Slow Burn Cowboy(37)

She uncovered half her face, looking at him with one wide brown eye. “It wasn’t?”

“You’re being ridiculous, Lane. You know it wasn’t.”

She shrugged one enticing bare shoulder, and he found himself taking extra time to notice the freckle there. He wanted to lick it.

He wanted to lick her. Again. All over. One taste of that magic between her legs hadn’t been enough. He had a feeling if he said that to her now she would disappear beneath the covers, never to return.

“Okay, maybe I know it wasn’t.”

Without waiting for her permission he joined her on the bed, stretching out beside her. She scooted about half an inch in the other direction, but he didn’t take it personally. “This is the part where you tell me I was the best you’ve ever had,” he said, propping his face on his fist.

“Maybe you weren’t,” she said, tilting her chin up.

He took hold of it, lowered her face so that she was forced to make eye contact with him. “Try again.”

Her pupils expanded, the ring of brown in her eyes nearly disappearing. “Okay,” she said, her voice trembling. “Maybe you were.”

“Good. Because you were definitely the best I’ve ever had.”

“Really? Me? You’ve been with so many women.”

“Not that many,” he returned.

“Still sounds like an indeterminate figure.”

“I’d stop and count for you, but I can’t remember anyone else at the moment. All I can think of is you.”

She laughed again, but this time she sounded subdued, lowering the pillow completely and wrapping her arms around it, clutching it to her chest. Some of the tension in his own chest eased. But the tension in other parts of his body remained.

“What were you going to tell me?”

“Oh,” she said, waving her hand, “it’s not that important.”

“You thought it was really important a few minutes ago.”

“Yeah, well. Your abs are compromising my thought process.”

“You’re welcome to touch them while you talk.” That wasn’t the only place he wanted her to touch. But he would start with whatever he could get.

She smiled, mirroring his position, propping her cheek up on her closed fist. “This doesn’t feel all that weird.”

It didn’t feel weird at all to him. But then, this attraction wasn’t new for him. He had a feeling it wasn’t really new for her either, but acknowledging it was new.

“Why would it be?” he asked, reaching out and tracing her face from her cheekbone down to her chin. “It’s you and me.”

“It’s just always seemed to me... That it’s best to keep things separate, you know?”

“Is that another rule from the Lane Jensen guide to life?”

She pushed his shoulder. “I just mean... When I left Massachusetts, when I left my parents, I was broken. I was broken in part by my romantic relationship, but it was more than that. I had the baby when I was sixteen.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t know if we should talk about this now, after all.”

He studied her profile, the way her lashes rested against her pale skin. The slight tension in her forehead. The only indication of just how badly this topic hurt her. He wanted her to tell him everything. He wanted her to open up and pour all her pain out onto him. To give it all to him. To let him carry it. He wanted that so badly it shocked him. It was a physical ache, a need that went beyond logic, beyond sex.

He cared about Lane. He wanted to protect her. From everything. And for a long time, that had included himself. But now, now that he knew even more about her, the need had intensified.

“Tell me,” he said.

She kept her eyes closed, but she continued talking. “It was decided right after I found out about the pregnancy that we should give the baby up for adoption. And when I say it was decided, I mean our parents told us exactly how it would be. We were both scared. He was my first boyfriend, and while I definitely had thought about marrying him, it wasn’t like I was anywhere close to being ready for that. We both had college to look forward to. We both had our whole lives ahead of us. Cord’s parents just wanted it all to go away. Him being a part of the child’s life was never an option, as far as they were concerned. If I had the baby, they didn’t want him involved. So having my parents say that we would put the child up for adoption was...a relief in a way. I didn’t have to make the decision. They made it for me.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath, holding even tighter to the pillow. Then she continued. “But all throughout the pregnancy I had my doubts. Still, we went forward with the process. The baby was placed with parents before I had him. And I did my best not to think of him as mine. He was theirs. He was theirs because they were the ones who were going to raise him.”

“It wasn’t that simple in the end, was it?” Finn prompted, trying to keep his tone gentle.

She shook her head, biting her lip. “Sometimes I can’t believe that really happened to me. It’s like a scene out of someone else’s life. And then other times... It’s way too real. Way too close to the present. Sometimes I think I feel a flutter in my stomach. And I think it’s the baby kicking. But of course, it isn’t. I haven’t been pregnant for more than twelve years. But it’s just... Those reminders. That experience... I can’t just forget it. I can’t let go of it. It all seemed so simple. You give the baby up for adoption, and then you move on with your life. But there’s more to it.”

“Tell me,” he said.

The image of Lane, so young, going through something that terrified women twice her age, made his heart clench tight.

“My parents told everybody that I was going to study abroad for a year. That wasn’t true. I went to a special school with pregnant unwed mothers. Like it was literally the nineteen fifties. And I kept up with my schooling that way.”

“Your parents hid the pregnancy from everybody that way.”

She swallowed visibly, nodding. “It was for the best,” she said, like she was repeating words she had heard before but had never really internalized. “You know, especially for Cord. Because he had political aspirations, like I said. Like you can see. And really, nobody could know that his girlfriend was pregnant. I mean, it was out of consideration for me too. As my mother told me, over and over again, nobody can respect a girl who gets pregnant.”

He swore. “That’s awful.”

“It was really awful. I was so lonely, and everything was scary. I couldn’t even talk to my boyfriend. And, anyway, at a certain point I didn’t want to. I just wanted to forget that I’d ever had a relationship with him. We broke up over the phone when I was about five months along. I was the one who ended it. I wanted to forget him. And also to never have sex again.” She laughed a little. “Clearly I didn’t stick to that. But after I had the baby I only ever talked to him once. We didn’t talk about the pregnancy. Or the birth. I didn’t tell him we had a boy. He doesn’t know. He didn’t want to know. I did. Sometimes I wonder if that was a good decision.”

She cleared her throat. “Anyway. After I had him I went back home, I went back to school. I was going to finish my senior year.” She stopped for a moment, biting her lower lip. She let out a long, hard breath. “I tried. I tried to be normal. I tried to forget that anything had happened. The only person who knew about it was Cord, so it seemed like it should be easy. But I couldn’t forget. I couldn’t feel normal. I couldn’t catch his eye from across the school and not remember. I didn’t want him to ask about the baby—his son—and yet I was so angry every time he didn’t. I couldn’t feel like myself again. I couldn’t look at my parents and pretend the last year hadn’t happened. I just... I didn’t feel like I could move on there.”

“That’s when you came to live with Mark.”

“Yes. He had moved away back when I was in junior high. So we weren’t all that close, but he knew how Mom and Dad were. He understood. The minute I told him I was having issues with them... He didn’t ask questions. He just bought me a plane ticket. And I think... I think my parents were relieved to have me go. Because at the end of the day I think it was a lot harder for them to deal with the fact that I’d had their grandchild, and that they never met him, than they wanted it to be.”

“So you came to Copper Ridge. And that’s when we met.” No wonder he had found her so vulnerable. She had been wounded. Wounded deep. Much more than he had imagined. Mark had made it sound like it was the typical conflict between parents and a teenager.

“Yes,” she said. “And this place was... Everything. It was where I really started healing. Where I put all that distance between myself and my mistakes. All that pain. I couldn’t live in it. But here... The air, the ocean, the mountains. It started to heal me. I made friends. I found my independence. Who I was. I learned to make my own choices, and that making my own choices wasn’t a burden.” She looked at him for a moment, then away just as quickly. “I never even wanted to think about being attracted to you. You are too important to me. And I had already lost too much.” The words grew tight, small. “That hasn’t really changed. It’s just that my ability to deny everything clearly decreased.”