Chapter 9
I knew he wasn’t dead because I know what a dead man looks like. What it looks like when the soul has gone and only a body remains. I got him into the wagon, and I took him back to the homestead. I’m a woman alone—if he recovers, he might harm me. But that is a big if. It seems unlikely to me.
A thing?
A thing.
A. Thing?
What did that mean?
Pretty ass.
A thing.
Had it been a thing? More than a rush to her head, more than hot spots on her body where he’d touched her?
She should be focusing on what he’d said about Dalton being jealous, right? That seemed like the more essential truth. Like the thing that should matter more.
She had West’s number. She could text him. She considered doing it the whole ride back to the ranch and then as she waved at Austin and Millie, stumbled back into her little cabin, and closed the door behind herself.
The cabin had been transformed since her arrival in Rustler Mountain. It had been empty and dusty then, and now it was all remade, just for her. One of the many things her brothers had done when they’d carved out new space in their lives for her.
There had been no women on the Wilder ranch. Not until she’d come.
She couldn’t exactly say her little place was girly, but it was clean and comfortable, with a log-cabin aesthetic that she found pleasing and homey.
She was grateful for Austin, because he was a neat freak, and the way he had kept their house when she was growing up had influenced her.
Even better, he’d taught her how to keep things clean.
How to make a schedule for chores and how to do a little bit every day to keep things nice.
She wasn’t sure she’d have done that otherwise.
Another way her brothers had influenced her.
She made it halfway through her little living room before she had her phone back out of her pocket and in her hand, scrolling to find her text chain with West.
Should she ask him?
Her heart was beating too fast. They’d been interrupted, though, so maybe he wanted to tell her. Maybe she needed to ask.
what did that mean
She hit send before she could overthink it.
The response came almost instantly. Is that a question?
u know it is
You have to use a question mark so you can be understood. That is, in fact, what punctuation exists for.
u already told me u have no attention span so I’d think u of all people would appreciate me saving some time
No. I hate it. Stop.
You know it’s a question now so you can just answer it.
Look at that. You spelled out you.
She laughed, then growled, and her face felt hot, and she didn’t know why her hands were sweaty.
What did you mean when you said we had a thing?
There. She’d spelled. She’d used a question mark.
Do you want me to spell it out? In this case literally.
I wouldn’t have texted you if I didn’t.
If I’d kissed you earlier, you wouldn’t have pulled away.
She stared at his text. Stared hard. She could feel her heart beating in her head, and she could hardly breathe because of a squeezing pressure in her chest that felt foreign and awful and amazing all at once.
She’d never been kissed before. She’d been so fascinated by his mouth, by that growth of stubble on his face and what it might feel like. Did she want to kiss him?
No. She wanted Dalton. She was in love with Dalton, based on years of being around him and …
This was just some weird impulse, the impulse that drove people to have affairs or something.
Which was maybe an insane way to look at it, given she wasn’t in a relationship with West, but it was the only way she could wrap her head around this …
this attraction. This curiosity about a man she didn’t know, who hadn’t been there for her when she was young and sad and lonely, who didn’t treat her as if she was special or fragile.
Who didn’t seem to feel sorry for her.
Coward.
She stared at his one-word message and started typing angrily. I’m not a coward. I’m deciding if I agree.
You can agree or not, but it’s true. Do you know how many women I’ve kissed?
Her face felt as if it was on fire. You’re disgusting.
Only Dalton is allowed to be a slut and be forgiven?
He doesn’t say things like that to me.
Has he ever told he wanted to kiss you?
You didn’t say you wanted to kiss me.
Why had she typed that?
I think it was obvious. I wanted to kiss you.
West Hancock wanted to kiss her? Her heart was beating so fast, she couldn’t catch her breath. She was responding before she could think it through, panic driving her now.
It’s a good thing you didn’t because we have to work together and your sister is marrying my brother and it would only be a kiss and nothing else so it wouldn’t even be worth it.
She hit SEND.
Then typed: Right?
With a question mark.
She deleted the word and didn’t send it.
Bubbles appeared on the screen—he was typing. Stopping. Typing. Stopping. For two whole minutes. Then finally:
Go to sleep, Cass.
She stood, touching the screen, staring down at it. Maybe if her mom were here, she’d ask her about this.
That was when her panic took on a sharper focus. Her mother. Her mother had chosen and discarded men and let them discard her as if it were a game.
Was that what her behavior was? A genetic predisposition toward … being easy? Treating love like a game?
Treating relationships as if they didn’t matter.
The kind of attitude that meant you could leave a man without shedding a tear, or drop your daughter off across the country and leave her, without ever checking to see if she was even okay.
Cassidy didn’t like the implications at all.
Worrying kept her up half the night so that by the time she rolled out of bed and headed off for her practice with West, she was feeling rumpled and out of sorts.
She had spent way too long trying to figure out what to wear, and she couldn’t remember ever doing that in her life.
Her wardrobe was pretty basic—it consisted of boots, jeans, and T-shirts. She had a couple of dresses, but not many. They just weren’t practical. And even with her dresses she tended to wear flat shoes. In addition to the boots, she had quite a few pairs of sneakers.
Nothing that could be called alluring, that was for sure.
She wasn’t sure why she wanted to be alluring now.
Except …
If I’d kissed you earlier, you wouldn’t have pulled away.
She bit her bottom lip as she pulled up to the front of the Wild West Show. Her meetings with West were beginning to feel like Groundhog Day, in a way that was making her antsy.
What would happen today? She knew the beginning of the interaction, but the details would change. And it seemed to be escalating.
West wasn’t here yet, and she pulled her phone out of her pocket to see if he had texted her.
Then she had the funny realization that only a week ago she had been wondering if she and Dalton would start texting more now that they were planning a trip.
They hadn’t. She hadn’t texted him; he hadn’t texted her.
They had chatted a little bit about it last night at the bar, but that exchange had been wiped away by her conversation with West.
West, whom she had definitely been texting.
His truck came around the corner, and her heart slammed against her breastbone. About as subtle as snakebite.
She needed to get a grip.
“Get a grip. Get a grip. Get a grip.” She muttered it to herself until she got out of the truck, just as West was doing the same.
“Morning. I don’t have the horses ready to go,” he said.
“Well, what good are you?”
“Hard to say,” he responded.
“Yeah. Well. Let’s go get them, then, I guess.”
She was not looking forward to riding with him in his truck, and she practically held her breath on the way over to the stables.
Because if she inhaled that air scented with his skin, the soap that he used in the shower, and let that aroma mingle with her memories of last night, she was going to pass out.
Better oxygen deprivation than letting West know how affected she was by him.
Their interactions kept playing over and over in her mind. What he’d said to her in the bar, the text conversation after. And once she got really foolish and thought about him extricating her from the saddle. His hands. His body.
Maybe this was what happened when you spent too many years being a vestal virgin. Eventually, you got horny for the wrong man. For no real reason.
A kiss was probably not exciting to West.
He hadn’t revealed how many women he had kissed, much less how many he had slept with.
It was probably an extremely high number.
Which was such a dude thing, because guys could do it without being judged.
And West didn’t have to worry about repeating the mistakes of his parents, not in that sense.
They seemed like a committed, happy couple. Cassidy’s mother, on the other hand, had been both the user and the used depending on the dynamic. Her father had been utterly faithless, she knew.
“I can hear you thinking,” he said.
She turned toward him. “The words?”
“No, it’s just a grinding sound. Like the gears in your head are turning hard.”
“Well. I have some things to think about.”
“Maybe your problem is that you think too much.”
“Something I’m sure no one has ever accused you of doing.”
She felt bad right after she said that.
“Correct,” he responded, taking some of that guilt and lightening it just a bit.
He parked the truck in front of the stable, and they got out.
Then they proceeded to quietly get the horses out of their stalls, passing each other as they went back and forth between the tack room and the area where they readied the animals.
On the third pass, he grabbed her arm in the doorway and stood in front of her, the heat from his body immobilizing her.
Kiss me.
Kiss me.
The demand rose to the top of her brain, and she was shocked by herself. But not shocked enough to move away.
What would it be like? To kiss West. To be kissed at all.