Chapter Six
Roni sat down on her couch and breathed a sigh of relief. It had been Rooster’s first day at the shop and she’d been on edge for most of it. Every time he walked towards the office, her body tensed up and her stomach rolled. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him, she was afraid of herself. After he’d cornered her the night before, she’d not been able to do anything but think about him. How they’d been during the summer they’d spent together. It hadn’t mattered to either one of them that she was older than him by a few years, all that mattered was the animal magnetism they had for one another.
“C’mon, Liam’s asleep,” Rooster whispered.
Roni couldn’t believe that he’d conned her brother into letting him sleep over, just so he could spend time with her. “What if we get caught?” she whispered back. It didn’t really matter to her, she was of age, but he was a few months from it. If they got caught, she knew without a doubt his parents would punish her to the full extent of the law. That’s how they were, and that’s why Rooster wanted out so bad.
“We’re not goin’ to get caught. Your brother sleeps like the dead and your dad’s on a run. We’ll be back before he gets back; you and I both know that.”
It was tempting, she loved being alone with him. When they were alone, he was different. He listened to her ideas and didn’t give her shit the way Liam did. He made her feel like she mattered. She was missing so much of that in her life. Old beyond her years, that’s what she’d heard some people call her. Raising Liam since her mom had left had made her miss out on things that other teenagers had done. Rooster was younger than her, but he’d taken her virginity the month prior and she loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone else in her life. She hadn’t told him, she was scared to, but she hoped that he could sense it. “Okay,” she relented. “Let’s go.”
He grabbed her hand and led them out the front door. They would come back through the window if they had to, but he didn’t want to do that until it was absolutely necessary.
“Wait, don’t we need towels?” She tugged on his hand to bring him to a stop.
“Already got it taken care of. I took a bag down there earlier today, hoping I could lure you there tonight,” he grinned. His eyes, a cross between blue and grey depending on his mood, sparkled with mischief.
“You set me up,” she accused.
“You fell for it, didn’t you? C’mon, we don’t have forever.”
The two of them ran against the backdrop of the midnight black sky, making their way through the field that bordered the property. On one of their excursions, they’d found a spring that looked like it fed into Barren River. It was deep enough to swim in and they’d never seen anyone else there.
“I didn’t bring a suit,” she told him as they came to the edge of the water.
“Me neither,” he grinned over at her.
Something told her that this wasn’t the first time he’d used those words. It made her self-conscious. People had a certain way they expected her to be and she usually wasn’t what they expected. She didn’t want to disappoint Rooster; she didn’t want to run him away.
“C’mon Roni,” he encouraged her, his hands at the button on his jeans.
She watched as he undid the button and shimmied out of the jeans, throwing them far enough back that they would be away from the water, but would be easy to find later. When he took his boxers down, she laughed.
“You’re going naked?”
“Aren’t you? I have towels, but I sure as hell don’t have a change of clothes.” He jumped in then looked back at her as he was treading water. “It’s great, seriously, c’mon in.”
Roni had never been naked in public before, and it felt weird to strip bare, especially with him watching her.
“Nobody here but us.”
That didn’t make her feel much better. “You wouldn’t turn around would you?” she joked.
“I’ve already seen it,” he laughed. “Don’t get shy on me now.”
Her eyes avoided his as she disrobed and ran quickly to the water, diving in. When she surfaced, she was right next to him. Rooster reached over and grabbed her arms, putting them around his neck. She sighed as their bodies touched. “This feels so wrong,” she whispered, afraid that someone would hear them. Who, she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t want anyone to intrude upon them.
“It’s right, Roni, it’s the rightest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he whispered back.
It was only then that she let him take her lips. In their relationship, physically so far, he had been the one to make all the moves. She had been too scared to, afraid that he would reject her, but then at the same time, afraid he would accept what she wanted. It was a crazy thing, the age that the two of them were at. He was more of a man than she was a woman and truly, here in this setting, age was only a number.
A knocking at her door broke Roni out of her memory. Shaking her head, she got up and walked over to the reinforced steel, courtesy of the club and Travis. Looking through the peephole she groaned, it was Rooster.
“I know you’re in there,” he told her. “Your car’s parked out front.”
It would do her no good to pretend she wasn’t home; he would keep on until either he got someone from the club to come over and let him in or she let him in. It was easier to relent. “What do you want?” she asked him, suddenly tired, as she opened the door.
“To talk to you. Is that okay?”
She knew it didn’t matter whether she said it was okay or not, he would do what he wanted to do. Stepping back from the door, she let him enter.
Rooster came in and had a seat on her couch, opposite the chair she liked to sit in. He knew that about her, they’d hung out enough that he was aware of her favorite seat in her house. “Why are you avoiding me?”
“Are we back to this again?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why do you always think I’m avoiding you?”
“Because you are. I’d like to know what I did.” He shrugged. “I thought we were coming to an understanding, getting back to where we liked each other. You know, almost like it was that summer.”
She couldn’t risk that, she couldn’t risk her heart again and she damn sure couldn’t take a heartbreak like that. Roni hated being indecisive, but this was the most painful thing in her life. Just when she thought she would be able to handle it, her head brought her down and told her that her heart was wrong. “We will never be back to the people we were that summer. Too much shit has happened, that’s water under the bridge.”
“Why can’t we try? What’s stopping us now? William’s in jail, I’m good with Liam. You have no man in your life that anyone is aware of, I have no woman…”
“What about Stacey?” she asked, humor in her voice.
“Y’all have got to leave me alone about her. She scared the fuck outta me.” He scratched the back of his neck as he kicked his long legs out in front of him. “Tell me, what’s holding you back?”
How did she tell him it was the secret she’d kept to herself for so long? She’d wanted to tell him back then, but she hadn’t been able to get a message to him at the camp, and then by the time he got out, he’d wanted nothing to do with her. It was easy to play it off, though, act like there wasn’t a huge elephant in the room that only she knew about. “Who’s to say you won’t decide that you want to be good guy sheriff again at some point?”
He chuckled. “We both know that was never me. You, of all people, knew the real me. You knew who I really was.”
“Did I? Because you played a good part for years, Rooster. You arrested my brother and several members of the club without batting an eyelash. You helped put them in jail. Excuse me if I don’t want to welcome you with open arms.” Roni knew she had her back up, but this was how she protected herself. The only way she could.
“That’s not fair,” he argued. “I had a job to do, a position to uphold.”
“I did too,” she fired back. “I didn’t leave my family and friends when the going got tough.”
The thinly veiled insult hit right where it was supposed to. “It’s not like I had much of a goddamn choice,” he gave right back as good as he got. “It was do the camp or go to juvie. I was lucky that the judge decided I could do the camp in the first fuckin’ place.”
“Because you had well-liked parents, Rooster, let’s call it what it was. They bought you out of juvie.”
He fumed as he got up from the couch. “You know what pisses me off more than anything? You know that those two people I call parents are the biggest pieces of shit to ever walk this earth. You know that they play a good game and put on a good show. You, of all people, and now you wanna throw that back in my face? There was a reason I was constantly at your house. There was a reason that I was always in on whatever you and Liam were doing. I told you everything.” He pointed at her. “I don’t appreciate you throwing that up at me, at all.”
That had been a low blow and she knew it, but if it got him out of her apartment, then she would take it. She watched as he paced, his long legs eating up the distance of her living room. Suddenly he stopped and looked at her, a slow smile spreading across his face. “I’m not a dumbass, I know for some reason you’re pushin’ me away, but that’s okay. Sweetheart, I got all the time in the world and I ain’t going anywhere. Two can play at this game.”
Before she could say anything, he’d kissed her on the cheek and he was gone.