Slow Burn Cowboy(90)

That was the story of her entire life. She had, from the time she was a child, refused to make herself vulnerable. Refused to open herself up to injury. To pain. So she pretended she didn’t care. She pretended nothing mattered. She did that every time her father ignored her, every time he forgot an important milestone in her life. She had done it the first time she’d ever had sex with a guy and it had made her feel something. Rather than copping to that, rather than dealing with it, she had mocked him.

All of her inner workings were a series of walls and shields, carefully designed to keep the world from hitting the terrible, needy things inside of her. Designed to keep herself from realizing they were there. But she couldn’t do it anymore. She didn’t want to do it anymore. Not with Chase. She didn’t want to look back and wonder what could have been.

She wanted more. She needed more. Pride be damned.

“I do,” she said, nodding. “I love you.”

“You can’t.”

“I’m pretty sure I can. Since I do.”

“No,” he said, the word almost desperate.

“No, Chase, I really do. I mean, I have loved you since I was fifteen years old. And intermittently thought you were hot. But mostly, I just loved you. You’ve been my friend, my best friend. I needed you. You’ve been my emotional support for a long time. We do that for each other. But things changed in the past few days. You’re my...everything.” Her voice broke on that last word. “This isn’t sex and friendship, it isn’t two different things, this is all the things, combined together to make something so big that it fills me completely. And I don’t have room inside my chest for shields and protection anymore. Not when all that I am just loves you.”

“I can’t do this,” he bit out, stepping away from her.

“I didn’t ask if you could do this. This isn’t about you, not right now. Yes, I would like you to love me, too, but right now this is just about me saying that I love you. Telling you. Because I don’t ever want to look back and think that maybe you didn’t know. That maybe if I had said something, it could have been different.” She swallowed hard, battling tears. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Unless it’s a movie, I almost never cry, but you’re making me cry a lot lately.”

“I’m only going to make you cry more,” he said. “Because I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to love somebody.”

“Bull. You’ve loved me perfectly, just the way I needed you to for fifteen years. The way that you take care of this place, the way that you care for Sam... Don’t tell me that you can’t love.”

“Not this kind. Not this... Not this.”

“I’m closing the gap,” she said, pressing on, even though she could see that this was a losing battle. She was charging in anyway, sword held high, chest exposed. She was giving it her all, fighting even though she knew she wasn’t going to walk away unscathed. “I’m not going to wonder what would’ve happened if I’d just been brave enough to do it. I would rather cut myself open and bleed out. I would rather risk my heart than wonder. So I’m just going to say it. Stop being such a coward and love me.”

He took another step back from her and she felt that gap she was so desperate to close widening. Watched as her greatest fear started to play out right before her eyes. “I just... I don’t.”

“You don’t or you won’t?”

“At the end of the day, the distinction doesn’t really matter. The result is the same.”

She felt like she was having an out-of-body experience. Like she was floating up above, watching herself get rejected. There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t change it. Couldn’t shield herself.

It was...horrible. Gut-wrenching. Destructive. Freeing.

Like watching a tsunami racing to shore and deciding to surrender to the wave rather than fight it. Yeah, it would hurt like hell. But it was a strange, quiet space. Past fear, past hope. All she could hear was the sound of her heart beating.

“I’m going to go,” she said, turning away from him. “You can have the bacon.”

She had been willing to risk herself, but she wouldn’t stand there and fall apart in front of him. She would fall apart, but dammit, it would be on her own time.

“Stay and eat,” he said.

She shook her head. “No. I can’t stay.”

“Are we going to... Are we going to go to the gala together still?”

“No!” She nearly shouted the word. “We are not going to go together. I need to... I need to think. I need to figure this out. But I don’t think things can be the same anymore.”

It was his turn to close the distance between them. He grabbed hold of her arms, drawing her toward him, his expression fierce. “That was not part of the deal. It was friends plus benefits, remember? And then in the end we could just stop with the benefits and go back to the friendship.”

“We can’t,” she said, tears falling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. But we can’t.”

“What the hell?” he ground out.

“We can’t because I’m all in. I’m not going to sit back and pretend that it didn’t really matter. I’m not going to go and hide these feelings. I’m not going to shrug and say it doesn’t really matter if you love me or not. Because it does. It’s everything. I have spent so many years not wanting. Not trying. Hiding how much I wanted to be accepted, hiding how desperately I wanted to try to look beautiful, how badly I wanted to be able to be both a mechanic and a woman. Hiding how afraid I was of ending up alone. Hiding under a blanket and watching old movies. Well, I’m done. I’m not hiding any of it anymore. And you know what? Nothing’s going to hurt after this.” She jerked out of his hold and started to walk toward the front door.

“You’re not leaving in that.”

She’d forgotten she wasn’t exactly dressed. “Sure I am. I’m just going to drive straight home. Anyway, it’s not your concern. Because I’m not your concern anymore.”

The terror that she felt screaming through her chest was reflected on his face. Good. He should be afraid. This was the most terrifying experience of her life. She knew how horrible it was to lose a person you cared for. Knew what kind of void that left. And she knew that after years it didn’t heal. She knew, too, you always felt the absence. She knew that she would always feel his. But she needed more. And she wasn’t afraid to put it all on the line. Not now. Not after everything they had been through. Not after everything she had learned about herself. Chase was the one who had told her she needed more confidence.

Well, she had found it. But there was a cost.

Or maybe this was just the cost of loving. Of caring, deeply and with everything she had, for the first time in so many years.

She strode across the property, not caring that she was wearing nothing more than his T-shirt, rage pouring through her. And when she arrived back at the shop she grabbed her purse and her keys, making her way to the truck. When she got there, Chase was standing against the driver’s-side door. “Don’t leave like this.”

“Do you love me yet?”

He looked stricken. “What do you want me to say?”

“You know what I want you to say.”

“You want me to lie?”

She felt like he had taken a knife and stabbed her directly through the heart. She could barely breathe. Could barely stand straight. This was... This was her worst fear come true. To open herself up so completely, to make herself so entirely vulnerable and to have it all thrown back in her face.

But in that moment, she recognized that she was untouchable from here on out. Because there was nothing that could ever, ever come close to this pain. Nothing that could ever come close to this risk.

How had she missed this before? How had she missed that failure could be such a beautiful, terrible, freeing experience?

It was the worst. Absolutely the worst. But it also broke chains that had been binding her for years. Because if someone had asked her what she was so afraid of, this would have been the answer. And she was in it. Living it. Surviving it.

“I love you,” she repeated. “This is your chance. Listen to me, Chase McCormack, I am giving you a chance. I’m giving you a chance to stop being so afraid. A chance to walk out of the darkness. We’ve walked through it together for a long time. So I’m asking you now to walk out of it with me. Please.”

He backed away from the truck, his jaw tense, a muscle there twitching.

“Coward,” she spat as he turned and walked away from her. Walked away from them. Walked back into the damned darkness.

And she got in her truck and started the engine, driving away from him, driving away from the things she wanted most in the entire world.

She didn’t cry until she got home. But then, once she did, she was afraid she wouldn’t stop.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SHE WAS GOING to lose the bet. That was the safest thought in Anna’s head as she stood in her bedroom the night of the charity event staring at the dress that was laid across her bed.

She was going to have to go there by herself. And thanks to the elaborate community theater production of their relationship everyone would know that they had broken up, since Chase wouldn’t be with her. She almost laughed.