Wild Card (North Ridge #1)

Fucking hell. I don’t want my heart to break for Shane all over again, but it does. It is. All through the years I saw him grapple with those demons and I had no idea how serious and life-changing they turned out to be. He stuck with the ranch because he felt he owed it to his own family, just for being born.

“But,” he goes on quietly, chewing on his lip for a moment. “After a while, it stuck. I started to like it, I started to love it. I drank the whisky like my dad and granddad because I wanted so badly to be like them, to prove I had what it takes to do what they did. The drink stuck, everything else stuck. And now it’s my life.”

I watch him, taking him all in. The cut of his jaw, his lips, the pull of his eyebrows as he frowns at his drink. He’s changed so much and yet he’s still the same boy I fell in love with. The boy who was my protector, my savior, my world.

Friends. I’m supposed to be friends with him?

The man might still have most of my heart.

“But are you happy?” I whisper.

He stares at me for a moment, his gaze resting on my lips in such way that I know what he’s thinking.

And I want him to think it.

“Almost,” he finally answers. “What about you?”

I should give him the stock answer I give everyone. The answer I give myself.

But I can’t lie to Shane anymore.

I give a simple shake of my head. “No. I’m not.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Fox says, suddenly appearing behind us. He rests his hand on my shoulder and gives it a meaty squeeze that brings me back to reality. “Rachel, I’m going out for a bit to see a few friends. I’ll be back later if you need a ride home.”

“Not drinking tonight?” Shane asks him.

“Nah, I might be sent out tomorrow, so I need to be in good shape. See you in a bit.”

Then he leaves. I watch him go because it gives me time to get myself in order, to put some distance between what was just happening with Shane and me. I don’t even know what that was, but it was getting dangerously close to something I’m not sure I could pull back from.

So I drink instead.

I finish my whisky and cherries.

Shane finishes his.

We have two more.

Then two more.

And then Waylon Jennings “You Ask Me To” comes on the jukebox and Shane springs to his feet, nearly knocking over his stool. He grabs my arm and pulls me to the dancefloor which is already crowded with people.

He slips his arms around me and starts singing into my neck. “Let the world call me a fool but if things are right with me and you…”

I sing the rest of the chorus back to him, laughing as I go. It reminds me of our high school grad party, drinking moonshine my father confiscated, sitting on bales of hay outside the dance and having our own private party via a tiny speaker. This song came on and Shane started singing it to me, every single word done in a dead-on impression of Jennings.

I fell in love with him even more that night.

Just like the nights before it.

Just like the nights after.

And it never, ever stopped.

“Come with me outside,” Shane whispers into my ear, the warmth of his breath shooting right through me to my toes, bathing me in a helpless warmth.

I nod, letting him steal me away. I can feel Del’s eyes on me and I don’t care.

I don’t care about much right now except the man holding onto me.

His hand meant to meld with mine.

Shane leads me into the parking lot until we’re standing beside his truck.

“You’re too drunk to drive,” I tell him.

But that’s all I get to say.

In a flash, my face is cupped by his large, warm hands and his mouth is enveloping mine and every single bad part of me flees my soul. It’s replaced by his lips, soft and hungry against mine, his tongue, the way his hands grip me, holding me in place, possessive and strong.

I struggle to have thoughts. I can’t find that hard place inside me from which to push back from. I succumb to him because it’s so fucking easy to give myself to Shane Nelson.

My hand goes to his waist, tentative at first, then aggressive as our kiss amplifies, turns frenzied. All these years, all these years.

He moans into my mouth.

I grab the back of his head, feeling the heat on his neck.

He pushes me back against the truck door, the handle digging into my hip, but I don’t care.

His lips go for my neck, sucking and kissing and licking as if he’ll never get his fill and I’m digging my fingernails into his shirt because I’m afraid to let go, afraid to see what lies beyond this moment the minute we stop.

I don’t want to stop.

I’m wet already, everything is throbbing, aching for him. He’s always had that ability with me and now it’s on ten-fold, rendering me completely powerless in his throes.

I want him so fucking bad.

I need him.

I’ve needed him all this time.

He whimpers, this primal, desperate sound as his mouth finds mine again and his tongue slips in, sliding against mine until I’m driven wild. Wild for him, always so wild.

“Rachel,” he whispers, breathless, hungry. He licks up a path to my ear, takes my earlobe between his teeth and pulls, hot breath enveloping me.

And I’m melting.

Melting.

Right here in this parking lot.

The same parking lot that he broke my heart in.

And just like a needle scratching across a record, everything comes to a wretched stop.

The anger I thought was shoved aside has shot right back up and I pull back, pressing my fingers into the hard mass of his chest, pushing him back. “No,” I manage to say.

His eyes are glazed with lust in the lights above the parking lot but they quickly snap out of it while he reads my face. “What?” he says, voice thick.

“No,” I say again and manage to squeeze out between us, stepping away. “No, just no. No, Shane you don’t get to do that.”

He studies me, trying to regain his breath. Adjusts his erection in his jeans.

I ignore the hot stab of want that rolls through me at the sight.

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing!” I yell, pulling at my hair. “Fucking hell, Shane.”

He almost says it again, I can tell. So Canadian of him.

Then he says, “It’s because of your boyfriend.”

“No. Yes. It’s everything…Shane…for crying out loud, don’t you see where we are? Don’t you know, remember, realize the last thing that happened here?”

He closes his eyes, leans back against the truck, kneads his forehead with his knuckles. Doesn’t say anything.

“Shane. You broke me. You changed me. You did that, here, and it’s something I’ll never be able to get over because I’ll never understand why you did it. Why you told me, in front of all our friends, your brothers, everyone, that you didn’t love me anymore, that you never loved me and you wished I was gone for good. That’s what you said Shane. And I still can’t…I can’t believe it because that’s not who you are. And yet I can believe it because…who has ever fucking loved me, and meant it?”

He looks up, his eyes sharper than a mountain peak. “That’s not it, Rachel. Don’t say that. Don’t you fucking say that.”

Tears rush to my eyes and I throw my hands out in frustration. “Then why? Why did you do it?”

“Because I had no choice,” he says, voice like steel.

“What?”