Page 31 of The Rogue (Four Corners Ranch #11)

He was shaking. He was so hard it hurt. His whole body was on high alert, everything in him pushed to the brink.

He had known that he was lost the moment he had led her out to the campfire. Hell, he had tempted it. He had told himself

it was to prove they were all right. That without the bar, without her tight dress, without the alcohol, things would be like

they’d been before.

And this was where it had gotten them.

He had known that he was lost when she had looked up at him and whispered his name.

You made a huge mistake.

He had.

He was no stranger to mistakes.

He made mistakes with people.

With feelings.

He followed the wrong instincts.

He’d done it now. It was too late to turn back.

He’d known it was a risk, so had she. Still, they’d lingered. Lingered until they were alone, tempting this inevitability.

Looking at her standing there, illuminated by all the glimmering string lights, there hadn’t been another choice. He’d had to kiss her. Because he’d never seen anyone or anything more beautiful than Ruby Matthews in that moment.

She was right. It would never be nothing.

He could also never go back to pretending he didn’t see this. To pretending he didn’t see her . It was impossible.

Equally impossible was taking her against the side of the barn where anybody could walk in. Equally impossible was taking

her, his friend , who’d confided in him that her experience of sex had been lackluster so far, in a way that would satisfy his base lust,

and little else.

“Well... that really sucks,” she said.

“What?”

“That this was so... good.”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“It could’ve been bad.”

He huffed a laugh. “Did you think it would be?”

“I tried not to think about it. Until tonight.”

“Bullshit,” he snorted, “you thought about it before tonight.”

“I did,” she said. “But I didn’t let myself really imagine it until tonight, you know?”

If only he didn’t. “Yeah. I do.”

“I haven’t been keeping this a secret. It’s not like I’ve been secretly waiting to jump you,” she said. “I made a decision.

When we were teenagers. That this wasn’t you and me, not when I needed us to be us .”

He nodded slowly, looking straight ahead. “So did I, Rue.”

She looked away, her cheeks turning pink. “We chose the same path.”

“Yeah. We did. And it was a choice. Because with hormones and everything. I never was as close to another girl as I was you. We could’ve been the Fia

Sullivan and Landry King of our grade.”

“And no thank you,” she said.

“A big no fucking thank you . I didn’t want the drama.”

“Me either.”

It wasn’t that simple. He and Rue had never been drama. But they had been sure. Certain. They had been and he hadn’t wanted

to do anything to disrupt that. They trusted each other. And introducing anything else into the mix had seemed like a bad

bet. Especially then. Especially when they’d been young.

“I wasn’t ready for sex,” she said. “Back then.”

“I probably wasn’t either. But I ran out and had it so that... I didn’t want my hormones fucking with you and me, okay?

The minute I started looking at you differently I did something about it.” The words sat uneasy inside him, like they were

a lie. But they couldn’t be.

“What?”

“I just thought it was the better choice.”

“You had sex with somebody because you wanted me ?”

“It’s not that simple. I had sex with somebody else because I could feel myself beginning to be attracted to you.

I wanted to firmly remind myself which camp you were in.

Our friendship survived so much already.

I didn’t want it to collapse because you were beginning to become a woman and I was becoming a man, and that was changing things.

It used to be comfortable for us to sit together in the barn, with our heads together.

And then it wasn’t. It used to be comfortable for us to hold each other when it was cold, and then it wasn’t. You know what changed.”

“I got boobs?”

“Yeah, that’s what I would’ve said when I was fifteen, but we know now it’s a little more complicated than that. Our bodies

started to recognize how we could fit together. We both decided not to take that path, so don’t be wounded about it.”

“I can be wounded about it if I want,” she said, sounding angry.

“You chose something different too. You chose Asher.”

“Yeah. I did.” She was silent for a moment. “I really don’t want to mess us up,” she said. “But I realized earlier tonight

that the ship kind of already sailed.”

“Yeah, it did.”

“Because this is the thing, isn’t it? Acknowledging that it exists. That we... that we have chemistry.”

“I’ve always been honest with you,” he said. “And I didn’t want to stop... being honest with you now but it would have

been easier. You know I have always admired the way that you did the right thing. The way that you’ve always been so measured

and sweet. Why the hell couldn’t you stay that way?”

“It is me, isn’t it? I jostled myself out of the position we were both used to me being in. I wanted something different.

It turned everything on its head.”

“It did that.”

“When you think about it,” she said, “it actually makes sense. Because we’ve been a lot of things to each other. And we tried to be rational and reasonable at the beginning of all this.”

“The beginning of what? We just established that this actually started a long time ago,” he said, looking out his windshield

at where the headlights fell on the road. Where they bled up the sides of the pine trees.

“Right. But we put it in its place. Now it’s bubbling up because of what happened with Asher. And you’ve always been there

for me, Justice, and I think it makes sense.”

She let out a slow breath, and continued. “Fia said something to me at our girls’ night. She said I probably needed to be

with someone I trusted. In order to get out of my own head. I realize I never actually trusted Asher to the degree that I

thought I did. I wanted Asher to be my husband. I was desperate to shoehorn him into a husband-shaped mold, because there

was something easy about him. There was something easy about the two of us together. But I wasn’t in love with him. Of all

the issues that I had since the wedding got called off, heartbreak really hasn’t been one of them. Disappointment, yes. Profound

disappointment. But about the life that I thought I was going to have, not about the man who wasn’t going to share it with

me. Because he was never the one that I trusted. He was the guy I had to keep control with, even during sex. You... I trust

you.”

“So you think that you want to do this.”

“I never canceled my room at that resort. I never got to go on any nice holidays when I was a kid and I really haven’t done

it as an adult and I thought I deserved it. You should come with me.”

“I don’t know...”

“It’s a week. Away from here. It won’t be at your house, it won’t be at King’s Crest. Nobody has to know. I wouldn’t want

anyone to know.”

“Because it embarrasses you?”

She shook her head. “No. Because everybody already has opinions about us, and you know that.”

He laughed then, maybe to dispel some of the tension that was gathering in his chest, or maybe because it was funny. “You

don’t want to admit that they were right. That we couldn’t not have sex.”

“That’s half of it. Probably actually a full half.”

“For me too,” he said, because hell, why lie?

“The other part is I just don’t want anyone else to make comments or have opinions in general. I want for us to be able to

figure this out, you and me. Because that’s what we do. This is a part of myself that I need help with. And I...”

“You have to want me,” he said. “It can’t just be about wanting to feel attractive. It can’t just be about you thinking I

know what I’m doing. You said it earlier. It’s never going to be nothing, because it’s us.”

Few things scared him. At least at this point. A little PTSD here and there, sure, but he was a man who had lived a lot and

done a lot of things. Certainly when it came to sex it didn’t feel like there were a lot of novelties left in the world. But

she was his friend, and much more than a novelty. She was the most important person in his life. And she was trusting him

with her body.

More than that, it was like someone had delivered a fantasy so forbidden, so secret that he had never even let himself acknowledge

the desire existed inside of him.

Now that he had the idea introduced to him he didn’t want anything else. Didn’t want anyone else.

No woman had ever been forbidden to him. No woman except for Ruby.

That was making him feel a lot of things. Most of them illicit. But he needed to hear her say it. He needed this to be more

than just her looking to feel good about herself. He didn’t know why the hell he needed that. He had plenty of sex he didn’t

interrogate. But she was different. He knew her. He cared about her. And that would always make her singular.

“I do want you,” she said. “I’ve been trying... I’ve been trying not to. But it isn’t working. There’s a reason that when

I got drunk I flung myself right at you. Because that was when I forgot. I forgot why I wasn’t supposed to say that to you.

I forgot why it was a bad idea. And that’s just part of the whole thing. I want you to show me. I want you to show me what

it can be like when it’s good. Because I know that with us it would be.”

“You expect me to go inside,” he said, pulling up to the house and killing the engine, “and go to bed having just had this

conversation with you?”

He could see her pulse throbbing at the base of her neck, even in the low light of the truck, and he knew that if he leaned

in and kissed it, he would have her naked in seconds.

“I just think we need rules,” she said.

“That’s one thing you’re gonna have to learn,” he said. “Sex needs less rules than you’ve been applying to it.”