Ride with Me

“My tent’s down that way,” he said, gesturing in the direction where she’d spotted it earlier. “It sounded like this asshole might be bothering you.” The way he ground one fist into his palm made it look like he wanted to do something about that.

Lance sat up with both hands raised in a classic gesture of surrender. “Whoa. Listen, Tom. We’re just having a misunderstanding here.”

“You know him?” She was speaking to Lance, but she really meant the question for Tom, and he was the one who answered it.

“I met him when I came by earlier. He didn’t tell you?”

She shook her head, stunned. If she had known he was here, she would have … what? Tried to set the record straight, at the very least. Anyway, she wouldn’t have been eating marshmallows with Lance.

Then Lance’s words sunk in, and she whirled to face him. “A misunderstanding? You—You—” She couldn’t think of a bad name to call him that would come close to doing him justice.

“Rotten, opportunistic, spineless piece of shit?” Tom suggested.

“Yes!” Lexie agreed. And then she surprised herself by bursting into tears.

She was not a cr

ier. She tried to stop, but out it came anyway. When she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, she got marshmallow on her face, and that only made her cry harder.

Tom stepped closer and pulled her into his chest. He was stiff with anger, but he was warm, too, and he smelled of his familiar woodsy soap. Collapsing gratefully against him, she wiped her sticky face on his shirt, and he settled his hands into the hollow of her lower back. Even in her addled state, she recognized how good it felt, how right.

“Did he hurt you?”

“Hell, no,” Lance protested. “I didn’t—”

“Shut up,” Tom warned, in a tone that made it clear he wasn’t in the mood to hear another word. Lance shut up. It was kind of fascinating—apparently Lance found Angry Tom a lot scarier than she did. Though in this case, that was probably a good thing. She had the distinct impression that if Lance made one more wrong move, Tom was going to break that pretty nose of his.

“I’m okay,” she told him. “It’s—I’m happy to see you again.”

He acknowledged that with a curt nod. “What do you want to do with him?”

“Huh?” It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the words, more that she couldn’t really think through the implications of the question.

“I’d like to kill him, but I keep telling myself not to, because I don’t want to end up back in front of a jury. So then I thought I should just beat the living shit out of him and call it good. Or you could. You were doing a pretty good job of it without my help.”

He smiled a little then, and she reached up her hand to brush through his hair in a quick, unauthorized caress. It was hard to concentrate on the conversation when all she wanted to do was look at his eyes, his cheekbones, his lips, his chin, to reassure herself that Tom was here, that he was speaking to her.

“Lex?”

“Don’t hurt him. I’m a pacifist.”

That made him sigh. “Of course you are. You going to keep riding with him?”

She grimaced. Even if Tom hadn’t shown up, there was no way she could buddy around with Lance now. “No. I want to ride with you.”

Tom pursed his lips, pleased again, and then he defaulted back to stern. “So I can run him off?”

“Right now?” It was dark out, and it wouldn’t be safe to ride. “Can’t it wait until morning?”

He said something under his breath she didn’t catch. Probably for the best—it hadn’t sounded complimentary.

“Tom?”

“Fine,” he said. He turned his attention to Lance, who had been watching their whole discussion with a bewildered expression. “You’re leaving as soon as the sun comes up,” Tom announced. “And you’d better ride fast, because if I ever see you again, you’re going to be sorry.”

Then he took Lexie’s hand and guided her away from the campfire. “Come on, Lex. You’re sleeping with me.”

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