Shame

“WHAT IN THE HELL IS that supposed to mean?”

Pressing the gas almost to the floor, Shame whipped his car around the curves of the lonely, deserted road that hugged the property his grandmother had left to him. The body of the car shook and rattled under him, letting him know that he’d probably have to put the damn thing in the shop again, but he didn’t care.

There were only so many things that could help burn out the raw energy inside him and he hadn’t had any interest in fucking his brains out—or fucking a woman’s brains out—since he’d climbed off the floor and seen Charli under him, shaking and shuddering, her pale skin bruised from where he’d touched her.

You don’t want to be anybody else for me and I’m done fighting you.

He’d told her that he wasn’t the kind of man for her.

She needed one of her doctor types. Or an accountant. A cop, for fuck’s sake. A kindergarten teacher. Somebody, anybody, other than him.

She’d told him when she was seventeen that she wanted him, that she’d wait...for him.

And she had.

She’d been a fucking virgin when he put his hands on her.

But even once he’d figured that out, he hadn’t gone slow and easy with her.

Slow and easy should have been simple for a man who’d spent so much of his time losing himself—or trying to—in the arms of whatever woman promised oblivion.

But not with Charli, the woman who was a drug in his system, the one he’d promised he’d never give in to.

And had he ever broken that promise.

Now she was leaving.

She loved this little town, loved the house. She loved walking into town on hot summer nights and buying ice cream, sitting down and watching the world go by. Not that she’d ever told him that—that would require him spending more time around her than he’d allow himself.

But he watched her.

He knew things about her she’d never told him.

He saw it when things made her happy.

And she was walking away from it—from the town, from the house. She’d told her brothers that she’d thought about opening up a practice or joining in with somebody in Bardstown.

What happened to that?

But he knew.

Shame had happened.

Throat tight, he hit the brakes and did a three-point turn, heading back toward the main road.

He needed to talk to Con and the reception out here sucked.

She couldn’t just walk away from her life because of him. He’d move...or whatever. But he had to figure out just what she was doing before he started doing shit.

He didn’t want to do the wrong thing.

Or more of the wrong things.

“Fuck,” he muttered, dragging a hand down his face as he drove. The sun was blindingly bright as it edged down closer to the horizon. He’d left his sunglasses back at the house and the light was only adding to his vicious headache.

By the time he got even close to civilization, his car was edging up on empty and he eyed the gas gauge, debating if he could make the drive to Bardstown or if he should stop at the one gas station coming up. Since he wasn’t too keen on the idea of walking miles to get gas if he ran out, he made the stop.

The cluster of cars and trucks in the parking lot was a large part of the reason he hadn’t wanted to stop at this particular station. He’d had to hit this spot before and each time, he’d wished he’d used his head and filled up so he could avoid this occurrence. But Shame only headed for Grandma’s old place when he was in the blackest of moods and those weren’t the times when he was thinking about gas and filling up and avoiding assholes.

“It’s Mr. Megabucks.” The drawling sneer came from a man sitting on the back of his truck bed, a cloud of smoke half obscuring his face. He snubbed out the cigarette and lit another one, all without taking his eyes off Shame. “What’s a car like that cost, pretty boy?”

Shame ignored him and swiped his card. As he started to pump the gas, he heard his phone ringing from inside the car. One of Chainsmoker’s asshole friends said, “He’s probably a lawyer or some shit like that. Makes money screwing over people like us. Can’t even buy American. What kind of car is that, boy?”

The boy pissed him off, but Shame continued to ignore him, grabbing his phone and answering it just before it would have gone to voice mail.

“Hey, you know you were on the schedule for the night, right?”

Shame scowled. “No, man. I forgot. Sorry.”

There was a slight pause, followed by, “Shawntelle said you were there when she dropped Charli off.”

“Yeah. She’s selling the house.” He eyed the slow crawl of the numbers on the pump, wondering if it was him or if the pump was really just that slow. Somebody pulled up to the pump on the other side and he pinched the bridge of his nose as the asshole club behind him continued to shout in his direction.

“Yeah. She...um, well, she called me and Riley from Mexico, checked to make sure we were okay with it. Riley sort of considered buying it, but he and Bree are happy with their place in Bardstown and neither Shawntelle nor I know what we want. You going to be in here or what?”

He left it open and Shame knew why. Con was giving him an out, without asking questions.

He was tired of feeling like his friends had to give him that out, tired of not being the guy they could count on. “I’ll be there,” he said, irritated, although it was self-directed.

A car door shut and he looked up to see a woman hurry around the vehicle, her head tucked low, a dark ponytail sweeping her shoulders. Her eyes skittered up to meet his—no, not meet. She was gauging him.

He knew that look, because he gauged just about every damn person who came around him.

As her dark brown eyes swept off to the side, he looked back at the gas pump. “I’m getting gas and I’m about an hour away. I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”

“Hey...why don’t you get your gas somewheres else?” Chainsmoker snarled. He had moved a lot closer. So had a couple of his buddies.

“Who was that?” Con asked.

“Somebody who wants trouble,” Shame said calmly. The gas pump shut off.

One of Chainsmoker’s cronies had circled around to cage the woman in from the other side. “Yeah, maybe you could like...get your fucking gas in Mexico,” he sneered.

Her mouth had a pinched, white look to it, but she didn’t say anything, staring determinedly at the pump. Probably cussing the slow pumps the same as he had been, only with much more desperation. “I need to go, man.”

He tossed the phone into his car and moved around the pump, cutting between the young woman and Chainsmoker. “Why don’t you leave the lady alone and go back to smoking yourself to death?”

“Why don’t you mind your fucking business, pretty boy?” Chainsmoker blew a thin stream of smoke in Shame’s face.

“See, that’s the problem with dumbasses like you. You don’t read.” He gestured to the No Smoking sign hanging over the pump and when Chainsmoker followed the movement, he grabbed the cigarette and tossed it off into the darkness.

Didn’t want to catch fire while he was kicking ass.

Chainsmoker whipped his head around to glare at him. “You stupid fuck.”

Behind him, he heard the woman’s soft voice, shaking and nervous. “Excuse me, please, sir. I am done and I am leaving now.”

“Aw, honey...you ain’t leaving now, are you?” one of the men said, taunting her.

Chainsmoker ignored his friends, his attention focused on Shame. He reached up and shoved Shame. “You just fucked up your night, boy.”

“You don’t want to do that again.” Shame smiled, the bright edge of rage inside him realizing it was about to find an outlet.

“Yeah? Why not?” He reiterated by shoving Shame again.

Or trying.

Shame caught his arm, twisting away at the same time. The sound of the man slamming into the concrete pole just to the side of the pump was a sweet one, although the woman screaming in fear behind him wasn’t. He spun and saw that one of the men had grabbed her.

Several more were moving in on them from the cluster of trucks.

There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver.

As the man nearest Shame went to pull back his fist, Shame took out his knee.

He collapsed.

Shame gave the man holding the woman a hard look. “You’re next.”

He backed away, tripping a bit, but sneered in bravado. “You’re outnumbered.”

“And you’re a chickenshit coward, terrifying a woman.” He took another step.

It had the desired effect. Chickenshit tripped over the gas pump’s hose and as he crashed down, Shame caught the woman’s wrist and kept her from falling. She stared at him with panicked eyes. “Get in your car,” he said curtly. “Go.”

“I should call the police,” she said, her voice cracking.

A fist drove into his kidney.

Shame sucked up the pain and turned, already reacting.

Sucking up pain, fighting through it...he’d been doing that for so long, it was second nature.

Distantly, he heard raised voices, felt an arm go around his throat.

He caught it and twisted, putting his body weight into it. As he threw his attacker to the ground, too many ugly memories tried to swell up. He shoved them back with a rage and slammed his fist into somebody’s startled face.

Tires squealed.

“Going to cut you up, you stupid meatsack...”

He saw the knife and spun away, his world shrinking down to two objectives—attack, and hurt.

* * * * *

CHAINSMOKER MIGHT BE a dumb redneck, but Shame would give him credit for sticking by his words.

He had indeed done his best to cut Shame up.

The cops had shown up and it was little wonder why. The owner of the gas station had locked the doors and Shame had caught sight of him standing behind the glass with a handgun in his white-knuckled grip.

Shame had lucked out, this time. Apparently Chainsmoker had some run-ins with law enforcement in that tiny little town and after he’d taken a swing at the cops who’d gone to intervene, they hadn’t been predisposed to listen to anything he had to say.

Said cops hadn’t been too happy they couldn’t talk Shame into going to the hospital.

They’d kept trying to insist, but Shame had played dumb.

Now, four hours later than the hour he’d promised Con, he let himself into the back of B&B. The pub had shut for the night and he’d have to apologize to his best friend—again—but it wasn’t like he could have stood by while some Neanderthals hassled a woman for pumping gas. Con would get that.

He’d just—

“I knew it.”

The sound of Con’s voice had him groaning. “I’m not up for this shit, Con. I just wanted to swipe a bottle of Jack. You know I don’t keep anything in the house.”

Lights flooded the room as Con approached, whistling under his breath. “Man, you need more than a bottle of Jack Daniels. I don’t think whiskey is going to make you sleep tonight. How long did it take for the cops to show?”

Shame frowned, then grimaced as it made the cut on his lip split open. Everything made the cut split open. “How do you know the cops showed?”

“Because I called them.” Con folded his arms over his chest, giving Shame a hard look. “You were an hour away and you were in a mood. Only one place you were likely to be. You went down to your grandma’s old place. You were pumping gas—only one place around there to do it. Oh, and you left your phone on when you told me somebody was asking for trouble. I took a shot in the dark. Nice to know I was right.”

“Nice to know I’m predictable.” He moved down the hallway, pausing in the entryway that opened up into the main room of the pub. Eyes adjusting to the dim lights, he studied the distance between him and the bar. He sure as hell didn’t remember it being that long of a walk.

“Son of a— Shame, you bastard, did you get stabbed?”

He paused, remembering the bloody mess of his back. The leather in his car was going to have to be cleaned. “I got cut. Asshole was too slow to actually stab me.”

“He had a knife,” Con said.

“Usually cutting requires a sharp object. In this case, yes...a knife.”

Taut silence was the only response from Con for a few minutes and Shame continued his slow shuffle to the bar. Just before he would have headed behind the bar, Con exploded. “Would you sit your ass down! I’ll get you a fucking drink!”

Gratefully, Shame dropped onto a stool, tuning out Con’s rant. Somewhere between my best friend is a fucking moron and can’t even get his ass to the hospital, a glass of water appeared at his elbow.

He eyed the water. “That’s not Jack.”

“You’re drinking the damn water,” Con said, slamming his hands down on the bar and leaning in. “You got cut up and you’re bleeding.”

“The bleeding’s already stopped,” Shame replied, shrugging. He regretted it immediately as pain rippled through him. “It was slowing down by the time the cops were done yelling and they decided I didn’t need to be handcuffed.”

“Why were you handcuffed?” Con glared at him.

“Because there were three men on the ground by the time they got out of their cars.” He picked up the water, decided it wouldn’t hurt—he was thirstier than hell and guzzling Jack probably wasn’t a good idea. He wasn’t going to mention that he’d used the time he was handcuffed to put some serious pressure on the bleeding wound, because he hadn’t wanted to hear the cops hassle him about an ambulance.

They’d done it anyway, but the bleeding had slowed, so he figured it had helped some.

They hadn’t decided he wasn’t fit to drive, so it was all good.

Con continued to swear.

Jack Daniels, straight up, appeared in front of him.

“...bleeding, no shit...I can’t make him do anything...”

The tenor of the rant seemed to have changed. Shame was going to blame his slowed reaction time on exhaustion and pain. That was why it took him so long to realize that Con wasn’t just ranting now.

He was on the phone.

“Who the hell are you talking to?”

Con ignored him.

“Okay...okay...yeah, thanks, sweetie. Be careful. See you soon.” He ended the call and shoved his phone into his pocket.

Mind whirling, Shame grabbed the whiskey and tossed it back. He kept his eyes on the bar top, breathing in slowly as he fought to clear his head. “You called Charli.”

“No shit, Sherlock. You won’t go to the hospital and you need to get looked at.”

“Call her back.”

“No.”

“Then I’m leaving.” Shame went to slide off the stool.

Con leaned over the bar and caught the front of his shirt. “Sit your ass down or I’ll put you down. You’re too fucked up to stop me, too. You can barely stand up.”

He wanted to throw Con’s hand away.

But the humiliating thing was...Con was right.

“Get off me, you dick.” Con’s hand fell away. “I need more of this.” He drained the glass and slammed it down.

Con obliged and Shame closed his eyes, wondering if he could get drunk enough, fast enough, that he’d pass out before Charli got here.