Graham was impressed with the rather edited version of events that Ro shared with her father. She’d managed to omit the fact that she had slept with him and Zach, not that he expected her to share that particular detail, but she also glossed over the part about how she ended up leaving the ranch by herself. Graham suspected that had Rick Callahan not been doped up on painkillers, he would have noticed the holes in her story and demanded answers. It was easy to see where Ro had gotten her bulldogged determination. She and Erica had spent the remainder of the day at their father’s bedside. After they’d eaten the fried catfish Travis made for dinner, Beau had shooed them away with orders that Rick needed to rest.
Graham sat on the couch in the dark, alone with his thoughts and one of the several bottles of Jack they’d stored. One question had been plaguing him since the sun had set: where was Rowan going to sleep tonight? He’d been informed that Allison had set Erica up in the cabin that Lia was using. Graham couldn’t picture the ultra-timid woman getting along with the rough-edged country girl, but reports indicated they’d clicked nicely. It was a small cabin with two sets of bunk beds, so there was certainly room for Ro, if she chose. And that was the problem: Graham didn’t want her to choose to sleep there. He still wanted her in his bed. He’d just taken a swig of whiskey and was thinking about Erica’s words outside the clinic when the door opened on silent hinges.
Ro tried not to appear nervous as she cut behind the mess hall to head to Graham and Zach’s cabin. But her palms were sweaty and her heart raced, so she figured she probably looked just as nervous as she felt. She was going so far out on a limb, and the only assurance she had that it wouldn’t break off beneath her was Zach’s declaration. Graham was the wildcard, and she didn’t know how he’d react to her presence. The cabin was dark as she eased the door open and crept inside. It was the opposite of the move she’d made thirty-six hours before, and the irony wasn’t lost on her. She shut the door behind her and tiptoed to Graham’s bedroom. Empty. She padded across the living room and stuck her head in Zach’s room. Empty. Where the hell were they?
“Looking for someone?” Graham’s voice came out of the dark.
“Jesus, fuck, you scared me!”
“Why are you sneaking around in the dark in my cabin? Or is that just your M.O.?”
Bravado flaring to life for the first time since she’d returned, Ro asked, “Are you going to hold that over me for the rest of my life?”
Light flickered from the oil lamp on the table as Graham lit it. “You could have been killed. If we hadn’t been there ... Hell, I don’t even want to think about it.”
“Why did you come after me? You told me you couldn’t spare anyone. What made you change your mind?”
“Why are in you in my cabin?” He lifted a bottle and swigged, ignoring her question.
“This conversation is going nowhere.” Frustration gripped her. The spark of optimism she’d felt on her trek to the cabin was doused. “I’ll go find somewhere else to bunk, and you won’t have to worry about where I am.” She pivoted toward the door and took two steps before she was yanked off her feet and tossed over Graham’s shoulder. She barely comprehended what was happening when she landed with a hard bounce on the mattress.
“Good Lord, you are a such a caveman. What the hell are you doing? You don’t want me here, so just let me leave.” Ro was proud that her voice didn’t break when she spoke.
“Don’t tell me what I want. Because it’s fucking clear you don’t know a goddamned thing about it.” The oil lamp on the nightstand blazed to life.
Ro scooted up the bed until she was leaning against the headboard. “Of course I don’t know what you want. You grunt more than you use actual words, and when you do say something, it’s so fucked up, I can’t even figure out how to respond. This,” she gestured between them, “is a total disaster.”
“How hard is it to understand that it gutted me to wake up to an empty spot where you were supposed to be? How hard is it to understand that you were supposed to pick me—us—and when you didn’t, it stirred up some bad shit for me?” Graham’s jaw clenched and the lines bracketing his eyes deepened.
“What are you even talking about?” Ro buried her hands in her hair and dug her nails into her scalp. “You’ve got to decode this shit for me, Conan, because I don’t read minds. I might be multi-talented, but mindreading is beyond me.”
Graham’s laugh came out as choked huff. He rubbed his face roughly. “Could you just shut up for a minute? Another talent you haven’t quite conquered is recognizing when a guy is trying to lay it on the line.”
Ro shut her mouth so quickly her teeth clacked together. Graham was silent for more than a minute. Ro knew this for a fact because she counted, waiting for him to speak.
“I don’t … do well with … desertion,” he said, the words sounding as if they’d been dragged from his throat with rusty pliers. His gaze pinned her, daring her to comment on his raw statement. Ro stayed quiet. After Zach’s revelations earlier, she wasn’t sure she could handle whatever it was that Graham had to say. He stalked across the room to shove open the blackout curtain and peer into the dark night. He rested a forearm on the high windowsill, head dropping forward. “Fuck, I can’t do this.”
He spun and started for the doorway when Zach stepped into the room. “Come on, man. Just tell her.” Ro jumped, surprised once again by Zach’s stealthy entry.
Graham attempted to shove Zach out of the way, but Zach continued to block the doorway. “What the fuck does it matter anyway?”
Ro decided it was time to bare a piece of her soul. “I left because I’ve put my family last in every decision I’ve made for the past ten years. This was my chance to finally put them first, and I was doing it, without regret, until I met you.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I wasn’t deserting you. I was choosing them. For once. But you had to go and make me fall in love with you. Both of you. I couldn’t let that matter, even if it ripped me apart. Don’t you see? How do you not choose your family?”
Graham swung around, his movements almost violent. “My mother managed it when she left me in a shithole motel room when I was seven years old. It was three days before housekeeping caught me trying to steal Cheetos out of the fucking vending machine because I was starving. They found her a week later, floating in the Ohio River. The kicker—she’d been dead for less than twenty-four hours.”
“Oh my God, Graham …” Ro said, mouth hanging open in disbelief. Apparently her childhood, even with a mother dying of cancer, had been all rainbows and unicorns compared to both of theirs.
“I don’t want your pity. Social services got in touch with my uncle, and I moved up here. It was probably the best thing that’d ever happened to me up to that point. This place is the only real home I’ve ever had. It’s easy to take for granted … but when you’ve never had one ...” He cleared his throat. “My uncle put me in school—first grade, even though I’d never seen the inside of a classroom in my life. My mom had been too busy moving us from fleabag motel to fleabag motel to put me in school. She’d disappear for hours every night. It didn’t occur to me until I was older that she was a junkie, turning tricks to feed her habit.”
“I … I don’t know what to say,” was all Ro could get out.
“You don’t need to say anything. You just need to know that when I woke up to find you gone, I thought I’d never see you alive again. All I could picture was you, dead in the woods somewhere. And all because you were too damn stubborn to let us protect you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You almost weren’t,” Zach said.
“So what we do now?” Ro asked.
Graham felt hollowed out. Drained. Like he’d just confessed his sins and wasn’t certain whether he’d be granted absolution.
“I guess that depends on you,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Ro asked.
“You’re the one driving this train, sweetheart,” Zach said. “If you hadn’t noticed, we’ve both laid our hearts at your feet. What you do with them is your choice.”
“Way to put the hard decision on me,” she said, her tone a weak attempt at humor.
“You’re the only one who can make it,” Zach replied. Graham stayed silent, studying her features for any indication of her decision.
When finally Ro spoke, her words came easily, as if the choice was obvious. “Everyone who matters to me is inside these walls. There’s nothing that could make me leave again.” She looked at each of them before saying, “If it’s truly my choice, then I choose this. Both of you. Us.” Graham exhaled a harsh breath. She. Was. Theirs.
“You sure, darlin’?” Zach asked. “Because you make that choice and there’s no going back. We’ll be keeping you, come hell or high water.” Graham could’ve snapped Zach’s neck for giving her the option to change her mind. She was theirs. The decision had been made.
“I’m sure.” She reached for the hem of her sweatshirt, and Graham’s eyes widened.
“Whoa, baby. It’s been a hell of a long day, and all that’s on the menu tonight is sleep,” Graham said.
“But I thought … You don’t want me?”
Zach sat on one edge of the bed, and Graham crossed the room to sit on the other. “You know that’s not the case. But, we’re wiped. I think I speak for both of us when I say, we just want to hold you tonight and wake up with you tomorrow morning,” Zach said, trying to reassure her.
“Huh,” Ro said, continuing to pull her sweatshirt over her head, exposing naked skin beneath. She tossed it to the floor. “I’ve got to admit, that doesn’t really work for me.” She leaned back to rest on her elbows. Her lusciously rounded breasts swayed dangerously close to Graham’s hands, and an impish smile curled on her lips. “I’m actually pretty disappointed with that decision.” Her nipples were already pebbled, and Graham remembered how they’d felt against his tongue. His cock jerked to life.
“You’re not playing fair,” he murmured, mesmerized by the rise and fall of her breasts in time with her increasingly rapid breaths.
“I don’t care,” Ro replied, her gaze daring them to resist her. It was a losing battle.
“Fuck. You win. Zach, might as well help her lose the pants.”
“Happy to,” Zach said, tugging them down her legs, revealing bare, smooth skin. Graham swore the woman owned zero pairs of underwear. And thank God for that.
“Forget something, babe?” Graham asked, reaching over to skim his fingers up the inside of her naked thigh, not stopping until he reached her plump lower lips that were already slick with need. Graham dragged a finger up her slit, feeling his cock flex against his zipper when Ro moaned.
Zach knelt between Rowan’s spread legs, and Graham watched as he dragged his tongue from ankle to knee, nipping at Ro’s sensitive spots. Graham slid a finger through her wet heat as Zach approached her inner thigh. He trailed his finger up, circling her clit while Zach tongued her entrance. Graham brought his finger to Rowan’s mouth, and interrupted her moan to paint her lips with her wetness.
“Taste yourself.”
Graham held back his own groan as Ro’s tongue circled his finger. When she sucked, all Graham could think was how much he wished it was his cock instead. Fuck.
She started to buck her hips against Zach’s mouth, and all thoughts of his own pleasure fled as Graham realized she was about to come. In that moment, there was nothing he wanted to see more than her eyes glazed over with passion. He withdrew his finger and slanted his mouth over hers, catching a hint of her sweet and spicy flavor. He inhaled her whimpers as Zach worked her toward orgasm. He rolled her puckered nipples between his thumb and index finger, pinching and tugging until she bucked harder. Her elbows collapsed, and her body tensed. Graham bent to tug a peak between his teeth, and Ro buried her fingers in his hair. Graham loved the sharp tugs that signaled her impending orgasm. She stilled. And then her whole body tensed and writhed as she rode out the pleasure.
Graham pulled back. There… that was the look he needed to see. She was so goddamn beautiful and open in that moment that he knew he would never deserve her.