Chapter 5
Joined up with a new gang. Sitting around doesn’t work for me. I crave the adventure we used to have. Plus, all the money won’t last forever.
It wasn’t until he’d almost reached Wilder Ranch that he realized he was going to be caught between a rock and a hard place during this dinner his sister had railroaded him into.
There were two ways West Hancock handled social situations.
One was to be the biggest asshole in the place.
Oddly, people enjoyed that. In certain venues.
He had found that he got a lot of attention for being a troublemaker.
Had done it all his life. Well. From everyone except his parents anyway. Not that it mattered.
The other thing he did was flirt. That was something he was really good at. Men often didn’t enjoy him, but women loved him. Tonight, he knew full well most of the people in attendance were not fans, his sister would be there monitoring his behavior, and he sure as hell couldn’t flirt with Cassidy.
He thought back to their earlier encounter. Yeah. It was proving a challenge to keep himself from leaning in during those moments when things got tense between them.
What he’d said was true, though. Her family was so careful with her. He had observed it on multiple occasions. And the world wouldn’t be careful with her.
When that crush on Dalton Wade finally blew up in her face, it wasn’t going to be gentle. West was a man. He knew when another man was interested in a woman, and when he wasn’t.
When Dalton looked at Cassidy, the light in his eyes was … brotherly.
West did not feel brotherly.
Far from it.
He was beginning to get annoyed by the very sight of the girl, because he didn’t know what to do with this whole arrangement.
He had arranged his life very carefully.
To avoid creating trouble for other people, to avoid creating too much trouble for himself, and to do his best not to do harm that wasn’t reversible.
After being such a damned hellion in his youth, he felt he owed that consideration to the world.
Making money had become his risk-taking venture.
When he was a kid, it had been vandalism, driving too fast, speeding up and down Main Street on a motorcycle, lighting a fire at the school. Just the one.
He had been arrested more times than he could count.
He would never forget the first time Millie Talbot’s father had brought him back home in handcuffs.
The non-reaction his appearance had garnered from his parents likely told Sheriff Talbot everything he needed to know about West’s home life.
There was nothing he could do to get his parents’ attention.
His dad, William, cared about the Wild West Show. His mother’s focus was even tighter. On the things that obsessed Lucinda Hancock. Her collections. On a routine for the show that she cared about.
But as far as he could tell, the only real way they engaged with their children was if the children were engaged in the show.
He knew Jessie had some baggage about that. He wouldn’t say he had baggage; he had accepted his parents’ disengagement. For a while, it had spun him out into wilder and wilder behavior, because his parents didn’t care, so what was the incentive to not raise hell?
But eventually the inverse proved to be true. If he couldn’t get a reaction out of anyone he cared about, what was the point?
The realization he had been acting up to get a reaction out of them had sat heavy in his gut. He was lucky, he supposed, that all of his shenanigans had taken place before he was eighteen. Otherwise, he would’ve gotten into some real trouble, and landed with a real criminal record on his hands.
As a man who had spent a good part of his life cruising for some pain, he worried that Cassidy was doing the same thing.
Or maybe it wasn’t worry.
Maybe he sort of hoped she was.
Hoped he was the mountain she wanted to climb.
Maybe he was just obsessed, and he was trying to pretty it up.
But why?
It was his brain.
He was built like this, hardwired this way.
He’d finally gotten a psychological evaluation, because in his opinion, the best thing a man could do was understand why he did the things he did; otherwise he was going to continue to act recklessly and hurt the people around him.
Like his father.
So he had pursued a diagnosis. ADHD. Not surprising, all things considered.
It explained the supercharged nature of his thinking, his risk-taking, and any number of other less charming aspects of his personality. It explained his dad too, though his dad didn’t want to hear it.
But West found that once he understood why his brain did certain things, he was able to work with it. Or at least avoid doing things that were pointless.
He had a feeling that he was obsessed with Cassidy because he loved new things. And once he got curious about something, he could fixate on it for hours. Days. Weeks. It depended on how intricate and complex the learning process was. How hard the dopamine hit.
That, in his opinion, was the biggest misconception about attention deficit disorder. It was badly named. He didn’t have a deficit of attention. But he only paid attention to things that interested him. And his interest was very difficult to regulate.
It also popped up at the most inconvenient times. Like now.
This obsession with Cassidy. The trouble was, if he fucked her, he wouldn’t be interested anymore. He already knew that. The mystery would be solved, the question would be answered, the end.
It was good to remind himself of that. Even in the plainest and crudest of terms.
It was good to remember who he was.
He’d devastated his high school girlfriend. Neither of them had been virgins or anything like that, but still, sex had been relatively new, and it had been important to her.
When they’d slept together, she’d felt it was tantamount to a commitment.
But he didn’t have it in him to make a commitment.
For many reasons, he didn’t want to. The end of their relationship had showed him that he could hurt someone else, when he didn’t feel a thing.
It had been shocking, because it hadn’t occurred to him that she would feel any different from the way he did.
She had, though. She had really thought they were in love.
He hadn’t even been close.
He had thought he would never hurt someone like that again.
His parents had been committed to each other for years. So people like them could find romantic love.
But they were into each other, and they were into the Wild West Show. They were not into their children.
What West knew was that it was too easy to make casualties of other people, and he wanted to avoid that.
Which was just more rambling thoughts on why he couldn’t touch Cassidy Wilder, no matter how much she piqued his interest.
Right then, he pulled up to the front of Austin’s house. He had been so deep in his thoughts, he hadn’t even realized how close he was getting.
There was a fire going, and it was beginning to get dark. Evening was coming sooner and sooner as they got deeper into the darkest part of the year.
There were barbecues going, and the family was standing around with drinks in red Solo cups.
But not Cassidy.
He parked his truck next to another one, killed the engine, and got out.
“Howdy,” he said as he approached the group, trying to school his expression into one that was friendly. He wasn’t used to being friendly. Least of all to the Wilders.
“Hi,” Perry said.
He returned an easy grin and realized he was learning.
But hell, he had kissed Perry. It was way too easy to flirt with her, whether she was married to Carson or not.
Carson noticed, though, and scowled.
“Hi to you too,” West said.
“Grab a beer,” Carson said.
West chuckled. “Well. That’s a decent welcome.”
“Not too decent,” Flynn said, approaching the group. “We’re meeting outside because Austin said he wouldn’t let you darken his door.”
“I …” Austin said from the other side of the fire ring. “I didn’t say that.”
“You did,” Carson and Flynn said at the same time, deadpan.
“I was kidding,” Austin said.
“You sounded serious,” Millie muttered.
“That’s so sweet, Austin,” West said. “I wouldn’t let you darken the door of my house either.”
Austin gave him a rueful half smile. West could see that the other man grudgingly appreciated the fact that his longtime enemy wasn’t ruffled by his grudge.
But hell, what was there to be ruffled about?
The trouble was, they were almost family now. Thanks to Jessie Jane and Flynn, fraternizers of the highest order.
He and Austin probably felt irritation in common there.
The truth was, he was just happy to see his sister taken care of. To see her happy.
It made him feel happy.
They had never really … They hadn’t known how to be there for each other. He felt a lot of regret about that.
He hadn’t realized how much Jessie Jane was picked on at school until she had confided in him recently, and he just felt like a jerk.
But everyone in their family fended for themselves, except for their parents. He and Jessie Jane had realized their mom and dad needed help, and they had always done what they could to keep the show running smoothly.
Their parents had not looked at their children and seen similar issues. But how could West even be mad? He hadn’t seen that Jessie needed him either.
So he wasn’t any better than his absentee parents.
He forgot to grab a beer. Instead, he went to the firepit and proceeded to do something he never did: He found himself fading into the background. He didn’t know how to talk to any of these people. He needed to keep the peace, he needed to behave himself.
The door opened, and Cassidy walked out, laughing, her dark hair shimmering around her shoulders.
Dalton was behind her, talking to her, looking animated.
And when Cassidy looked over her shoulder at Dalton, West caught the sheer adoration in her eyes and felt the breath had been sucked out of his lungs.
What would it be like to have her look at him that way?
What would it be like to have anyone look at him that way?