CHAPTER ELEVEN
Chauvinistic pig.
Brooding, stubborn man who’d… saved your life (more than once), opened his home to you, cooked for you, and has basically taken care of your every need since he found you? That man?
I sighed, my anger at Derek fizzling away into nothing.
By the time we reached The Tavern – Derek slamming the truck door behind himself in his haste to get out of his truck, get away from me – it’d been replaced with something far worse: regret.
It burned inside me as I recalled the way he’d bolted up from the couch when I’d asked him about his parents, emerald eyes flashing, hot with anger and something else – something resembling panic.
Right when I thought he was warming to me, too, or at least didn’t outright resent my presence in his cabin. We’d been talking more and more every day. Well, I talked. Derek mostly just grunted, sometimes stringing a sentence or two together under duress if I pestered him with questions long enough.
And sure, most of what he had to say was laden in sarcasm, but underneath all that and the general melancholy of his demeanor, I’d caught glimpses of such goodness. It almost felt like having a secret, knowing that under the layers of cynicism, grumpiness, and muscle – and holy Jesus, there was a lot of muscle – it was there. It felt like a secret between friends, and… and it had made me feel special.
And then in a single moment of recklessness, I’d gone and ruined all that.
For a second, I’d thought he would even make me leave.
I wouldn’t have blamed him.
I never should have asked him about anything that could be construed as private, no matter how much the curiosity was eating me up inside. I knew better. Derek was a private man who didn’t appreciate prying, and I’d gone and pried anyway, repeatedly. Even after he’d warned me to leave well enough alone.
I’d annoyed him so much, in fact, that he’d been willing to flee his own home to get away from me.
And I hadn’t even allowed him that. Instead, I’d stubbornly insisted on tagging along to a bar that I had absolutely no interest in being at except that I wanted to be near him. Because in my mind, Derek meant safety. He meant warm blankets and homemade breakfasts. He meant barked words, but gentle hands. He meant sanctuary.
Except… maybe not anymore.
To my internal horror, I could feel tears pooling in my eyes, and I squeezed them tightly shut in an effort to keep them at bay. I took a series of quick breaths in through my nose, internally denying that I was sniffling.
Get it together, I commanded harshly.
A moment later, I opened my (miraculously) dry eyes, and took a moment to wipe my nose and smooth down my shirt before opening the passenger-side door of the truck and following Derek outside.
Considering I’d sat sulking in his truck for a solid minute, I half-expected him to already be inside The Tavern, but he was waiting for me by the bar’s door. He looked annoyed, his mouth set in a firm line and his jaw clenched, but he didn’t say anything as I approached, just opened the blue door and impatiently gestured me through.
I was assaulted by noise as soon as I stepped inside.
It was a Friday night, and much, much busier than the last time we were here.
Music – some sort of country-rock song I only half-recognized – blared from the jukebox situated in the right corner of the room, and dozens of people were crammed into the tables near the front windows. Others were meandering around the bar, ordering drinks or nursing their beers. It seemed like everyone was chattering loudly, laughing with their friends – an animated cheer even erupting from the left side of the room where a group of guys were knocking back Bud Lights and playing darts.
It was just so loud.
I was used to clucking hens, fish sizzling on the stove as Derek made lunch, and the sound Thane’s paws made scratching against the hardwood floor as he followed me around. I was used to the relative quiet of the cabin, where the loudest noise was the sound of my own voice.
Either sensing how overwhelmed I was, or, more likely, growing impatient with my stillness, Derek wordlessly took me by the elbow, leading me to the half of the bar that was moderately vacant.
He released me to pull out a stool. “Sit,” he demanded.
I frowned at the order, a spark of irritation igniting despite the guilt still resting heavy at the bottom of my belly from pushing him earlier. Regardless, I carefully slid into the stool.
“I’m not a dog,” I mumbled under my breath, playing with my fingers for lack of anything else to do.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
I tensed, surprised that Derek had heard me over the clamor of voices around us. But I was too preoccupied with the fact he had made me not being a dog somehow sound like an insult (because what?) to question it.
My eyes flitted up to him. “What’s that-?” What’s that supposed to mean?
But I didn’t get the chance to finish the question because I found myself with Derek’s hand suddenly covering my mouth. It was… weirdly intimate. His fingers were coarse against my lips, and I was struck with the absolutely ridiculous urge to lick them. I managed to keep my tongue firmly in my mouth, thank God, but I couldn’t prevent a wild flush from exploding across my cheeks at the thought of it.
Almost like he could read my mind, he snatched his hand away from me, tucking it into one of his jean pockets. The Tavern’s lighting was dim, so I couldn’t tell for sure, but I almost thought that he was blushing too. “Just… be quiet for once. Please,” he added, an almost desperate quality to his voice.
Thoughts of mouths and fingers disappeared at the sound of it, and I swallowed hard at the reminder that while Derek was essentially my safe place, I was nothing more than an annoying houseguest to him. He was still looking at me, so I nodded once – the movement jerky – before redirecting my gaze to my lap.
When I dared to glance back up a few moments later, I was relieved to see that his attention was no longer focused on me. Instead, he was blatantly searching the room. He must have found what he was looking for because less than a minute into his search the tense line of his shoulders wilted a bit. “Thank Christ,” he muttered.
Frowning, I followed his line of sight.
Only to feel my heart drop somewhere in the vicinity of my shoes when I saw he had locked eyes with a vaguely familiar blonde. It was the woman who had been practically sitting in his lap the last time we were here. Her eyes flickered over to me, something – maybe surprise – flashing in them before she offered me a haughty sort of smirk.
Something in my stomach clenched at the sight of it, but I refused to look away… even if staring her down made me feel a trifle like a wild animal assessing a possible threat to her mate… which was crazy. The epitome of crazy, even. Derek didn’t even like me.
“Gemma!”
I was shocked out of the impromptu staring match by Derek’s voice, loud and impatient, on my left. He was attempting to wave down the bartender, a woman with rainbow-streaked hair who was serving someone on the other end of the bar.
She flashed Derek a smile before dumping a handful of cherries into the sherbet-colored drink she was mixing. After serving it to whomever had ordered it, she headed our way. “Derek, baby! It’s been a while.” She eyed me curiously, looking me up and down before meeting my gaze. “And you’ve brought company. What’s your name, angel?”
Whatever remained of my earlier blush made a hasty reappearance. “Oh my God,” the woman – Gemma, apparently – practically squealed at the sight of my flushed cheeks. “Where did you find this cutie?” she demanded, turning Derek’s way before refocusing her attention back on me. “What’s a girl like you doing with this guy?”
“Gemma!” Derek snapped at the same time I managed to choke out an answer to her original question, “My name is Wisp.”
To Gemma’s credit, she didn’t so much as blink at the odd name.
“Yes, Gemma, this is Wisp. Wisp, Gemma,” Derek introduced us irritably. “Look, can I talk to you?” He jerked his thumb like he wanted her to come out from behind the bar so they could talk privately. Because, of course, he didn’t want to say whatever he had to say in front of me.
And that didn’t sting at all.
Gemma frowned, but she sounded amiable enough when she replied. “Sure, sweetie. You have to come back here, though. I can’t leave the bar. It’s busier than normal. Some suits on their way back home from a conference in Seattle are putting an impressive dent in my scotch.” She lifted the hatch to let Derek back behind the bar, and he wasted no time leading her to the corner farthest away from me, near whatever beer it was The Tavern had on tap. He turned his back to me, but I could still see Gemma’s face past his right shoulder.
He probably thought he’d walked far enough away that I couldn’t hear them, but the space behind the bar was cramped, and I found if I strained my ears enough, I could still pick out their voices amongst the others filling the air.
“What do you need?” Gemma asked.
“To use your spare bed upstairs,” Derek answered in a low tone, obviously trying to keep his voice down, but I was familiar enough with his murmuring by now to pick out the words.
Gemma raised her eyebrows, glancing at me over Derek’s shoulder. I immediately looked away, redirecting my gaze to the bar top, pretending to pick at a notch in the wooden surface. “Derek, I don’t think she’s that kind of girl.”
“Not her,” Derek spat ferociously, those two words much louder than his earlier ones. He sounded half-infuriated, half-scandalized, and I couldn’t resist peeking up, but Derek had shifted, blocking Gemma’s view of me and my view of her with his body.
“Then, who?” Gemma asked, sounding legitimately confused. Not half as confused as I felt, though. Why would Derek want to use her spare bed? I’d thought he’d come here to have a few drinks, stew in his gloom for a while. If he wanted to sleep he could have just done that at home. And why would Gemma think that he wanted me to…?
My thoughts derailed as I once more followed Derek’s gaze across the bar.
His eyes were again glued to the busty blonde from before. My stomach twisted painfully. “Blair?” Gemma demanded. “Really? Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?”
“Look, can I use it or not?” he snapped back.
It was quiet for a beat, and though I still couldn’t see her face, I saw Gemma throw the hands she had stationed at her hips up into the air in surrender. “Fine. But you’re taking the damn sheets home with you and washing them. I don’t need to catch an STD just trying to get to my liquor stores.”
And just like that, understanding dawned. Derek was going to take that woman – Blair, apparently – upstairs to… to…
I felt like I was going to be sick.
Feeling the beginnings of what felt like a panic attack lick at the base of my spine, I clutched the edge of the bar surface with both hands, trying furiously to ground myself. Vaguely aware that Derek was still talking, I forced myself to stay attuned to their conversation.
“And one other thing…”
Gemma didn’t verbally respond, but she must have indicated he should keep talking because he started up again. “Will you keep an eye on Wisp for me until I get back? Make sure she doesn’t go anywhere? She’s… fresh.”
Fresh.
I had a horrible feeling he meant naïve. Young.
Because that’s all I was to him. Some kid he felt a strange sort of responsibility for so he’d let stay at his cabin. Humiliation flooded me.
Followed swiftly by fury. It was a much more productive feeling than whatever it was that’d been trying to swallow me whole before.
“One hour,” I heard Gemma agree. “But you owe me. Not for watching that cutie over there, but for stealing my damn waitress out from under me when The Tavern’s this busy. You’re good with your hands; you can refurbish my tables in repayment.”
“Yeah, sure, fine,” Derek agreed easily enough. I glanced back up in time to see him rub the back of his neck with one of his hands. “And thank you.” It absolutely gutted me how sincere he sounded.
Gemma sighed. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I’m thirty-two years old. I think I understand the mechanics of it by now.” And there was that sardonic man I’d come to know.
Through the daze of anger, embarrassment, and (completely irrational) betrayal threatening to suffocate me, I still managed to conjure up some surprise as I registered how old Derek was. I’d had him pegged as twenty-five at the most.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it!” Gemma exclaimed, humor in her voice despite the fact her face was contorting with something resembling disgust.
I could see it again because Derek had already turned his back on her and was walking towards me, stealthily avoiding my eyes. He wouldn’t even look at me when he reached me, focusing instead on the space above my left shoulder. “Stay here, alright? Don’t wander off. I’ll be back in an hour. Just… stay. Okay?”
I wanted to rage, cry, and most embarrassing of all, beg him not to take that girl upstairs. Words chased each other around in my throat. They were all things I wanted to say: “Who’s Blair?”, “Please don’t do this.”, “Take me instead.” I had to press my lips together to keep them contained. “Okay,” I managed to croak instead.
Derek frowned, taking a jerky step towards me. His hand twitched at his side, almost like he wanted to reach forward and touch me – put a hand on my shoulder or… or nothing.
Because his hand stayed at his side, and a moment later, he was walking away from me.
Since, apparently, I was a masochist, I forced myself to watch as he approached the blonde – Blair, I thought viciously. She threw her arms around his neck in an overenthusiastic greeting, the smile she wore only growing wider after he said whatever he’d planned to say to her. They shuffled back towards the bar together, Blair hanging off his arm. Gemma once again lifted the hatch. She ushered them through the swing door that the kitchen and stairs must have been located behind.
Blair threw a vicious smirk my way as they passed, but Derek didn’t even notice.
He was too busy dragging the woman to the stairs. Where Gemma apparently had a spare bed. Where they were going to… Derek was going to…
A dull roar resounded in my ears as images of the two of them together assaulted me. I pressed the heels of my palms as hard as I could into my eyes, willing the images away. My stomach felt like one massive cramp, but I sternly told myself that I was not going to throw up.
And if I really did have to… well, I could at least have the decency to wait until Blair got back on duty to clean it up.