Page 77 of Make Me Crazy (Loco, Texas 2)

He dropped his arm from the car and said, “I wanted to apologize for what I said. I didn’t mean it, I was just…”

“I don’t really care Jake, okay? I just want to get through the next year without a hitch. We’ll just try to stay out of each other’s way.”

He grabbed her arm and his voice was pleading, “Rand, that’s not what I want. I was just freaking out.”

“I know, Jake, but actually, it was probably a good thing all this happened. Otherwise, we would have gone on pretending that you wanted me and we were happy, and things would have just gotten more complicated.”

He grabbed her other arm and argued, “I do want you! I was happy! I’m still happy with you, I just didn’t want…”

She finished for him. “You didn’t want to stick around longer than you had too. I get it. Marriage with perks for a year and then we get a divorce and go back to being just friends. That was the plan. But I can’t just go back to the way things were.”

“Rand, I am so sorry…”

She waved his apology off. “It’s fine. I’m trying to forget about it. But I hope you can respect the fact that I want to go back to my original plan for a marriage in name only.”

His eyes narrowed and his face turned purple. “You want to just pretend what we had never happened?”

She hoped she was giving him a blank expression when she answered, “Yes, that’s what I want.”

“What about what I want? I handled everything badly, Rand, I know that. I fucked up big time, but can’t you forgive me?”

Fool me once…

She shook off his hands and reached for the door again. “I forgive you, Jake. But I can’t just go back. Sex just complicates things and we promised Red we’d leave this thing as friends.”

She was just getting inside when he asked, “Are we still friends, Rand?”

She couldn

’t look at him or he’d see the tears she was trying to hold back. “I don’t know.”

He didn’t stop her from closing the door to her truck and driving back to the Double C, and a part of her wished he had yanked the door open, pulled her off the seat and kissed her into submission.

Later that night, he came back to the ranch and she laid in her bed, listening to him come through the door and walk down the hall. She waited for him to try the door, come inside and beg her again to change her mind.

He paused outside her room for a minute, before she heard his footsteps retreat back to her granddaddy’s room. She tried to tell herself she wasn’t disappointed that he hadn’t even tried.

Her brain believed her but her heart didn’t. She rolled away from the door and cried herself into a fitful sleep.

Jake and Rand fell into a routine of avoidance, him leaving early and getting home late. She made sure to get in bed when she heard his truck pull up and didn’t get out of bed until she heard him leave.

She missed him, and the whole situation wasn’t working. It didn’t make her love go away, it just made her heart ache worse. She had been reduced to one of those whimpering simpletons that cried at everything and buried their sorrows in junk food after a break up. She used to laugh at those characters on sitcoms and movies, and the girls in town were worse.

Oh, how the mocking had fallen.

On Friday, Jamie and Tabitha showed up on her porch at six and Tabitha yelled, “Surprise! We’re kidnapping you!”

The last thing Rand wanted to do was hang out with anyone, and she said, tiredly, “Sorry guys, I’m not really in the mood.”

Jamie, decked out in a school girl skirt and a black tank top shook her head. “Too bad, you’re coming. You need to get out of this house and have a little fun. No one has seen you in a week.”

“I’m hibernating.” Her growl matched the statement.

Tabitha pushed past her, ignoring her intimidation attempt. “You are not going to mope because Jake is an idiot.”

Jamie passed her and handed her a white pastry bag. Okay, so maybe they could come in for a minute. “What makes you think Jake did something?”

Tabitha snorted. “Because he’s a man, and men are stupid.”

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