Charged

“For the record”—I lifted an eyebrow at him and used my body to squeeze him where we were still connected on the inside— “I’m always going to jump and think the risk is worth it. That’s part of who I am.”

I couldn’t tell by his expression if he agreed with me or not about the risk, but when I mentioned that I was on the pill and had gotten myself checked out as soon as I realized how deep into his addiction Jared was, his head jerked up and he seemed a whole lot more interested in the different kinds of risks we could take that involved having no kind of protection between us at all.

CHAPTER 14

Quaid

I was surprised how easily I slipped back into the role of the guy that knew how to do without and how to make the most out of very little. The two days spent in the tiny cabin with nothing more than a roaring fire and Avett for entertainment were some of the most peaceful, relaxing, recharging days I’d had in … I couldn’t remember how long. I thought she was the one that needed escape from the commotion of her life but it turned out I was the one that really benefited from the forced unplugging and isolation. The quiet used to haunt me and taunt me with the emptiness and memories; now it soothed all kinds of ragged edges that I thought I had ruthlessly polished off. Plus, the way my name sounded when Avett screamed it or whispered it was so much better with nothing around for it to get lost in.

I felt like two parts of my soul that had always been ripped apart were slowly being stitched back together, but Avett seemed no different than she was deep in the heart of the city. She went fishing with me without complaint and didn’t even balk when we had to clean and cook our own dinner. She tromped through the woods with me, her pink hair getting tangled with pine needles and bark as the trees reached out to touch her like I felt compelled to do. I took her out to the makeshift firing range that had been an integral part of my youth and was shocked and, admittedly, impressed that she handled my firearm almost as well as I did. She laughed and told me that when you were the daughter of a badass, things like spot-on aim and not being squeamish at the sight of blood came with the territory. The only thing she complained about was having to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and it wasn’t even that she had to use the rickety outhouse; it was the fact that she was afraid of mountain lions and bears that made her grumble. All we had with us was what we packed into the backpacks the Ducati forced us to use and still she didn’t seem to be missing a thing. She was content with me and the woods for company and that did something fundamental to all the truths I had been holding up as my reality for so long.

I wanted possessions to matter because I’d had so few of them growing up. I wanted stuff to make me important and to fill all the empty voids my childhood, the fallout with my folks, and the sham of my marriage had left in my life. I wanted to have so many things and obvious material objects so that no one could ever doubt my success or my worth because I lived in a constant state of fear that someone, like my ex-wife, would decide I wasn’t enough. I was smart enough to know it was a deep-rooted fear that came from growing with parents that were more interested in teaching me how to survive than they were in teaching me how to love or how to be a good man. Because I wanted an education, because I wanted a way out, because I wanted more than they thought I needed, they always considered me the weakest member of the family. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t resilient enough. I wasn’t solid enough or brave enough to be the man they wanted me to be. So I chased after a girl that I knew would never settle for the kind of life I came from. I threw myself into a fight for a government my family abjectly disapproved of. I went into a career that was all about rules and order and I took up on the side that was guaranteed to put me in the press and in the crosshairs of ethics and morality. And I got the stuff. Submerged myself in the things because I had something to prove.

Only now, I wasn’t sure who in the hell I was trying to prove any of it to.

The girl that currently had every single piece of me tied in knots and broken me down to my most basic, my most pure self, apparently didn’t care about any of the shiny and opulent things I was surrounded with. She was happy with me wherever I happened to be, so there was no need to kill myself trying to show her the finer things in life.

My parents hadn’t bothered to reach out to me since I let them know I bought back their land for them, and even then, other than to let me know that they weren’t coming back to the lower forty-eight. Harrison and I used to be close, but when he left and my parents followed, I lumped them all into the category of what was. I never gave my little brother the benefit of the doubt. He might not know about my marriage ending, but I didn’t have a single clue what he was up to, and how his life was going either. I felt like my folks abandoned me, but I’d never done anything to bridge the gap as I got older and maybe not so wiser.

If Lottie had been impressed, maybe she wouldn’t have cheated or been so callous about how she treated the life we built together. I’d wanted to give her everything, and had tried, but there was always more, so I knew that no matter how much I worked or spent I was never going to have her look at me like I had done a good job. To her, I was always going to be the kid from nothing, doing his best to hold on to the girl that was out of his league.

There was Orsen and the guys at the firm. I worked my ass off, took cases other lawyers were scared of, and I won far more often than I lost. I made them money. I fit the mold that was set out for me to crawl right into when I was hired, and I did it all with determination and my eyes set firmly on the big picture. But the reality of the situation was that no matter how nice my home was or how expensive my suits were, they still hadn’t made me a partner, and I had more than earned the right to have my name on the sign. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t have an Ivy League law degree like the rest of the partners did, or if it was because my messy divorce had made the news, or if it was simply that they knew underneath the veneer I was a guy playing at being civilized and refined. I wondered if those jagged edges that were so apparent here in the wild and with this girl were blatantly obvious to people that hadn’t been born with them. I wondered if who I had been born to be was keeping me from being the man I was so sure I wanted to be.