Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)

In my haste to escape I hadn’t noticed the alarm—so much for my special training. “It did?”


“It’s funny how many times I’ve been woken up by a door alarm. Lu actually keeps track of how many of her hookups sneak out in the middle of the night.”

“Do they know that she knows exactly when they bail?”

“No. Which is why it’s so funny.” She paused. “Until it happened to me.”

My gut twisted. “You thought you’d get up and find me gone?”

“I wasn’t sure. I figured it was your turn for a freak-out moment since I’ve had several and hit the road at every major turning point so far.”

“The thought had crossed my mind to just…go.”

“Even if I would have found you gone, Boone, I would’ve come after you. Like you always come after me.” She squeezed my hand.

I squeezed hers back.

It didn’t seem odd that we were lying side by side on her patio, in the middle of the night, staring at the starless, cloudless sky.

“You want to talk about why you freaked out?” she asked gently.

“Yeah.” I paused. “And fuck no.”

Sierra laughed softly.

She didn’t push. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. I knew even if it took me a fucking hour to find my balls and spit this out, she’d still be right there beside me, waiting.

I compiled an ordered list in my head. High points. Low points. Problem was, they were all low points.

Quit stalling and man up.

It took two tries before I forced the words out. “I freaked out because I’ve never spent the entire night in bed with another person.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Not even as a kid?” she asked.

“Nope. Even with the shitty places we lived with my mom, I never shared a bed with my brother or sister.”

“You shared a bedroom with them?”

“Yeah. I spent plenty of nights in a sleeping bag on the floor.”

“What about during sleepovers with friends?”

I released a bitter laugh. “I didn’t have friends. On purpose, so no one knew how fucked up my home life was with my drugged-out mother. The closest I came to a sleepover was on the rare occasion I stayed with Aunt Carolyn or my uncles Chet and Remy.”

Sierra didn’t say anything. That’s when I noticed she’d started sweeping her thumb across the back of my hand, down to the bone in my wrist and back up. Maybe she wasn’t conscious of the constant movement. Maybe it was a way of calming herself. But that tender touch soothed me. Or maybe she knew I needed a connection to her, however small.

Back to supposing. Back to stalling. You started this, finish it.

I inhaled and exhaled, trying to stop my heart from racing like a trapped rabbit’s.

“Then I moved in with my dad and had my own room and a double bed. Man. I loved having all that space to stretch out in. The last thing I wanted was to share that with anyone. Even temporarily.”

“So your high school hookups?”

“Didn’t happen there.”

“I drove past your house once.” She paused. “Okay, more than once, but less than a hundred times. I always hoped you might be outside working on your motorcycle when I passed by and I could act all innocent. ‘Oh, Boone, you live here? I didn’t know that. But since I’m in the neighborhood…’”

I allowed a small smile at that image because that was exactly how the Sierra I’d known would’ve played it. “What happened after the ‘Since I’m in the neighborhood’ scenario?”

“In my sixteen-year-old fantasy world? We made out like crazy. I think I let you touch my boobs.”

I groaned. “Goddamn you had a nice rack. I tried so fucking hard not to stare at it.” I brought our joined hands to my mouth and kissed her knuckles. “You still have an outstanding rack, baby.”

“And now you can touch it any time you want.”

Silence settled between us again.

When I didn’t speak, Sierra prompted me. “So you had your own bed at your dad’s. After that?”

“In the army I had a cot. Or occasionally a bunk bed. Never had to share. Actually, we weren’t allowed to share.”

“I’ll just ask this straight up. You are fucking hot as hell, Boone West. You didn’t lack female attention when you were in high school and I doubt a healthy, sexy, young, buff, gorgeous soldier chose celibacy.”

“I chose hookups. Which I told you. Always at her place so I could leave after. Yeah, I was that fucking douchebag ‘one and done’ guy.”

“There’s no judgment, so don’t get testy.”

I blew out a breath. “Sorry. It’s just hard to admit, to you of all people, that I’ve never done the whole cuddle, snuggle thing except while waiting for my dick to get hard. I fucked, then I went back to my place. Alone. Every time.”

“Hence the ‘no shampoo bottles in the shower’ reality,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“So you don’t do the whole cuddle, snuggle thing longer than necessary to get laid…because you don’t like it?”