Chapter Fourteen

Jules woke up wonderfully warm…and certain that some small animal had crawled into her mouth and died. She shifted, not quite willing to leave the safe circle of Adam’s arms—because she’d know that spicy scent anywhere.

“Morning.”

She looked up, finding him far too close to risk opening her mouth. There was no help for it. She slithered out of his hold and to the other side of the bench seat. Eyeing the distance between them, she decided caution was the better part of valor and held her hand in front of her mouth. “Morning.”

His eyebrows crept up. “What are you doing?”

Being an idiot, apparently. Considering what she remembered of the night before, he shouldn’t be surprised. “Morning breath.”

If anything, he looked even more amused. “Here.” He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a bottle of water, a tiny toothbrush, and a travel-size tube of toothpaste.

She was so shocked, she dropped her hand. “You carry around a toothbrush setup in your truck?”

“As you said…morning breath. It’s always good to have a backup ready if I’m not in a hotel room for whatever reason.” He passed them over and waited while she considered. “If you’re one of those people who are weird about toothbrushes—”

“No, it’s fine.” Considering where both their mouths had been on each other in the last week, sharing a toothbrush shouldn’t be a big deal. It just felt kind of…domestic. Intimate.

Or maybe she was so hungover, she was thinking crazy thoughts.

Jules climbed out of the truck and went to work, brushing away until her mouth felt minty clean and there wasn’t a trace of morning breath left. Then she waited while Adam did the same. It gave her the opportunity to really remember how much of a hot mess she’d been the night before. Regret soured her stomach—or maybe that was the purple nurples. “I think I’m dying.”

He spit. “Nah, you’re just feeling the effects of too much alcohol in too little time.” He gave her some serious side eye. “Not going to lie—you were in rare form last night.”

“Sorry.” She should have just gone with the moonlight picnic. There was probably good food involved, and there definitely had to have been sex on the books. Instead she’d gotten drunk and made a fool of herself in front of half the town. Talk about making a scene. I’m surprised I haven’t already gotten a call from Jamie—or worse, Mom. She didn’t even want to look at her phone in case she was wrong.

Wait. Jules patted her pockets. Oh, crap. Her phone. She didn’t have it. Aubry must have been going crazy imagining all the ways Jules might have been killed when she didn’t come home. Hopefully she’d assume she spent the night with Adam.

She was definitely going to hear about this when she got back to the apartment.

He held the door open for her. “Happens to the best of us.”

Maybe. But it never happened with her—mostly because even if she got particularly drunk, her bed was only a handful of steps away. I’m never drinking in public again. Her stomach made a truly embarrassing sound and she glared at it. “Shut up.”

“You want to get some breakfast?” He started the truck, heading back toward the main road. “You’ll feel better if you eat.”

That was debatable. Right now, all she wanted was to crawl into a hole and never surface again. “Are you sure you want to be seen with me?”

He laughed. “Aw, sugar. You might have been a little bit of a shit show last night, but trust me—I’ve seen worse. I’ve been worse.”

That was strangely comforting. “I should know better. I’m not twenty-one. Four shots in half an hour is more than enough to make me act a fool.” She crossed her arms over her chest and slumped down. “I hate that he makes me so crazy. That they all make me so crazy. Everyone thinks that I’ve accomplished all I’m going to in life—that I had my chance at greatness and Grant and blew it—and they’ve written me off as a result.” She should be past it by now, shouldn’t she? But Grant showing back up in town was like rubbing salt in her wound. Every time she turned around, someone was giving her considering looks like they should be asking her if she was really okay. She’d walk to hell and back before her pinnacle in life was dating that man.

That said, the whole situation wasn’t all bad.

There had been Adam, after all. Fake boyfriend or not, spending time with him wasn’t exactly a hardship. Assuming he’s not going to drop me off on my front doorstep and hightail it out of town as far and fast as this rig can take him. “I don’t suppose you still want to have sex with me?”

“Sugar, come here.”

She slid across the seat and yelped when he grabbed her hand and pressed it against the front of his jeans. His length met her touch, hard enough to make her bite her lip. Adam’s eyes were dark as he looked into hers. “I’m always ready for you. If you think for a second getting a little drunk and trying to fight your ex is enough to make me change my mind about wanting you, you’ve got another think coming.”

“Oh.”

“All the words in the world and that’s the one you respond with.”

She could do better. Really, she could. Jules swallowed hard. “I’m glad. I like having sex with you.”

Adam threw back his head and let loose a laugh that resonated with something in her chest. “Damn, sugar. You’re something else—and before you go overthinking things, I mean that as a compliment.”

Considering every other time someone had said something of that nature, they hadn’t meant it as anything positive, she wasn’t used to being complimented. “You are a strange, strange man, Adam Meyer.”

“It’s been said before.” He turned onto the highway, heading away from Devil’s Falls. There were a grand total of four towns within easy drivable distance, and the only one in this direction was Pecos, so they had a good thirty minutes before they got to wherever he was headed.

She settled against him. “I know this is like two weeks late, but you really aren’t what I expected.”

“Oh, yeah?”

She ignored the tight way he spoke. “You’re such a…well, a good guy. From the way some of the locals talk about the legendary Adam Meyer, I expected a hell-raiser.” People still talked about the time he started a brawl after the Devils’ rivals beat them in the division championships. Yeah, he’d been all of seventeen at the time, but he’d gone on to be a freaking bull rider. Every rodeo cowboy she’d met over the years was a hard-core adrenaline junkie. Adam just seemed so…well, not chill exactly, but not like a junkie jonesing for his next hit. He was intense and sometimes he moved around a room like the walls were closing in, but he wasn’t anything like she’d imagined.

And that wasn’t even getting into the sex and how out-of-this-world good it’d been.

He still didn’t say anything, so she just kept talking. “Do you like bull riding?”

“I love it.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Those few seconds are the only time everything around me becomes crystal clear and quiet. I feel fucking invincible.”

“Before you’re thrown butt over teakettle and have to run away because the bull is angry and looking for someone to take it out on.”

He smiled. “Yeah, before then.”

It felt almost like he was opening up to her, so she pushed her luck a little. “I hear you’re something of a rodeo star.”

“That’s not why I do it.”

She traced the veins in his forearm as he drove. “You must have a whole lot of stories that would scare years off your friends’ lives.”

“A few.” There was that smile again, the one she was seriously starting to crave. “Down in San Antonio a few years back, there was this big, mean old brute by the name of Sue.”

Jules blinked. “Sue. As in the song?”

“The very one.” He chuckled softly. “Well, he has a nasty history of putting his riders in the hospital, to the point where the odds of hitting eight seconds is so far against them, a man can make a pretty penny if he manages.”

There was no mistaking the self-satisfied tone of his voice. “You did it.”

“I did it. I went eight point one seconds.” His eyes went a little distant. “It was one hell of a ride, sugar. There hasn’t been any quite like it since.” He glanced down at her, his smile fading. “I never told anyone back home about it. Mama would worry, and I don’t like the boys to think I’m bragging.”

There was something almost sad about that. He’d done some incredible things, and to not be able to share it with anyone… Jules snuggled closer to him, wishing she could soothe the faint ache she heard behind the surface happiness of his words. “How did you even get started on that? Was it something you were determined to do as a kid, with the added bonus of giving your mother gray hair?”

A terrible, hopeless expression passed over his face, but he was answering her before she could ask what had put it there. “It was never on my list. I actually had started working with your cousin on your uncle’s farm before I graduated high school, and I liked it a lot.”

If she thought picturing Adam on a bull was hotter than hot, picturing him on a horse and herding cattle was downright devastating. There was something so attractive about a man, rugged and a little dirty, working the land and animals. She looked away, trying to get a handle on her hormones. “Why’d you stop if you liked it so much?”

“Something just clicked inside me at graduation. It was like a whole new world of possibilities opened up, and I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Dodge.” He hesitated. “Not going to lie, I considered coming back right around the time I hit twenty-one. Your uncle Rodger offered me a job, and the other guys were running things at the ranch. I came back to help out over the holidays, but…”

That was when John died.

She knew the story. Everyone in town did. How Adam, Quinn, Daniel, John, and John’s little sister were on their way back into town when a truck swerved and hit them. John had been killed on impact, and his little sister had her leg horribly mangled.

Jules swallowed hard. “Losing him must have been awful.” She knew her cousin had never quite recovered.

“It was.” He was silent for a beat. “I lasted until his funeral, but then I started getting restless again. Since then, I haven’t stayed in one place more than a week or two.”

And they were topping out two right now.

Jules couldn’t imagine it. She loved her family, loved her friends, just plain loved Devil’s Falls. It was her home and it might be a pain occasionally, but the good far outweighed the bad. She understood needing a break, but Adam had started driving and never come back. “I bet you’ve seen some cool stuff in all your traveling, though.”

“Yeah. There are places where you can drive for miles and miles without seeing another person. Sometimes I camp out in the truck under the open sky and just…am. And the rodeo is something else. The energy is off the charts, amping up the people, which amps up the animals. It’s a show unlike any other.”

She’d only been a few times, and the last time, she’d seen one of the bull riders get trampled. He’d fallen after a great ride and while everyone was cheering, he hadn’t gotten up fast enough and the bull had done a number on him. He lived, but he’d never ride again.

The thought of that happening to Adam…

Jules did her best to think of anything else. “But you’re back in town for your mom—because she’s sick.”

“Yeah.”

Even after the short time they’d known each other, she recognized his tone of voice. He was shutting her out. Again. It shouldn’t hurt. She had no right to the information. She wasn’t really his girlfriend.

And he’s not staying.

She had to remember that, to keep it in the forefront of her mind. To do anything else was emotional suicide.