Chapter 12

April awoke having no idea where she was. She lay blinking at her own bedroom ceiling while the morning sun poured through her open window and a puff of wind ruffled the sheers.

Brandon haunted her, even in dreams.

She swept the tangled sheets aside and sat at the edge of her bed. A stuffed unicorn that her niece, Lexie, had given her as a birthday gift gazed mutely from the bookshelf. More stuffed animals littered the bed—a bear and two kitties, all with jaunty bowties. A unicorn poster from April’s middle-school years hung opposite the closet.

A wave of embarrassment crashed over her. No one her age had kiddie crap in their room. Why had it taken her so long to see it? April sprang up, ran to the kitchen and then returned with a cardboard box.

She tore down that stupid poster without bothering to remove the tacks. Now there were bits of paper stuck to her wall. But Lexie’s unicorn and the other stuffed animals she boxed up and put in the attic. One of the great blessings of never bringing home any men was that fewer people knew what a dork she was. Jacey had hung out in her room, of course, but she already knew the awful truth and didn’t care.

Since it was Saturday and there was no rush, April took a long shower, brewed some coffee and then went to work in the backyard. A nest of baby sparrows cheeped from the eaves of her carport. She sat on the kitchen steps and repotted geraniums. The spicy, lemony smell drifted up, reminding her that life went on no matter what your problems were. These were the things that were real. The sun beating down on your head. The red geraniums. The dark, loamy smell of the soil. Had she forgotten how good it felt to get her hands dirty?

And she was doing a great job of not thinking about Brandon, despite the dreams that stuck in her mind like cobwebs.

“Not going there,” she mumbled to herself. “Not going there. Not going…”

A sly thought crept in that maybe the purging of her bedroom had more to do with Brandon than she was willing to admit. But that was ridiculous. She’d just seen it through different eyes was all, like she had with her old wardrobe. These tiny improvements were all a part of the new new April.

She went inside for a glass of water. The minute she opened the door, a bird flew into her kitchen.

The poor thing was terrified, wings flapping, feathers raining down in a storm of white. April’s heart pounded as she watched its horrible distress. It lit on top of the ladder and then the spice rack. It flew toward the window above the kitchen sink, switching directions at the last second when it realized escape was impossible.

April stood frozen in the doorway. The bird’s beak was open as if it were panting. Even though she kept the door wide open, the creature was too panicked to see the way out.

She grabbed a towel out of the bathroom and stalked the prisoner. Every time she threw the towel over its tiny flailing body, the bird managed to get away. After half a dozen clumsy attempts, she finally seized the thing and carried it, squirming, to the backyard. The minute she unwrapped it, the bird flew away.

April sat on the steps, shaken. She’d never been that close to a wild bird before and hadn’t expected to feel everything it felt—panic, confusion, a desperate need to be free. She would never forget those overbright eyes and the sound of wings flapping. It had all happened so fast and now it was gone.

But her kitchen was a mess. She stood, trying to think where the broom was so she could clean it. But as she turned to go up the steps, she heard the low rumble of a Harley.

April clutched the towel against her chest as if it might save her. She knew the Harley was Brandon’s, and she knew why he had come. In a way, she had always known. They were connected. She could feel him thinking about her, just as he could feel her thinking about him.

This train’s got no brakes on it, April. And the harder you fight it, the faster it’s going to roll.

There was still a part of her that resisted. She had to.

Brandon angled the hog up her driveway with that little crook to his mouth and a cool, assessing gleam in his eyes. He clearly knew that he had a fight on his hands. And she knew that he would win by patiently wearing her down. When she saw him, her heart beat frantically, like the wings of that bird. It tore around inside her chest, looking for a way out.

He turned off the ignition, just as he had in front of Matthew’s school, so they could talk without yelling. “You ready?”

There was amusement in his deep voice, probably because he already knew she was coming with him. It made her feel oddly vulnerable. She glanced around to see who was watching. On this side of the house, they were safe from the prying eyes of Mrs. Felps, but the distinctive growl of a Harley could wake the dead.

“You know I can’t,” she said tonelessly.

“The bridge at the bottom of Dry Gulch Road,” he said. “Drive your car there and park it. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Please.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “There’s no point in starting something. We know that. And we both know how badly it will end.”

“Do we?” Brandon lanced her with his all-seeing, hundred-proof gaze. He didn’t look quite so amused now. “My friend Long Jon is meeting us at the track. He’s there with Matthew. The way I figure, with the four of us all together, it won’t seem quite so…” He smiled his unholy smile. “Suspicious.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” April said. Even from the safety of the stairs, she could feel how unescapably he pulled her in. Something blisteringly hot moved through her. She’d never felt anything like it before. It made her weak. How could you want someone this badly and not have it tear your guts out and leave you for dead?

“Think you can get there in fifteen minutes?” he asked.

“I’m not going,” she replied.

“Fifteen minutes,” he repeated as though he hadn’t heard her, as though he weren’t asking her to gamble her life away on a roll of the dice. “Don’t wear a dress.”

Brandon walked the bike backward to the street. The look he gave her before starting the engine was one she knew she would remember for the rest of her life. There was heat in it, but more than heat, there was the lazy confidence of a man who knew what he had to offer. Adventure. Danger. Lawlessness. Sex.

All she had to do was reach out and take it.

Her whole life she’d done the right thing. The safe one. She’d done it in an effort to avoid the mistakes of her sisters, sure, but she’d also done it to spare her parents the pain of seeing another daughter fall flat on her face. And maybe—just maybe—because she wanted to be the good daughter, the one they never had to worry about.

It had all brought her to this. And this had a strange sense of destiny to it, as though no matter how hard she fought and screamed, there was no getting away from this man who was fated to show her to herself. He had handed her a mirror and now it was impossible to avoid looking into it.

Brandon took off, the roar of his motorcycle receding into the distance. Her house seemed so small all of a sudden. Her life was so small.

She took a shaky breath and trudged back up the steps. Had she been faking all this time? Pretending to be good when, in fact, she was exactly as Brandon saw her—a sadly repressed, overly conscientious young woman in desperate need of a thrill?

April washed her hands at the kitchen sink. She went to her bedroom closet, pulled on a pair of jeans, boots, and a lightweight sweater. When she did look at herself in the full-length mirror, she recognized the reflection, but she didn’t recognize herself. She had no idea who this person was.

The whole time she kept telling herself she wasn’t doing this, even as she swiped her keys out of the loose change bowl in the kitchen, locked up and went to her car. She wasn’t somebody who risked everything she’d worked for, everything she believed in, just to feel a man’s scorching heat. It was some other woman who stabbed her key in the ignition, started the car and then drove to Dry Gulch Road, hands shaking, insides heaving, her entire understanding of herself and the world turned upside down.

She saw Brandon waiting for her on the Harley with that sleepy, mysterious smile that he used to get across ideas he was probably too lazy to put into words. Since Dry Gulch was a deserted farm road, they were the only ones there. He’d done that on purpose, of course. If her terms were absolute secrecy, Brandon was obviously okay with that. He was probably used to it.

Next to Brandon was the underpass of a small stone bridge that had been in Cuervo since its cattle-driving days. There had been a creek here once, long since dried up, which was now blanketed in wildflowers. Red-and-yellow Indian paintbrush nodded faintly in the breeze. Purple phlox made a mass of color on the sun-covered slope of the old bridge. Even a few yellow sunflowers had raised their heavy, graceful heads. April stared at it as though she’d never seen it before

She parked her car in a small clearing and sat with her heart booming, her ears ringing, her hands gripping the wheel. Somewhere deep inside her brain was the idea that she would turn the car around and go home. But then she watched herself get out and pocket the keys. The air smelled of warm earth. Insects whirred from the tall dried grasses that grew beside the road. She was walking toward him now, toward her deliverance and damnation.

Brandon reached into one of the saddlebags on his Harley and pulled out a shiny black helmet. He didn’t seem at all surprised that she’d come.

“With Doak being your dad and all, I figure you’ve been on a bike before,” he told her, “but have you been on a Harley?”

She didn’t want to admit the truth. Brandon already had too many advantages over her. “You have buddy pegs,” she said. “It can’t be that difficult.”

He grinned, all dazzling white teeth, his hands slack on the handlebars. Oh, you’re just loving this, aren’t you? she thought.

April took the helmet, fastened it under her chin and then she slid in behind him. The very act of keeping her thighs open and molding her body to his seemed like the darkest part of sin. Electric shocks flew across the surface of her skin where it made contact with his warm, muscular back. The insides of her thighs tingled. The tips of her breasts ached.

But it was the smell of his leather jacket, the heat of his body, his intoxicating maleness that made her bite down fiercely on her impulse to run.

After she locked the heels of her boots on the buddy pegs and her arms around his flat hard stomach, Brandon took off. Accompanied by the feral growl of the open throttle, she, April Lynn Roby, officially looked and sounded like a badass. But she still felt as though she were moving through a dream—a dream where someone who resembled her exactly had this gorgeous man pressed up against her tender parts.

The roar of the wind, the thunder of the bike, the sharp blue of the skies, all of it combined to drown out the noise in her head. For the first time, she was free. Not just the lack of inhibitions a couple of beers might have given her, but complete immersion in the moment. Instead of watching the world flash by through the windshield of a car, she was experiencing every bit of that world, right as it happened.

I will always remember this. April held the thought close as she held Brandon closer. No matter what it cost her in the end, there would always be this ride. This bike. This man. This wild, joyful awakening. This sun. This road. This moment.

They passed only a few cars on the two-lane country highway to the motocross course. With a helmet on, April realized that no one knew who she was. Even Mrs. Woburn, the cashier from Strom Mart, who scowled disapprovingly at them from behind the wheel of her car, didn’t know who she was.

Brandon’s entire body radiated the power and mastery he had with the Harley. His dark hair streamed behind him, brushing against the windscreen of April’s helmet, as he guided her through the thick yellow syrup of the Texas afternoon. April yearned to take the helmet off so she could press her cheek against the wall of his back. She knew those thoughts were dangerous, but was too delirious to care.

From the moment she first saw Brandon stripped to the waist and working on that bike, she’d wanted this. She’d wanted him. And now that she had shucked off all her good girl costume, at least for this afternoon, April wondered how she would ever put it on again.

She never wanted this to end.

If only Brandon would keep driving forever, to where the lines of the road converged on a glittering horizon. They could head west, slicing across red-canyon desert roads that ribboned through Arizona. They could stop at lonely highway motels with sand-bleached signs and make love until dawn.

April closed her eyes, pretending she was already there, and that Brandon was showing her things, doing things, she had only started dreaming about after she met him. She could admit that now. She could admit anything.

He drove into a clearing in the woods. Cars were parked everywhere, some with trailers that had the names of popular soft drinks or auto parts manufacturers on them. April heard the brraaap of dirt bikes in the distance, practicing on the outdoor course. Her dad had taken her to a few of these motocross competitions, but she had no idea what to expect from this one.

Brandon cruised up and down the rows before stopping in front of a shabby old horse trailer that didn’t have any fancy painting on it. Matthew stood next to the trailer wearing a lot of mismatched gear and carrying a scuffed helmet. A big muscle-y tank of a man with long gray hair in a ponytail—Long Jon?—gave her a wide grin.

“You’re here,” Long Jon said. “Damn, girl, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

It took April a second to recover from the ride. Even when Brandon cut the engine and climbed off the bike, her whole body kept vibrating. She unfastened her helmet and then set it on the seat in front of her. Brandon’s eyes had a glint of admiration in their depths, which must have meant she’d passed some kind of secret test.

“Thanks for coming out to watch me, Miss April,” Matthew said.

April blinked in surprise. Well, this was a different kid from the one she remembered that first day she met him. He looked shy, nervous, hopeful, but not like he wished she were a million miles away from here.

“I can’t wait to watch you race, Matt,” April said. “I’m really excited.”

While Brandon and Matthew unloaded the dirt bike off the trailer, April extracted herself from the Harley. It wasn’t easy since the bike was big and she was small. She darted a look around to see if there was anyone here who knew her and might rat her out, but this was a different crowd from the one she was used to. More flannel shirts, less shaving.

Long Jon gave her a knowing chuckle. “First time on a Harley?”

“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

“Crazy about it, though, aren’t you? I recognize the look.”

April glanced over at Brandon. Just moments ago, she’d had her breasts crushed against his back. “Yeah, you might say I’m crazy.”

“We’ll get along fine then.” That seemed to settle something for Long Jon. Maybe he’d worried that she was the type of woman who gave herself airs or who spent an entire ride bitching. It made her wonder what Brandon had said about her—if he’d said anything at all. Long Jon would have seen a million women come and go in Brandon’s life. She was just another one.

Remembering that brought a burn of shame to her cheeks.

They walked the dirt bike over to a holding pen full of dads and bikes and boys. Brandon explained to her that this was a preseason event. The real action started in late May. April listened with a sense of genuine curiosity. She liked walking across the rusty pine needles with Brandon, Matthew and Long Jon, even though she felt as though she’d brought the wrong hormones to this gun fight.

Her world used to have magical unicorns in it—not anymore, thank goodness. This one was all muddy tires, flop sweat and one-upmanship.

It made April wish Matthew had fancy new gear, too, instead of a jacket patched with electrician’s tape.

How unfair, she thought, as she looked around at the other kids with their brand-name helmets and two-hundred-dollar shoes. Now she really wanted Matthew to win—just to rub their noses in it.

“Okay, listen,” Brandon told Matthew as he fastened his dinged-up helmet and straddled the bike. “Make sure the fuel switch is on. You don’t want the bike stalling in the first lap. And don’t be afraid to scrub the jumps. Less time in the air means faster time on the ground.”

Matthew nodded, but April could tell he was nervous, poor kid. Her heart reached out to him. According to her dad, motocross was the second most physically demanding sport in the world, right after soccer. A dangerous one, too—broken bones, torn ligaments. She waited next to Long Jon and watched.

“All those turns are going to be rutted out,” Brandon continued, “so remember to power through. Once that gate drops, the first one in the corner gets the holeshot.”

“What’s a holeshot?” she whispered to Long Jon.

“The fastest one out of the gate usually gets the best position on the track,” Long Jon whispered back. “Watch him. He’s got this.”

It touched her how good Brandon was with his brother, all man-to-man, no trace of condescension. He may not have been terrific at getting Matthew to school, but when it came to motorcycles, Brandon was clearly in his element.

A court of law would never see it that way, though. The only thing a judge would look at was number of absences on a school attendance roll. It worried her. The only reason Matthew was going to school right now was because she was keeping her foot on his neck.

Well, this kid deserved success so her foot would just have to stay there.

Brandon watched Matthew roll up to the starting gate and then he walked over to where April was standing with Long Jon. The air smelled of race fuel and pine sap. They had at least four hours until sunset, but shadows were just starting to lengthen across the churned-up dirt. Further up the fenced-in pastureland, people milled around, waiting for the race to begin.

“Who’s ready for beer?” Long Jon said, rubbing his hands together. “April, would you care for a frosty libation?”

She grinned up at him. “April probably shouldn’t have libations.”

“No better reason.” Brandon gazed down at her with the corners of his mouth twitching, the way a cat might look at a mouse. “Get her a big one.”

After Long Jon hightailed it to the beer stand, April found her nervous excitement returning. Something high voltage occurred when she and Brandon were alone. She could feel his hands on her body, everywhere, even when they weren’t. The surge of heat that swirled around inside of her made her forget things. Important things. Like how stupid she was to even be there.

But as she took in those green eyes with their thick dark lashes and the smile that only faintly touched the corners of his chiseled mouth, she felt as though she were dreaming all over again. Her mind pulled her in one direction, her body in the other. And somewhere along that tension wire was a reminder that she could never trust him not to break her heart.

Only a fool would have come here today. And April hated being a fool.

“You’re wondering how I got you out here,” he said. “You’re also worried how much trouble you’re in.”

How did he know that? She stuffed her hands in her pockets and turned toward the spectator area, guessing that was where they were headed anyway. The smell of popcorn, hot dogs and beer drifted over from the food stands. Brightly colored racing pennants snapped in the breeze.

But she didn’t deny it. How could she?

“There’s this thing bikers like to say,” Brandon told her. “‘If you don’t ride in the rain, you don’t ride’.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It means if you want the thrill, you have to risk getting…wet.”

Her eyes flew to meet his. Was he messing with her? He was hard to read sometimes. Brandon seemed to have two expressions: one that was intense and predatory, and one that searched for the April who lived behind her eyes. The April she tried to hide.

He might have had that searching expression now.

“You really love your brother,” she said, purposely changing the subject. “It’s very sweet.”

Brandon shrugged. If April didn’t know better, she would have thought being scrutinized made him uncomfortable, too. “His dad, Monroe, was a mean drunk,” Brandon said. “When he got liquored up, he’d beat anyone within three feet of him. Not me so much. I was thirteen by the time Monroe came along and knew how to fight back. But Matt and our mom…he’d lay into them when I wasn’t there. I grew up having to protect everybody.”

“Weren’t you afraid?” It was the wrong question to ask someone like Brandon, but she asked it anyway, hoping he might tell her.

“Fuck, yeah, I was afraid. Even when I got older, I was afraid. Monroe grew up on the Atchafalaya swamp in backwoods Louisiana with three older brothers. He knew a thing or two about beating the shit out of people. By the time I was old enough to shake loose of social services, I took off. If I’d stuck around, I probably would have killed the sonofabitch.”

“But you knew Matthew was still there,” April said. “You knew he was—”

“I did know. But it wasn’t enough to make me go back.” Brandon crossed his arms and gazed down at her moodily. “I’m telling you this for one reason. Do you know what it is?”

She shook her head. Her heart kicked hard but she tried blanking out her expression so he wouldn’t see how eager she was to know.

“I want you to see the hard, ugly truth about who and what I am,” Brandon said. “And I’m actually going to lay it all out there for you, too. No bullshit. No games.”

“But look at you and your brother now,” she said hotly. “I see how you are with him. I see how he looks up to you.”

“He’s just a kid who doesn’t know any better. But you aren’t. If we’re going to dance this dance, Princess, you need to know exactly who you’re dealing with.”

Time seemed to speed up and slow down at the same time when she looked at him. They stood off to the side, away from the crowd, sheltered from the afternoon sun by a grove of pines. She knew what he was telling her. With a young man’s selfishness, he’d gone off and left his mother and his brother to deal with an abusive drunk.

But he was different now, even if he couldn’t see it. He’d rented a house. He was making an effort. He helped his brother to excel in the things they liked doing together. April didn’t believe that Brandon was still the same person he had been ten years ago.

“I won’t lie to you,” Brandon said with a seriousness she’d never seen in him before. “But I don’t want you lying to me, and I sure as hell don’t want you lying to yourself.”

“I thought all you did was lie to women,” she said. It was a dig, but they were being open with each other, right? Why not say what she thought?

There was dark heat in Brandon’s eyes, something edgy and alpha and irrevocably male. “It’s not me you have to worry about. I said I wouldn’t lie to you and I won’t. But if this thing goes south on us? It’s not going to be because I lied to you. It’s going to be because you didn’t want to see the truth.”