Page 44 of Smokin’ Situation (Masked Men of Sage Springs #3)

Tristan

Rhey still seemed a little skittish as I sat behind her on Seraphina in the barn.

I couldn’t exactly blame her. It’d been a bit of a shock to learn that my brother was the friend from high school she’d been hooking up with for years.

And to have the discovery happen completely unexpectedly led to the three of us epically fucking things up.

Jay was probably the one who escalated things the most unnecessarily, but I knew my tendency to put my head down and walk away from conflict hadn’t helped.

“I’m sorry I tried to leave,” I whispered into her skin, tracing my lips along the side of her neck. She leaned her head back against my shoulder, guiding my hand higher until I felt her heart thudding beneath my palm.

“I’m sorry I left,” she replied, melting against my chest as we sat quietly atop the horse in the dimly lit barn. “I was scared that you’d be angry with me.”

“I wasn’t angry with you. I was angry at how he was talking to you…

about you.” It still made my blood run a little hot when I recalled the crushed look on her face when Jay started lashing out as he realized something had happened between Rhey and me when he was out of town.

“You never lied to me, sweetheart. So, I have no reason to be mad. I knew the score going in, and I still pursued you. And I wouldn’t change what happened between us either.

If he has a problem with that, then so be it. ”

“But I don’t want to come between you and your family. I couldn’t live with myself if you lost your brother over me. I’m— ”

“Worth it,” I interrupted, wrapping my arms around her tighter.

“You are worth more to me than you give yourself credit for. With you, I finally feel like I might move on with my life and be happier than I was before. I thought it ended underneath that tree, and now I have you. It was worth every bit of that pain and grief to find something I want more than to be a jumper.”

“I’m scared,” she whispered, her inhale shaky, and I could tell she was right on the cusp of being overwhelmed enough to cry.

“So am I.” I whispered the words against her neck, my lips lingering on her pulse point. “But I think I could love you, and while that scares the fuck out of me, I don’t want to let it go.”

She sniffled, a drop of wetness rolling down the back of my hand as I realized she’d given in to the tears she’d been trying to hold back. “I don’t think I’d survive losing you too.”

My heart broke as her voice trailed off into a soft cry, and I shifted, turning her face in my direction.

I used my fingertips to catch her tears before I leaned in, softly pressing my lips to hers.

When I pulled back, I dipped my head to keep eye contact.

“I’m not planning to go anywhere, anytime soon. Not unless you tell me to go.”

She nodded, sniffling again and trying to stem the tears rolling down her cheeks.

She’d lost so many people in her life, and I knew she was scared, but I wouldn’t let a little fear deter me from pursuing what I wanted.

I never had, and I wasn’t starting now. I wasn’t stopping until I got what I needed, and that was building a new life with her by my side.

“What do we do now?” she asked, wiping her cheeks with her fingertips.

“Well, right now I should probably get this saddle off Phi, but you’re waiting for me because I’m not letting you out of my sight right now.” She rolled her eyes, but I leaned in, placing a kiss against her wet cheek. “I don’t trust you not to wander into danger if I don’t keep track of you.”

“A girl gets stranded on a deserted road in peril once and she never hears the end of it. ”

“A gorgeous woman intentionally puts herself in danger multiple times in a few days’ span and I have to come to her rescue more than once,” I teased, squeezing her waist.

“My favorite hero,” she whispered, laying the side of her face against mine.

“Your favorite sweaty hero that wants to get out of this sweltering barn and take a shower before I do unspeakable things to you now that you’re back where you belong.”

Phi was a good girl and held still while I slipped off the back of the saddle, extending my hands up to help Rhey dismount. She fell into my arms, and I tightened them around her waist, my nose grazing her chin. She laughed when I didn’t put her down, leaning back to look into my eyes.

“I think I could love you too,” she confessed, and I sighed, letting her slip lower in my grip until our lips were level.

“Good,” I whispered into them, our breath mingling as hers pulled into a smile against mine. “I was worried it’d take you a while to catch up.”

Not giving her time for a retort, I surged forward, kissing her hard as I backed her against the barn wall, pouring every ounce of relief into reconnecting with her.

While I wanted nothing more than to fuck away the stress of the day, I knew it was more important that Rhey and I talk about everything that had happened before we let ourselves get distracted.

Even if she was looking gorgeous—stretched out on my bed in just a towel—watching me dry my chest after our shower.

While our hands had wandered as we kissed underneath the spray of the shower until the water ran cold, I’d tried to keep my baser instincts at bay.

She deserved a genuine conversation about where our relationship went from here.

I knew where I wanted it to go, but I also didn’t want any other surprises.

“Is it time for you to do those unspeakable things to me now?” she asked, crooking a finger and beckoning me toward her like the siren she was.

Climbing onto the mattress, I tried not to laugh at how her eyes lit up as I stalked toward her.

The way she looked at me had me falling harder and harder the more time we spent together.

I’d never felt as wanted as I did with her.

The fleeting thought that she might have looked at Jay the same way at one time had me groaning and falling to her side on the mattress.

“That didn’t sound like a sexy groan,” she mused, turning to her side and tracing her fingers down the damp skin on my back. “Everything okay?”

Turning my face, I looked over at her, hating I’d put that little crease between her eyebrows again. Sometimes being honorable was a gigantic cockblock.

“Maybe we should talk.”

Her eyes flashed with something that looked like fear as she shifted away from me and sat upright against the headboard, clutching her towel to her chest.

“Not that kind of talk,” I murmured, reaching for her hand and tugging until she settled on her side, mirroring how I was lying on top of the covers.

Lifting her hand toward me, I kissed her palm and settled it on my chest as I scooted in close to drape my hand over her hip.

“I just don’t want the tough conversations to get clouded by my desire to fuck you into this mattress until you can’t remember your own name. ”

Her eyes widened, and she tilted her head to the side. “I don’t know, forgetting my own name sounds pretty good right now.”

Leaning forward, I kissed her nose, shaking my head at yet another one of her dirty comebacks. While I wanted nothing more than to lose myself in our connection, I didn’t want the emotional one to suffer because we were too afraid—or too distracted—to talk.

“I want you to know that I’m not just interested in a fling with you.

I know we talked about how this felt different, but I also know how guarded you can be sometimes.

I’m laying my cards on the table. I want a relationship with you.

” She opened her mouth to respond, but I put my fingers over her mouth so I could finish.

“While he wasn’t exactly thrilled about finding out about us at first, I told Jay the same thing.

You aren’t a distraction in a new town; you’re the reason I want to stay. ”

“He’s not mad?” she asked, her gaze trained on where her fingers played with my chest hair. Crooking a finger, I tilted her chin so she’d look at me.

“Jay is gonna have plenty of distractions on his plate here soon. He’s the one who encouraged me to go after you when I told him how I feel about you.” And provided the interference so I could escape our mother and having to explain why my date had run away from the family barbecue.

“I don’t want to cause problems with your family. I know how important they are to you,” she murmured, averting her eyes.

“Rhey, sweetheart…” She tried to pull away, but I banded my arms around her back, pulling her further into my chest. “You’re important to me, too. And while it might be a little awkward for a while, I still want you to meet my family.”

“Do they—”

Cutting her off with my mouth, I captured her lips, kissing her until we were both breathless. “Reid is the only one besides my dumbass brother who knows what happened.”

Rhey’s body relaxed in my hold as I kissed her again, her anxiety melting with each pass of my lips. When we finally came up for air, she still looked worried, but there was some relief lingering in her gaze.

“It’s gonna be so awkward when I meet them,” she whined, burying her face in my chest. I combed my fingers through her hair, enjoying the way she burrowed closer with each caress .

“No, it’s not. Because they never need to know. You gave me the impression that you and Jay kept things discreet as far as my family was involved, so unless you feel the need to tell them, I won’t say a word. And I’ll make sure my ding dong brother doesn’t either.”

“Are you sure it’s not too much?” she asked, shifting back so she could look into my eyes.

“While you are a lot,” I teased, tickling her side when she tried to escape. “You’re definitely not too much. Not for me. Leaving you isn’t in my plan; I can tell you that much.”

“Sometimes plans change,” she whispered, her eyelashes fluttering as a tear streaked down her cheek.

She sniffled, reaching up to wipe away another tear, and my heart broke as she finally let me see through the mask she tried to hide behind.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I whispered. She’d heard enough of my trauma and helped me cope with it, and I wanted her to trust me enough to do the same for her.

“You don’t want to hear ab—”

I blanketed my body over hers as I rolled her onto her back, staring into her eyes. “Don’t blow off your own feelings. Because I absolutely want you to talk to me. I want to hear your stories, even if they’re hard. I want to know you, Rhey. The real you. Not the one you try to hide behind.”

“I don’t even know where to start,” she whispered as she wrapped her arms around my neck, her fingers lingering as they traced the outline of my scars. While I’d thought they were disgusting a few months ago, and no woman would want a broken man, she never hesitated to touch me.

“What happened to your parents?” She’d told me about living with her grandmother, but other than Jay’s veiled comments about her losing people, she’d never talked about them.

She shifted beneath me, turning her body to face away from mine, but she was quick to tug me closer, so I curled around her back, my lips against her shoulder as she began to talk.

“I was twelve when they died. And to be honest, when I had to leave behind my life and move here to live with my grandmother, I hated them. I hated they left us…” her voice trailed off in a broken whisper as she sniffled.

“And I hated I had to be strong for Reese, because she fell apart once they were gone.”

While she sounded sad, her voice was clearer as she talked about growing up in a big city, and how it’d seemed like she had the perfect parents and the perfect life…

until she didn’t. She broke down again as she talked about the accident, and how their grandmother had shown up in the middle of the night with the police.

About Reese’s panic attacks and how she pushed down her own grief to be strong for her sister as they tried to fit into a small town where they didn’t know anyone.

She told me stories about a younger Baker and briefly skimmed over how she dated my brother before they left for college.

I chimed in with sarcastic comments about how much of a dumbass he’d been at eighteen and she just laughed as she told me things I knew he’d hate me knowing.

It should have been weird that he’d been with her for so long, but I could see how easy it would be to get caught up in something familiar when you were trying to protect your heart.

“It sounds like he was a good friend to you,” I whispered, my fingers toying with the towel covering her stomach. “So, I guess I don’t have to kill him for disrespecting you earlier. Even though I really want to.”

She rolled in my arms, her hand covering my cheek as she scooted up, so our faces were level. “I never once felt about him like I feel about you.”

“I can just cut off his airway a little, make him sweat,” I teased with a little growl, but she shook her head.

Her fingers tangled with mine as she slowly drew my hand to wrap around her throat. “If you’re cutting off anyone’s airway, it better be mine. ”

Shaking my head, I tried to resist the urge to squeeze, but her eyes lit up as I applied just a bit of pressure. “Feeling reckless again?”

“Well, someone did promise to make me forget my name,” she whispered, pulling the towel out from between us and throwing a leg over my hip.

She giggled as I pinned her to the bed, kissing her firmly before I slipped inside her warm body, doing my best to give her what she wanted.

While I knew things were still a bit complicated, as long as she was in my arms, the only detail that mattered was us being together.