Free Burn for You: Outback Skies, Book 2 by Lexxie Couper Page B

Ridge. Hadn’t seen her lips curl and her eyes dance with mirth. What he had seen was her shocked, sympathetic, aroused…angry.
    “She’s a reporter,” he grumbled, fidgeting with his peak some more. “Of course she’s going to be asking questions. And she’s not here now, so there goes your theory about her wanting a relationship with me.”
    “Not these kinds of questions, Ev. She may as well have walked around the place with I like Evan Alexander tattooed on her forehead. No, change that, I love Evan Alexander . I think she spoke to everyone in town about you, not about the fire—the thing she was here to cover, might I point out—but you. Were you seeing anyone? Have you been in a relationship? Where do you live?”
    It was Evan’s turn to snort. “Sounds like a stalker.”
    “Fuck, you really are an idiot.”
    Straightening in his seat, Evan leant across the table and turned his head so Ryan couldn’t help but see the left side of his face. “In case you haven’t noticed, mate, I’m not exactly easy to look at.”
    Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “And in case you haven’t noticed, no one who cares about you gives a flying fuck.”
    Evan slumped back in his seat and stared at the sweating beer glass in front of him. “You won’t understand, Ryan. You don’t know what it’s like—”
    “To be different?”
    The calm sarcasm in Ryan’s voice lifted Evan’s gaze to his friend.
    “To know every time you step out of the privacy of your home, people are going to be looking at you? Wondering about you? Maybe even cowering away from you—even if it’s only mentally—as you walk near them? To hear people sniggering behind your back? To have your peers constantly mock you?”
    Evan’s throat grew thick.
    “Do you know how many Brokeback Mountain references I’ve heard since I came out, Ev?” Ryan grinned. “Do you know how many mustering jobs I’ve lost because of my sexual preferences? Station owners who used to book me months and months in advance to herd their stock, who now don’t even take my calls? Or how many times I’ve watched blokes I’ve known forever—guys I used to go skinny dipping with when we were just kids—make sure they never have their back to me? Like I’m going to bend them over the nearest table and fuck them there and then, just ’cause they’ve got a set of balls?”
    Evan bunched his fists. Hot anger for his friend rushed through him. “Jesus, Ryan. Who are they? I think a lesson in human decency is in order.”
    Ryan laughed. “I’m not asking for a hero, not even one as glorious and sexy as you. I’m pointing out you’re not alone in your fear. The difference between you and me is I don’t really give a fuck about what anyone thinks, and you seem hung up on it. When really, the only opinion of you that should matter is your own. Once you get that sorted out, mate, you’ll see that the pretty reporter from the city is seeing you for what you really are—a decent man with more heart and strength than most of us will ever have in our entire lives.”
    Gut clenching, Evan turned his stare back to his beer. He watched a glistening bead trickle down the side of the glass.
    Christ, was Ryan right? Was he just wallowing in his own self-pity? Was he cutting off any chance of a future he’d believed beyond him because of something as superficial as his looks? “What happens if she wakes up one day and realizes she can’t stand looking at me?”
    “What happens when you wake up one day and realize you never gave her that chance? And it’s too late to do so?”
    Squeezing his eyes shut, Evan pictured Jenna in his kitchen. Saw her furious with him when he’d suggested she leave. Heard her accusation again. “Are you really this scared to let anyone in?” Saw the hurt rejection in her eyes when he refused to let her remove his jeans. When he refused to let her see him. All of him.
    “And just to add fuel to the complicated fire you’re so stubbornly stoking over