside me. “Why would I
deny it? It’s been a year. If I was the person you think I am,
why wouldn’t I want to brag about it? Besides, nothing happened
between us. So, if it was my intent to have my wicked Outlaw way with
the virgin preacher’s daughter, I think I would have been a
little more aggressive with my evil plan to get into your pants.”

She stepped back,
her eyes going all stricken and confused.

“Oh, God,”
she said softly.

I stepped towards
her, nauseated and also confused about how she could ever think I
would do something like that. But then I realized she’d just
assumed I would have been the one to do something so underhanded and
despicable. Without wanting to analyze why that hurt, deeply, I just
wanted her to understand that what I wanted from her in high school
went beyond fucking sex. Even now, admitting that sounded so stupid
and impossible. “Verity, in high school…I was….I
wouldn’t have….Dammit.”

The horn sounded
again and I closed my eyes. “Fuck!”

I watched the
emotion flicker across her eyes, eyes that looked a hundred years
old. I wanted to cage her, delve into why she was looking at me like
I had been the one to drop this huge bomb on her. Like she was the
one making connections and dealing with shock and confusion. And,
what the fuck, but I wanted to wrap my arms around her, comfort her
against whatever was streaking through her mind right now that had
put that look in her warm eyes. I was reeling at the implications,
dying to have a conversation with her, but I had Marcy in the truck.

“I don’t
believe you. I can’t be wrong.
You
are the liar,” she shouted at me, shouldering past me and
slamming the door behind her.

The beginnings of a
headache, a dull pain in the back of my head, tightened my skull. I
just stood there for a moment, trying to absorb the shock of learning
what Verity really thought of me. I never even had a chance with her.
She’d already made her decision about me without ever giving me
an opening to defend myself.

Resentment and anger
boiled up. When I got back to the truck, Marcy said, “I thought
she was a little bit nicer than that. She always seemed to be in high
school.”

“People
change, Marcy,” I said as I watched the light come on in
Verity’s room. I put the truck in gear, that turmoil I had
experienced on her porch still roiling around. Was that true, or had
I bought into the whole preacher’s daughter thing? Had I done
to Verity what the town had done to the Outlaws? That didn’t
sit right with me.

As soon as we got to
Marcy’s apartment and the door closed behind us, her hands were
all over me. I wasn’t born yesterday. I’d known what she
wanted from the moment she approached me in the bar. Her mouth fused
with mine but I could only think about how hurt I was. How much I
needed the comfort of someone who really wanted me.

But as Marcy pressed
her mouth to mine, that sick feeling moved over me again, so I kissed
her harder to get it to go away.

There was something
decidedly lacking in heat with Marcy, but I pressed on. I wasn’t
going to admit that I didn’t enjoy being with her. Except the
damnedest thing happened, and I wondered as Marcy reached for the
clasp on my jeans, crowding me until the backs of my knees hit the
bed, how soft Verity’s lips would be, how hot against mine.

Maybe that wasn’t
fair to Marcy, but I think she just wanted to bed an Outlaw, and
Booker was taken and Brax wasn’t interested. He was fucking
someone else. Brax was always fucking someone else. Guess I wasn’t
the only Outlaw who used stand-ins.

What did it matter?
We all looked the same.

“Boone
Outlaw,” she whispered. “It’s about time.”

She had me out of my
clothes and was having her way with me before I could even take two
breaths. As I slipped inside her, Marcy said, “That’s
feels so good, Booker.”

I closed my eyes.
Seriously? She had a thing for my brother? Ah, that made me
understand why she’d come on to me. Aubree and Booker were
quite an item. I smelled marriage in the future there. I’d
never seen my brother so far gone. Marcy had to know that Booker was
far out of her reach. My cell rang again, and I was glad I was
fucking Marcy and couldn’t answer it.

I pumped into her. I
could only think about how it would feel to be inside Verity, and as
I wrapped my hand into Marcy’s blonde hair, all I could see was
midnight black. I guess we were using each other.

Afterwards, she
wrapped around me and I lay on my back in her bed, my eyes open and
staring at the ceiling. I had thought this would make me feel better,
but it didn’t, and Verity’s stinging words just made this
whole evening even more pathetic.

Damn, Verity, she
even made sex unfulfilling. I wondered if she was still a virgin. If
she’d let someone have her. All that uptight, cute, raging,
face-slapping peach pit.

I want
out-of-control, can’t-live-without-you, consuming, joyous,
think-about-you-all-the-time love!

I had overheard what
she’d said to Billy Joe, what she wanted and how he fell short
of her expectations. I bet that took him down a notch.

My heart constricted
a little at the memory of her heartfelt and ferocious words. Who
would settle for less than that? I wouldn’t.

I wanted to get
close to Verity, and I felt that hollow feeling again. The one I had
felt the night of the graduation party.

But I wasn’t
that guy anymore.

I wanted to know
her. People who made those kinds of statements were very determined
and passionate people. Here I thought she would be pious, quoting the
Bible, and mercy this and mercy that.

But it looked like I
was wrong. Had she always had this fire inside her?

There was only one
way to get Verity to see me for who I really was. It wasn’t
going to be easy, but I was determined. She was like a microcosm of
this town I lived in. Jumping to conclusions, using me as a
scapegoat, ignoring the fact that I had never acted like that in my
life.

I drifted, but woke
up each time Marcy moved. Finally I fell asleep and started dreaming.
It was a dream I’d had often and it was always about Verity.

Her mouth consumed
me and I was lost. In a daze, I can’t find my way kind of lost.
No bearings. No anchor. Nothing except the smooth slide of her skin
beneath my hands. That enticing skin that peeks out of a neckline, or
the cuff of a shirt, or the creamy expanse of a bared shoulder and
teases and taunts.

Skin on the
forbidden body of a forbidden girl.

Skin I touched and
caressed and held as she moved above me like something elusive and
intangible. Like a wind through my soul. My dick deep inside her.

I shifted and
groaned and tried to hold on to the sensations, but when something is
forbidden, it always becomes like a dream that slips through your
hands like smoke.

A loud noise
intruded just as she dipped her head, put her sweet mouth to my ear.
She had a secret she wanted to tell me. It was coiled in her muscles
that moved and contracted beneath my hands, it was in her brown eyes,
in the line of her delicate jaw.

I wanted to hear it.

Yet, I didn’t.

Irresponsible.

That used to be me.
So maybe I hadn’t quite given up on the small part of me buried
inside that still rebelled.

The noise pushed
against the sound of her voice and I couldn’t hear what she had
to say. I jerked awake and an ambulance squealed past the apartment
complex. I rolled out of Marcy’s bed, my what-the-fuck reaction
telling me that the dream had felt almost real.

Same damn dream.

Same damn girl.

Same damn raging
hard-on.

Holy Mary Verity
Fairchild.

I looked for my
clothes, stumbling against a chair in the unfamiliar room, jerking my
head towards the bed. I didn’t want to wake Marcy up and deal
with her. I thought it best I just slip out. I pulled my t-shirt over
my head, slipped into my underwear and jeans. It was still dark
outside, and when I looked at the illuminated time on the dash, I
realized I had only been asleep for about an hour. Dead tired, I
headed home, the persistent headache beating in time with my heart.

Letting myself
inside, I locked the door behind me and took a quick shower, washing
off the remnants of my encounter with Marcy. I padded to my bed and
slipped under the covers, the cool sheets feeling good against my
naked skin. I hated sleeping in clothes. Again, I lay on my back
staring at the ceiling. I realized that I didn’t like being a
stand-in for my brother and I shouldn’t use a stand-in for
Verity.

I didn’t
really want to see Marcy again, now that I had a dedicated mission to
get Verity to see who I really was.

Damn, that dream had
seemed so real. I shifted uncomfortably, cursing my stupid-ass high
school self, especially about the night of the graduation party. I
hadn’t done anything to her. I couldn’t have. I was
passed out in the bed of my truck. I sure as hell never dropped X on
her.

When my alarm went
off in the morning, I woke up with that same headache, but it was
pounding. The pressure of all the shit that had gone down last night
was obviously lingering. That dream was pretty intense and I’d
had it several times over the course of a year. I’m not exactly
Mr. Philosophy, but damn. What was the meaning?

You want to do
her, fool.

With a huff of
exasperation, I swung my legs to the floor and stretched. Heading for
my dresser drawer, I got out a jock strap and a pair of shorts.

The sun was just
inching up on the horizon, my favorite time of day on the bayou. I
went outside and spent twenty minutes watering and tending to my
plants. It was a ritual that got me into the day and filled up my
well.

Back inside I headed
to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water out of the fridge and a hand
towel from the laundry.

Even after all that
busyness, the dream still lingered as I walked into my weight room.

I grabbed a stack of
weights and loaded up the bar. Slipping underneath, I pressed up and
shifted the bar off its supports, grunting with the weight. I wanted
to push her out of my mind, and for the next forty-five minutes of
intense lifting, I managed. Toward the end of the session, I heard my
front door open and Wild West’s voice.

“Boss, you got
your sorry ass out of bed?”

“Weight
room,” I hollered. “Grab me another bottle of water.”

I heard him in the
kitchen and he soon filled up the doorway. Deacon West. Deke for
short, or, as everyone had called him in high school, Wild West. He
was a Southern boy through and through. His baseball cap was pulled
low over his blond hair and forehead, and he was dressed in jeans and
a red t-shirt that had Outlaw Landscaping across his broad chest. His
blue eyes twinkled as he watched me grunting and puffing.

“Told you not
to call me that. Gives me the hives.”

“What? Boss?”

“Yeah, that,”
I said sitting up, catching the bottle he chucked at me, unscrewing
the cap and guzzling it down. Geezus, I was parched.

“Ain’t
you the master?”

“You’re
going to be unemployed.”

“Would serve
him right,” Savannah Hawkins said, standing next to him in the
doorway. She was eighteen and my other employee. Like Deke, she was
blonde, her hair a cute, short cut. She had a no-nonsense attitude
and a tomboy spirit. “But, then I couldn’t drop all the
shit jobs on him.”

I laughed.

“Ha!”
Deke said, “That’s right. You couldn’t get along
without me. Picked up your design boards. We’ve already been
out to Mrs. Johnson’s. That little old lady not only loves her
cats, but she knows how to fill a Southern boy’s belly. Her
coffee cake? Shoot. She asked after you.”

“Did she
really?”

“Yeah, wants
to know when you’ll be stopping by again. She wants to talk to
you about doing a koi pond.”

“Koi pond?
What the hell? Those cats are going to be licking their chops.”