Slow Burn Cowboy(29)

But guilt. Always guilt. On both sides of the seemingly opposite feelings.

“I feel like he took that second chance,” she said slowly. “That opportunity to try things differently, to start things over and he made everything of himself his parents hoped he would. I didn’t.”

“You haven’t done anything to be ashamed of,” Finn said. “You’re successful. You have a business. People here in town love you.”

She laughed. “Did I go to Harvard, Finn? Am I terribly important, or the wife of somebody who is? I was supposed to get a great education, so I could either move in prestigious circles, or marry someone who did, while I sat at home with my very important degree being smug in its existence. No. I am none of those things. I have none of those things. Dammit. I could have subscription boxes.”

She wiped the tears from her cheeks, feeling fortified if not completely stable. She wouldn’t crumble in the next few minutes anyway.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I...yeah.”

“Do you want to get off the floor now?”

He moved his hand to her shoulder, let his fingertips drift down to her elbow. And in spite of all the turmoil inside of her, she felt something else too. Something hot and restless and exactly the sort of thing she was trying to banish with her revelation.

His question felt weighted too. Like there was another level to what he was asking, another layer. As if he was pointing out that she had been on the floor for the past decade, and maybe she should stand up.

That wasn’t true, though. She hadn’t been on the floor. She had come to Copper Ridge, and she had made a new life for herself. She had separated herself from her past and she had moved forward. And yes, she had kept the details of that to herself, and yes, there was some pain that lingered. But she wasn’t on the floor. Not metaphorically, anyway. Physically was another story.

“Okay,” she said, and tried not to feel anything momentous when he moved his hand to hers and laced his fingers through her own. Tried not to ascribe any other meaning to the action when he lifted her to her feet, his eyes level with hers.

He was just helping her up off the floor. That was all.

“Are you going to be okay?”

It was a strange question. This was something she had lived with for a long time now. So it wasn’t exactly a new pain to her. But it was new to him.

“I’m always okay,” she responded, which was about the most disingenuous answer she could have given, all things considered. Clearly, she was something less than okay or she wouldn’t have just had an extended meltdown all over him.

“I think,” she continued, her words trembling a little bit. “I think I need some time by myself, though.”

And she felt... Well, she felt pretty crappy saying that to him. She was the one who had chosen to bring it up, and doing so had been a strange experience. Kind of out-of-body. She had been worried it would drive a wedge between them, and in some ways, in the moment, she’d hoped it might. Then it hadn’t. He had just stood there as steady as ever, and then he had offered her his hand.

So now she was pushing him away, since he didn’t let her bombshell drive him off. Now she felt like she might be a little bit manipulative.

She didn’t like that thought. But she couldn’t stop her mind from going there.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said. “If Mark asks... What do you want me to say to him?”

“Nothing has changed,” she said, parroting the thoughts she had earlier. “I mean, not for me. If I seem off it’s just because I’ve been having to think about all of this a whole lot more lately. Usually, it’s pretty easy to let it stay in the past.” She sucked in a fortifying breath. “It’s a lot harder when you have to look at that guy all the time. But I’m fine. It’s new news to you. It’s not new to me.”

Even those words tasted disingenuous on her tongue, and she couldn’t quite work out why. Or maybe the truth was she threw a wall in the way of figuring out why the minute she got close.

She had the sense—all of a sudden—that the inside of her was made entirely of a series of walls and locked doors. Designed to keep certain things, certain moments, certain people in different places so that they never touched.

She felt both desperately in need of them and desperately constrained by them all at once.

“You want me to tell him you’re fine,” Finn said. “You want me to lie to him.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Tell him I’m dealing with a bad breakup. That’s true. Even if it is twelve years in the past.”

“Fine. If that’s what you want.” He looked at her again, something strange in his eyes. Something she didn’t want to name. “I am going to call you tomorrow.”

It felt like a promise, one that she kind of wished he wouldn’t keep. She had a feeling he knew that too, which was why he made it with such a grave look in his eye.

“Great,” she said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She plastered what had to be the world’s most brittle smile on her face and took a step back from him. Just in case he was going to touch her again. She really needed him to not touch her again.

“Okay,” he said, gripping the end of his hat and tipping it forward—a reflex, one he usually reserved for strangers, and definitely not for her.

That made her want to reach out and grab him by the shoulders. Shake him and ask him why he was being weird. Why he couldn’t just be her friend. Why there had to be tension, and analysis of every movement and reaction.

And after that, she wanted to shake herself. For being so contradictory. For trying to widen the space between them, and then being angry when she had accomplished it.

Except, it had seemed for a moment like things weren’t different between them. Like he was her rock again. Her stalwart. Her Finn. Like somehow she had reset things between them with her revelation.

But then he’d tipped his hat.

While she was still standing there ruminating, he walked out of her house. On autopilot, she locked the door behind him. Then she turned and went down the hall and fell face-forward onto her bed. She was fully dressed, but she didn’t care.

She was still wearing her makeup, but she didn’t care about that either.

Instead of getting up and getting ready for bed, she gave in to that urge that had overtaken her earlier. She drew her knees up to her chest and curled into the tightest ball she could manage.

Then, she gave herself fully to her misery.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN

FINN HAD A feeling that Lane was avoiding his calls. But finally, about midday she had answered a text. And, much to his surprise, she had agreed to have dinner with him at Ace’s. He had considered asking her to go to the brewery with him instead, but that would be a half step fancier than they usually were together, and he had a feeling given the precarious nature of things the change might send her into a tailspin.

He was sort of surprised she wasn’t in one already. After the way things had gone down at her house yesterday he had expected her to commit a little bit harder to avoiding him.

But she had promised to meet him after work, and even though very little about being around Lane was a relief right now, that promise was.

He needed to get away from the ranch. He needed to get away from his brothers. Needed to get away from his sullen niece, who wafted around the house like a specter complaining about her boredom.

After work, he took a quick shower and changed into a fresh T-shirt and jeans. Then he put on his cowboy hat.

He walked out of his room, and met Liam partway down the stairs. “Going out?” his brother asked.

“Yes,” Finn said. “There’s a surplus of leftovers in the fridge. Help yourselves.”

“Are you going on a date?”

“Did you want to come upstairs and help me choose my shoes while you asked me these questions?”

Liam’s lips twitched. “No. But I was wondering if I could catch a ride down with you if you weren’t going on a date. Because I need to get out.”

“You want to hook up—that’s what you’re saying.”

Liam lifted a shoulder. “We’ve been here for a couple of weeks.”

Finn could have laughed at his brother’s blatant objection to what he clearly felt was a horrendous dry spell. Finn himself hadn’t gotten laid in nearly a year. That was what happened when you were hung up on the one woman you couldn’t have.

Or maybe it was why he was feeling so increasingly hung up on her. Because it had been so long since he’d been with somebody else. Chicken or egg, it didn’t much matter to him. It was what it was.

“The place I’m going to is crawling with local girls, and it is definitely where people go to hook up. But, local girls. That means they have family here. That means if you do something dumbass, their dads are going to show up at the door with a shotgun. And I don’t particularly want to deal with the fallout of that.”

“Hey, I get very few complaints,” Liam said.

“Stay away from virgins and farmers’ daughters,” Finn said. “And stay away from my table. It’s not a date, but I’m meeting my friend Lane.”

Liam’s gaze was assessing. “Your friend, huh?”

“Go to hell,” Finn said, continuing down the stairs, not able to inject all that much heat into the invective.