Chapter Four
My body had adjusted to constant interruptions in my sleep, allowing me to function on barely more than a few hours. What I hadn’t grown used to was the jerking awake, gasping for breath, as I clawed at imaginary hands while they squeezed my throat.
As with every time before, I reached with trembling hands for the light as I threw my feet off the bed. When the darkness was washed away and the safety of my childhood bedroom came to life around me, I forced my head between my knees. It took some doing, but my racing heart began to slow and my throat began to open.
Panic attacks, I’d been told. Post-traumatic stress, the counselor at school had said. I’d only gone to see her once. After that, the embarrassment and shame became too much. So, without even graduating, I’d come home.
I told my family I’d just missed them too much. That lie was the hardest I’d ever told.
With the tips of my fingers, I massaged away what remained of the ghostly fingers that haunted my dreams. I was surrounded by mementos of a happy childhood, my childhood. Stuffed bears and dolls with pretty dresses shared shelf space with trophies. Pictures of my family had replaced the posters of teen idols and race cars. Even sharing a room with Breanna, I’d been happy here.
The memories of that happy little girl I’d once been warmed my skin. I could never be her again. Though I still mourned that loss, I allowed the memories to comfort me. I could pretend that part of me remained.
I was so shaken from the dream that I almost jumped out of my skin when the window across from my bed rattled.
The fear, the dream, all of it went away as I crossed to the window. When we were young, Jordan would rattle our windows when it was time to roll out. I tried not to think about how easily the thought of him had made me forget about the rest.
He greeted me with a cocky grin when I pulled back the curtain and opened the window. “I saw the light on.”
“That doesn’t explain why you’re knocking on my window a few hours before dawn.” The mock annoyance in my voice was the only way to hide the excitement coursing through me.
“I don’t have your cell number, I figured this beat waking up…” His voice trailed off as his eyes slid down the length of me. I hadn’t thought to get dressed before opening the window. He’d caught me in nothing more than a tank and panties.
Jordan looked away far more quickly than I could jerk the curtain closed. My pulse raced again, but not from fear or embarrassment as it should have. Excitement and lust waged a small battle as I frantically searched for my modesty and clothing.
“What do you want?” He wouldn’t have knocked on my window close to dawn without a reason, no matter how much I would have wished for him to when I’d been younger. Or now, if my sensibilities hadn’t been intact.
I stumbled as I tugged on a pair of jeans with trembling fingers. That he made me nervous enough to stumble was an annoyance.
“Vic called. Hunter East is about to make a pass out behind the canning factory. I want to go see what kind of pass he puts down.”
The edge of worry in Jordan’s voice when he said Hunter’s name excited me. My curiosity piqued, I raised a brow in question. “And you’re at my window, why?”
“We covered this, I saw the light on.”
“And?” I wasn’t buying it, not even for a dollar.
“And he won’t recognize your car.”
The canning factory was set off away from anything resembling civilization. A random vehicle approaching it wouldn’t go unnoticed. Catching your competition watching you make a test pass? That could cause any manner of complications for Jordan and the next race.
“Want my keys?” It was a bluff. I was going. Sneaking out at almost dawn to watch a rival’s test past was thrilling. Doubly so that the driver was the guy I’d dated to make Jordan jealous.
I used the thrill of going with Jordan to help me forget I’d been awake in the first place.
“You don’t want to see what your boyfriend is running?” Jordan practically spat the words out. I imagined he was sneering on the other side of the curtain.
My lips spread wide as I snapped my bra into place and pulled a black tee over my head. If I’d ever doubted what Jordan thought of my dating Hunter, I didn’t now.
“On my way out.” I shut the window in his still sneering face. I hadn’t lost my ability to read him.
With the mass of my hair knotted on the top of my head, I trotted quietly out the back door. Jordan was leaning against my white Jeep Cherokee waiting on me.
“Hurry up,” he growled as he climbed into the passenger seat.
We didn’t talk on the way. We were both too anxious to get there before Hunter laid down the pass. Each time I cast a side long glance at him, I was reminded of how quickly I’d forgotten Caleb the second Jordan touched me.
I’d come home to hide from my shame. Yet, I was being sucked right back into the catalyst that had started it all. I didn’t blame Jordan, I blamed myself. I should be able to be an adult when I was with him. Not some libido driven teenager who can’t keep her hands to herself.
“Thanks, Raelynn.” He spoke my name quietly, like how he might whisper it in the dark.
“You’re welcome.” The words sounded dumb and hollow. More so, because I was trying not to react physically to the way he said my name. Something so simple shouldn’t make me so crazy.
I put the SUV in park. Only a rolling field stood between us and the strip of concrete often used for test hits.
“We should get closer.”
He had a point. Though sneaking across that field held little appeal to me. There would be bugs. Bugs probably bigger than I was.
Reading my thoughts, he chuckled. “Don’t be such a girl.”
“How do you expect to creep across a field?”
His brows disappeared beneath his cap in question.
“You’re one big Indian.”
His body shook with his responding laugh, but he didn’t say a word. No matter how much time I spent with him over the years, I never got used to the way he could respond without ever saying a word.
“Remember when all of you decided to grow your hair out?”
“I remember how much you liked it.” His head gave a tilt to one side.
“I was thirteen. I thought you looked like Tonto with long hair. I had a Tonto phase.”
His smile was vibrant and his laugh full of life. Two bouts of laughter from the all too often stoic and serious Jordan Slater made me grin in the dark.
“Please don’t grow it out again, though.” I made a face.
“Nah.” He slipped his hat off and rubbed a hand across the close cropped dark hair on his head. “You ain’t gotta worry about that.”
On a deep breath, I slipped out of the Jeep. “I can’t believe I’m spying on Hunter.”
Jordan didn’t say anything but moved away from the car and past the orange glow cast from the streetlights. I’d made the joke about him being too big to successfully spy. The truth was, I’d known better. He moved quickly, quietly, and pretty soon I could barely make him out a few feet ahead of me.
I’d almost caught up to him when the sounds of a vehicle approached in the distance.
“Hunter was my first kiss, this seems disloyal.”
Jordan peeled his upper lip back in disgust, before jogging down into the ditch.
“Hey, it’s not my fault,” I tossed out as I followed him. “It could have been you.”
I meant it as a joke. Everyone knew I’d have followed Jordan anywhere and happily done more than kiss him by the time I knew what couples did behind closed doors.
He looked down at me as we leaned against the side of the ditch on our stomachs. “I should have stomped his ass.”
“Why?” I laughed. A fight between those two would have been epic.
“Aiden wo—”
“Would want to kick his best friend’s ass for kissing his sister, too.” I cut him off.
He turned away from me and watched the approaching truck stop several hundred feet from our hiding spot. The silence seemed to stretch on forever. Again, he said a lot without saying a thing and it made me nervous as hell. I couldn’t handle that sort of silence.
“I’m not going to pretend like it didn’t happen, Jordan.” Because it had happened. It had happened and I’d been left reeling from it. When he’d followed up kissing me stupid in his driveway after my graduation with verbally shooting me down hard, I’d been left with all sorts of unsettled emotions. “For a while, I thought you’d broken my heart.”
“I never meant to.” I barely heard his words over the roar of the small truck Hunter raced as he fired it up.
As much as I’d wanted to hurt him after that, as many nights as I’d spent awake in my dorm room wishing I could make him feel what I felt, I never could have. Not then and not now. I loved him too much for that. I always would.
“You didn’t,” I assured him quietly. The smell of melted rubber from Hunter’s burnout assaulted us. “I had to learn what being broken really felt like to know it.”
He turned toward me, his face and eyes softening in a way very few people had seen or would ever see. My knees went weak.
“Rae—”
I held a hand out to stop him. This line of conversation wasn’t what I wanted out of us right then. I wanted us back to an ease I could navigate with far more clarity. “Life is about learning. Besides, Hunter East taught me more than you ever could have.”
The concern vanished from his face and was replaced with a contorted expression of annoyance. “Jesus, Rae.”
The smug smile on my face was as genuine as they came. I was proud, in a pesky girl sort of way.
“There are things I could have taught you, Hunter East never would have dreamed of,” he growled.
I was ill prepared for his response. My heart stuttered and the moisture drained from my mouth. In the distance, Hunter let off the trans brake that held his truck on an imaginary line and the truck tore off toward us.
Heat began to radiate following his sultry threat. I was glad of the thick grass beneath me that I could latch onto, otherwise the world might have spun.
After Hunter’s truck flew by, he glared down at me. “That shut you up.”
I was more annoyed with the blatant amusement in his voice than I was with what he’d said. My eyes narrowed to small slits, and Jordan rolled to his side to face me.
“Oh, now you’re mad?” He snorted into the dark.
“You’re a jerk.” I spun away as Hunter’s brake lights lit up the street.
“How am I the jerk? You started it.”
“Shut up, Jordan.” When Hunter’s crew finally drove past us to pick up their driver, I pushed back from the side of the ditch and tried to climb back out.
“Oh, come on, Raelynn.”
His arm snaked out and pulled me down. With very little grace I stumbled on top of him where he lay.
“Get off me!” I shoved myself up.
“Calm down. When you get mad, you do dumb shit.” There was no mistaking the condescension in his voice.
Annoyance slipped easily into anger. “Like run down to my ex-boyfriend and tell him you’re in a ditch spying on him?” I hissed angrily.
“Yeah.” His arms tightened around me. “Not happening.”
I struggled against him for the briefest moment, before going stiff. Jordan was strong, his arms thick with the evidence of that strength. I wasn’t going anywhere until he decided I was.
I tried to swallow down the chilling panic that came with that knowledge. I tried to remind myself it was Jordan, who despite breaking my heart years ago, would never hurt me. Still, my hands reached for my throat, and I found myself holding my breath.
Hot tears pushed at my lashes as I battled that fear with my back pressed against his strong chest. I could tell him, and he’d try to fix it, try to fix me. That’s who he was, it was one of the reasons I’d always loved him. All I had to do was open my mouth, and I wouldn’t feel so alone, someone else would share my secret.
But if I did that, each time he looked at me I’d see the pity in his eyes. I’d see what I never wanted to see there again.
“Yeah well,” I snorted and tried to make light of it. “You had plenty of chances to teach me. What was it you said?” I waited a beat. “Oh yeah, that it wouldn’t be worth it. You’d get bored with me.”
When I struggled against his grip again, he let go. It was a small miracle that I didn’t run straight up the ditch. Another one that my slow, steady steps never faltered. I had to get a grip on myself. Jordan was too perceptive.
Behind me, he walked slow enough to give me space but close enough that I could still hear his steps on the dry grass. He’d seen my reaction, must have felt the moment I stiffened in fear. Eventually he’d ask the question going unspoken.
I had to put as much distance between Jordan and any questions he might ask as I could.
I stretched my legs to put more space between us. With each step my anxiety and fear quickly grew to something else. Anger. At myself and at him.
We were halfway back to the car when I spun on him. The fear completely gone now, replaced with the outrage that should have been there all along.
My stop was so abrupt that he almost ran smack into me. “You didn’t seem very bored when you helped me off that trailer.”
I was ready for a fight when I looked up at him, my muscles were tense and my blood hot. The man who looked down at me didn’t have fighting on his mind. His head lowered a fraction of an inch and as if on cue I rose up on my toes to meet him.
His lips were as warm as I’d remembered them. I’d never expected anything about Jordan Slater to be soft. His kiss was. Tiny tendrils of heat spread through my mouth as he eased his tongue past my lips. He tasted sweet and male, a taste that called to me on a primal level.
To anchor myself to reality, I fisted my hands into his shirt. Excitement coursed through every fabric of my being. My entire life, I’d only ever wanted to kiss one boy.
Jordan’s wide, calloused palm cupped my face so that he took the kiss deeper. Surely the mewling sounds weren’t coming from me. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t moan against Jordan’s kiss. Not after all the time and emotional distance I’d put between us.
Still, my body responded with a desperate want and earned a low growl from Jordan as he dropped a possessive hand to my waist. A strong demand crushed me against him and stole my breath. I wasn’t scared now, not even a little.
Jordan took me over an edge I hadn’t known I’d been teetering on. His fingers moved from my face to my other hip and gripped me tighter. In one kiss he claimed me. I forgot everything about any other kiss I’d ever had before and surely any that would come after.
I slipped my tongue against his and wrapped my arms around the width of him. No longer idle, my body writhed against him. I was acutely aware of every hard muscled inch of him. From the hard expanse of his chest and lower to where his arousal was evident.
His erection was the jolt back to reality I needed. I pushed away and gasped, my chest heaving.
“Hunter ever make you moan that way, feel that way?” Jordan’s voice was raspy and thick with desire. I’d never heard it like that before. I couldn’t think of a single sound on the planet that could be sexier.
The fact that I couldn’t come up with a quick, snarky response as I stood trembling in a giant field at dawn, propelled my feet to where I’d parked the Jeep. If I stayed, I’d keep thinking of how sexy he sounded, how good it felt to be pressed against him, or even how damn good he kissed.
“I don’t need this,” I muttered as I went. I couldn’t handle the rollercoaster of emotions of the past few minutes. I’d been hit by the proverbial truck.
“Yeah, that makes two of us,” he grumbled.
My retort was stolen by the roar of an engine.
“Get down!” Jordan grabbed me right before I was illuminated by the beam of headlights. We both hit the ground, Jordan twisting himself so that I didn’t wind up face first in the tall grass. Instead, I was on my side, pressed against him. Adrenaline coursed through me as the truck and the trailer it pulled stopped near the burnout spot.
I tried to tell myself the adrenaline had nothing to do with Jordan pressed against me.
Hunter’s voice drifted through the field as the sun began to lighten the sky. When Jordan opened his mouth to speak, I reached across his chest and covered it with my hand. His signature black ball cap had fallen to the wayside and made it easy to read the question in his eyes. This close, I wouldn’t have needed the jumping shadows cast from the headlights on the street above to see him clearly.
“He’s talking about wheel spin.” I pressed closer to Jordan in an effort to get closer to the sound of Hunter’s voice. “Yeah, he’s spinning the tires the first sixty feet.”
Jordan shifted and pulled my hand away, a grin forming. “He’s tweaking it, trying to find all the power he can. He’s lighter than I am, but it sounds like he put too much power in it. Spinning right before a race? That’s no good, I’m in his head, he’s worried about me.”
“Don’t get too cocky.” My whisper matched his. “A smart guy once told me that being too cocky loses races.”
“So now I’m smart?”
I tilted my head to look at him. It was at that moment it became apparent that I was stretched completely across his chest. The feel of him beneath me reminded me of the heated kiss. “You have your moments…”
I’d promised myself I wouldn’t let myself feel like this again. Somewhere in the back of my mind was a frightened voice reminding me of what wanting him would turn me into. Wanting Jordan so soon after what had happened at college, made every bad thing Caleb had said true.
If I let this go further, what would it do to me? Yet, despite all the warning bells in my head, I lowered myself against his chest. I was flirting with disaster. This could only end badly no matter how much I wanted it.
His head came up to meet me halfway, his lips finding mine instantly. This kiss lacked the urgency of the first but was no less potent. This was a slow burn, a gentle slide into seduction.
Jordan’s tongue traced my bottom lip, once, twice, three times before he tasted me. Languidly he stoked the fire between us.
The tips of his fingers trailed down my side, leaving gooseflesh in their wake. And it wasn’t me that moaned first this time. Jordan’s deep moan when my fingers traced down his chest was thrilling in a way I had never imagined.
His moan made me desire things I shouldn’t have. Things I couldn’t have.
My nipples strained against the confining silk of my bra and my skin tingled for his touch. My body betrayed the warning voice in my head and reached for something I had wanted for most of my life.
It would go against everything I’d promised myself, to keep going, to let this happen.
I could still feel lust and desire. I’d come home tainted, sullied, and yet still I could feel the wanton rush of passion. What sort of woman did that make me?
I didn’t realize he still held the hand that had covered his mouth until I jerked it free to reach for my throat.
“Why do you that?” His voice was tender in the dusky light, vibrating against my lips.
“Do what?”
“Touch yourself here.” He brushed my throat with his knuckles.
I flinched. Even wanting him as much as I always had, I still avoided his touch there.
“We need to go.” I shoved off his chest. Even though Hunter was long gone, the field was entirely too crowded.
“Raelynn…”
I didn’t look back or wait on him. I didn’t breathe until I got to the Jeep and then I did it all in one big gulp. Some things weren’t meant to be said, and there were some things that Jordan Slater knew nothing about.
“Pretend tonight never happened, okay?” My voice was calmer than I’d expected. I had been wrong, it hurt too much. All of it. The memories left behind by Jordan combined with everything else I’d been through were far too much. “You’re good at that.”
If looks could kill, I wouldn’t have survived the ride home.