Slow Burn Cowboy(55)

“Right. So you think that knowing what happened to me is going to make me decide that I’m wrong about love and marriage?”

Something inside of her shrank down, died a little bit. Or at least, got really, really sick. “Well,” she said, her voice small, “kind of. Because it certainly started working for me. I can be patient, Finn. I don’t need you to say all the words today. I just want to know that we maybe could work toward that. That you could.”

“I want you to move in with me,” he said. “Be...what we are now. But in my house. That’s what I want. I want to have this, have you. I don’t see why it needs to be anything else.”

“Friends and sex,” she said. “Friends who have sex. Friends who are roommates and have sex. That’s it.”

“It’s good, Lane.”

“No,” she said.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because,” she said, her tone desperate. “Because I know exactly what it’s like to live with people who don’t really love you. To feel isolated and alone with people who really should understand you. I know what kinds of decisions those people make on your behalf.”

“Are you comparing me to your parents now? That seems a bit convenient.”

“Well, aren’t you comparing me to yours? Isn’t that what’s happening? You’re talking about abandonment like you think I would leave. Finn, I’m not going to leave. I have been your best friend for ten years, and now I’m more. And you think I’m going to walk away from you? Why would you think that? And don’t tell me it won’t help to give me a reason. I need something. Because I’m standing here screaming at you bare ass naked with my whole heart and everything else just kind of wrenched out in the open for you and you’re looking at me... I don’t even know how you’re looking at me. That’s the problem. I can’t read you. I don’t know what you’re thinking. I don’t know what you want. And don’t say to have me. Because that’s not enough.”

“I’m not enough for you,” he said, “that’s what you’re telling me. And you’re trying to make out like I’m the one that’s being selfish?”

She growled, grabbed hold of one of the pillows on the bed and slung it back onto the floor. “I want you to try,” she exploded. “That’s what I want. I want you to do something other than stand there with a blank expression on your face. Tell me who you are, Finn.”

“I am less lovable than my mother’s abusive boyfriend,” he said. “That’s who I am. Is that what you want to hear, Lane?”

“What?” Her stomach plummeted.

“Yeah. That’s the rest of that story. I walked in on the guy my mother was dating beating the ever-loving hell out of her, and I kicked his ass so good the cops got called. And you want to know what? My mother wanted to press charges against me. I stopped him from beating her up and she wanted to press charges on me.” Finn’s voice was vibrating with rage. With pain. And Lane felt it all echoing through her. “Of course, nothing stuck because it was clearly justified on my end. But she also wouldn’t press charges on him. Right after that, they left. And I didn’t want to end up in some foster home, so I took my ass down to Copper Ridge. To my grandfather’s ranch, because it was the only place on Earth I had ever spent a decent summer.” His lip curled, and he moved across the room to his dresser, taking out a pair of jeans.

“Then I spent almost twenty years breaking my back for this place, for that old man, and he left everything to my brothers. Split evenly between us like we were the same. Like that had to be fair, when nothing else in our lives was. Of course, wasn’t fair to me. But that’s how it works. You love people, you pour everything into them, you give them everything, and then they kick you in the balls. You want to know why I don’t want to get married? Why I don’t want kids? That’s why. I’m not a masochist.”

“But when you thought about getting married you were thinking of a hypothetical woman.” She crossed the room, put her hands on his chest. “This is me.”

“Is that supposed to reassure me? The woman who hid her feelings even from herself for a decade is trying to tell me that I don’t have to worry about things getting tough and her running away?”

She pulled away from him. “That was low.”

“It was honest. But it’s a dead end either way, Lane. It doesn’t matter. Because I don’t love you like that.”

She felt like she’d been slapped. “You don’t? You don’t love me like that? You dreamed of having me for ten years, and you couldn’t force yourself to not want me.”

“You’re underestimating just how extremely fucked-up I am. You’ve seen the way I treat my brothers, the way that I feel about my family. There’s only so much I can give. Why can’t you be happy with that?”

“Because I’ve been living with not enough for way too long. That’s been every moment of every day since I left Massachusetts. Taking little bits here and there. Cherry-picking my friendships and what I shared in them. Keeping you close to me, obsessively so, because something in me knew that I needed you, but I didn’t want you to be everything, God forbid, because then I might get hurt. So I shoved you to the side, and you’re right. I made you my handyman because I was too afraid to make you my boyfriend. So I dated easy men, men that I knew wouldn’t hurt me, but would give me just enough evidence that I was normal that I would never have to deal with all of the...bleh inside of me.”

“Why would you want to change everything?” he asked, his voice rough, raw. “Just... Why can’t this be enough?”

She shook her head, a sudden onslaught of tears slamming against the back of her eyes. Because she realized that she was losing this. Losing him. That he wasn’t going to back down. That he wasn’t going to tell her someday maybe she would have his whole heart. All of him.

And she was tempted. Tempted to just say okay. That she would live with him. That she didn’t need him to love her. That she could love him enough for both of them, and that maybe she would even be able to lie to herself when they made love and he held her at night, and tell herself that he loved her, even if he couldn’t say it.

“I’m tired of walls,” she said, her voice wobbly, thin and defeated. “Everything inside of me has been like a maze. And I just felt trapped in it. Lost in it. Claustrophobic. I want more than that. I want to be free of that. My ex-boyfriend got married—he had a family. He has the adoration of millions of people. I don’t even want that. But I want to be something other than my past. I want to be made of something different. I realized that all this time I’ve pretty much been made of my love for you. Even though you were my friend and nothing more, even though I did everything in my power to pretend I didn’t, I loved you. For you, I want to be open. I want to be free. I want to be everything. But I can’t chain myself to somebody who won’t do the same.”

She felt her entire posture begin to fold forward, collapse. All of the hope, all of the strength drained out of her. It was hard to feel anything but lost while she watched this brief glimmer of an imagined future slip through her fingers.

His face was still hard, impassable. For the first time she wondered if there really was nothing beneath it. If he was as damaged as he said he was. If being abandoned by his father, then by his mother—his mother who he had been trying to protect, who had called the police on her own son—really couldn’t feel things the way that other people could.

It was terrifying. Like suddenly realizing that the floor beneath her was quicksand and she was going to be swept right down in it. Nothing was certain in that moment. Nothing was stable.

“You know what I have on offer,” he said, his tone flat. “If that’s not enough... Then go now. Because I will be damned if I give you a place in my home and you leave me then. If I make room for you in my life and you take off like everybody else just because I’m not enough for you.”

She knew there was genuine pain beneath his words. They were coming from a place of hurt. But she didn’t really care. Because right now she was hurting. Because she was watching him ruin this thing between them, this thing he had pushed for, this thing he had wanted, because now he was being asked for something. Being asked to give everything she had.

And that just made her mad.

“You were the one that wanted this,” she said, her voice low. “You were the one who pushed for this. And this is what you wanted? To hold us in some kind of weird limbo for all of eternity? Yeah, I get that we were both in pretty deep denial when this started, thinking that we could do that, but I don’t think either of us actually believed it. Of course there were going to be feelings, Finn. But I’m ready to deal with them.”

“I made my position clear.” He took a step back.

“You’re willing to let me walk away? For what? For pride?”

“You won’t walk away,” he said, his confidence staggering. “You never have. And I don’t think you will now. You need me.”