Page 10 of The Rogue (Four Corners Ranch #11)

to marry him in the first place. She ground her back teeth together and opened up the bedroom door. She heard footsteps, and

then she made her way into the kitchen, where she saw Justice, shirtless and wearing low-slung jeans and no shoes, taking

the carafe off the coffeemaker and holding it beneath the spigot.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Nothing is good,” she said.

“Okay. How awful is today?”

He turned around, and she was struck by how gorgeous he looked. Because she looked hideous. It suddenly felt all the more

notable that he never did. Whether he was hung over or coming off of punching her ex-fiancé in the face, Justice King was

a glorious sight. His shoulders were broad, his chest well-muscled; the golden hair sprinkled over those muscles looked...

textured. It made her fingertips itch a little bit, and she couldn’t really say why. He looked a bit sleepy eyed, and that

was completely different to the swollen pig eyes she was currently sporting. That heavy, hooded blue gaze looked more like

a woman had just rolled over in bed to the sight of him staring at her.

Justice was a lethal weapon.

His rage yesterday on her behalf had been... It had been the nicest, most amazing thing anyone had ever done for her. She

really did think he might’ve happily risked prison. It touched her in a way that it maybe shouldn’t.

“This is a really sucky day,” she said, stomping deliberately over to the dining table and plunking down hard. The living

area and the dining room and the kitchen of his place were actually pretty nice. Partly because she had helped him put everything

together. His bedroom was decent too, owing to the fact that he had told her what he really wanted was a decent place to bring

women back to. She had helped him with his dark wood furniture, and his very plush bedding. He clearly had not transferred

the lesson over to his guest room. But then, she supposed women didn’t sleep in his guest room.

“I know, Rue.” He started brewing the coffee, and then he opened up his fridge. “Yogurt?”

“Yes,” she sniffed. He got out plain yogurt, granola, sliced strawberries and honey, and proceeded to make a bowl that looked

a lot like what she often had for breakfast.

“Do you just have all this on hand?”

“I went to the store after you went to sleep,” he said.

Which meant he had driven back to Mapleton. He was just so... He was so good to her.

“Thank you.”

“You really need somebody right now.”

“Yeah. I do. I... I don’t even know what to say. I don’t know what to make of any of this.”

“It sucks. But, I’ll take you back home today, and you can figure it out.”

“I guess I have to. Nobody’s going to do it for me.”

“I’ll give an assist,” he said.

She ate, and drank some coffee, and was disappointed to discover it didn’t actually make her feel more human. But then she

got into Justice’s truck, and they drove a few minutes to her house.

“It occurs to me that my car is in Mapleton,” she said.

“No. We took care of that too. Bix drove it back.”

“Where did she get a key?”

“I find it best not to ask questions where Bix is concerned. Because either she hot-wired it or she lifted your key off you

at some point. Either way, she managed to get it back.”

“Well... tell her thank you,” she said.

“Believe me. I already did.”

“This is the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened. I got left at the altar, and everybody knows. I have like a hundred

texts from people asking if I’m okay. And... no. I’m not okay. I don’t know how I could ever be expected to be okay. It’s...

it’s awful. My life is... nothing that I thought it was twenty-four hours ago. I was getting ready to get married yesterday

morning. And now... the inside of my mouth tastes like a musty old carpet, and I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“A toothbrush might help with your mouth. As for the rest... I don’t really know what I’m doing either.”

They pulled up to the house, and she saw her car parked in the driveway. That at least felt sane.

They walked up to the front of the house, and she noticed a yellow paper on the door. And then, she noticed that there were padlocks on the doorknob.

“What is this?”

“The hell?” Justice grabbed the paper and tore it off the door. “It’s a notice of foreclosure. And property seizure.”

“What?”

“Yeah. It says... it says that because of the failure to pay on a loan taken out by David and Mary Matthews, as cosigned

by Nina Hallstrom, the property is being seized by this company.”

“What?”

“Did you know that this had been put up as collateral?”

“No, I had no idea. But we never... I guess we never transferred the paperwork. I’ve just been paying the payments.”

“I don’t know that it would’ve mattered. I doubt you would’ve been able to transfer ownership because it was tied up as collateral

for this. I don’t think your grandmother would’ve been able to... Did she ask you not to go and change anything?”

“Yes. She mentioned that the terms that she had were so good and nothing was ever going to be able to be that good so...”

“Because of this. And she probably didn’t want to tell you because... she had loaned money to your parents. She cosigned

for them.”

“What was she thinking?” She was still in shock, not able to fully process the implications of any of this. Because how was this possible? How was it possible that all of these things in her life were unraveling all at the same time? “I can’t get in to get my things...”

“Well, fuck that.”

Justice butted his shoulder up to the door and elbowed it hard as he jerked the handle. She could hear the lock break as the

door pushed open.

“Justice!”

“What. Don’t you want into your own house to get your own things?”

“Well, yes,” she said.

“Then don’t wait for the locked door to open up on its own.”

How was it possible that she was reduced to breaking into her own house? She had never done a shady thing in her entire life

and here she was sneaking out of churches and sneaking into her home. Here she was, dealing with the fallout of a broken wedding,

and her, with her eternally answered text messages, now permanently broken apart by this canceled wedding, completely frozen

and unable to respond. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t the life she had invested in. That was for sure.

“Pack a bag.”

“I...”

“Some suitcases, even. We’ll go back to my place.”

“I can stay at the yarn store...”

“No,” he said. “You’re not staying at the yarn store. I’m going to pack your bed up and put it in the back of my truck. In

fact, we’ll pack up as much as we can, and we’ll take it to my house.”

“What then?” she asked.

“We’re going to have to try to get ahold of the bank,” he said. “Sort all this out. See what we need to do. But the point is, you’re not going to be without shelter. You’re going to come and live with me.”

“Justice, I’d—”

“Ruby Matthews, you listen to me. If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have passed high school. It wasn’t for you, I probably wouldn’t

have even made it out of elementary school. You taught me to read. You paid attention to me. You listened to me. You took

care of me. You were the one that was always there. You’ve always been there. And I will be damned if I don’t show up for

you.”

Her breathing was shallow, her heart thundering. She was pretty sure she was in shock, because it was really the only way

to explain why she hadn’t completely lost it at this point. But one thing that felt very important right then was that she

tell him this. She put her hand on his forearm. “Justice, you’ve always been there for me. It’s not uneven. This... this

has been above and beyond.”

“No, it’s not. There’s no such thing.”

He was truly the most important person in her life. Her touchstone. Especially now. He was everything. And right then, she

really felt it. Because her attempt at expanding herself hadn’t done a damn thing.

Working on autopilot, she gathered her clothes. Gathered her favorite kitchen gadgets. Left her living room furniture. Justice

had efficiently lifted her bed and her other bedroom furniture out of the space and put them in his truck. She folded up her

very lovely sheets.

“Am I really going to lose this house?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. I hope that we can figure something out. But until then, I’m just going to make sure that you’re as comfortable as possible.”

“This is surreal,” she said.

“Yeah. I know. I’m sorry.”

When he said sorry it meant something. Unlike when Asher had said it.

He hadn’t even done anything wrong. He had done all the things right. As a friend, he was unparalleled. It was very obvious

to her in that moment, though, exactly where her support system was. And where it wasn’t.

Because somehow her parents, their issues and all their unresolved baggage had just come home to roost. In spite of the fact

that she hadn’t spoken to them for all this time.

So all she did was pack up her life. Her neatly ordered life. The one that had been perfect two days ago.

She realized she was still wearing that necklace.

She reached beneath the sweatshirt she had on and touched it. Was this what it felt like? Leaving everything behind and moving

to a new home? Did it feel more like an end than a beginning? Back then when you hadn’t been able to look up pictures of the

place you were going, hadn’t been able to get all kinds of information at your fingertips? Or had his ancestor been excited.

Had she chosen it? Or was she just being dragged around by the whims of men? Because that was a whole lot of what Rue felt

like.

When Justice reappeared she released her hold on the necklace and tried to look... together. Because she had been dissolved in his presence for a while now, and that really wasn’t their dynamic. She was usually put together. But she just didn’t feel put together right now.

She didn’t feel like herself. It was the most disorienting, insane situation she had ever been in.

Feeling dazed, she walked outside.

“What do you think she’s like?”

Justice was just closing the bed of his truck. “Excuse me?”

“The woman. The one that Asher slept with. She was deployed with him. That means she was in the military. What do you suppose

a woman like that is...? What is she offering him that I’m not? What...? If he loved me then why did sex make him

forget that? Why did it seem so important?”

“I don’t understand the question, Rue.”

“Well, I don’t understand any of it. I don’t understand how he lost his sense of us.”

“Sex makes you crazy sometimes. And I’m not excusing him. Not at all. It’s just... you know.”

“I don’t,” she said. “I’m completely dumbfounded. I had sex with him for eight years. And only him. I mean, he’s the only

man I’ve ever had sex with.”

Justice’s face went rigid. But she kept talking.

“Nothing about the sex we had was enough to make me lose my mind. Not ever. I was always firmly contained within myself. So

what is that? How was he able to be so different with somebody else? Is that where I failed him? Because he said it wasn’t,

but it sounds like it was different, it sounds like...”

“I don’t know,” he said. “As far as what the hell he was thinking, I don’t. But I do know that men are really good at making up stories that allow them to get laid when they feel like it. So who knows, Rue, maybe she was a siren. Maybe she didn’t have a gag reflex.”

“What does that mean?”

Justice looked... pained. “Maybe she didn’t... Maybe she didn’t gag when she...”

“What?”

Justice’s face was now a mask of regret. “When she gave him a blowjob.”

Rue frowned. “I never gagged when I gave him one.”

Justice winced, opened his mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again. “I... have follow-up questions. But I’m not going

to ask them. Listen, whatever the story, it doesn’t really matter. Because it isn’t about you. And I don’t even know that

it’s about her. It’s about him. He made the decision. End of story. Because yeah. The desire to get off can be all-consuming.

But it doesn’t make you forget the person that you love. At least I’m pretty sure. I’ve never been in love. I’ve never cheated

on anybody. Because I’ve never set myself up to be in that kind of situation.”

“Neither have I. I loved him. I never even let myself consider getting close enough to somebody else to do that. I don’t understand

how he could do it to me.”

The words were broken; she felt broken. She felt ignorant and small and naive. She had never even imagined that he might cheat

on her, and she had grown up in the kind of environment where people acted like that. Where they lost their minds over sex.

Where satisfaction and jealousy and all of those kinds of things made her parents act unhinged. And they were clearly still

unhinged.

“Are you okay to drive?”

“Yeah,” she said.

She wasn’t sure that it was true. But she got behind the wheel of her car all the same and followed Justice back to King’s

Crest. When they got there, he got out of his truck as she exited her car. “I told everybody.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. I told them not to make you tell the story. So that should just be handled.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re going to make it through this. We’ll figure it out.”

“I had the next three weeks off,” she said. “For the honeymoon. All my shifts are covered.”

They had planned on spending their wedding night at a B&B in Copper Ridge, then they were supposed to be spending two weeks

fixing her house up. Making it theirs. And then they planned to go to the most beautiful resort she’d ever seen, with a spa

and mountain views. A suite with a fireplace and a private hot tub.

It had been her perfect getaway. Nothing like she’d ever had as a child.

And nothing she would have now either, so great.

“Good. Take the time off. Let’s figure out the house thing. Let’s figure out all the things.”

“You don’t have to help me. I have the time. I just... Thank you for giving me the space. Because if I had to worry about

where I was going to sleep on top of everything else I really don’t know how I was going to...”

Her entire life had imploded. That realization hit her in a wave. Her entire life had just caved in on her.

“Well, in honor of the fact that you don’t have anything going for a little bit, I say we go out and have some fun this week.”

“What?”

“Hey,” he said. “You’re not living like you right now. Maybe you should live like me.”