No Regrets (Bomar Boys #1) (8 page)

“I think I tossed my phone in my purse yesterday. It was dead but if you have a charger, we can use it.” She stood, dropping the blanket to go in search of her things.

“Your bag is over there.” Cash pointed and then his eyes darkened before he glanced away, “Why don’t you go get changed in the bathroom and I’ll plug it in for you?”

Changed? She paused, looked down at herself, and felt a fresh wave of heat color her face crimson. Her tank top was so thin it was practically see-through. Her nipples were clearly visible through the pale pink cotton that clung to her like a second skin.

Right. She’d forgotten about that last night. By the time she’d finished scrubbing her skin hard enough to sting to get the feel of Hoyt off of her and crying her eyes out, she hadn’t been thinking about much of anything else. She cringed with the knowledge that she’d all but given Cash a peep-show while they’d been talking last night and he hadn’t said a word. The way he glanced away, shoulders slightly hunched, hinted that he knew it as well as she did and expected her to start yelling at any moment. His gaze went to his brother and he cleared his throat, a low warning growl that had her turning to catch Colt lewdly wagging his brows at her.

“Like I said… clearly, I missed a lot last night.”

Instead of commenting on that, she turned on her heel. She darted behind the bathroom door after scooping up her bag. The latch had barely clicked into place when she heard the brothers arguing on the other side of the door. Cash was laying into Colt for staring at her, for touching her, for making her uncomfortable, and from the sound of it, for just generally being anywhere in her vicinity.

She turned the water on in the sink to drown out the words. She appreciated Cash standing up for her but she knew what was going to come next. Cash was going to fill his brother in on what had happened to her, or at least as much of it as he knew, and she didn’t feel like reliving all of it again. With unsteady hands, she dug through her bag and found her toothbrush and then borrowed toothpaste from the tube in the cabinet.

There wasn’t much else in the bag. After she’d knocked Hoyt out, she hadn’t wanted to risk sticking around to find out how long it would take him to wake up. She’d swiped a hand over the bathroom counter and come away with a variety of makeup, her brush and toothbrush. Other than that, she had the clothes she’d tossed on yesterday, the pajamas she was currently wearing and a couple of clean pairs of panties.

That was it. That was the sum total of her life. All of her earthly possessions reduced to less than two full outfits.

After brushing her teeth and combing her hair back into something that didn’t resemble a rat’s nest, she stared at her reflection in the mirror for a long moment. Her face looked exactly how she’d imagined it would. Bruised and turning an array of colors, but the swelling had gone down at least.

The knock on the door pulled her out of her depressing thoughts and she sighed, “Just a second.”

She flipped the water off and stashed her pajamas in the bag. She felt dirty and disgusting pulling on the same clothes she’d been wearing the day before but that was her only option. She tugged her long-sleeve shirt on over the tank top after putting her bra back on. It wasn’t much as far as armor went but it was all she had.

The knock came again, “Jemma? You okay in there?”

Her brow furrowed as she pulled the door open, surprised to find it was Colt standing on the other side and not Cash. She glanced behind him but his brother was nowhere to be seen. She immediately cringed when she noticed the serious expression on his face. In her experience, when this half of the Bomar twins was sans his dimpled smile, it usually meant trouble.

“Cash went outside to take a phone call. He’ll be back in a minute.”

“Oh… okay.”

“You want to hand me your phone? I’ll plug it in for you.” He offered.

“Um... yeah.” She stammered again as she pulled it from the bag and handed it over, “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Colt shifted, glancing over his shoulder before he lowered his voice, “Before he comes back, I uh… I wanted to say… I mean… I wanted to say I’m sorry… for what I did, or said, when we were kids.”

She knew immediately he was talking about what he’d done back in school and she didn’t miss the significance of this moment. Colt was not a man that was big on apologies. In fact, she wasn’t sure he’d ever apologized for anything in his life. He was what he was and he didn’t shy away from that or make excuses for it. The fact that he’d just apologized to her was a big deal and they both knew it.

“I know.”

“I had my reasons. It’s no excuse but I did it for him.” His eyes met hers, as troubled as she’d ever seen him, “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I was trying to protect him.”

She blinked in confusion, “From me?”

“From you, from himself, from the world.” Colt scratched his stubbled jaw and sighed, “He’d already decided that he couldn’t keep you here and he knew that he couldn’t go with you. He was set on pushing you away and I did what I always do… I helped him. That’s all it was and I’m sorry that I hurt you. For what it’s worth, I meant what I said earlier. I’m glad you’re back. He’s missed you.”

Jemma’s head felt like it was going to implode when her brain processed what it was that Colt had just told her. He’d said Cash had decided he couldn’t keep her. He had said Cash pushed her away. What he meant was…

“Oh. My. God!” It clicked into place and she swayed when the shock hit her.

Cash had lied. He’d lied to her so that she would leave. He’d lied to her because he couldn’t go with her. He’d broken her heart, broken them up, because he had thought that was the best thing for her.

How had she not seen it before? How had she not seen the truth? He’d pushed her away for her own good because that’s what Cash did… he took care of the people he loved, even if he hurt himself in the process.

“Shit.” Colt’s eyes widened when she gasped, “You didn’t know.”

“Of course I didn’t know!”

“He said you guys talked last night, that you were giving him this chance to help you and make things right and I thought…” Colt cursed like a sailor, “Shit! Shit, he’s going to kill me for telling you before he could.”

“All this time I thought he used me and discarded me like trash because he didn’t care about me.”

Colt groaned, “Oh come on, Jemma. Don’t bullshit me. Maybe it was easier to think that way but deep down you knew he was crazy about you. How could you not?”

She struggled to make sense of it all. Her entire life had imploded just a day ago. Her present and her future were completely up in the air. Now she was staring into her past and finding out that nothing was as it seemed there either. Her entire life was a lie.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know… Damn it Colt, I can’t deal with this right now.”

“Shit.” He shook his head, “I thought you knew or I wouldn’t have…” He stilled and frowned again, “Jem, Jemma, listen to me. You can’t tell him I told you.”

“What?” She blinked when Colt grabbed her arm.

He winced when she jerked back from him, “Shit. Sorry, I keep fucking up. I didn’t mean to grab you. Just, you can’t tell him I told you, Jemma. Please, promise me you won’t tell him.”

“What? I can’t…”

“He’ll tell you himself. You know he will, don’t look at me like that. It’s haunted him for five years and you’re finally back and you’re finally here and you need him. He’ll tell you, it might not be until he thinks you’ve worked out all this shit with the fiancé but he will.”

Her brain was whirling again as Colt pleaded with her. A part of her knew that he was right. The part of her that had never liked to believe that Cash used her for sex and discarded her so easily because the whole thing had been a lie. The part of her that had been madly in love with the boy that broke her heart knew that Cash was better than that. That same part knew that with some time and some distance from her current problems, that Cash would eventually tell her the truth.

Because there was still something between them. There was no denying that. Even amid all of her pain and anger, she was attracted to him, intrigued by him, wanted to be near him. She could have refused to get in that tow truck, could have insisted he take her to a hotel no matter the distance, she could have ignored him or yelled at him, but instead she’d let him take her home with him, comfort her and protect her.

“That tattoo… on his chest… that’s real?”

Colt winced as if he’d already admitted too much but he nodded, “Yeah, it’s real.”

She gaped. Cash had her name tattooed on his chest. Over his heart. A tattoo that hadn’t been there before she left town.

“Jemma.”

“What?” She huffed when Colt said her name again.

“You can’t tell him I told you. Not yet. He has enough to deal with right now without being mad at me. I can help with all of this but he won’t let me if he’s mad at me.”

“Colt I…”

“I’m serious. Don’t say anything. Please?”

She was still trying to figure out why Colt wanted her to keep the newly revealed secret to herself when the door to the apartment opened behind him and Cash came through it. He’d pulled on a t-shirt with his shorts but his hair was still adorably disheveled. He paused, sensing the tension in the room. His mouth thinned and his eyes narrowed as he glanced between them and she realized how close they were standing, realized that it would look as though Colt had blocked her from leaving the bathroom.

“Damn it Colt.” Cash growled and started forward, “I told you to give her space. I told you to leave her alone. I leave for five goddamned minutes and you’re already giving her hell?”

“No.” She stepped between them as soon as Colt moved back, out of her way. “No, Cash, stop.”

He pulled up short when he reached her. She could tell he wanted to go around her. He wanted to grab her, move her to the side, and fight with his brother. He wouldn’t though, because he didn’t want to scare her. He would protect her, even from him. Whatever doubts she might have had about that before, Colt had wiped away with the truth only minutes ago.

“Cash, stop.”

“Are you okay?” He pulled his glare off his brother and his gaze softened the instant it met hers.

“I’m fine.” She reached out and put her hand against his chest,
the chest that was marked with her freaking name
, “I’m fine. You know Colt wouldn’t hurt me. Don’t insult your brother like that just because you want to protect me. I don’t need protection from him and you know that.”

His jaw twitched, “You looked upset.”

“We were just having a discussion.”

“An upsetting discussion.” He glared over her head at his twin, “What were you talking about?”

“Look…” Colt started but she cut him off by talking over him.

“Colt was apologizing. He wanted to clear the air about what happened when we were in high school.” She smiled softly when Cash raised his hand, put it over hers, holding her palm against his chest where she’d placed it, just over his heart, and had to focus to keep her words steady after the intimate gesture, “Colt apologized and I forgave him. We’re fine. We’re both fine.”

Since her hand was against his chest, she could feel him exhale a breath of relief. She felt the urge to step closer to him, offer him some sort of comfort. He didn’t want there to be bad blood between his other half and her. Just like she couldn’t stand the idea of being the thing that came between these two brothers who obviously cared so much about one another.

She’d known them all of her life. She’d known the twin terrors that tried to burn Old Settlers Public School to the ground. She’d known the Bomar boys that came to school with bruises and sometimes broken bones, in dirty clothes and with dirty hands. And she wanted to know these big, strong men that they had become.

She could only imagine the horrors they’d faced, had only ever heard the rumors and seen the things they couldn’t hide, but she knew, instinctively, that they wouldn’t have made it through their childhood without each other. They were a team. They always had each other’s backs. And she wouldn’t be the one to come between that, particularly not when Colt had just opened her eyes to what was standing right in front of her.

Cash had loved her once. Loved her enough to let her go. Loved her so much that he’d broken both of their hearts rather than see her live her life full of regrets. Loved her so much that sometime after she’d left he’d still had her name permanently branded into his chest.

It was a big, gigantic, life-altering revelation. It was something she needed to think about. She needed time to process what it meant then and what it meant now, five years later. She needed to decide how to handle it, and him, and Colt had been right. She couldn’t do that until she figured out the rest of her life, which was also a gigantic mess right now.

“Who were you calling?”

“What?” Cash looked confused by the change of topic.

“Colt said you went outside to make some calls. Who were you calling?”

“I uh…” He dropped her hand and moved away from her, a chill seeping in where before there had been nothing but his warmth, “I talked to Auto. He’d left a message asking about the Jeep with out of state tags in the lot.”

“You didn’t tell him…”