Bane

“For my own good?” he repeated as if making sure he’d heard her right.

“Yes. In the past I was the reason you got into trouble. Now you’re a SEAL and I won’t be responsible for you getting into more trouble on my account.”

He stared at her. Didn’t she know whatever he’d done in the past had been of his own free will? During those days he would have done anything to be with her. There was no way he could have stayed away as her father had demanded. Her parents hadn’t even given them a chance just because Bane’s last name was Westmoreland. Although Carl Newsome had claimed Bane’s age had been the major factor, Bane often wondered if that was true.

Everyone knew how much he’d loved Crystal. Members of his family had thought he was insane, and in a way he had been. Insanely in love. Hadn’t his brother Riley even told him once that no man should love any female that much? Bane wondered if Riley was singing that same tune now that he was married to Alpha. Bane doubted it. All it took was to see his brother and Alpha together to know Riley now understood how deeply a man could love a woman.

“Crystal?” he said, trying to keep his voice on a serious note because he knew she actually believed what she’d said. “Stop thinking you’re the reason I was such a badass back in the day. When I met you I was already getting into trouble with the law. After I hooked up with you, I actually got in less trouble.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s not the way I remember it.”

“You remember it the way your parents wanted you to remember it. Yes, I deliberately defied your father whenever he tried keeping us apart, but it wasn’t as if I was a gangster or anything.”

A smile curved his lips as he continued, “At least not after meeting you. With you I was on my best behavior. You even nailed the reason I behaved that way. You’re the one who pointed out it had everything to do with the loss of my parents and aunt and uncle in that plane crash. The depth of our grief overpowered me, Bailey and the twins, and getting into trouble was our outlet. That just goes to show how smart you were even back then, and your theory made sense. Remember all those long talks we used to have?”

She nodded. “Yes, by the side of the road or in our private place. Our family thought all those times the sheriff found us that we were making out in your truck or something. And all we’d been doing was talking. I tried telling my parents that but they wouldn’t listen. You were a Westmoreland and they wanted to think the worst. They believed I was sexually active when I wasn’t.”

He recalled those times. Yes, they had been caught parking, and cutting school had become almost the norm, but all they’d done was spend time together talking. He’d refused to go all the way with her until she was older. The first time they’d had sex was when she’d turned seventeen. By then they’d been together almost two years.

At least Dillon had believed Bane when he’d told his brother he hadn’t touched her. However, given their relationship, it would have been crazy to think they wouldn’t get around to making love one day, and Dillon had had the common sense to know that. Instead of giving Bane grief about it, his older brother had lectured him about being responsible and taking precautions.

Bane would never forget the night they’d finally made love. And it hadn’t been in the backseat of his truck. He had taken her to the cabin he’d built as a gift for her seventeenth birthday. He’d constructed it on the land he was to inherit, Bane’s Ponderosa.

It was a night he would never forget. Waiting had almost done them in, but in the end they’d known they’d done the right thing. That night had been so unbelievably special and he’d known she would be his forever. He knew on that night that one day he would make her his wife.

In fact it had been that night when he’d asked her to marry him once she finished school, and she’d agreed. And that had been the plan until her parents made things even worse for them after she’d turned seventeen.

Crystal had retaliated by refusing to go to school. And when her parents had threatened to have him put in jail if he came on their property, he and Crystal had eloped. He hadn’t counted on her parents sending her away the moment Sheriff Harper found them.

Bane had come close to telling everyone they’d gotten married; no one had the right to separate them. But something Dillon had said about the future had given him pause.