Ride Rough

  “What is it?” Maverick asked from behind her.

  She turned, her stomach making a slow drop to the floor. “I have thirty missed calls and five messages.”

  Standing in the doorway, his big arms crossed, Maverick frowned. “Do you want me to listen to them first?”

  “No.” She had to face this. She had to be in control. For once. Sinking onto the edge of the bed, she shook her head. “You’re not going to be able to shield me from all this, Maverick. It’s my mess. I have to fix it. I have to face it.” She wasn’t sure what would be harder to hear—Grant yelling at her or playing nice. And she honestly had no idea which to expect. That said a heck of a lot, didn’t it? Taking a deep breath, she played the first voice mail on speaker.

  “Alexa, where the hell are you? Where did you go? I’ll come get you. Call me.” The tone was urgent, clipped, not obviously angered, but not just concerned, either.

  “One down,” she said, playing the next message. Adrenaline made her hands tremble around the device.

  “Damnit, Alexa. This is ridiculous now. Where are you? I’m . . . I’m worried about you, babe. Call me.”

  She made a face at the phone. Was he really concerned about her? And did she care if he was?

  Maverick blew out a long breath. “Fuck, Alexa. You’re killing me.”

  “Why?” Her eyes cut up to his.

  “Because I’m terrified that you’re going to give him another shot.” He braced his hands on the doorframe and hung his head for a moment. “And this isn’t about what we just did. It’s about what he did to you last night. For starters.”

  She pulled her gaze away from the fascinating movement of the tattoos over his muscles. “I’m not. No matter what he says.”

  Blue eyes flashed to hers.

  “I may not know a lot yet, but I know that,” she said. “I won’t go back to him.” It was a promise. A vow. To herself more than anyone else. But to Maverick, too. Because even though he’d said what they’d done could just be fucking—and it had been some mind-blowing fucking at that—it had felt like so much more. What she should do with that just then, she didn’t know. But it didn’t mean nothing, either.

  The third message played, the tone much more conciliatory. “Babe, please tell me where you are. I know I lost my temper. Things are just really stressed right now. Come home. Let’s talk this out. Like you said.”

  She wasn’t sure how to read the tone, but what she could see was that every one of his messages was filled with commands. Tell me, call me, come home. And she also heard all the things he didn’t say, too. No apology. No declaration of love. Or was she reading too much into it? God, after years of misreading Grant’s words and intentions, she wasn’t sure whether to trust her reactions.

  Alexa sighed and dropped her forehead into her hand. “This whole thing is so crazy,” she said almost to herself. “How is this my life?” Her fingers moved over the cell’s screen to play the next.

  “Goddamnit, Alexa. I’m calling the police. Come home.” That one had the angriest tone of all.

  “Great. You do that, I’ll be happy to tell them you physically threw me out of the house,” she whispered to herself. Although, if he called Davis, that guy wouldn’t give two craps that Grant had hurt her. Maverick was right. Officer Davis was a total lackey. “Last one.”

  “Alexa, I love you. I’m . . . I’m sorry about last night. It won’t ever happen again. Just let me know you’re okay, babe. I need you so much.”

  She blew out a breath and dropped the phone onto the bed beside her.

  Maverick crossed the room and sat next to her. “You okay?”

  “Wanna know the sad thing?”

  “Yeah,” Maverick said, clearly trying like hell to keep his voice even.

  “I’m not sure I know how to read those messages.” She finally met his gaze. “I’m not sure I trust my own judgment about them.”

  Emotions rolled over Maverick’s expression, and she watched him rein them in. “Okay. What do you think they might mean? What are you hearing?”

  She swallowed hard and ducked her chin. “Well. I think he wants me back. But he didn’t apologize or even say he loved me until the last message, so I think he’s trying to tell me what I want to hear rather than what he really means. I think he wants to control me.” She blinked up at him.

  Mav tilted his head, and his hair fell across his eyes. “Sounds to me like you know more than you’re giving yourself credit for, Al.” He gave her a pointed stare, and she nodded. “Slater had two ways to play reaching out to you—attacking you and lashing out in anger, or appeasing you and luring you back in with what seems like worry and concern and remorse. What happened when you went back to him after the last fight?”

  “He apologized. Said he hadn’t meant for things to get so out of control. Said it would never happen again.” She shook her head. “But it did.”

  “Yeah, it fucking did,” he said, his voice like gravel. “Last night you said there are all kinds of things you’re not supposed to say or do or he’ll get mad. So, that means he likes to control you, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered, looking away.

  “Fuck,” he gritted out, huffing an angry breath. Mav grasped her chin and made her look at him again. “Well, he can’t control you as easily if you’re not living under his roof, so his first objective is to get you back home. No doubt he didn’t expect you to leave, so he has to be on his best behavior now. Don’t think for a second he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. Don’t believe for even an instant he isn’t calculating the best way to get what he wants. That’s what guys like Slater do, Alexa. That’s what he’s been doing to you.” He touched two fingers to her forehead. “Trust yourself in here.” To her heart. “And in here.” To her stomach. “And in here. You know.”

  Just then, her cell phone rang. Alexa flinched, then scooped it up off the mattress. “It’s him.”

  “Of course it is,” he bit out, anger giving his voice a harsh edge. “He won’t give up ’til you give him what he wants.”

  She blew out a breath and her belly went on a loop-the-loop that left her a little queasy. “I guess I have to talk to him at some point, right?”

  Maverick gave a tight nod, his face set in a scowl that was almost scary.

  “Then here goes nothing,” she said, answering the phone.

  CHAPTER 14

  Grant,” Alexa said, hating the shakiness in her voice. Part of her wished she’d let the call go to voice mail so she had more time to gather her thoughts and come up with a game plan. Grant had always been an expert at litigating arguments and disagreements, managing to turn things around so that what had started out as a legitimate concern on her part ended up feeling silly and unreasonable and inconsiderate.

  “Oh, thank God, Alexa. Where are you? Are you okay?” His voice, filled with a convincing concern, sounded out on speaker. Letting Maverick hear her life fall apart was about as comfortable as eating glass, but he’d already seen it fall apart. So what was the difference?

  “No, I’m not okay,” she said, her stomach tossing. But what more did she have to lose? If she wasn’t going to speak the truth to him now, she never would. “You physically threw me outside in the middle of a storm late at night. I’m not okay.”

  “I know. I know. Things just got out of hand.” In her mind’s eye, she could almost see him pacing.

  “Things didn’t get out of hand, Grant. You got out of hand. With your suspiciousness, you mistrusting me, and you physically hurting me. Do you know how humiliating it was to be locked out of my own house? You were supposed to take care of me.” The anger she’d felt the night before, the anger that had given her the strength and determination to leave her ring and walk off that porch, pooled in her gut once again.

  “I didn’t hurt you, did I? I didn’t mean it,” he said, an odd tone to his voice.

  “I just said that you did, so yeah.” Her gaze cut to Maverick, who was studying her, that scowl getting deeper, the
look in his eyes totally lethal. Not that she minded any of that. Because she meant what she’d admitted to him—she didn’t trust her own judgment where Grant was concerned. She needed him to be a sounding board right now. “My arm hurts from how you grabbed me and the back of my head hurts from you pushing me into the door. And this is just a few weeks after you promised that nothing like our last fight would ever happen again.” She blew out another shaky breath. Adrenaline coursed through her. She never talked to Grant like this and her body was clearly preparing for the need to flee from the consequences.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Uh, okay, Alexa. Can you please come home so I can make sure you’re okay with my own eyes? I’ve been up all night worrying and imagining every nightmarish scenario. I need you to come home.”

  It didn’t escape her notice that he’d brushed off her pain to list all the things he needed and had suffered. Had he always been this big of an asshole? “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said, her voice less certain. Had he not found her ring?

  “What? Why not?” he asked. The surprise in his voice sounded so damn genuine that Alexa believed it. Which meant that he either didn’t expect her to draw a line in the sand where his behavior was concerned or that he really didn’t think he’d done anything so wrong as to warrant this reaction. Both possibilities left her feeling sad and defeated. How had she not seen this sooner? How had she let him get away with it for so long?

  “Something clearly isn’t working between us, Grant. It’s getting worse and I can’t take it anymore,” she said. She felt the weight of Maverick’s gaze, but couldn’t let herself look at him. Not just then.

  “Alexa, I can fix this,” Grant said. “It was just a fight.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “And it was more than that to me.”

  “Damnit, Alexa—”

  “You told me I was nothing, Grant,” she said, shame making her face hot for having to say that in front of Maverick. “Who says that?”

  “I know, babe. Things just got out of control.”

  Again with the things. He wasn’t taking responsibility here, was he? She sighed and didn’t answer. She’d already addressed this once.

  “Well, uh.” A long pause filtered down the line. “What about work? Are you planning to come in? The model home project won’t get done without you. No one else could do it like you. And you love that project.”

  Relief lifted some of the weight pressing down on her shoulders. If he was asking her, then maybe he didn’t see her being with him and working for him as being fundamentally linked. After all, she’d worked there initially before they’d become a couple. Maybe she’d be able to continue to work at Slater Enterprises and they’d be able to act like professionals and adults.

  “I still have a job at Slater Enterprises?” she asked, figuring she might as well be direct about it.

  “Of course you do, sweetheart. Yes.”

  She ignored the sweetheart. “Then I’ll be in this morning, but I’ll be late since I don’t have any clothes with me.”

  “Whatever you need, Alexa. Of course. I’ll see you later then?” he asked. Was that hope in his voice? Or something else?

  “I’ll see you at the office.” A shiver rushed over her skin.

  “I love you,” he said.

  For a moment, her tongue got tangled, because she couldn’t say it—not just because of what had happened, but because she felt like she was talking to a stranger. Like she’d been loving and sleeping with a stranger. Not to mention that Maverick’s burning blue eyes were focused so intently on her. “Okay,” she finally managed. “Good-bye.” She hung up without waiting for him to say anything else. Blowing out a breath, she scrubbed her hands over her face. “How’d I do? I know I didn’t flip out on him,” she said, chancing a glance at Maverick.

  “You did fantastic, Al. I know that couldn’t have been easy, but you stood up for yourself. You didn’t let him get away with anything. And you set some ground rules for yourself.” He nodded, his expression full of a pride that allowed her shoulders to relax and her lungs to inhale a deep breath. And God did it feel good to have someone in her corner. For once. She hadn’t had that in so long. “I’m worried as fuck about you going back to work, though. I’m not going to lie. The idea of you being near him makes me want to smash things.”

  She sighed, as her belly did a little flip. “I know. I don’t really want to be near him, either. But I have to work, especially given this situation. I have some savings, but I’m going to need more. Because almost everything I have is his. Including my mom’s house. I don’t even know if I’d get to keep my car because he convinced me to get rid of the one I had when he bought the new one for me, so it’s in his name.” Alexa hugged herself, sadness making her chest feel hollow. “I get that working for him long-term probably isn’t realistic now. Even if we can manage a professional relationship, there’s no way things won’t be awkward. But I need to work there until I can find something else, at least. And seeing this project through to the end will give me a project for my portfolio I’ll need to land a new job.”

  Mav bit out a curse under his breath and nailed her with a stare. “Fine. But I’m taking you and picking you up. At least until you get a better feel for how he’s acting towards you. But I wouldn’t trust good behavior for a fucking second.”

  Alexa thought about it for a moment and nodded. “I think that’s probably a good idea. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, not sounding too happy about it.

  The silence stretched out, and in that quiet, Alexa’s mind returned to what had happened between them on the couch, to Maverick waking her up with his hands and his mouth and his body. Waking her up in so many ways.

  Maverick Rylan was unquestionably masculine and unapologetically rough around the edges, and she found it even sexier now than she had when they’d been a couple. Maybe she’d been too young to appreciate him all those years ago. Maybe she’d been too focused on the wrong things. Maybe she’d been too distracted by her grief and her fear to see what was standing right in front of her.

  Well, clearly all of that had been the case, hadn’t it?

  How could she ever ask him to forgive her?

  I never wanted to let you go in the first place.

  The gravel of his voice played over again in her mind.

  “When do you want to go?” Maverick asked. “It’s eight-thirty.”

  His question pulled her from her thoughts. “Um, let’s leave around nine? That’ll make sure Grant’s already left for work. I don’t want to have to deal with him at the house. Oh, wait. I . . . I don’t—” Alexa bit back her words and smiled.

  “What?”

  “I was going to say I don’t have a way into the house, but I have you.” She grinned. “Oh master of lock picking.”

  “Like that idea now, do ya?” He smirked at her.

  “It’s proven to come in handy,” she said.

  Maverick nodded and rose, and Alexa couldn’t help but stare at his Ravens tattoo as he crossed the room. Why didn’t the sight of it rattle her like it once had? “I’ll grab some coffee and a quick shower, then we can go. Your clothes from last night should be dry if you want to change.” He left, then quickly peered back into the room. “And I like it when you call me master.” He winked and left before she could throw something at him.

  Her grin faded as her thoughts got all tangled up in the past. After losing Tyler, Alexa had thought she’d learned everything she could know about being scared. She’d been scared of how she’d manage to take care of her mother by herself. She’d been scared of how her mother would handle Ty’s death, and then of how her mom had fallen apart and gotten sicker. She’d been scared that she’d never get the life she’d always dreamed of having. And she’d been scared of what would happen—and how it would feel—if she lost Maverick the same way, too.

  Now she knew there was a lot about fear she hadn’t known.

  She’d learned that living your life
guided by fear meant that a scary amount of your life passed you by while you weren’t doing the things or being with the people you most wanted. She’d learned that there was more than one kind of loss. Death was the most catastrophic, obviously. But losing your friends and your independence and your faith in your own judgment were pretty damn scary, too. And she’d learned that sometimes playing it safe was its own kind of loss—representing wasted chances, unrecognized opportunities, and unrealized possibility.

  Maybe . . . maybe things crashing and burning with Grant didn’t represent so much of a loss as an opportunity?

  From the direction of Maverick’s bedroom, the hum of the shower water sounded out, and her mind couldn’t help but conjure up a series of old, secret images. The water sluicing over all Maverick’s hard edges and ink. Him taking her against the tile wall. Her on her knees on the shower floor, his cock in her hands, her mouth. A shiver raced through her.

  Maybe losing the life she thought she was going to have with Grant could give her a second chance with . . . other things?

  Lucy curled around Alexa’s ankles and let out a pleading meow. On a sigh, Alexa bent down to give the sphynx some love. “Don’t worry, Luce. Everything’s going to be all right. We’ll figure it all out. I promise.”

  Though Alexa didn’t know who she was trying to reassure most.

  “WANT ME TO come in with you?” Maverick asked from the driver’s seat of his truck.

  Alexa looked out the window to the sleek glass building that housed Slater Enterprises. Would going inside feel as strange as going home had felt? Maverick had let her into her house so she could shower and change, and the first thing that had dropped a ball of nerves into her gut was that her ring hadn’t been hanging on the door knocker. Which meant Grant had seen it after all. Which left her wondering even more about what he’d said—and what he hadn’t said—when they’d spoken on the phone.

  The second thing that had left her feeling uncertain was the question of whether she should take anything beyond Lucy’s nearly empty food and kitty litter and her own clothes, toiletries, and things for school. She didn’t even know whether to take her car. Maverick convinced her that she should, and he had a new guy who was joining the Ravens drive someone over who could take it back to Mav’s house. Otherwise, she’d only taken what was definitely hers.