Chapter 15 #2
“Tough. You’re not guaranteed to get the things you want in life.
Past trauma doesn’t guarantee you an easy future.
Your idea of happily ever after may not even be what you really want.
It’s a fantasy you have. About marriage.
You want Dalton because he feels safe. But that’s doing a disservice to him and to you.
If I thought there was a spark between you guys, I would probably be telling you something different right now. But I don’t.”
“But he said that we could try—”
“And did West tell you that you could try, or did he kiss you?”
There was no trying with West. If anything, they had been trying not to. But they couldn’t seem to keep away from each other. Couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other.
“The thing you feel with West is a thing you should feel with the man you want to marry. That doesn’t mean you should marry West, but I’m pretty sure it means you shouldn’t marry Dalton.”
Cassidy didn’t even have to ask how she would know if she didn’t try to make it work with Dalton.
Because she already knew. Because she already knew that she had experienced more electricity sitting in the confined space of a pickup truck with West than she had when Dalton had actually pressed his lips to hers.
Something inside her was being torn in half. Because that fantasy of being with Dalton had felt like something safe. A lighthouse that she was sailing her personal ship toward. Like something sure and certain that she could count on.
And now it was shrouded in mist, receding from her.
Now she understood why marriage had been important to her in the first place. It had given her a sense that everything would turn out all right in the end. It had given her that gauzy happily ever after off in the future.
Because she had been so certain that if anything ever happened between the two of them, it would all work out.
Everything would be great. Nothing would go wrong, and she would be set for life.
The same way she had felt set for life when she had first arrived at Rustler Mountain and celebrated her first Christmas with her brothers.
She had been rescued from uncertainty. And she had been trying to create certainty ever since.
At the expense of a lot of things. She hadn’t gone away to college because she hadn’t wanted to leave Rustler Mountain.
Because it had been so important to her that she not burst the bubble.
True, she’d never had a burning dream that she had denied herself—she loved doing ranch work.
She was happy doing ranch work. But she wondered if she had limited her dreams because of that fear.
That fear of being shoved out of this safe space.
She was in the middle of a reckoning, and maybe it was a reckoning that couldn’t be avoided. A reckoning that had to come for everyone.
“I just want to know how everything is going to turn out. The idea of doing something just for the sake of doing it seems so … scary to me. So dangerous. Like an experience just for the sake of it. Because what …”
“You’re a control freak. I can’t believe I never noticed that before. But you’re the little sister, and I guess I never realized that you thought that you were keeping everything together by being the way you are.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose. I never really even thought about it. It’s just second nature to me. At least it was until him and I—”
“It’s actually okay to have a hot guy disrupt your life.
Let him disrupt it for a little while. You’ve been so serious ever since you were a kid.
Because your mom made it so that you had to be a tiny adult.
I don’t know everything that happened to you before you came here, but it seems to me you were carrying a pretty big weight on your shoulders even when you were nine years old.
You’re still carrying that weight. You are an adult now.
But you’ve been one for a long time, actually.
You’re allowed to make a mistake. Maybe West will be a mistake. ”
“Don’t say that. It terrifies me. It won’t be a mistake, because he told me it was going to end, and I am okay with that. I—”
“You can’t plan this kind of stuff. Trust me. Carson and I ended up crashing into each other at a very inconvenient time. We knew each other for all those years, and our feelings all stayed undercover. Until they didn’t. And then we were a disaster.”
“I don’t know if you were a disaster.”
“We were a disaster. And it hurt. A lot. Good things can hurt.”
She thought back to what she had been saying earlier to West. That this discomfort wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
One thing she did know for sure: She wasn’t in love with Dalton. Above all else, she couldn’t imagine kissing him now. She couldn’t imagine being with him. Letting him touch her. Right now, that could only be West.
She didn’t know what that meant about her.
But she was not worried about it anymore.
Because sex with West didn’t feel like a shameful thing.
She didn’t feel dirty or used. She felt good.
It wasn’t the sex that was the problem. It was the way people used each other.
The way her mom had used men for money, the way they had treated her, like an object.
But West didn’t treat Cassidy that way. He treated her like she was special. Like she mattered.
There was nothing to be ashamed of in that. Maybe it wouldn’t be forever. Well, more than maybe. But maybe it was okay if he was part of her story. And maybe it was okay she didn’t know how that story ended.
Maybe she had to stop trying to force a happy ending of a specific kind, and just be on the journey. That was a hard, scary thought for her.
Letting go of her Dalton fantasy made her feel rudderless.
She had to resist the urge to make West a new anchor.
“Thank you. I have to … I have to go talk to Dalton.”
“Well, good luck.”
“Can you not announce to my brother that I had sex with West?”
“It probably won’t come up organically,” Perry said. “But you know I tell him things.”
“I know. But it’s embarrassing.”
“I promise that if I do talk to him, he won’t say anything to you. No one’s going to interfere. You’re a grown woman, and you get to make your own decisions.”
“Even if my brothers think they’re bad?”
“Especially if your brothers think they’re bad. They’ve all made a whole stream of bad decisions. Why shouldn’t you?”
Cassidy felt a little bit of hope at the center of her chest as she walked out of the florist’s shop. Her brothers had made a lot of bad decisions. And their lives were still good.
She started to drive toward Dalton’s house—something she rarely did. Generally, Dalton came over to their place. But she really didn’t need an audience for this conversation.
She sent him a warning text, but then didn’t check her phone.
When she pulled into the driveway, she looked at his response.
Sure. I’m in the barn, getting the new horse settled in.
She took a breath and started her engine again, driving toward his barn.
When she arrived, he was walking out the door, a speculative look on his face.
He paused, crossing his arms over his chest, and she waited. To feel something. To feel the kick of excitement that she now recognized as attraction. Now that she knew, now that she fully knew, she couldn’t even understand what she had thought she had felt for him.
Comfort. Safety. But so very clearly not lust or desire.
He was handsome. Realizing that somebody was handsome and wanting to lick them everywhere were two totally different things. Another little insight she had gleaned from the last couple of days.
She got out of the truck and took a deep breath. “I don’t think this is going to work,” she said.
Dalton looked as if she had punched him in the gut. His eyebrows shot upward, his eyes going round. “What?”
“This thing with us being more than friends. I’ve been thinking about it. A lot. And I’m just not into you like that.” She felt so bad. Awful. She was doing this wrong too. It wasn’t fair, because she had been into him. Or she had thought she was.
“You’re not into me like that?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
He stood there as if he didn’t quite know what to say. “You … I’m not … It’s just that it’s been pretty well accepted around here that you had a crush on me.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I did. And I held onto it for a long time. But then you kissed me.”
“Wow,” he said, pushing his cowboy hat up on his forehead. “This is one of the more bracing conversations I’ve ever had.”
“No. It’s not you. It’s chemistry. Right? I mean, you could be the best kisser in the world—not in my opinion—but maybe you are. I just didn’t feel anything.”
“That’s fair enough, Cassidy.”
“I really hope I didn’t hurt you.”
He let out a long, slow breath. “No. You didn’t. Come here.”
He stretched his arm out, and she went to him, letting him pull her into a hug that felt warm, but nothing else.
“I love you, Cassidy Wilder. Like a sister.” He pushed her back a step. “I hoped that it could be something else. I don’t know if that makes any sense. But I love you so much, and I love your family so much. It would be nice if we could have something, and I knew that you liked me.”
“Well, now I feel diminished.”
“Don’t be embarrassed about it. Flynn said something to me. About how we would be good together.”
“No. Fucking. Way.” Cassidy was stunned. “My brother tried to set us up?”
“Yeah,” Dalton said. “And I thought about it. And I thought on paper there’s not a woman who makes more sense. But God, I’ve known you since you were a kid. I just don’t …”
“You’re not attracted to me,” she said.
“I didn’t want to say it like that.”
She stared straight ahead. “It’s okay. I’m not attracted to you. I just didn’t know enough to realize that. You should, though.”
“Well, in my defense, all of my relationships have been purely physical. So I thought maybe it was just different when you care about somebody. And then I thought maybe I could care about you enough to make it happen.”