Into the Storm (Signal Bend #3)(32)
“I’m not leaving. I came here to talk, and I’m not f*cking leaving. I’m asking you to listen.”
“You’re not asking. You’re telling.”
He didn’t respond, except to tighten his grip on her arms a little. He was going to get his goddamn way.
After they stared at each other for several charged seconds, Shannon huffed. “Do you know who that guy was?”
He didn’t care, but she was talking and not insisting he leave, so he answered her. “Asshole with his hands where they shouldn’t be.”
“One of the Hollywood people. The photographer. You made a perfect first impression.”
That hadn’t occurred to him. Made sense in retrospect; he’d known they were coming. But it changed nothing. He’d have done the same thing knowing who the guy was.
She fought his hold again. “Will you get off me? Please?”
“You gonna sit and listen?”
With another huff, she said, “Fine. Make it quick, and make it good.”
Satisfied, he let her go, and she started to sidle around him, headed to sit behind her desk. He caught her —taking her hand this time. It was so small in his grip. For a second, he considered pulling her back and kissing her, leaving the talking for later.
“No. Over here, with me.” He pulled her toward the small couch. She came, but she made him pull her the whole way. When she sat, she tucked herself in the corner. He let her have that distance, some small space between them, as he sat, too.
Her regard was steady on him, brittle with anger and hurt. But she was quiet and waiting for him. Now, he had to figure out what to say. He’d had it ready, but he had not planned to come in tonight the way he had.
He cleared his throat and started, “I didn’t mean to leave you like that. I—”
Before he could get into the next sentence, she scoffed. “So, then, what? You got lost?”
“I am trying to tell you something, to explain. You gonna listen or not?”
Sitting back into the corner of the couch, she crossed her arms and gave him a well, go on, then look.
She’d meant it sarcastically, but she hadn’t been far off the mark. He’d been lost. They’d fallen asleep together, her body warm under his hand. He’d only dozed for a couple of hours, though, and then, before the dawn, he was awake, the whiskey cleared away, leaving his mind free to review the events of the night and realize that a door had been opened that Show had intended to leave sealed shut. That he’d needed to leave sealed shut.
He’d forced himself to stay in bed as long as he could, trying to work through his thoughts. That’s what he did—he thought things through. He paid attention, took in the information, and thought it all out. It was his job as Isaac’s VP—to be the one who saw the whole picture and kept reason in charge. Reason told him that he did not have the emotional fortitude to start something with Shannon. Shannon wasn’t the kind of woman you f*cked. She was the kind of woman you loved. He’d thought that many times before, and he…
just couldn’t. He couldn’t bind himself to a woman again. He’d loved Holly. Even when that love had turned mostly to guilt and pity and patience, he’d loved her. And that love had eroded him.
He’d lain next to Shannon knowing the truth of his limits, but wanting to touch her, to wake her, to take her again. Wanting it so much that it felt like…not love, but something that could become love.
That thought had driven him from the bed.
He hadn’t intended to leave, only to get some distance until his head settled. But he couldn’t get enough distance. So he rode. He rode all damn day, doing hundreds of miles, letting his head go and do what it would as the highway spooled out under him. No particular destination, just his head and the highway.
When he was younger, before Holly, he’d ridden like that, all day, when he’d found himself feeling restless and broody. It had helped him get right with his world. He hadn’t ridden off by himself in years—he hadn’t ridden alone, just for the sake of it, the joy of it, in years. He’d lost the joy. In everything. Long before Daze. By the time he lost her, and then Rose and Iris, he’d locked himself down so damn hard, it hadn’t even occurred to him to just ride.
As he’d ridden, the deadwood began to fall away.
He’d stopped in the late afternoon at a little roadside place for a burger and a beer, eating outside on their scant patio, alone in the fall chill, watching the country traffic roll by on the highway. And he thought things through. What blame he deserved to carry—and what blame he did not. What he wanted. What he deserved. What he’d lost, and what he could keep. What he could gain. He’d always been the guy who made sense of things—for his family, his club, his town. He saw the road ahead of them, clearly and at some distance. But not his own. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even thought about where he was headed. Then, when he lost his family, when Daze was gone, he’d just stopped completely, feeling himself dying off in pieces but not caring.
He cared— that’s what he felt with Shannon, what had driven him from her in his bed. Not just that he cared about her, though he certainly did, but that he cared about himself. That vexing way she’d gotten hooked into his thoughts—that was him beginning to pay attention to himself. To be interested. To want. It scared the f*ck out of him. Jesus God, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d let himself want anything, just for himself. He was almost fifty f*cking years old, and, sitting at that dive diner by the side of a two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere, he’d finally seen his own road. What he wanted. Who he wanted.