Page 2 of Rival Heart
I always wondered if something hadn’t happened to him instead. It seemed like he was in love with her from what I heard. But there was no proof of any kind of foul play so it was just dropped as that bastard Carter took off and left the poor little bride at the altar. Left her to mourn and cry. And her family to curse the day she met him.
Branded the lot of us as bastards from that day on.
But Rebel Hawthorn didn’t give a fuck about all that when we met in grade school. Just plopped herself down beside me, smiled, her cinnamon eyes sparkling and her russet hair glowing like curly wildfire, and handed me part of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “You look hungry.”
I was. My dad didn’t pack my lunch, I did, and we were just about out of groceries… again. He sometimes forgot that we actually needed to eat. Always remembered his beer though. That was when he’d head to the grocery store and shop. When he realized that he was out of beer.
Rebel and I had been best friends from that day forward. Whenever Dad got crazy and I had to make a run for it or face a belt or a palm to the face, I always ran to her. My safe space.
It hurt when I left town. Hurt when I left her. But I was damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
I shake myself out of my old, painful memories. Seems like all I’ve got since I came home.
“I missed you, Reb.”
She snorts and stalks over to me, slamming her palm against my chest and then stalking past me. “Hah! If you actually missed me, you’d have tried to contact me, even once, over these last fifteen years. Nope. Not a fucking word. Don’t try and convince me that you care.”
“I figured you’d be married by now and have at least six kids, happy as a bull in a field of heifers.”
Her pretty face screws up. “That’s a sexist remark if I ever heard one,” she mutters. “Besides that, I’m not married. Why would you think I would be?”
Now it’s my turn to grumble. “What about Martin?”
She snorts. “I was never going to marry him. Again, I have to ask… why would you think that?”
“Because that’s what your dad told me when he asked me to leave town and leave you the hell alone,” I growl under my breath.
But she hears me and her glorious eyes go wide. “And you believed him?”
TWO
Rebel
ShouldI be surprised that my father did something like that and chased my best friend off?
No. Not even close.
“If you had come to me and asked me even one thing, I’d have told you the truth. That it’s always been his dream to expand the ranch, and he was willing to use me as a bartering tool to take over another rancher’s property. That rancher also wanted to expand his ranch, and his dream was to do the same thing with his son. That guy came to me and talked to me about it, and we stood up to our fathers and broke that dream into smithereens. Like you should have done.”
He sighs and glares at me. His teal eyes are still just as beautiful as the first time I saw him and realized that I was in love with him. But I pushed those thoughts right out of my head because he’s my best friend and I didn’t want to lose that. Fuck around and mess up your relationship by trying to change it into something that it never should have been. I never wanted that.
But I also never knew how much it would hurt if he just up and left with no word and no clue where he’d gone. I couldn’t believe he’d do that to me. It took a helluva long time before I realized that it was for good and he wasn’t coming back.
And now he’s back and I’m not ready for it. At all. He still looks just as delicious, only a little older and a little more worn. Just like me. But men don’t age in the same way. They get better.
Women just get older. Or so they say. I feel better, stronger than I ever did as a teenager or even a young woman.
He groans and his blue-green eyes close, his long, dark lashes lying on the hollow of his high cheekbones. Sharp and defined enough to cut glass with a jawline that should be on a statue.
Jesus, the guy could be a damn male model!
I turn and walk away, huffing, and reach the fence line, glaring out across the overgrown fields. The corral is a mess and any horse that is put out there is in danger of stepping in a hole and going lame or breaking a leg and being put down.
I can feel him behind me, see his big hand reaching out to touch my shoulder and I curl up, unwilling to let him touch me. Not even for a brief second. I don’t want his comfort. Don’t want his support.
I just want my best friend back and that’s not gonna happen because I cannot trust the man behind me. He left me. Left me to dig myself out of my own problems with my dad.
Heat curls in my gut again and my lips firm. “I’m here to offer to buy this damn god-forsaken place, Jace. So you can hit the road and go back to the life you left home for, you left me for.”
