Wild Card (North Ridge #1)

“You’re a pig,” she volleys back, but she’s smiling.

I can’t help but smile, watching the two of them like I’m watching a TV show. I have a hard time believing that these two haven’t slept with each other yet. It has to have happened at some point. Then again, there’s too much sexual tension between them.

“Uh oh,” Del says under her breath, her eyes trained on the door.

I look over my shoulder to see Shane walk in. He’s wearing dirty jeans and a white thermal that’s too hot for this weather but nonetheless makes his taut muscles look fucking fantastic. He stops in his tracks when he sees me and Fox.

“Sorry, Rach,” Del says under her breath.

I just wave her off. “It’s fine. We’re fine.”

“Fucking hell you’re fine,” Fox mutters under his breath.

“Hey,” Shane says, hovering at the bar. He nods at me and Fox. I haven’t seen him since we buried the raven and rode back to the ranch in complete silence. That was yesterday, and I’ve been grappling with what happened since then. The feel of his abs through his sweaty shirt, my legs pushed against his, the smell of his skin, the look in his eyes when he told me he dreamed about me every night. The sound of his voice when he told me he misses me.

I felt it. I shouldn’t have, but I did. It worked its way past the lock on my heart and buried itself inside until I realized just how badly I’ve missed him too.

And the awful part is that it’s too late. We had our moment in the sun, we had our young love. Whether he regrets it or not, he pushed me away and we broke apart, and you can’t go back and change that. You can’t change the past any easier than you can change your feelings.

Now I’m a fucking mess, knowing that I have to stay mad at him, then getting mad at myself as if that’s the only big reason we should be apart. The reason why he shouldn’t touch my skin like he did, setting off fireworks in my chest. There’s Samuel, my boyfriend. We may not be head over heels in love with each other but that has to come with time—it has to, and I can’t tarnish that potential just because being around Shane stirs up all those old feelings, just because he has such a pretty way with words.

But they were honest words. You know it. They were the most real words you’ve heard in years.

I suck back on my beer and try to pretend it’s okay that Shane’s here, but it’s not. It’s why I’m at the damn bar to begin with.

Fox gives me the side-eye and gets up. “I’m going to go put some money in the jukebox.”

“What can I get you?” Del asks Shane after she watches Fox walk off.

Shane gives her a half smile. “Why do you even ask?”

She rolls her eyes and grabs a bottle of beer from the fridge, passing it to him.

Then Shane turns to me. “Mind if I sit down?”

I shake my head, unable to find the words, and Shane takes the seat on the other side of me.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he says to me before he takes a swig of his beer. “You’re looking beautiful.”

And I didn’t expect for him to say something like that right out of the gate. Things were left so awkward between us and yet he’s moving on without skipping a beat.

“Thanks,” I tell him. I guess I did go out of my way to try and look good tonight instead of that sweaty dirty farmgirl mess I’ve been lately. I put on a strappy, tiered cornflower blue maxi dress that matches my eyes, my hair loose around my shoulders, even though I keep brushing it back in a loose braid to keep the heat off my neck, and just the tiniest bit of mascara.

He leans in closer and I try not to freeze. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about the other day.”

I give him a funny look, moving my head back an inch. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

He stares at me, deep into my eyes, with so much intensity that it renders the next thoughts in my head to dust. “I just want us to be friends.”

Oh. I wasn’t expecting him to say that.

I glance up at Del who immediately turns around and busies herself at the bar, pretending like she’s not listening. I call hogwash on that.

Friends. Well, I guess I can do that. It’s how we started anyway.

“Okay,” I tell him. “Friends it is.”

But do friends know what it’s like to kiss each other, to fuck each other, to give each other over and over again in the name of love?

“Friends, it is,” I say again, as if I’m convincing myself that I can do this. Fuck, even ignoring each other has become incredibly hard lately. There’s rarely a minute that goes by when he doesn’t occupy my head. Everything here reminds me of him because everything is him.

“You need another drink,” he says to me, nudging my elbow. He looks at Del. “Two whiskies.”

“Cherries in mine,” I tell her.

He gives me a smile that I feel in my core, a sweet flash of heat. “You still love your whisky and cherries.”

I shrug, conscious of how he’s leaning into me, as if we’re trading secrets, conspiring to be the people we used to be. “It makes it sweeter.”

He nods, palming his beer. “I remember you used to love that Jaegermeister shit.”

“I was, like, eighteen,” I tell him. “Every underage drinker loves that. Except for you. You were an old soul even then. Drinking your whisky or rye straight, sipping from the glass, just like your dad and grandpa.”

He seems to think that over, staring at the bar for a moment, at the condensation gathering at the bottom of his bottle. “I know,” he says gravely. He exhales heavily. “I wanted to be like them. I knew I’d be working on the ranch. I knew that’s what I was born to do. Fox, Mav, they got to run free, scale cliffs, jump out of airplanes. And I stayed.”

Something prickles at the back of my throat and I try to swallow it down. “Did you ever want a different life?”

He turns his head toward mine, eyes just inches away, more amber in color than his red ale. To anyone else it would look like we’re having an extremely intimate moment. Maybe because we are.

“I told you I’d run away with you,” he murmurs, his voice so low it sends faint shock waves through me. “I meant it. I would have gone anywhere with you. I would have tried any other kind of life, so long as it was with you.”

This stuns me. Completely. I always thought he was paying lip service with empty promises.

“But you love being a rancher,” I say softly.

“I do now,” he says. “I really do. But I knew growing up that I was expected to be the one to take it over, to help out, to become one of them. When I say I was born to do this, I’m being literal. Fox and Mav did their own thing, and it was up to me to pull the ranch together, to keep the ranch going. And maybe…maybe I felt I owed it, you know. Because of my mother. Because I had to do something to make up for…that.”