Chapter 14
I didn’t run this time. I’ve never felt anything like this. Michael represented safety. Love. Butch is like trying to tame a storm. You can’t. You can only stand in it and hope it doesn’t wash you away.
West Hancock had never woken up next to a woman before.
Even when he had tried having a girlfriend, he’d been young, so he had ditched the party as soon as the festivities were over, so to speak.
But that morning he woke up with Cassidy Wilder in his arms, and it was pretty damned great.
Pretty goddamned great. She was naked, and she was gorgeous.
And the sex last night had blown his mind.
She stirred against him, her nails scraping over his chest as she flexed her fingers, like a sleepy little cat.
He picked her hand up and sucked one of her fingers into his mouth. Her eyes popped open, and for a moment she just stared at him.
“Good morning,” he said, returning her hand.
“Good morning,” she said.
“I don’t have coffee up here. Sorry. Usually when I come up to spend the night, I prepare a little bit better.”
“Oh.”
“We can get dressed and go down to Scallywag’s for some coffee.”
He could see her calculating the ramifications. Could see her trying to decide if the gossip resulting from the two of them showing up together for coffee in the morning was something she wanted to deal with.
“We are working together on the show,” he said.
“True,” she responded.
Then she made a face. “Sorry. I’m being ridiculous. I would love to go have some coffee with you.”
“What makes you feel ridiculous?”
“I feel like I have I just had sex stamped on my forehead.”
“You kind of do,” he said, looking at her.
Her hair was a disaster, in the hottest way, and she had a mark on her neck—his fault, though her hair would cover it as long as she left it down.
She probably only had last night’s clothes, because she hadn’t come with a bag or anything. She definitely didn’t have a hairbrush.
“Right.”
“That’s not really a bad thing.”
“Maybe not to you.”
“True. I’ve never done a walk of shame, simply because I have no shame.”
“That frightens me,” she said. She sat up in bed, pulling her knees up so the sheet tented, making her look like a shy ghost. “The lack of shame, I mean.”
“It has to do with your mom?”
“And my dad. He had kids with a bunch of different women. As far as I can tell from everything the guys have said, he didn’t do the best job taking care of his kids.”
“He did take care of them, though. I mean, God knows my family has never been a fan of the Wilders. And I’m not saying he was perfect. But he never dropped them off up on the top of a mountain.”
“Yeah. That is true.”
West cleared his throat. “I think what your mom did to you is a terrible thing. But it sounds like her life wasn’t the kind of life you’d really want to have a child in. So maybe shame didn’t drive her. I guess you’re probably right about that. But maybe the desire for you to be safe did.”
“Well, if she wanted me to be safe, leaving me without ever checking on me again was maybe not the best choice.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think any of the choices made were made well. But it doesn’t sound to me like she had a lot to work with.”
Cassidy nodded. “That is probably true.”
“I don’t really think shame accomplishes much, if I’m honest. Shame made me feel like there was no point in doing anything but living down to the expectations of the people around me.
Being the worst version of myself. Because I already felt like I wasn’t good enough.
I tried one time, having a girlfriend. I hurt her.
And I’ll always hate that I dragged somebody else into my issues before I had them worked out. ”
“You have them worked out now?” She looked down at her thumbnail and began to pick at it. He wondered if she was asking for herself, or just asking.
She loves Dalton, idiot. She’s not asking about a future with you. You were both pretty clear on that.
“No. That’s the thing. I don’t know that I ever will.”
“I guess I don’t really understand. There are a lot of people who have ADHD. And they have lives and families.”
“Yes, they do. That’s not why. It’s just …
It’s me. It’s complicated. I spent most of my life taking care of my parents, and that was hard.
I had to give pieces of myself to try and keep the show going.
It was exhausting. I never really feel like I have my life together unless I have total control of everything around me.
So now I have the ranch, and I’m about to be in control at last. The idea of taking care of other people, of having them depend on me, doesn’t appeal. ”
“I don’t know what kind of life my mom had before I was born,” she said, suddenly looking desperately sad. “Maybe she was tired of taking care of people too.”
“Maybe,” he said. “And the thing is, I don’t think that’s an excuse. Not once you have a kid. But that’s one reason I don’t want to do it. I can’t think of anything worse than finding out you aren’t capable after you’ve already made the decision.”
“She made the right choice,” Cassidy said. “Even if she went about it the wrong way.”
“Well, that’s kind of the story of the world, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
“Coffee?”
She flung the covers off, and he was momentarily stunned by the sight of her naked body. He watched as she wandered around the room, collecting her clothes, and gave a sigh of disappointment when she covered every last inch of her skin.
“You can’t go get coffee naked,” she said, looking at him meaningfully.
“Why not?”
“Maybe you do need a little bit of shame.”
He chuckled. “Possibly.”
He also got dressed in yesterday’s clothes—because he didn’t have that many clothes here at the house, and it seemed only right since Cassidy had to wear last night’s clothes.
Without discussing it, he got into his truck, and she got into hers.
As much as he would like for her to leave her vehicle up here, it didn’t make any sense.
Anyway, he had stuff all over the seat—a toolbox, loose tools he hadn’t put back in the toolbox, and a sack lunch from the other day.
She had seen the inside of the house that was in progress.
The trailer where he actually lived was a lot more disorganized.
Cassidy pulled out first, and he followed her down the long dirt driveway to the county road, which led to the main street of Rustler Mountain. He was closer to town at the new property than he was living at the Wild West Show. It was convenient, though that wasn’t why he had chosen the land.
He had never been one to spend a ton of time in town—his reputation preceding him in a hundred negative ways. It would be different now, though. He wouldn’t even be the West Hancock of William’s Wild West Show. No. He would be a rancher. The same as so many of the other people in town.
Was that what he was after? The sense that he was one of them?
He hadn’t thought so. But the idea of not being so different, of not standing out …
It might be nice. To take a break from walking into a room and having every head turn, mouths dropping, women fainting.
Okay, no woman had actually ever fainted.
But sometimes it felt as if he was an outlaw barging into the saloon.
Sometimes he expected a gasp to go through the crowd and the piano player to stop.
He knew why. But he was different now. Older. Or maybe he had actually learned to behave.
He thought about everything that had happened with Cassidy the night before. Maybe behave was too strong a word.
Town was already bustling with people going to work—either commuting into Medford, almost an hour away, or getting coffee so that they could do their jobs in town.
Scallywag’s was crowded, and all of the parking spaces out front were taken.
Cassidy went around the block, and he went up farther, knowing that the odds of finding two spaces in close proximity were low.
He found one and parked against the curb, walking back toward the coffee shop at the same time Cassidy came around the corner.
“Two parking spaces,” she said. “Almost unheard of.”
“Definitely at this hour.”
He wanted to hold her hand. He knew their relationship wasn’t that kind of thing.
And hell, he’d never felt compelled to do something like that.
But with her, it might be nice. She had given him something last night that he had claimed was not precious.
Nothing more than a physical experience.
But he felt the weight of it now. He felt the momentousness of her decision.
Of her choosing to make him her first. He wanted to beat his chest like the caveman he was discovering he was.
Weird, because this wasn’t supposed to be about his personal discovery.
He’d just wanted to satisfy his curiosity about her.
He didn’t feel satisfied. At all. He wanted more.
Of it, of her. He felt the same sort of gleeful high he got from driving too fast. The sort of high he imagined he would’ve felt if he had ever tried drugs, and there was a reason he hadn’t.
Because he was so addicted to that dopamine rush, he knew it would take hold of him and never let go.
What he hadn’t realized was that Cassidy Wilder had the power to do the same.
To take over utterly and completely, to enrapture him in a way that felt all-consuming.
Of course, it had been like that even before they’d had sex.
Maybe it wasn’t a big deal that the sex hadn’t changed it.
Maybe. Maybe this was just a sign that he was changing.
He had joked about getting old. But the truth was, different things appealed to him now than back when he was younger.