How to Rope a Real Man (16 page)

Matt sank into his chair, staring at the blank touch screen on the phone long after his call with Jenna had ended. She’d asked him not to come over. Straight up told him to leave her alone tonight. And with his work schedule and her school, it’d be next weekend before he saw her again—if he saw her again. The calm he’d found by hunting with Jake was evaporating.

It’d been a great afternoon. In minutes flat, he and Jake had rustled up more than enough firepower to hunt with. The rifle from Kellan’s truck, the shotgun that had been hanging over his fireplace, and a backup from Kellan’s foreman, who’d also pointed them to the ranch’s impressive stash of ammo. Jake’s amusement at the ease with which they’d armed themselves for the hunt had been enough to get Matt out of his head. It was nice to see Jake’s grief lift a little, if only briefly.

The relief from Matt’s troubles had shattered the moment he’d heard Jenna’s tense, distant voice on the line. Then again, what had he expected? He’d dropped a bomb on her that morning, forcing her to decide now whether she could be with a man like him for the rest of her life without regret.

Judging by her shuttered emotions and request that he not stop by to see her one last time for the week, he could predict what her choice would be. Darkness simmered inside him, but he tried to take solace that this was happening now rather than a year or two down the road. Though he was already falling hard for Jenna, he and Tommy hadn’t bonded yet to where he’d suffer devastation at the loss. Sure, he was already half in love with the little guy, but who wouldn’t be? The kid was adorable and smart and full of gumption like his mom.

Jake stretched his legs out past the railing of Kellan’s back deck, his dinner plate on his lap with nothing but bones from their dinner of barbecued rabbit. “What’s up? You headed to Jenna’s place?”

Matt set his phone on the railing ledge and poked at the rabbit’s foot sitting there. He’d cleaned and saved it as a gift for Tommy, but now he wondered if he’d ever get the chance to give it to him.

“No.” He cleared his throat. “She said she has a lot to do tonight, and now that the wedding’s over, she’s tired.”

Jake tossed a bone off the deck into the darkness. “Sounds like a lame chick excuse to me.”

Kellan’s dog, Max, trotted to the edge of the deck, his eyes following the trajectory of the bone. If the poor thing had been a few years younger, he probably would’ve lit off after it, but instead he sank to his belly next to Jake’s chair.

Matt ground his molars together. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?”

Jake dropped his hand onto Max’s head and gave him a rough scratch between the ears. “How long have you and Jenna been together? I don’t remember seeing you around last Christmas when I was here.”

“That’s around the time I met Jenna and her sisters, but we just decided to start dating last night at the wedding.”

Jake snorted. “Dating. That’s one way to put what you two were up to at the wedding. Maybe she thought you were rushing it so she wants to slow things down. That sounds like some kind of wacky logic a chick would dream up.”

Matt didn’t want to get into the nuts and bolts of his and Jenna’s situation with Jake, but the man had a point. Jumping into the sack with Jenna might not have been his brightest move, not because they were rushing it, but because if he hadn’t known how sublime their chemistry was in bed, it might’ve been less painful to absorb the breakup he was more certain by the minute was coming. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel as raw and ready to shatter as he did now, waiting for her to issue her verdict.

He forced the dark thoughts away. “I can’t believe you’d bring up what happened at the wedding between me and Jenna after what we walked in on. What I should be doing right now is kicking your ass in defense of my sister’s honor.”

Jake’s lips twitched into a jocular smile, but his eyes remained heavy with the dark grief. “I could use a good fight right now, if that’s what you want. I might even let you get a few hits in.”

Jake was clearly kidding, but Matt sensed the truth in his offer, as well as the pain. He’d lost his partner today. Probably his best friend. Matt could see how sparring might help take away the hurt for a few minutes, as hunting had.

That was the thing about grief. You constantly had to invent new ways to cope, even if it only got the rock off your chest for a few minutes at a time. Too bad Matt wasn’t in the mood to show up at work the next day with black eyes and bruises. “Sorry. Fistfighting with an LAPD SWAT officer is right there at the top of my list of things not to do. Ever.”

Jake chortled. “Smart man.” He winged another bone into the darkness. Max stood, ears up. Jake stroked his back until the old dog lay down again. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not sorry about your sister and me. Nobody’s honor was compromised or any bullshit like that. There’s nothing wrong with two people giving each other what they need, and I definitely needed a distraction from what was going on with . . .” He swallowed, narrowing his eyes at the dark horizon. “With Nick. You probably don’t want to hear me say it, but there it is anyway.”

All Matt could do was nod. Nope, he definitely didn’t need to hear that, but he took comfort in the revelation that he could count on Jake for honesty. That was rare in a friend.

“I liked being on the horse today,” Jake said. “I didn’t expect to, but it was cool. Wouldn’t mind doing that again if I got the chance. Tara said your family breeds and trains horses, so you grew up in a place like this ranch, I guess?”

“Kind of like this, but Circle R Ranch is at a higher elevation so there’s more greenery. Kellan’s land is set up for cattle breeding, grazing, and beef processing. My family deals in horses so our property has more fences, corrals, and stables, that sort of thing. Another difference is that Kellan’s ranch is quieter than my family’s because besides breeding horses, my parents run a therapeutic riding center for people with disabilities, so the ranch is always crawling with people and cars. My house is on the property, but a mile away with its own entrance road. One of my older brothers and his family live on the ranch, too, closer to my parents’ house.”

“I’ve never heard of horse therapy. Is that like a kind of physical therapy?”

“Physical therapy, mental therapy, all that stuff. Being on a horse is good for the soul.”

Jake pressed the bottom of his shoe against the rail and rocked the chair onto its back two legs. “I can see that. That’s why you took me out today, isn’t it?”

Matt shrugged. “Partly. I like to ride and hunt when I’m down or something’s bothering me. You get the benefit of working with a horse, plus in order to hit anything you’re trying to shoot, you have to clear your mind.”

“If you love horses so much, why didn’t you stay in the family biz?”

At the time he’d made his career choice, grief over his SCO diagnosis had been fresh. Being around his family with their pitying attitudes and unwanted advice had made him feel even worse, as had watching all the children and their families coming for equine therapy. “I’m happy as a lawyer.”

Jake dropped the front two legs of the chair down with a thunk. “You’re a lawyer? How did I miss that? Please don’t tell me you’re a criminal defense attorney, because if that’s the case then we might have to brawl after all. Those dicks make my job harder than it has to be.”

“Oil law.”

“Okay. I’ll give you a pass on that one.” He grinned and smacked Matt’s shoulder as though to make sure Matt knew he was kidding around, but Jake wasn’t the first law officer he’d met with an aversion to attorneys. Cops and lawyers didn’t exactly mesh in temperament or personalities.

Come to think of it, the two of them probably looked like the world’s oddest pair at the moment—a city cop and a country lawyer. But Matt genuinely liked Jake and got the impression the feeling was mutual.

“How did you decide to become a cop?”

Jake set his plate on the rail ledge and took up his beer bottle. “My dad pushed me to it.”

“Oh yeah? But your dad isn’t in law enforcement, is he?” Matt thought he would’ve remembered Kellan mentioning it if that were the case.

Jake huffed. “Not quite. More like a criminal. Went to prison when I was young, he and my mom. All I wanted out of my life was to be the opposite of them in every way, and so I figured what’s more opposite from a career criminal than a police officer? When I was going through the academy, I figured out that being a generally pissed-off, fearless son of a bitch worked in my favor. The job was a natural fit.”

“I thought there was a saying about an angry cop being a dead cop, or something like that.”

“It depends on what you do with the anger. I learned how to control it right away. I also learned to embrace my first training officer’s philosophy that when you have the skills, size, and temper to do harm, you also have to be man enough not to.”

Matt liked that philosophy. If a miracle happened and Jenna and he worked out and he got to help raise Tommy, that would be a lesson he’d want to pass on to him.

Thinking about becoming a family with Jenna and Tommy made him restless for the solitude of a long, dark drive to Santa Fe. He set his boots on the ground and picked up his phone. “I’d better hit the road. Got to be up early for work tomorrow morning.”

Jake stood too and offered Matt his hand to shake. “Hey, thanks for staying today. That was cool of you.”

They shook. “You bet. I’m always up for a hunt. Maybe if I come down to Catcher Creek next weekend we can do that again.”

“Sounds good to me. I’ll probably leave for Cheyenne next Monday. Hey, don’t forget your rabbit’s foot.” He tossed it to Matt. “It might give you good luck with Jenna.”

He needed a whole lot more than luck for things to work out with Jenna. “Thanks.”

Matt idled his car under the entrance arch to Kellan’s ranch, where the dirt road met the blacktop. The entrance to Jenna’s property was to the right, only a couple miles away. He wanted so badly to pop in and remind her of how good they were together. But she’d said she needed time and he owed her that much with the choice he was asking her to make.

It hurt like hell to know she was close, yet out of reach. But like his dad said, doing the right thing wasn’t easy. It was damn depressing how often Dad’s words rang true in Matt’s life. For once, he didn’t feel like doing the right thing. He wanted to break rules. Be selfish. Take. It wasn’t the man he had been raised to be and went against everything he stood for, but tonight he wanted to fight for Jenna’s love, brazenly. He wanted to show her everything she stood to lose if she cut him out of her life.

He looked left, toward the highway. It was nearing eight o’clock and he had a three-hour drive to get home after forty-eight hours of barely sleeping. The prudent thing to do would be to hit the highway while he still had a semblance of energy, rest up for work, and call Jenna in the morning.

“Screw it.”

No more wade-in-slowly guy. He sent one last look in the direction of the highway, eased his foot off the brake, and turned right. He needed one more kiss from Jenna, a real kiss this time instead of that peck on the cheek from earlier. Tired of playing it safe, he was going to go after what he wanted, consequences be damned.

The last time Jenna had seen Carson, his face had been swollen and damaged, his body and spirit broken. Since that day, Carson had transformed into a taller, broader version of the lanky farm boy he’d been. Shorter hair, clearer eyes, fighting strong. Clearly, his time in the Marine Corps had hardened more than his body.

Under the yellow glow of Jenna’s porch light, they each staked a territory outside. Jenna stood in front of her kitchen window, jumpy with nerves, while Carson paced with measured steps along the white picket fence at the edge of the mangy-grass front yard, his face a web of shadows.

“You’ve changed,” she said in the tense silence.

“You haven’t.”

He wasn’t really seeing her then, if he thought she hadn’t changed. Jenna doubted there was another person in Catcher Creek who had undergone such a radical overhaul as she had since finding out she was pregnant.

That was what made the past so hard to reconcile. She’d relive that night with Carson on the sleeping bag in the bed of his truck a thousand times over if it meant she ended up with Tommy. It felt shameful to wish things had gone down differently with Carson when Tommy’s conception was inextricably woven into everything that had gone wrong in the weeks that had followed.

Carson’s steps faltered with a crunch of gravel and weeds. Huffing, he whirled to face her, gripping the fence behind him. “I thought I knew what I’d say when I saw you again. Hell, I had six years to think about it. But now, looking at you, being here . . .” He shook his head.

She felt the same way. Having spent so much time figuring out how to avoid this very confrontation, she’d never given much thought to what might actually happen if it came to pass.

“Is there any chance you and I can agree to let the past go? We could call each other friends and be on our way.”

He rapped his knuckle against his forehead. “You think that’s why I’m here? To grant you a pardon? God, hearing you talk like that, I hate you all over again.”

His hatred didn’t surprise her in the least. Two weeks after Tommy’s conception, when he’d demanded she meet him at an abandoned barn, she’d shown up and seen it in his eyes that he was furious with her. At the time, she’d had no idea why her best friend hadn’t returned her phone calls or answered his door for two long weeks after she’d shared her body with him and he’d shared his secret with her. She hadn’t understood the wild hurt in his eyes when it was she who’d felt neglected and used.

Yet at the first sight of his broken, beaten body, she’d set aside her hurt feelings and rushed to him, only to have him shove her away and accuse her of unspeakable betrayals. The argument that followed had been the worst she’d ever experienced—unmatched in its vitriol and volume.

Tonight, she knew intuitively that there was nothing she could say to convince Carson he was wrong to accuse her. “I know you’re not going to believe me any more now than you did then, but I kept your secret. I’ve kept it to this day.”

In her mind’s eye, Jenna could see the two of them in the bed of his truck, gazing at the stars.
I’ll tell you something about me I’ve never told anyone, but it can’t get out. Not even to my family.

She remembered holding her breath, her body tingling. Even as a teenager, she’d loved being privy to people’s private business.
You’re my best friend. You can tell me anything
, she’d said.

She’d taken his hand. The attraction she’d come to feel toward him because he was a good-looking guy had gotten jumbled up inside her with the platonic love of being longtime friends who shared a bond. Maybe daddy issues were to blame. She’d grown up so lonely and neglected that of course she craved attention. She’d slept with nearly every other guy in her class, yet Carson never acted like he wanted her, and men who ignored her drew her in like magnets. It was embarrassing, how naïve and needy she’d been. How starved for love. She hugged herself more tightly as the memory flooded through her.

“Enough with the lies, Jenna. You were the only person in the world who knew. I trusted you, and only you, then not more than two days later, I was ambushed behind my parents’ store. They waited for me to lock up and head for my car. I really think their intention was to kill me.” He smashed his lips together. “I think they thought they had killed me.”

“Who?”

“Stop pretending you don’t know. How do you live with yourself, lying like that?”

“You were my best friend. I loved you.” What more could she say?

He released a bitter laugh. “That’s the bitch of this whole thing. All these people swore they loved me—you, my parents, my brothers and sisters—right up until they found out who I really was. No more lies, Jenna. Tell me why you betrayed me. Tell me how you live with yourself or I’m going to take my vengeance out on you the same way I’m going to take it out on everyone else who tried to destroy me.”

Whatever kind of vengeance he had in mind, she had no doubt he planned to take it out on her, no matter what her response. But she had to try to make him see the truth. “I didn’t tell anybody. Not a soul, whether you believe me or not.” Desperation rose inside her, constricting her throat. “Tell me the names of the men who did that to you. Don’t make me face another day in Catcher Creek wondering which of the people I’ve known my entire life have the hearts of murderers.”

“You’re going to stick to your story, then? Fine. Bucky Schultz, Kyle Kopec, and Lance Davies. Go ahead and act surprised.”

It was the first time she’d heard the names of the boys who assaulted Carson. Punks, every last one of them. Punks a few years older than she and Carson, and whom they’d partied with and considered friends. Lance brought the pot, Bucky the booze, and Kyle the ideas that never failed to land them in trouble with the law. Her sister, Amy, had even dated Bucky briefly. All three had joined the rodeo circuit by the time Carson and Jenna had graduated high school, but they still called Catcher Creek home. She had distinct memories of partying with them that fateful summer.

Jenna had no idea if they were presently in town or not, but their families were. “What are you going to do to them?”

That garnered a hard smile. “I’m going to hurt them like they hurt me. And then I’m going to tell everyone the truth—about my parents’ cover-up, about you and your betrayal, about how the hate in this place has been allowed to fester. No more secrets. I’m proud of who I am. I fought for this country and now I’m ready to fight for myself. Nobody’s pushing me around anymore.”

Jenna pulled at her hair. “Can you hear yourself? You’ve got as much hate in your soul as they do. What happened to you?” She heard her tone rising to a shout, but couldn’t stop it. “Where’s the boy I knew? The boy who saved me from bullies and from myself too many times to count? I want him back.”

Her voice broke on that last word. They could’ve been parents together. They could’ve grown up into better people together. But their connection had arrested the day he first confronted her and she couldn’t see a way out of the hurt.

Carson stabbed a finger in the air between them. “Whoever I was, you destroyed him.”

“I would never betray you like that. Why are you so sure they beat you up over your secret? Maybe it wasn’t about that. It could’ve been a dare or robbery gone wrong, some kind of misunderstanding.”

His nostrils flared. He stood legs apart, hands clenched, red in his eyes. “You don’t get it, do you? There was only one reason Bucky, Kyle, and Lance tried to kill me. One reason my parents refused me medical help so their friends and customers wouldn’t find out. One reason I was left for dead, then shipped out of my home. Shunned by my own parents.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“They carved it into me, Jenna.” He ripped his shirt off over his head and spun away from her. “They fucking carved it into me.”

There, scrawled across his flesh in ragged lines of scar tissue were the letters
FAG
. His whole body moved with the force of his labored breaths. The word rippled with the flex of his muscles. She gasped and swayed, a hand to her mouth, aching for what he’d been through. No wonder he was so full of hate.

With his back to her still, he braced his hands on the fence and sunk into his arms. “What do you think it was like for me, coming out to my parents like that? What do you think it was like for me in the Marines, denying who I really was so I wouldn’t get kicked out of the service, defending myself against every bigoted prick who wanted to take a shot at me anyway?”

Tears sprang to her eyes. It must have been horrible. Pain piled onto pain. It must have felt to him like the world was ending over and over. How had he borne it?

“My dad found me half dead behind their store. He took one look at my back and he . . .” He hung his head. “I wished I’d have stayed unconscious instead of having to listen to my parents debate the pros and cons of taking me to the hospital. Eventually, they decided it’d be bad for business if the truth came out. My mom called her sister, who’s a nurse. She did what she could and as soon as I was healed enough to travel, they shipped me out.”

Jenna didn’t think she could stand to hear any more. She reached out, walking forward, needing to touch his pain, to let him know he wasn’t alone if he didn’t want to be. He hated her, but she’d never stopped loving him as a friend and brother. As the father of her child.

He must not have sensed her approach because at the first touch of her fingertips on his back, he flinched and pulled away. Spinning to face her, he clamped a hand over her wrist. “Don’t you dare touch me. Don’t you
dare
pretend sympathy for me after what you did.”

“I didn’t do anything. You left me all alone and I couldn’t find you. I had no idea who’d hurt you because you hadn’t told me. All I knew was people in this town were capable of such unspeakable violence that no one was safe. I’ve lived in fear since the day you told me you were almost killed. I was afraid they’d come after me, too.”
Afraid they’d come after our son if they realized who his father was
.

She stopped fighting his grip on her arm. The tears that came were hot and angry. “I trusted you. I trusted you with me, but you left.”

Until the words were out, she hadn’t realized how betrayed by him she felt. Not only by his accusation, but his abandonment. It flooded through her now as fresh as if it’d happened yesterday. All that hurt and fear she’d endured back then. The shock that he could so easily and fervently believe her capable of betrayal. That day had scarred her as deeply as her parents’ deaths, as brutally as her childhood of neglect. Maybe he hadn’t ever really cared about her, for him to think the worst of her on the turn of a dime.

Sneering, he released her and fumbled back. “I trusted you, too, and look what it got me.” He prowled to the far edge of the picket fence. “But the joke’s on you and this town because I’m not that weak-ass wimp I was back then. That boy I was, the Carson you knew, I think Bucky and his friends really did manage to kill him like they wanted to.”

He sounded like a victim. This hulking Marine sounded like a weakling. Weaker than the Carson she’d known. Maybe he was right, and Bucky and his friends had killed that boy. “They might have hurt your body, but you’re the one who let them mangle your spirit.”

He spun around in slow motion, rolling his head on his neck. “Well, fuck you, too, Jenna.” He enunciated every word like a bullet. “You’re the one who allowed that to happen to me. Who did you tell—Bucky? Your sisters? One of the girls in school? You never could resist a juicy bit of gossip.”

No, she couldn’t. Especially back then.

I think I might be gay,
he’d told her the night of Tommy’s conception in the back of his truck. It hadn’t been much of a surprise. She’d found gay porn under his bed one day when she’d been looking for his stash of pot. She doubted she would have had much of a reaction even if she hadn’t found evidence, because she’d been so high that night. Pot and pills and tequila. She’d been buzzed, lying there next to Carson. Would’ve vibrated right into the atmosphere if she hadn’t been holding his hand.

You’re not sure?
she remembered asking him.

Not really, okay? It’s all so fucked up. I mean, how do you know for sure?

And then she’d said the fateful words.
I can think of a way.
With that, she’d taken his hand and cupped it over her breast. His touch had made her higher than the drugs. It was the ultimate rebellion—screwing her best friend. Screwing the boy who’d ignored her every flirtation. He wouldn’t reject her this time if she helped him figure things out about himself.

If she’d only known.

She shook herself back to the present. “I never told anyone you might be gay.”

“There was no might about it. I was. I am. And of course you told someone, you lying bitch.”

Carson stepped toward her and she responded with a step back. A new awareness tingled over her spine. He could hurt her tonight. His eyes radiated violent potential. She couldn’t afford to argue with him anymore, not even to defend herself. Time to be smart and let self-preservation win out over taking a stand for the truth about what had really happened.

Around the corner, propped against the house, she kept a rake. She took another step back, then another, until she could see the rake in her periphery. Three feet away.

Carson inched toward her, spitting hate and fury. “Six years I’ve been working up to this, training, getting strong. I’m a fucking soldier, and there ain’t nobody going to mess with me anymore. I’m going to weed the poison out of this small-minded Hicksville. It’s time for me to get biblical. You all are going to pay the price of your sins.”

All that mattered now was Tommy. His safety, his future. She ruminated on her son, gathering strength. If she’d ever doubted her resolve to keep the truth about Tommy from Carson, she didn’t any longer. The bitter, vicious man before her was beyond reason, beyond humanity. What would he do to her, to Tommy, if he learned the truth she’d hidden from him?

Holding her breath, she lunged for the side of the house, grabbing a firm hold on the rake. She jabbed the tines in Carson’s direction.