Chapter Seven #2
Of course you should go down to Cowboy Point, his mother had said in what was, looking back at it, an alarmingly serene tone of voice. When Belinda was not known for her smoothness of temper. I’m sure you have any number of things to take care of.
Knox had kissed his sweet little Hailey on her forehead, and then on her nose because she was so cute and she made her little noises at him, and then he’d gone.
To talk to Atticus, he’d told himself. But he’d known the whole time that he would end up here.
Really it came down to the advice Zeke had given all his sons at one point or another. Shit or get off the pot.
Simple and to the point, a lot like Zeke himself.
Knox took a breath, straight into that place near his solar plexus where he still felt like he was coming apart.
And he comforted himself with the knowledge that no matter what happened now, no matter if he really did put himself out there for once with her, he couldn’t make their situation more messed up.
It was oddly cheering.
He moved then, and then had to admit that it felt good to watch her eyes go wide. As if she’d expected him to do something even less than he already had.
That stung.
But it didn’t stop him.
He thought there might have to be a reckoning at some point, to figure out why it was that he had no fear at all strolling into Devil’s Gorge where literally anything could have happened to him and no one would ever have found his remains, but a little bit of vulnerability scared the hell out of him.
But even as he thought that, standing beside the table, looking down into Ramona’s unfathomably pretty face, he knew the answer.
The love in his family came with a whole lot of mockery, and Knox had long ago decided that he was never going to let them see that they got to him. Not as the youngest. He already got the worst of it. If they knew they bothered him, it would have been worse. They couldn’t help themselves.
He didn’t know when it had turned into a cage he didn’t know how to get out of.
Ramona wasn’t his family. And vulnerability with her would never become a joke the way it would with his brothers, because that wasn’t who she was.
Maybe he’d known that all along.
Maybe he’d known that if he was going to go in at all, he’d have to go all the way.
There’s no maybe about it, he told himself then.
But he was getting ahead of himself. He wasn’t going anywhere, in or out in any other direction. He was still just standing here, looking at her.
Knox reached down into that place that felt like it was unspooling, and decided that if there was a way out of the cage he hadn’t understood he was in until now—this was it.
And it felt a lot like it was now or never.
He moved around the table and knelt down beside her chair. That put him just about at eye level—though because he was on his knees, she had to look down at him a bit.
This close, he could not only hear but see it when she sucked in a breath. He could also see the beginnings of that flush he loved to watch roll out over her skin like a quiet, rosy thunderstorm.
She didn’t say anything. She also didn’t ask him why again, so he took that as a victory.
He put his hands on her legs and he didn’t crack a smile.
Because this was Ramona, and the mask was off, and anyway, this was serious.
“You’ve always gotten this wrong,” he told her, his voice low, maybe, but intent.
“I know you think I don’t feel anything.
Or I do, but I don’t want to, which amounts to the same thing.
But that’s not it. Of course I feel. I feel all the things that you do.
I just never wanted you to think that this was going places I knew it wouldn’t go.
” She didn’t react to that. And her legs were warm in those leggings beneath his palms, and touching her was still the best thing he could think of.
He felt something beating in him, like some kind of drum, urging him on. “I was trying to protect you.”
It was a testament, maybe, to the intensity of the moment that she didn’t laugh at that. Scoff at it, more like. Because he could see a gleam of that sort of thing in her gaze.
He kept going, because there was no turning back now.
“I love my family. I love the ranch. I love Montana. But I never wanted anything more than my family time here. I never wanted anything to tie me down at all. I figured the best way to go about that was to be brutally honest about that from the start. Not just with you. With everyone.”
For the first time in years, he thought about his high school girlfriend. He’d heard she’d met a nice guy and had moved to Denver, and he liked that for her.
Because he’d broken her heart, too.
“You certainly succeeded,” Ramona told him. And her voice was as calm as ever, but there was something a little more turbulent in all that blue in her eyes. “You have always been the very soul of brutal honesty.”
That wasn’t a compliment, he was well aware.
“Ramona.” He moved a little closer and tugged her around on her chair so she was facing him. So he was staring right into her face. Her astonishingly beautiful face that only got prettier closer in. “We were never supposed to meet when we did. I wasn’t even supposed to be here.”
He shook his head, but he didn’t stop. “I was planning to break it to my parents on Easter that I was done with the ranch for the moment. I had it all planned out. I was going to go on a road trip, first and foremost. Take a look at this country of ours myself, not through a screen. I was going to pick a place to settle and see how I liked it. But instead, my dad told us…”
Knox broke off. He blew out a breath. “How could I leave with my dad sick? I couldn’t. I couldn’t even consider it. And now there’s Hailey. My name on a birth certificate and a little baby girl who doesn’t seem to have anyone. And the whole while, between those two things, there’s been you.”
Ramona was tense beneath his hands. Her eyes were darker than usual.
But when she spoke again, her voice was as maddeningly smooth and even as ever.
“Yes,” she said, coolly, “life does happen while you’re busy pretending it hasn’t started yet. A thousand apologies for not making it easier on you. By… not moving here, I guess? Not going to find food on my first night? I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“If I was going to stay here, you must know that I would have locked you down already, Ramona,” he belted out. “I knew you were trouble that very first night. Haven’t I made that clear?”
She leaned a little closer, so that her gaze was practically inside of him, tearing him to shreds. “The only thing you’ve ever made clear is that every single thing I feel about you is my problem, not yours.”
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “I think you know that’s bullshit.”
Ramona stared at him. She didn’t melt. She didn’t cry.
She stared at him, and he had the terrible, paralyzing thought he’d left it too late after all, and that was nobody’s fault but his—
But then, barely an inch from his face, she blinked, and he saw the gleam he recognized in all that blue. That softening he sure as hell didn’t deserve, but he’d take it.
Knox wasn’t sure he’d ever felt this kind of relief in his life.
When he finally leaned in and kissed her again, after the two longest months of his life without her, it felt like fire.
And better yet, like coming home.