Baxter’s face hardened, taking on the ruthless, brutal, icy coldness of his Basher alter-ego. “You.” He snapped his gaze to Thomas, who halted under that glare, visibly blanching. “You hold your fuckin’ horses, pussy-boy. I’ll get to you.”
I couldn’t help a snort. “Pussy-boy?”
“How I’ve always thought of him.” He quirked an eyebrow. “And what’d I tell you about what it does to me when you talk like that, Eva? You’re gonna make it hard for me to get off this motorcycle, and it looks like I got a bit of a tussle brewing.”
I bit my lip, hesitating, and then let fly the joke running through my head. “I’m…making ithardtoget off, huh?”
He guffawed. “Aww hell, Eva, you’re killin’ me here.”
I laughed, but then sobered, stepping off the small dais to stand by the motorcycle, putting a hand on his arm. “Why are you really here, Bax?”
His expression went equally serious. “This ain’t you, princess.” He gestured at the archway with its three hundred hand-cut roses, and Thomas, and the Wadsworth mansion, and then at my dress with its four-foot-long train. “I know I don’t belong in this world, Eva, but…are you sureyoudo?”
I swallowed hard, but couldn’t speak. Which was fine, because he wasn’t done.
“I know I’m just a dirty redneck from the shit-end of Alaska—like your dad said—and basically a caveman, but I ain’t gonna actually club you over the head and drag you off. What Iwillsay, though, is that you should think really hard about this. Whether you reallyhaveto do this. I know I got no clue about your life, or what all these fuckers have on you to be forcin’ you into this—or if they even are, because I mean, maybe you’re marrying Tommy the Pussy-Boy because you want to. I dunno—”
“I’m not,” I assured him.
“Well thank fuck: that means I’m nottotallycrazy,” he said, playfully wiping imaginary sweat off his forehead and flinging it aside. “Point is, you don’t want to do this, then don’t do this. I ain’t even sayin’ you gotta be with me, I don’t know if that’s even…shit, if it’s somethin’ you could even consider in, like, a million years. I know we’re different people from different worlds and all that, but…like I said, even if you don’t wanna end up with me, or we try it and it doesn’t work out, you deserve to live your life on your terms. Nottheirterms. You got class, and beauty, and talent, babe. You couldbesomethin’ in this world. With me, without me, you oughta at least give yourself the gift of checkin’ out what you got to offer the world, naw’m’sayin’?”
He was so scared, right now. I could tell by the way he was talking; by the way his eyes never wavered from mine. He was the kind of man who would ride directly toward whatever he was afraid of, and he would look it in the eyes and wouldn’t look away, no matter what.
“Bax,” I started.
He held up a hand. “One sec, babe. Lemme say one more thing.” He sucked in a breath and let it out. “Evangeline, I just…shit—I dunno. I’m a way out for you, right here, right now. And I know you may not know how to navigate the world and shit, but you got friends out there, babe. I know you got pride, so you’d never ask, which is why I’m offering, not on my own behalf, but on the behalf my seven crazy fuckin’ brothers, and on behalf of Claire, Dru, and Mara—and little Jackson Badd, who was just born about a week ago, by the way. I’m offerin’ a place to crash, a chance to figure out yourself and your life on your terms. This part ain’t got nothin’ to do with me, okay? It’s just…an open-ended offer of a place to crash with folks who think the world of you.” He let out a breath, blinked hard a few times, clenched his hand into a fist, shook it out, and started again. “That’s all I’ve got to say, Eva. So. Whaddya, say, babe? Wanna ditch this fancy shindig and go for a ride? It’s only”—he checked his watch with a flick of his wrist—“sixty hours to Ketchikan, and there’s whiskey waitin’ when we get there.Withme, or just with me…however you wanna play it, babe.”
I blinked hard, sucked in a breath. It was, in a very real sense, a do-or-die decision. No do-overs, no going back, no time to have a long meandering think.
I had todecide, right then, what I wanted.
My father, Connecticut and the familiarity of the East Coast, the stuffy, stifling, stuck-up world I’d always known? Yale? Thomas…being Mrs. Haverton, the shiny trophy wife of the great and mighty Thomas Haverton?
Or Baxter Badd, who was so much I couldn’t even mentally encompass all that he was.
His brothers, all seven of them, wild and vulgar and crazy and hysterical, but warm and friendly and so accepting, so giving, immediately willing to give you the shirts off their backs, willing to do battle for you, to bleed and risk death and even possibly end lives for you, willing to feed you, clothe you, and befriend you, willing take you in and shelter you, willing to listen to you and laugh and commiserate. And then there was Claire, and Dru, and Mara—she had her baby? OMG, I’d have to congratulate her, no matter what happened here—those crazy, amazing bitches. The bar. The twins and their kick-ass music. Even Alaska itself, the gorgeous scenery and the serenity and the drastically different pace and lifestyle and people…all of it.
Yeah, not much of a choice, was it?
Framed in this context, with Baxter in front of me, it was so blindingly obvious I felt almost stupid for not calling him the second I got back. But once I was dragged back here, it was just so easy to fall back into the role of the cowering, obedient good little girl I’d always been, even if that wasn’t who I was inside anymore. I’d been changing steadily for a long time, realizing I wasn’t happy and wasn’t content to live up to their expectations and go along with their manipulative, controlling bullshit anymore, but it wasn’t until I spent those magical, crazy hours in Ketchikan that I fully left the rest of my old self behind.
Evangeline, the East Coast socialite, the Good Girl…
She became Eva, the…
The version of myself I was suddenly ferociously eager to continue discovering.
I reached up and cupped his face, rubbing my thumb over his cheekbone, as he so often did to me. “Fuck this place, Bax.”
“Hell yeah!” he crowed. Then, more quietly, a chagrined expression stealing over him, he tried it again more quietly. “I mean, are you sure? Not sure you’ll ever be able to go back to the way things were.”
I laughed. “I nevercouldgo back to the way things were, Bax. Not after you.” I kissed him, softly, gently, quickly. “I’m with you.”
“So…” He stared down at me, hope on his face. “You’re with me, or you’rewithme? Just so I’m clear.”
I tipped my head back and laughed. “Oh, Bax. Do I have to spell it out?”
He nodded. “Yep. Pretty much. I’m a dude, and I’m sometimes a little extra dense, even for a dude.”
