Harder (Caroline & West #2)(2)

The muscles in his crossed arms belong to a brawler.

The West who left me in Des Moines more than four months ago was a guy, sometimes a boy, but this person who’s waiting for me is a big, hard, mean-looking man, and when he glances in my direction, I freeze. Mid-step. I’m wearing a white cardigan over a new green top that cost too much. Designer jeans. Impractical flats. Ridiculous clothes for August, because it’s always cold when you’re flying.

I wanted to look nice, but I got it wrong. I got everything wrong, and yet I think nothing I’ve done is as wrong as whatever is wrong with him.

He straightens and steps forward. I start moving again. I have to.

“Hey,” I say when we meet a few feet from his truck. I try on a smile. “You made it.”

He doesn’t smile in return. “So did you.”

“Sorry you had to pick me up.”

I’d texted right before I boarded the first flight to tell him I was coming. I didn’t want to give him a chance to say no, so I just gave him my flight number and announced when I’d get in.

When the plane landed in Minneapolis, I had three texts and a voice mail from him, all of them variations on the theme of Turn your ass around and go home.

I waited until I was boarding for Portland to text him again. I’ll get a rental car.

Walking off the jet bridge, I got his reply. I’ll pick you up.

Since that was the outcome I’d been angling for, I said, Okay.

It doesn’t feel okay, though. Not even close.

West wears cargo shorts and a red polo with a landscaping company’s logo. He’s tan—a deep, even, golden brown—and he smells strongly of something I don’t recognize, fresh and resinous as the inside of our cedar closet after my dad sanded it down. “Did you come from work?” I ask.

“Yeah. I had to take off early.”

“Sorry. You should’ve let me rent a car.”

West reaches out his hand. For an instant I think he’s going to pull me into his body, and something like a collision happens inside my torso—half of me slamming on the brakes, the other half flying forward to crash into my restraint.

His fingers knock mine off the handle of my suitcase, and the next thing I know he’s heading for the truck with it.

I stand frozen, gawping at him.

Get your act together, Caroline. You can’t freak out every time he moves in your direction.

He opens the passenger-side door to stow my bag in the back of the cab. The truck is huge, the front right side violently crumpled. I hope he wasn’t driving when that happened.

By the time he emerges, I’m comparing the musculature of his back to what his shoulders felt like under my hands the last time I saw him. The shape of his calves is the same. He’s West, and he’s not-West.

He steps aside to let me in. I have to climb up to the seat. The sweltering cab smells of stale tobacco. I leave my sweater on. Even though I’m too hot, I feel weird about any form of disrobing.

I turn to grab the door handle and discover him still there, blocking me with his body.

That’s when I figure it out. It’s not his hair or his tan or his muscles that make him seem different: it’s his eyes. His expression is civil, but his eyes look like he wants to rip the world open and tear out its entrails.

“You need to eat?” he asks.

I don’t think the simmering cynical hatred I hear in his voice is directed at me. I’m pretty sure it’s directed at everything. But it sends a shiver of apprehension through me, because I’ve never heard West sound like that before.

“No, I’m good. I had dinner in Portland.”

“It’s almost three hours back to Silt.”

“I’m good,” I repeat.

He’s staring at me. I press my lips together to keep from apologizing. Sorry I came when you called me. Sorry I needed a ride from the airport. Sorry I’m here, sorry you don’t love me anymore, sorry your abusive * dad is dead.

My own father didn’t want me to come. At all. I had to quit my job a few weeks early and hand over almost everything I’d earned as a dental receptionist this summer to pay for the plane ticket—a move Dad called “boneheaded.”

He doesn’t trust West, and worse, he doesn’t trust me when it comes to West. Which means we argue whenever the subject comes up. We fought like cats and dogs at breakfast this morning when Dad realized he wasn’t going to be able to talk me out of this.

To make matters worse, we’re close to being ready to file the petition in my civil suit against Nate, my ex-boyfriend, for infringing my privacy and inflicting emotional distress. Dad wants me close at hand so we can read through the complaint together four thousand more times.

He’s a judge by profession, a single parent of three daughters, and a fretful micromanager by nature. Which makes him, in this situation, kind of unbearable.

I reminded him that poring endlessly over documents is what he paid our lawyer a zillion-dollar retainer for, but Dad says this is a learning experience for me. If I want to be a lawyer myself, I ought to pay attention.

I am paying attention.

I’m trying, at least. It got hard to pay attention right around the time West told me he was seeing someone else.

When he called me last night, all other thoughts flew out of my head.

The upcoming trial is important. Keeping my employment commitments is important. But West is more important. I’m not going to abandon him when he needs me.