Chapter 8: Faded Ink & Fresh Bruises
Saving
The cold was a living thing in the barn, seeping through the thin blankets, gnawing at her bones. Cassidy’s shivering had become a constant, fine tremor. She watched Wade’s silhouette, the rigid line of his back against the stall wall. He hadn’t moved.
“Why are you still here?” Her voice was a rasp, shattered by crying and the cold. It wasn’t an accusation. It sounded like a genuine question, even to her.
He didn’t answer immediately. Then, in one fluid motion, he pushed off the wall and stood. The moonlight from the high window caught the movement. He pulled his t-shirt over his head, a quick, efficient gesture. The pale light washed over the defined planes of his chest and shoulders, over the dark ink that coiled around his right bicep. He knelt beside the cot, and she felt the weight of his flannel shirt settle over her blankets. It was still warm from his body and carried his scent—clean sweat, hay, and something like leather.
“You’re shaking the whole cot,” he said, his voice low. He didn’t move back to his spot. He stayed on his knees, rolling up the sleeves of his undershirt. The moonlight glinted on the tattoos now fully visible: intricate, dark bands of barbed wire wrapped around the muscle, and below it, a series of dates and symbols etched in a stark, prison-yard style.
She pulled the flannel tighter, the warmth a shock to her system. Her eyes were glued to his arm. “The one time I went to a public pool in New York,” she whispered, “the chlorine smell stayed on my skin for two days. No matter how much I scrubbed.”
Wade looked down at his own arm, at the permanent record inked into the skin. He understood the metaphor. “Some stains don’t wash off,” he said, the words quiet and final.
Her hand, small and pale, emerged from under the covers. Her fingers hovered for a second in the space between them, then lightly traced the air just above the bruise on her cheekbone. A question.
He didn’t flinch. He leaned in, just slightly, letting her see. The gentleness when it came was almost worse than the violence that had caused it. His thumb, calloused and rough, brushed the edge of the swollen skin so lightly she barely felt the pressure, only the startling heat of his touch. It was a surveyor’s touch, assessing damage. It cracked something open inside her ribcage.
“He used to use a belt,” she said, the words tumbling out into the dark space between them. “When I was little. For talking back. For existing too loud. Then, when I got older, he’d get clever. He’d lock me in the root cellar for a night. Said the dark would give me perspective.” She took a shaky breath. “One time, when I was sixteen and came home ten minutes past curfew, he took a roll of that thick, brown packing tape. The kind that tears your skin. He taped my wrists to the legs of the kitchen chair. Just sat there and made me watch the news with him for an hour. Didn’t say a word. Just left me there, stuck.”
Wade’s hand had stilled. His breath came out in a slow, controlled stream, fogging slightly in the cold air. His eyes were on the bruise, but she knew he was seeing that kitchen chair.
“The man in New York,” she continued, the confession flowing now like poison from a lanced wound. “It was only the once. The others… it was just dinner. Drinks. Letting them think they were charming. It felt like acting. A role. But the one… he was older. Kind, in a detached way. He owned a gallery. He paid my rent for three months. The hotel room had a view of the park.” She swallowed. “It didn’t feel like me. It felt like I was watching Cassidy McAllister from a distance, doing what she had to do to survive. And part of me hated her. And part of me was proud of her for being so pragmatic.”
“You survived,” Wade said. His thumb moved again, this time sweeping a tear from the corner of her eye she hadn’t even felt fall. “That’s all it is. That’s all any of this is. You do what you have to so you wake up the next day.”
“What did you have to do?” she asked, her gaze flicking to his tattoos.
A long silence. A horse stamped in a distant stall. “I had to become invisible,” he said finally. “You learn fast inside. You look at the floor. You don’t have opinions. You make your body hard, and you make your mind quiet. You become a ghost in your own skin.” He paused, his jaw working. “The fight… the one that put me in there… that was the last time I let myself be seen. Until I got out. Your dad hired a ghost.”
“You’re not a ghost,” she whispered.
He looked at her then, really looked, his eyes searching hers in the milky light. “Neither are you.”
The recognition was a bolt of warmth straight to her core. She shifted under the covers, wincing as a new ache made itself known. The cold, the hard cot, the adrenaline crash—her body was a map of complaints. A small, pained sound escaped her.
“What?” Wade’s voice was instantly alert.
“It’s nothing. My back. The cot’s just…”
“Turn over.”
“What?”
“Turn onto your stomach.”
The command was quiet, leaving no room for argument. After a heartbeat, she did, pushing the blankets down to her waist, his flannel shirt bunching beneath her. She rested her head on her folded arms, the worn canvas of the cot scratching her cheek.
She heard him stand, his boots whispering through the loose hay. He moved to the end of the cot. His hands, when they settled on her feet, were warm and shockingly sure. He began to knead the arch of one foot through her sock, his thumbs pressing into the tight muscle.
A shuddering sigh escaped her. It was pure, uncomplicated relief. He worked in silence, up her calf, his fingers finding knots of tension she carried from city pavements and farmyard gravel alike. His touch was clinical, purposeful, but the sheer human contact in the wake of so much violence was liquefying her from the inside out.
He moved to her other leg, then his hands slid higher, to the hem of her tank top. He paused.
“This okay?”
She couldn’t speak. She just nodded into her arms.
His palms, rough and warm, settled on the bare skin of her lower back. She jolted at the contact, then melted. He pressed the heels of his hands into the muscles flanking her spine, working out the stiffness with a steady, relentless pressure. It hurt in the best way. He didn’t speak. The only sounds were their breathing and the slow, rhythmic shift of his hands on her skin.
Tears leaked silently from her eyes, soaking into the canvas. Not from pain. From the sheer, devastating kindness of it. This man with prison ink on his arms, who’d seen her at her most vicious and her most broken, was offering a solace so profound it felt sacred.
His hands moved up, under the edge of her tank top, skimming over her ribs. A calloused thumb brushed the side of her breast, an accidental, fleeting contact. They both froze. The air in the stall changed, grew thicker, charged with a new kind of awareness.
Slowly, he withdrew his hands. The cold rushed back to claim her skin.
“You should sleep,” he said, his voice gravelly.
She didn’t want him to stop. She wanted the silence and the darkness and his hands to erase everything else. But she rolled over, pulling the blankets and his flannel back up to her chin. He had retreated to his spot against the wall, putting deliberate distance between them.
He sat back down, drawing his knees up, resting his arms on them. He stared into the darkness, a sentry again.
“Wade?” Her voice was small.
“Yeah.”
“What happens tomorrow?”
He was quiet for so long she thought he might not answer. “Tomorrow,” he said, “I get up at five. I feed the horses. I check the north fence line. Your dad will have a headache and a shame he won’t ever speak of. Your mom will make breakfast and not meet your eye.” He finally looked at her. “And you’ll still be here. In this house. In this town.”
It wasn’t a reassurance. It was a bleak, honest assessment. A life sentence.
“I have ninety-three dollars to my name,” she said. “No car.”
“I know.”
“I can’t stay here.”
“I know that, too.”
They lapsed into silence again, but it was different now. A pact had been formed in the sharing of wounds. A shared understanding of the walls around them.
“Go to sleep, Cass,” he murmured, using the shortened version of her name for the first time. It sounded like a gift.She closed her eyes. The throb in her cheek was a dull rhythm. The memory of his hands on her back was a shield. She listened to the sound of his breathing, steady and solid in the dark, and for the first time since returning, she didn’t feel entirely alone. The problem of tomorrow remained, vast and unsolved, but for these few hours in the hay-scented dark, she had an ally. However temporary, however complicated, it was something. It was a thread to hold onto.
It was a thread to hold onto. Exhaustion, deeper than bone-tired, finally pulled her under. She dreamed of his fingers trailing her back, not with the clinical pressure from before, but with a slow, exploring heat. A warmth spread in her core, heavy and insistent. In the tangled logic of the dream, she wanted to reach down between her thighs to release the tension, her own touch a shocking contrast to the memory of his.
Suddenly, she was awakened by the cry of a rooster. The sun had barely started to rise, a faint gray light seeping through the barn boards. It took her a moment to gather her surroundings. The barn, the stiff cot, the smell of his flannel shirt. Wade asleep against the wall across from her.
She jumped up to see him watching her with amusement. “What were you dreaming about?”
Her face flushed, a wildfire of embarrassment. She threw the blankets off, suddenly feeling too hot. “Nothing. Bad cheese.” The lie was pathetic. She turned away, gathering his shirt. “Here. Thanks.”
He took it, his eyes never leaving her. “Didn’t sound like bad cheese.”
She didn’t answer. She headed back to the house knowing that it would be unlocked already. The back door swung open silently. She desperately wanted a bath, to scrub the barn and the dream from her skin. The house was quiet, pre-dawn still. She crept upstairs, avoiding the seventh step that groaned.
Breakfast was normal, no awkward tension, nothing referring to last night. Her 18-year-old younger siblings, a brother and a sister, seemed to have no idea what happened. They shoveled cereal and argued about who used the last of the milk, heading to school like normal. Her father read the agricultural paper, his eyes bloodshot. Her mother flipped pancakes, her movements efficient and silent. The bruise on Cass’s cheek was a shared secret they all pretended not to see.
“Wade needs to check the line in the south pasture,” her father said, not looking up from the futures report. “Fence is sagging where the creek washed out. You go help him. Take the post driver and the new wire.”
Cassidy nodded, pushing her eggs around her plate. A day alone with Wade, after the barn, after the dream. The thread felt like a live wire now.
The morning sun was already warm, promising another relentless day. Wade loaded tools into the bed of his pickup, which now chugged roughly but ran. He didn’t speak to her, just handed her a pair of heavy work gloves that were too big. They drove in silence to the far edge of the property, where the land dipped down toward a slow, brown creek.
The sagging fence was a casualty of recent rain, the posts leaning like drunk men. “Hold this,” Wade said, thrusting the end of a new wire at her. He positioned a fresh cedar post in the hole he’d dug.
She held the wire taut, watching the muscles in his back and shoulders work as he swung the heavy driver. Thunk. Thunk. The rhythm was primal. Sweat dampened his t-shirt. The memory of his hands on her skin was a physical ache.
“You’re staring,” he said, not pausing his work.
“I’m not.” She looked away, at the distant tree line.
“You are. You’ve been staring since you got in the truck.”
“Maybe I’m just admiring your technique.” The words came out sharper than she intended.
Thunk. He set the driver down and wiped his forehead with his arm. “My technique is fine. Your tension on that wire is not. It’s like you’re holding a spider. Pull it tight, for Christ’s sake.”
“I am pulling it tight!”
“You’re pulling it like a city girl afraid of breaking a nail.” He strode over, his boots crushing the weeds. He stood behind her, his chest almost touching her back. His hands closed over hers on the wire, rough leather over leather. “Like this.” He pulled, using her hands as tools, drawing the wire until it sang with tension. His body was a solid wall of heat against her.
Every nerve ending sparked. “I got it,” she snapped, trying to pull away.
He didn’t let go. His breath was near her ear. “You sure? Because you seem real distracted today, Cass. Real jumpy.”
“I’m not jumpy. I’m hot. And you’re crowding me.”
“It’s a two-person job. You wanted to help, so help.” He released her hands but didn’t step back. “Or is manual labor beneath you now?”
She whirled around. They were inches apart. “You think that’s what this is? You think I look down on this?” She gestured wildly at the field, the fence, him. “I look down on the fact that my only options are this or getting taped to a fucking chair! I look down on a town that thinks a degree is a character flaw! But you? This?” Her eyes raked over him. “No. I don’t look down on this at all.”
The air crackled between them. His gaze dropped to her mouth, then back to her eyes. The anger in his face shifted, melted into something more dangerous. “Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is you standing there judging me for surviving one way while you survived another!” Her chest was heaving. “The problem is you, in my attic, in my barn, in my head—”
He kissed her. It wasn’t gentle. It was a collision, a direct answer to all the bickering, all the unsaid things. His hand came up to cradle her jaw, his thumb careful beside the bruise, but his mouth was demanding. She kissed him back just as fiercely, her gloves coming up to fist in his sweaty t-shirt. The taste of him was coffee and salt and heat. It was nothing like the dream. It was better, real, a lightning strike after months of static.
He broke away, breathing hard, his forehead resting against hers. “That what you were dreaming about?”
She was trembling again, but not from cold. “Shut up.”
A slow, real smile touched his mouth, the first she’d ever seen. “Make me.”
She kissed him again, surging forward to silence the smirk on his lips. This time, there was no hesitation, only a hungry convergence, her mouth open and demanding against his. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, clinging to him as if the ground had fallen away.
He groaned into her mouth, a low, rough sound that vibrated through her entire body. His hands gripped her thighs, holding her up as he turned and carried her the short distance to his pickup. He didn’t set her down. He braced her against the side of the truck bed with his hips, one arm locking around her to keep her pinned, the other reaching back to fumble with the tailgate latch.
The metal hatch dropped with a loud, protesting shriek. In one swift motion, he lifted her and set her down on the sun-warmed bedliner. The ridged plastic was hard and unforgiving against her thighs. He stepped between her legs, his eyes dark and focused, pupils swallowing the blue.
His hands went to the hem of her thin vintage top. With a sharp, deliberate pull, he ripped it straight up the middle. The sound of tearing cotton was shockingly loud in the quiet field.
She gasped, more in exasperation than protest. “That was a Dead Kennedys shirt from 1981, you asshole!” she spat, looking down at the ruined fabric. “A perfectly destroyed vintage piece. City folk would literally fawn over that.”
He laughed, a genuine, surprised burst of sound as he tossed the torn halves aside. “Yeah?” he said, his hands coming to rest on her bare waist, his thumbs stroking the sensitive skin just above her hip bones. “Well, I’m not city folk. And I’m gonna fuck that attitude right out of you.”
A violent shiver racked her, part cold, part pure, undiluted want. She bit her lower lip, her chest rising and falling rapidly. The autumn air chilled her exposed skin, but the look in his eyes set a fire blazing in her core. This was nothing like the transaction in the hotel room. This was a storm she had asked for.
“Yeah?” she challenged, her voice breathy. “You think you can, Mister Collins?”
The use of the title hung in the air between them, a gauntlet thrown. His expression shifted, sharpened. He leaned in, his mouth hovering just above hers. “Say that again.”
She held his gaze, the forbidden longing a live wire in her gut. “You heard me, Mister.”
He kissed her, deep and consuming, as his hands made quick work of the button on her shorts. He yanked them and her underwear down her legs in one rough movement. She kicked them off, the practicality of the act incredibly erotic. He unbuttoned his own jeans, freeing himself, and then his hands were back on her, gripping her hips, pulling her to the very edge of the tailgate.
He didn’t ask. He just pushed into her, a slow, inexorable invasion that made her cry out, her head falling back against the truck bed. He was thick and hard, stretching her, filling the aching hollow the morning’s tension had created. He stilled, buried inside her, both of them panting.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice strained.
She forced her eyes open, meeting his. The intensity there stole her breath.
“You want this?” The question was gritty, real. He needed to hear it.
“Yes.” It was a whisper, then a demand. “Yes, god, please.”
He began to move, setting a relentless, driving rhythm. The truck rocked slightly on its springs, a metallic creak accompanying each thrust. Her palms scraped against the textured bedliner as she pushed back against him, meeting every snap of his hips. The sun beat down on her exposed stomach and breasts. Sweat beaded between them.
“Tell me who you belong to right now,” he growled, his breath hot against her neck. His hand slid from her hip to her center, his fingers finding the exact spot that made her vision blur.
The orgasm built fast, a terrifying wave. “You,” she gasped, the word torn from her. “Sir.”
He cursed, the sound reverent and filthy. His pace became punishing, focused, chasing his own release. The role was a frame, a structure to hold the chaos of what they were doing—the farmhand and the disgraced daughter, fucking in broad daylight where anyone could crest the hill and see. It gave a name to the power surging between them, made it something they could touch without burning.
“Come for me,” he ordered, his voice breaking. “Now.”
It wasn’t a request. It was the final trigger. The climax shattered through her, wracking and silent, her mouth open in a soundless scream as her body clamped around him. He followed her over, slamming into her one last, deep time with a choked-off groan, his forehead dropping to her shoulder.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the distant call of a crow. The reality of where they were, what they’d done, seeped back in like cold water. He softened inside her but didn’t pull away, his body heavy and warm on top of her.
Slowly, he pushed himself up on his arms, looking down at her. Her hair was wild, stuck to her temples with sweat. The bruise on her cheek was livid. His flannel shirt was still tangled under her back. He reached out and gently traced the line of her jaw.
“Cass,” he said, just her name. It sounded like an apology, a question, and an endearment all at once.
The blare of a truck horn from the distant county road made them both flinch.