Page 20 of The Rogue (Four Corners Ranch #11)

Rue was dead set on doing her polar plunge today. It was damned-ass cold today. The snow might still be in the mountains but in the morning

Justice’s breath was visible in the air and there was a bite to it that was impossible to ignore.

He was unimpressed. He also wasn’t letting her jump into freezing water by herself. Because it was stupid.

Now he kind of understood how she felt most of the time, and he was a little bit chagrined.

It was annoying when someone you cared so much about seemed bound and determined to do a bunch of weird shit.

So when she came out of her room around noon, layered up and determined, he intercepted her.

“I’m going to drive, in every way. Let’s go down to the watering hole.”

“Okay,” she said.

“How was the party last night?”

Her head whipped around quickly. “Which party?”

“Your girls’ night.”

She looked oddly guilty, and he didn’t know how to interpret that. “Oh, it was... good. Probably a good thing to get a

little bit of a soft intro back into seeing people.”

“So you just ate cheese and didn’t talk about Asher?”

“Oh. We talked about Asher.”

“Yeah?”

Her lips twisted. “Yeah. So you’re coming with me?”

“Yeah, we’ll drive my truck and keep it warm and running at the edge of the watering hole so that when you’re freezing little

ass gets out of the water you can scurry to safety.”

“I really do appreciate it.” She paused for a moment, then tried to look like she’d just had an idea. Subterfuge wasn’t Rue’s

strong point, and he knew for a fact that she’d thought about what she was going to say long before this moment. “You should

do it with me.”

Little ferret.

“Hard pass. So what did you talk about Asher?”

“Just... about him?”

He snorted. “Come on, Rue. I know there was more than that.”

“We just... talked about how he was... how we... I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s embarrassing.” Her face turned honest-to-God pink and he found himself morbidly curious because Rue never...

didn’t tell him things.

“You can tell me anything,” he said.

She cleared her throat. “I guess I can, but there are things we only tiptoe around, not jump right into.”

It hit him then. They’d been talking sex.

Sex with Asher. Her sex life. Sex.

In spite of himself, he wanted to know.

“Come on,” he said.

“It’s just... I’m realizing we didn’t have a great sex life, okay?”

So on top of making her feel bad about herself, on top of giving her a complex, he’d been shitty in bed? Well, that sucked.

He didn’t like that at all.

He also felt... he felt protective and weirdly like he wanted to fix it. His brain got stuck on that. He couldn’t figure

out what to do with that, couldn’t figure out how to move on from that.

Because he would do better for her.

Oh. No. Never. No.

“I should have hit him twice.” That seemed like a fair, true and neutral thing to say.

“I appreciate that,” she said. “Though I’m forced to take some of the blame for it.”

He frowned. “Why?”

‘Let’s just... go to the polar plunge.”

“No, hey. Tell me why you think it’s your fault.”

“I just... I don’t know. It’s me. I didn’t realize anything was missing. I didn’t realize my sex life was bad until Bix,

Arizona and Fia looked at me like I’d grown a second head when I said I wasn’t that into sex. I didn’t realize we were missing

something until Asher told me he had chemistry with a woman he didn’t even love that was better than what we had and now I’m

forced to conclude that something was off. If I didn’t know it was off it must be me.”

“That is dumber than wanting to jump into ice cold water.”

“How is it dumb? It makes perfect sense to me.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that. That’s not fair.”

“Well, I can take half the blame, right? He wasn’t in bed by himself.

Something is... there’s something broken in me, maybe.

When it comes to sex. I don’t know. Maybe it’s my grandma being so concerned with modesty.

Maybe it was my parents being so... I feel like whatever was happening with him, there’s something with me too. ”

“Do you want to fix it?” he asked.

“I don’t know! And I really don’t want to talk about it. I want to do my polar plunge.”

It was best to let this go. It just fucking was.

He hadn’t realized it until right then but his stomach was so tight he could barely breathe.

“Right, your crazy-ass polar plunge. What does this have to do with anything?”

“Because it’s a thing people do to like test their mettle and stuff, and I want to test mine.”

“I just don’t get why this specifically.”

“Because. Because it’s about doing something that I know will make me uncomfortable, and just committing to it anyway. Because

I’ve been safe for such a very long time, and now I want to...”

“Get hypothermia and die?”

This was more comfortable ground than sex, thank God.

“I do not want to get hypothermia and die. I want to try something different. Figure something else out. I just... I’m

uncomfortable right now. And this is kind of a metaphor for that. I have to submit to the discomfort in order to survive it.”

“Or, I could knock off the rest of the workday and we could sit down on the couch and watch one of your favorite movies.”

She looked suddenly hopeful. “We could watch 13 Going on 30 ?”

“We could. Thirty, flirty and thriving,” he quoted.

He knew the movie better than any man should. Because he’d watched it an untold amount of times with Rue over the years. He

didn’t hate it, he had to admit. Actually, he could admit just privately he kind of enjoyed a romantic comedy. Rue had shown

him that.

She made a harassed noise in the back of her throat. “But the problem is I’m thirty-two, I am in no way flirty and you could

argue that this is not thriving.”

“ I would argue that,” he said. “I would argue that wanting to jump into an icy pond is not thriving.”

Neither was having a bad sex life with the same man for eight years but he wasn’t going to say anything about that.

She stuck her chin up in the air, looking defiant now. “Support me on my journey or don’t, I can go by myself.”

“Like fucking hell,” he said.

“I need to do this,” she said. “So if you don’t want to be involved...”

Her eyes were full of mischief, and there was something else there. Something that he’d seen yesterday, just briefly, before

they’d gone down from the mountain.

It brought him back to that tightness in his gut.

To lines he’d drawn years ago. Lines he didn’t want to cross.

She got into the truck and he drove them down the short distance to the watering hole.

He had opted for the little spring at King’s Crest because he did not want her to parade her breakdown in front of everybody at Sullivan’s Lake.

And anyway, she had said that she didn’t want to encounter too many people right at the moment.

She seemed comfortable with him and his family, but there was no need to run the risk of running into other people.

He always got a feeling of unease in his gut when he came down here, though. It was part of the ranch, and he didn’t avoid

it. It didn’t make sense to avoid it. He lived here. He worked here. He made his life here. He might not revisit the exact

epicenter of his trauma, but he wasn’t going to avoid it like a little bitch either.

They were going to the watering hole anyway. They wouldn’t be pushing beyond that.

He pulled the truck up to the water, and just looking at it made his balls want to jump up inside his body.

“Yeah,” he said. “Looks great.”

True to his word, he left the truck running, and got out with her.

“Come on, Justice,” she said, cajoling. “You should do it with me.”

Just like that all the words just filtered out of his head. He couldn’t think of any intelligent thing to say, because he

had gotten snagged on what she’d just said. She unzipped her jacket and shrugged it off her shoulders. Then she gripped the hem of her long-sleeved shirt

and pulled it up over her head, exposing her bare stomach, and revealing a very small bikini top that gave him a view of her

breasts he wasn’t sure he’d ever had. Typically, she dressed pretty covered-up.

“I got this for my honeymoon,” she said, grimacing. Then she pushed her pants down her legs, and he found the bottom of the swimsuit to be as equally brief as the top.

Do it with me.

Was he in middle school? What was the matter with him?

Why was he standing there staring at his friend’s bare skin? Why did he suddenly have the urge to put his hands back on her

thighs. Why did he suddenly want to make sure she knew that she was beautiful?

To make sure she knew sex didn’t have to be disappointing.

No. Nope. That fell outside of his purview. That was not a friendship task. There were caregiving tasks that fit very comfortably

within the borders of friendship. That was not fucking one of them.

“Come on,” she said. “Are you really going to make me do this alone?”

He wasn’t compelled by the dare. Whether or not she would think he was. He wasn’t compelled by the challenge in her voice.

It was just her. Which was how he found himself shrugging his coat off and then stripping his shirt off. “I don’t have swim

trunks on.”

This was a mistake.

Her eyes went round. Well, she’d made her bed so she could lie in it. He undid his belt buckle and kicked his boots off, pushing

his jeans down his thighs and leaving himself wearing only his black boxer briefs.

Everything slowed down.

She looked at him. Really looked. From his face, down to his chest, his stomach. He watched her eyes skim quickly over his package, and to his thighs, then with an almost panicked speed, go back to his face.

He felt it.

Dammit to hell, he felt it.

When she looked at him like that it was difficult. And she probably didn’t even know how she had looked at him. But he had

seen a curiosity in her eyes that wasn’t going to lead anywhere good.

Would you rather she looked at some other man that way?

That was a shitty thought. And an intrusive one.