Slow Burn Cowboy(48)

“Not specifically,” she said.

“As in, not right at this moment?” Rebecca asked.

“Pretty much.” Actually, this moment had triggered the first twinge of any kind of longing she could remember that wasn’t related to the child she’d already had.

“Me either,” Alison said. “Though, I have to say that’s mostly related to how very little I want to deal with a baby daddy.”

“Well,” Rebecca said. “That’s the difference. Because I don’t mind the eventual father of my children at all.”

“Okay,” Lane said. “Enough with the baby talk. I’m sort of afraid that by talking too much about them we might invoke one. What if they’re like Beetlejuice?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be me that ended up carrying it,” Alison said. “Unless you start seeing suspicious stars in the east.”

“You’re not a virgin,” Rebecca pointed out.

“I may be a born-again one,” Alison returned.

Rebecca and Alison looked at Lane. She felt her face getting warm. “Like I said. I’m worried they might be catching. And I don’t want to catch one.”

“But it’s possible that you could.”

Lane squinted at Alison. “One never knows. Anyway, moving on. I brought a project.”

“The point of girls’ night is not to bring work,” Rebecca said. “You’re not honoring the spirit of the get-together.”

“Yes,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I am. Because while you help me make a list to figure out what items I want in my Best of Copper Ridge subscription box, I’m going to talk.”

She felt a little dizzy the moment the words left her mouth. She didn’t know if she wanted to get into all of the minute details about her past, but... She had to stop giving it so much power.

And by making it a giant monster that she shut the door on, that she was working to keep out of this existence, she was also hiding herself from her friends.

Keeping things buried, like she had done with Finn for so long. All the little separate compartments inside of herself where she kept her secrets, where she kept her desires. Things that kept her distant from everyone around her.

Things that were starting to make her feel like a prisoner inside of herself.

She was done. If there was one thing she knew for certain after that encounter with him by the lake it was that she couldn’t go on the way that she had been.

Well, she could. She could keep on stuffing everything down. Keep on lying to everybody about who she was by cleverly concealing all that she’d been through. But she might very well implode.

There was something about being open. About taking that first step to revealing her past. About stripping off her clothes, stripping off her mask, about knocking down all those carefully placed walls she had constructed between the two of them, that made her want to do it in other ways. With other people.

Well, not the naked bit. That was just for him.

Her stomach clenched tight. She was more than a little afraid that it would always be that way when she thought of him. That, from now on, it would only ever be him for her.

“Okay,” Alison said. “Then let’s get listing.”

They broke out the snacks—mini pies from Alison’s bakery and wine from Grassroots that Lane had in stock—and began to work on the list.

Which came together with surprising speed. Cheese from Finn she would be able to ship well enough with ice packs. Preserves, wines, and Alison wanted to contribute dry mixes with recipes. There were a few local coffee roasters and including a pound of beans every so often would be good too.

“You should talk to Ryan Masters,” Rebecca said around a mouthful of pie. “I know you carry some of his stuff already, but maybe there are more options. Like smoked salmon. Also, I wonder if the Garretts would be interested in doing beef jerky or something.”

“Okay,” she said, “that’s good. I wish there was more in the way of local candy. I mean, I can get some from a few places down south, but it would be nice to have something here.”

“With the way things are expanding to accommodate tourism I have a feeling you won’t have to wait too long for it,” Rebecca said. “Oh,” she continued, “if you got Chase and Sam McCormack to make bottle openers or something, that might be cool.”

The McCormack brothers had made quite a name for themselves even outside of Copper Ridge through both their practical products and Sam’s artistic skill.

“This is great,” she said, feeling incredibly self-satisfied. “I mean, there are more things than I even thought of initially.”

“You might be a genius,” Alison said.

“I might be.” She felt... Well, she felt like she was taking steps in new directions. After being stagnant for so long it felt exhilarating. A little bit scary. “Thank you, guys, for helping me with this. For dealing with how obsessive and weird I’ve been lately.”

Rebecca rubbed her hands together. “Oh, are we getting to the talking?”

“Cord McCaffrey is my ex,” she said, wincing when the words came out of her mouth.

“What?”

“Senator Good Hair?”

Both questions were asked at exactly the same time, and Lane wasn’t quite sure who had asked what. But it didn’t really matter.

“Yes,” she said. “From high school. My first boyfriend. My first...”

“Oh,” Alison said, “holy crap.”

“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t really think she could get into the baby thing right now. Because that would require... Well, more alcohol. Possibly some crying. They would look at her like they felt sorry for her, and she wasn’t in that space right now. What she needed was what Finn had given her.

He had been... Supportive. But also pragmatic. He had been strong, something for her to lean against, but not something for her to dissolve with. Maybe someday she would be ready for that. But not now. It was a little too demanding at the moment.

“Anyway, I guess seeing him and how successful he is kind of messed with my head.” That was true. “I felt like... What was I doing with my life? He has all of that. This family, children, the promising career. He’s famous. And I just...suddenly wanted to kick-start what I was doing.”

“That’s understandable,” Alison said. “Wow. I can’t imagine that. Basically, if my ex-husband is doing well it means he’s not currently in prison. So... I won. I won the divorce. I have my own business, I’m happy. I have a little apartment, and it’s clean, and it’s mine. I feel nothing but extraordinarily happy with what I’ve made, and when I look at his existence—which I try not to—I only see a million reasons why I left.”

“That would be so much better,” Lane said. “Not because I want to be with Cord. I don’t. I mean, I know that I’m unfairly judging his sexual performance based on what he could pull off as a teenage boy, but let me tell you, I have had better since.” She was having the best right now. “I don’t want him at all. I don’t want to be part of his life. I just want... My family was really rich. And, you know, I lived in the kind of neighborhood that you would expect a future senator to come out of. And when he’s old enough, I imagine a future president. Or at least a presidential candidate. But that’s what everybody in my hometown is groomed for. I left it all behind. It’s not what I wanted. I couldn’t handle it. And I guess I feel like I need to make something out of my life here.”

Alison wrapped an arm around her and squeezed her tight. “I get what you’re saying. But you’ve already done so freaking much, Lane. You have a business, a home, friends, and the most important thing is that you’re happy. And if you’re happy it doesn’t matter if you’re on TV, if you own your own store, or if you collect seashells on the beach and sell them on the roadside. Success, like what you’re talking about...it doesn’t make you happy. All of that comes from inside you.”

“I guess so.”

“No, not you guess. I’m right. I spent a long time looking for it in other people. In my husband. He would hit me, Lane, and I would try to tell myself that it didn’t matter, because without a husband I wasn’t anything. That was success to my family. Getting married, having children. It didn’t matter if the marriage sucked. A divorce was a failure. So I thought because they defined success that way that’s what it was, no matter the quality of my life. But that’s not it. I left him, and I had absolutely nothing. No house, no husband, nothing but my waitressing job at Rona’s. But you know what? I was the happiest I’ve ever been, because I was standing on my own strength.”

Lane thought about that. She thought about all the years of general discontent. And she thought about what she talked about with Finn by the river. About how angry she was that Cord had moved on and she didn’t feel like she could.

She wasn’t standing on her own strength because she was still holding on so tightly to the past. Afraid to let it go. She was looking for answers back there. For some kind of moment where she would find satisfaction in the decisions she had made. Where she would know beyond a shadow of a doubt she had been right. Or maybe even that she’d been wrong.