I meant it as a joke. Everyone knew I’d have followed Jordan anywhere and happily done more than kiss him by the time I knew what couples did behind closed doors.
He looked down at me as we leaned against the side of the ditch on our stomachs. “I should have stomped his ass.”
“Why?” I laughed. A fight between those two would have been epic.
“Aiden wo—”
“Would want to kick his best friend’s ass for kissing his sister, too.” I cut him off.
He turned away from me and watched the approaching truck stop several hundred feet from our hiding spot. The silence seemed to stretch on forever. Again, he said a lot without saying a thing and it made me nervous as hell. I couldn’t handle that sort of silence.
“I’m not going to pretend like it didn’t happen, Jordan.” Because it had happened. It had happened and I’d been left reeling from it. When he’d followed up kissing me stupid in his driveway after my graduation with verbally shooting me down hard, I’d been left with all sorts of unsettled emotions. “For a while, I thought you’d broken my heart.”
“I never meant to.” I barely heard his words over the roar of the small truck Hunter raced as he fired it up.
As much as I’d wanted to hurt him after that, as
many nights as I’d spent awake in my dorm room wishing I could make him feel what I felt, I never could have. Not then and not now. I loved him too much for that. I always would.
“You didn’t,” I assured him quietly. The smell of melted rubber from Hunter’s burnout assaulted us. “I had to learn what being broken really felt like to know it.”
He turned toward me, his face and eyes softening in a way very few people had seen or would ever see. My knees went weak.
“Rae—”
I held a hand out to stop him. This line of conversation wasn’t what I wanted out of us right then. I wanted us back to an ease I could navigate with far more clarity. “Life is about learning. Besides, Hunter East taught me more than you ever could have.”
The concern vanished from his face and was replaced with a contorted expression of annoyance. “Jesus, Rae.”
The smug smile on my face was as genuine as they came. I was proud, in a pesky girl sort of way.
“There are things I could have taught you, Hunter East never would have dreamed of,” he growled.
I was ill prepared for his response. My heart stuttered and the moisture drained from my mouth. In the distance, Hunter let off the trans brake that held his truck on an imaginary line and the truck tore off toward us.
Heat began to radiate following his sultry threat. I was glad of the thick grass beneath me that I could latch onto, otherwise the world might have spun.
After Hunter’s truck flew by, he glared down at me. “That shut you up.”
I was more annoyed with the blatant amusement in his voice than I was with what he’d said. My eyes narrowed to small slits, and Jordan rolled to his side to face me.
“Oh, now you’re mad?” He snorted into the dark. “You’re a jerk.” I spun away as Hunter’s brake
lights lit up the street.
“How am I the jerk? You started it.”
“Shut up, Jordan.” When Hunter’s crew finally drove past us to pick up their driver, I pushed back from the side of the ditch and tried to climb back out.
“Oh, come on, Raelynn.”
His arm snaked out and pulled me down. With very little grace I stumbled on top of him where he lay.
“Get off me!” I shoved myself up.
“Calm down. When you get mad, you do dumb shit.” There was no mistaking the condescension in his voice.
Annoyance slipped easily into anger. “Like run down to my ex-boyfriend and tell him you’re in a ditch spying on him?” I hissed angrily.
“Yeah.” His arms tightened around me. “Not happening.”
I struggled against him for the briefest moment, before going stiff. Jordan was strong, his arms thick with the evidence of that strength. I wasn’t going anywhere until he decided I was.
I tried to swallow down the chilling panic that came with that knowledge. I tried to remind myself it was Jordan, who despite breaking my heart years ago, would never hurt me. Still, my hands reached for my throat, and I found myself holding my breath.
Hot tears pushed at my lashes as I battled that fear with my back pressed against his strong chest. I could tell him, and he’d try to fix it, try to fix me. That’s who he was, it was one of the reasons I’d always loved him. All I had to do was open my mouth, and I wouldn’t feel so alone, someone else would share my secret.
But if I did that, each time he looked at me I’d see the pity in his eyes. I’d see what I never wanted to see there again.
“Yeah well,” I snorted and tried to make light of it. “You had plenty of chances to teach me. What was it you said?” I waited a beat. “Oh yeah, that it wouldn’t be worth it. You’d get bored with me.”
When I struggled against his grip again, he let go. It was a small miracle that I didn’t run straight up the ditch. Another one that my slow, steady steps never faltered. I had to get a grip on myself. Jordan was too perceptive.
Behind me, he walked slow enough to give me space but close enough that I could still hear his steps on the dry grass. He’d seen my reaction, must have felt the moment I stiffened in fear. Eventually he’d ask the question going unspoken.
I had to put as much distance between Jordan and any questions he might ask as I could.
I stretched my legs to put more space between us. With each step my anxiety and fear quickly grew to something else. Anger. At myself and at him.
We were halfway back to the car when I spun on him. The fear completely gone now, replaced with the outrage that should have been there all along.
My stop was so abrupt that he almost ran smack into me. “You didn’t seem very bored when you helped me off that trailer.”
I was ready for a fight when I looked up at him, my muscles were tense and my blood hot. The man who looked down at me didn’t have fighting on his mind. His head lowered a fraction of an inch and as if on cue I rose up on my toes to meet him.