Chapter Seven
W alking away from her had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. But he had work to finish, and she had to get her kids.
Being honest with her about why he needed a little space had been the other hardest thing he’d ever done. Because it came too close to admitting the truth.
This impossible truth that he had no idea what to do with now that they’d slept together.
He had felt like he was in love with her for a very long time.
But that love had been impossible to act on. So it had felt...safe in a way.
Or at least abstract.
The truth was, Boone didn’t know how to love somebody actively.
He knew how to do things for them. But he had no idea what being in love entailed.
He looked at the way his brothers had brought women into their lives, the way they’d rearranged themselves to have them. He didn’t like the thought of that. Not at all. Because he’d rearranged his life so many times.
And he just couldn’t take all that on right now.
Hell, more than that, he knew it was an impossibility. Wendy was going through a divorce. Wendy had kids.
There was something much heavier to the idea of trying to be with a woman who had been through so much, than if it was a woman he didn’t know.
He knew her. He knew how difficult all this was.
He knew about her life, about the things that she’d been through. And about the responsibilities she had.
And he took all that shit very seriously.
So he decided to go out. Decided to go to the bar. And wasn’t surprised to find his brother Jace there, since Jace’s wife was working tonight.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey yourself.”
“What brings you out on a weeknight?”
“I need a drink.”
He could confide in his brother.
He could. He was still considering it when Jace looked at him just a little too keenly. “Woman trouble?”
“You could say that.”
Because he had been considering telling his brother about it unsolicited, so he sure as hell didn’t have it in him to lie.
“Wendy?”
“Yeah.”
“You know, this just isn’t a great time for her, I would imagine.”
“It was a fine enough time for her to sleep with me.”
“Oh. Well. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised about that.”
“It’s not a surprise,” he said. It really wasn’t. They wanted each other too badly for too long for it to be a surprise.
“What’s the problem?”
“Life is just really messed up,” said Boone. “I don’t know how you ever let go of that enough to be with someone. Especially when everything they’re going through is as equally messed up as the world around you. It was easy. To carry a torch for her knowing I could never have her. But the rest of it...”
“Yeah. I get that.”
“She’s in a bad space,” he said.
“So you said,” Jace commented.
“It’s true though. And it’s important I remember that. I don’t want her to feel obligated to me.”
“Bad news,” said Jace. “When you have a relationship with somebody you do often feel obligated to them. It’s not a bad thing. I think that’s somewhere in line with basic human connection and empathy.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want this to be transactional.”
“Fine. I can understand that. But if you do something for her and she wants to do something for you, that’s not transactional so much as it is a relationship.”
“She doesn’t need one of those right now.”
“And that’s up to you to decide?”
He snorted. “I didn’t say that. But I don’t...”
“Listen to me, and trust me. I say this as a man who talked himself into thinking he knew better what the woman in his life wanted than she did. That way lies disaster. If you actually care about her, you need to give her some respect. The respect that she knows what’s going on in her own mind. At least that.”
“I know she does,” he said. “But just... You weren’t there. You didn’t see her marriage. Okay? I did.”
“Yeah. You were friends with her husband. If you hate the guy so much then why—”
“I didn’t hate him. Not everything about him. When we were hanging out on the rodeo circuit, he was a good guy. The thing is, he kind of taught me how to have a good time. I needed that. You know how things were after...after Buck left. I had to take on a lot. And it was heavy. And I threw myself into the rodeo after that because I knew it was so important to Dad. I found some things there that I didn’t expect to. But Daniel is a fun guy. And he kind of gave me something to look forward to. He taught me how to enjoy what had felt like an obligation before. There were good things about him. But when he married Wendy, things did change.” And he left out the fact that a huge part of that was the way Boone felt about Wendy. From the moment he’d first seen her. There was no way Daniel could ever have been good enough for her. Even if he’d been perfectly good after all.
It was just that he hadn’t been. So that combined with everything else made it kind of an impossible situation.
“Our friendship has had some cracks in it for a while. And in the end, I chose her. I was always going to choose her. I...” He realized what he’d just said.
“How long have you had a thing for her?”
“Too long. But the timing is bad.”
“Word of advice. The timing is always bad.”
“No, it really is. And I’m... I’m not someone who just hopes because he wants something. Not anymore.”
“Boone, listen. I know... I know Sophia—”
“It was a lesson, Jace. When an illness is terminal, hoping for the best is stupid. It’s not charming.” He took a drink. “It’s been a long time. But I changed. I know better. And I can see clearly, without...without being a blind optimist. The timing is bad.”
Jace shook his head. “I get where you’re coming from. But when it comes to relationships, the timing is always bad.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Because at some point, caring about somebody means getting over yourself. And that is a really hard thing to do.”
He could understand what his brother was saying. But caring about Wendy had always meant denying himself. It had always meant caring more about her than about him. Of course it had.
He’d always been clear on what loving Wendy meant.
He could care, but he couldn’t have her.
And if anything, it just reinforced what he had to do. And that was let her go at the end of all this.
Because that was what caring about her meant.
It meant not being like Daniel. Not holding her to him when it wasn’t right. When it wasn’t the best situation for her. That was what love was.
It was sacrificial.
So there.
“Well, that’s the way I feel about her,” he said. “Like my feelings can’t be first.”
“Great. Just make sure you don’t decide for her what her feelings are. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
Jace raised his hand, and Cara brought over a couple of beer bottles.
“Do you have a designated driver, Boone?” she asked.
“You have my permission to put me in a cab if I have too many.”
“Good. I have to look out for you. You’re my brother now after all.”
It was weird, the way the family kept expanding. Especially after being so conscious of the contractions in their family for all those years.
But Cara was a sister to him. Another person who cared.
That sat a little bit uncomfortably in his chest, and he couldn’t quite say why.
“My biggest problem now,” he said, lifting his beer bottle and looking at his brother, “is figuring out how to act like what happened earlier today didn’t happen, especially when her kids are around.”
“Well, not that I know, but I assume kids are a pretty big dampener on the libido.”
“Especially teenagers,” Boone said. “Little kids you could get that past, but older ones...”
“I don’t know, man. Sounds to me like you just stepped your boot into a whole mess of sexual tension snakes.”
He laughed. “Yeah.” He didn’t laugh because it was funny. He laughed because it was true. He laughed because the mental image that it painted was far too accurate.
He had gone and done it. The nest of sexual tension snakes had been there all along, and he’d known. Full well.
But it was like stepping in it had been the only option. So there he was.
And now he was going to have to get back to the task of taking care of her. And taking care of the girls. All while carrying on a blisteringly hot, temporary affair with her. Because the snakes had been stepped in. So there was no point going back now.
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Sure you will,” said Jace, a little too cheerfully for his liking.
“Why exactly do you seem to be enjoying this?”
“Because a woman completely rearranged my life some years ago, and a few months ago, I was finally able to figure out exactly what that rearranging needed to look like. I’m glad to see you in a similar situation.”
Except it wasn’t the same. It never would be. But he didn’t argue with his brother. He didn’t have the energy for it. He had other things to save his energy for. If his time with Wendy was limited, he was going to pour everything into it. Absolutely everything.
She was so distracted. She needed to get her daughters through homework. And then she needed to get herself off to bed.
She managed that, just barely. But then she couldn’t sleep.
She was completely consumed by her thoughts of Boone. And what had happened between them that day.
He was gone still, the driveway empty, and she should be completely okay with that. He explained himself after all.
And, anyway, he didn’t have an obligation to her.
It wasn’t about obligation, though. She just wished he was here. And when she saw headlights pull up into the driveway, she climbed out of bed and, without thinking, went out the side door of the cottage and walked toward his house.
It wasn’t a truck; it was a car. And she stopped and stared at the unfamiliar white vehicle, not quite understanding what was going on until she saw the logo on the side.
He’d gotten a taxi.
He got out of the cab, and she saw him stumble into the house.
And without thinking, she went the same way he did.
“Are you drunk?”
He turned. “Tipsy. Not drunk.”
“Okay. Why?”
“I was trying to make it a little bit easier to fall asleep, actually.”
“Oh, Boone. Come on inside. I’ll make you some tea.”
“No. That is counter to my objective. Which is to not think about you. And definitely not to fall asleep with you on my mind.”
He was a little tipsy. And she didn’t usually find that kind of thing sexy. But here she was. She had a feeling she would find Boone’s hangnail sexy. And that was a whole other kind of problem she’d never had before.
“In the house.”
“I don’t take orders.”
“Why not?”
He grinned, and she found herself suddenly pressed up against the side of the house. “Because I like to give them.”
Arousal crashed through her body. Yeah. She would really like to take orders from him. Though, that wasn’t supposed to be what was happening tonight.
“And tomorrow afternoon when you’re sober, and you come in for your lunch break, you’re welcome to tell me everything your heart desires. But right now, I’m telling you to go in the house so I can make you some tea.”
“I think you’d have more fun if you got down on your knees.”
“For sure,” she said, breathless with the desire that thought infused in her. “But sometimes you can’t get what you want.”
“I’m well familiar.”
“Inside.”
And this time, he obeyed her.
So there was that.
She found an electric kettle—which was surprisingly civilized of him, she thought—and plugged it in, flicking on the switch to start up the hot water.
“I appreciate that you got a cab. I feel like sometimes you guys are not so great with the designated-driver thing.”
“You guys?”
“You rodeo cowboys,” she said.
“Yeah well.” He cleared his throat, his expression going stoic. “My older brother was in a drunk driving accident. He wasn’t driving. But they were a bunch of boys that had gone out camping and drinking and... Anyway. He was the only one that survived. After something like that you take the whole thing pretty seriously.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Boone, I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. Nobody knows Buck. Because he took off so long ago. It really screwed him up.”
There was something raw and unspoken in his words. A truth buried there she couldn’t quite figure out. And he wasn’t going to tell her. Not willingly. Not right now.
And that was okay. Because that wasn’t supposed to be the point of this. But now she couldn’t stop imagining the catastrophe, and the way it must have hurt everyone.
“Was he injured?”
Boone nodded. “Yeah. He was okay, though. I mean physically. But it’s a small town. And people will define you by something like that. And everyone will know. You can’t outrun it unless you leave. I know that.”
“It must’ve been hard. Having him leave.”
“Plenty of families don’t live in each other’s pockets.”
“Yes. That is true. But I expect it feels different when somebody leaves because of something like that.”
“I guess. Were you close to your mom?”
“Yes. Until she died. She died when I was eighteen. And then after that, I met Daniel. I expect I was looking for a connection.”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“We don’t often do the best things for ourselves when we’re feeling desperate.” She closed her eyes. “That isn’t fair. He was good to me. As far as I knew. I wasn’t openly accepting poor treatment.”
“I was trying to remember today, when my brother and I were talking at the bar, exactly why I used to like Daniel. It occurred to me that he was one of the most carefree guys I’ve ever met. And as somebody who was burdened with a host of care by the time I was sixteen, I liked being around him.”
“That’s what I liked about him too. I was always afraid. Always afraid of losing what little I had. Always afraid of when the other shoe was going to drop. I was always scared. And he never was. Not of tomorrow, not of his success vanishing, not of our relationship imploding, he just lived. And now, I feel a little bit betrayed. Because so much of that is just arrogance, isn’t it? Thinking you’re the center of everything, the most important person, and that nothing you do can compromise it. And here I thought I was maybe learning some kind of life lesson from him.”
“There’s still a life lesson there, maybe. He doesn’t have to have had everything worked out for some of it to be true.”
“I guess.”
“Did he ever make you happy?”
“Yes,” she said. “And I guess it was real enough. I guess.”
“I can understand why it’s difficult. To accept that any of it was real when it seems like he was lying all that time.”
“Yeah.” She poured the hot water into a mug and put a tea bag in it. “But I guess that’s the thing. That was part of his arrogance. He didn’t think I needed his fidelity as long as he kept it from me. And I think he didn’t much see the conflict there. It’s insane. It doesn’t make any sense. But I think that’s what he thought. And so in his way, I think he loved me. I just think he never really loved anybody as much as he loved himself.”
“And that may be why he was so happy,” Boone said.
That made her laugh. “That’s fair. How happy can you be when you’re worried constantly about the happiness of somebody else? When you love yourself most, your joy isn’t completely tied to the feelings of others. Like it is when you care about others as much as you care about your own. For Daniel, ultimately your own happiness is what matters...”
“I expect that’s the easiest way.”
“I wouldn’t want to live that way, though. Because I wouldn’t have my girls. Makes everything hard. Because as difficult as it is to go through this separation, it’s so much harder when you’re worried about other people’s happiness as much as you are your own. Or more. But then I think at least I know what it’s like. To feel an intense amount of caring for somebody else. I think that’s the depth of it.”
“Yeah. I think that’s the depth of it. When I was a kid, my sister died. You might know that.”
“I didn’t,” she said.
“Well. Sorry to bum you out with my family history. But it was a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. Me too. But you know, that was my first introduction to understanding just how badly love could hurt. But what can you do? You love your siblings. No matter what. And I couldn’t turn off my love for my family just because we lost our little sister. So I learned how to kind of move on with it. I learned that you could love even though it hurt. The hurt is part of it. And yeah, I think the way Daniel loves, that’s kind of something else.”
“Narcissism?”
“Possibly.”
“I’m very sorry to hear about your sister. And your brother. Do you see him at all?”
“No. And in some ways that feels harder to deal with than Sophia’s death. Because he is still alive. He just doesn’t speak to us. He is still alive, he just... He won’t come to us for help. After everything we went through. As a family. He put my parents through losing another child, effectively. He lived, but he won’t live. And I just can’t wrap my head around that.”
“This one isn’t about me,” she said slowly. “It’s my mother’s story. But she isn’t here to tell it, so I’d like to. My father abused her. She loved him, she trusted him, and he abused her. Physically. Emotionally. And I know that the woman she was after him was different. No matter how much she wanted to go back. She just couldn’t. And sometimes I wondered why she didn’t go home. Why did she go out on her own and struggle? When she could have gone back, because she talked about her family like they were all right. But the issue wasn’t them, it was her. She survived something she didn’t want to explain to anybody. And she didn’t feel like she could go back. And I think there was something sad about that. I never got to know my parents. But I also understand there were things that happened that were so traumatizing she just couldn’t face people seeing how they had changed her. And I can’t judge her for that. Maybe your brother feels the same. Maybe he doesn’t want you all to see who he is. Because maybe in some way he does feel like he died. I don’t know. And I’m sorry if I’m overstepping. It’s just that I love someone very much who did a similar thing.”
He was quiet for a long time.
“This is maybe a little bit of a deep conversation to have when I’m partway into my cups,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep. But I—”
“You didn’t overstep. Hell. We had sex a few hours ago, I think you can give me some advice.”
“It’s not really advice. It’s just you said you didn’t understand, and I hope maybe you might feel less mystified. And even if it isn’t true, even if that’s not why he left, if he didn’t tell you, well, then what can you do? But if having an answer, any answer—one that’s about him and his pain and not you—helps, then you might as well choose to believe that one.”
“Good point. I can’t argue with that.”
“You could.”
Their eyes met. This felt dangerous. Quite dangerous. Because this was another thing they hadn’t done these last years. They hadn’t gotten to know each other. They knew each other in the sense that they saw each other around. She knew the quality of man Boone was because she saw the way he interacted with other people. Because they chatted in passing at different things when it couldn’t be avoided, and they did their very best to never be self-conscious about the sparks between them. To never draw too much attention to all of it.
But they didn’t do this. They didn’t sit and have heart-to-hearts. They didn’t talk about his dead sister or his missing brother. Maybe she had started it, trying to push him away by telling him about her childhood. It hadn’t worked. And now she knew about his, and that was close to having a connection. It was close to something she should be avoiding. And definitely something she shouldn’t want.
Definitely not.
“Yeah. But, why? I’d rather kiss you.”
“That’s probably not a great idea.” But she was already leaning in, and when he kissed her, it was almost tender. Nearly sweet.
It could never be entirely tender, though, because there was an edge to the meeting of their mouths that she thought not even time would take away.
It was the wanting. And how long they’d lived with it.
But tonight, there was something glorious about it. An ache fueled by how much she wanted him, and by knowing tonight she couldn’t have him. Because she needed to get back to the cottage, needed to get back to the girls.
Because one thing she really couldn’t afford was for her daughters to discover she wasn’t home. For them to wonder where she was.
So he was forbidden again, but only for a few hours. There was something illicit, in a glorious way, about that.
A fun way because it wasn’t impossible, it was just delayed.
So she let the kiss get intense, hungry, and she gloried in it.
In the building desire between her thighs, and the reckless heat that threatened to overwhelm her.
His whiskers scratched against her skin, and she liked that too.
Yes. She really did like it.
And when they pulled away, they were breathing hard, and her whole body felt like it was strung out, ready to shatter at the slightest touch.
“Are you going to touch yourself tonight? And think of me?”
It wasn’t a question, she knew. It was a command. Because that was who he was.
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Okay.”
“Send me a text and let me know exactly what you thought I might do. Because you know, ‘you have not because you ask not.’”
“All right.”
He kissed her again, once more, then picked up his mug and stood. “I’ll head to bed.”
“Me too.”
And she did exactly as he ordered, and when her climax hit, she turned her face into her pillow and said his name.
Then she sent off a furtive text letting him know she had completed the task. But when it came to what exactly she thought about? That was a lot more difficult. And in the end, she only wrote one word.
You.