Chapter 15 #2
He would bathe in the river when the weather was nice, shower inside when it wasn’t. He would go to the Graysons’ for dinner whenever he was invited but never pushed for an invitation if it wasn’t right there on the table, because he was happy enough to open up a can of stew and eat by himself.
But then, Cara had come into his life, and he’d started eating a sweet roll at her bakery every morning.
She had trained him to do that, he realized. And she hadn’t been paying him.
“So, you just wanted to see me? When you left out the rolls,” he said, as they drove into town.
“Yes. You really thought that I was… that I felt obligated to do it?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t figure out another reason that you would do that.”
“You didn’t think that maybe I was attracted to you?”
“I kind of did,” he said. “Mostly because, generally speaking, when a woman’s not attracted to you, she doesn’t blush whenever you look at her.”
She blushed then; he could see it out of the corner of his eye.
“Just like that.”
“Yeah, I suppose they typically don’t.”
“But it’s such a terrible idea, and I also figured you were pretty smart, so I guess I was hoping that you weren’t.”
“You were hoping that I wasn’t attracted to you?”
“I was hoping that you were smart. Smarter than me. And I suppose I was kind of hoping that you being smarter than me would protect us both.”
“Sorry. I guess I wasn’t any smarter than you. But… I came out here to try new things.”
“I’m not really sure how I feel about that. Being a new thing.”
“Well, it wasn’t really specific to you, I guess. It was more that I hadn’t… You know, I hadn’t had sex.”
“Yeah. We have been over that.” He cleared his throat as he turned onto her street. “You thought that you would get some easier sex than you were going to get from me.”
“It seemed smart. I was trying to be smart. The problem is, I don’t think logic comes into the equation here. Just…” He could feel her looking at him. “Chemistry.”
Chemistry. He supposed that was what it was. He never experienced it, not specifically.
But she had been something he couldn’t leave alone from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her.
“Do you know how pissed off I was the first time I saw you?” He pulled up to the front of her house and turned the engine off.
He stared straight ahead and didn’t look at her, even though he could feel her looking at the side of his head with shock. He didn’t know why he could even feel her emotion, but he could.
“You were mad?” she asked.
“Yes. Because there you were, so soft and feminine and pretty, and I wanted you. I knew that I couldn’t have you.
Because you were all those things. And I am…
I am so fucked up, Cara. I know that you know what happened to me.
But I don’t know if you understand… I don’t know how to…
I don’t know how to not be alone. I don’t know how to be soft.
If I were a better man, then I would have looked away from you and never gone near you again.
But I didn’t. I attempted it. Every day.
I put myself in the path of temptation because I knew that eventually I would give in.
If I’m honest, that’s what I wanted. From the beginning. ”
Silence bloomed between them like flowers, delicate and new, and not bad at all. Neither of them moved or spoke. But he wanted to move. Wanted to touch her. Take her right there in her driveway.
“Why don’t you come inside?” she asked.
She slipped out of the truck, and he took a deep breath and let it out slowly to see if it eased any of the tension in his chest. It didn’t.
He was filled with a particular feeling that was like half-dread, half-hope. He knew dread. It lived in his chest, a lead weight that kept his heart from beating too fast. Kept his body from anticipating anything too good.
But that hope was new. Something almost buoyant, in a fight with that dreaded weight.
He didn’t know if he liked it or hated it.
He got out of the truck slowly, weighed down and buoyed up, and followed behind her on the very well-groomed path into her adorable little house.
Stopping by was different than knowing he was going to stay for the night.
Perversely, it turned him on.
Being in this place that was all hers. Delicate and pretty, something so sweet and soft and nothing he’d ever have for himself.
Maybe it was just the glory of giving in.
Because he was. They were both diving headfirst into this now. There was no more resistance.
No more second-guessing. He knew he shouldn’t do it. He knew it was a mistake. But he was doing it.
He’d been living in that resistance for months.
Hell, he’d been living in the state of resistance for a long time. Holding himself back from everything.
Giving in for just moments at a time, getting to immerse in her was something new altogether.
“I was going to throw together some pasta with the veggies I picked up at the farmers’ market the other day. Does that sound good?”
It sounded completely unlike what he normally ate. And that was just fine with him. “I’ll put you to work,” she said. “You can be my sous chef.”
Which was how he found himself standing in the kitchen in front of a cutting board, chopping onions, tomatoes, asparagus, and leeks.
“It’s kind of pasta primavera-ish,” she said.
“I don’t care what you call it,” he said. “Looks good.”
All of a sudden, he felt like he was having an out-of-body experience. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cooked with another person. The last time he had done anything like domestic.
He had the strangest sensation of flashing back to his childhood, standing in a kitchen, doing these mundane things that he had taken for granted back then.
There was nothing more normal than dinner with your family.
He felt like he was being stabbed, and the sensation didn’t stop. It went deep into the center of his chest, and just kept on pushing.
He could barely breathe.
And if he had any idea how to talk to people, maybe there was some kind of small talk topic he could bring up that would ease that pressure in his chest. That would take him out of the intensity.
But he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to smooth over a moment like this, didn’t know how to get himself out of the deep recesses of his own brain.
Thankfully, Cara either sensed it and instinctively lightened it, or she just had that ease about her.
“So, tell me more about your ranch plans.”
“Oh… I just… It would be a horse breeding operation. Probably rodeo stock, because that’s where my connections are, and it’s kind of my personal area of expertise now.
My dad bred Irish Cobb horses. So… I have a little bit of an idea of how that runs as a business.
What the operation looks like. I would have something a little bit more scaled down, but that…
” Even that felt like an enormous thing, to talk about, to commit to.
Because it was committing to putting down roots, which was something he hadn’t done.
He had been toying with it here. Had bought the property, was working on Cody’s ranch, but even that felt like it had a clean and easy out.
Cody didn’t need him. Zane could easily sell his current place and go on to the next.
Something he had been doing for years now. Doing work that allowed him to keep on moving.
Actually, starting a real operation here was going to put down roots. For real. Not just borrowing the roots of other people around him.
And he was getting in deep.
Really, really fucking deep.
“I think that sounds great. Is it something that you want to do?”
Was it something that he wanted to do?
“Yes,” he said slowly. He didn’t really think of things that way.
He had never really thought of anything that way. He had always been thinking in terms of… surviving.
“You know, when all that happened…” He closed his eyes, it was a weird way to say it, but he didn’t necessarily want to say: when my whole family died, because that just seemed depressing.
Brought the room down, really. “I went to live with my grandparents, and I don’t even really remember the first year of that.
I was just trying to survive it. To live through it.
They were doing the same thing, because you know, they lost their daughter, and their grandson.
They were good to me. But I was different. I never could be who I was before.
Grief steals all kinds of time away from you.
Shock like that cannibalizes your memories.
Your body is just trying to keep you alive.
I don’t know that I ever really switched out of that mode.
So… As far as what I want to do, I don’t really know how to answer that question.
I’m alive. I do consider that a privilege.
I’m alive, and that means that I need to do something.
Because not doing something, not making the most of all the years that I’ve had that my brother didn’t, that my parents didn’t, that feels like a pretty shitty thing to do. ”
“From everything I know about you, it sounds to me like you’ve done so much with all of these years. You made a real difference in the military, you earned your fortune in the rodeo, and you’re a really good friend. You’re here, supporting Cody.”
“No, trust me, it’s the other way around.
I…” He tensed his jaw, not really wanting to say what he was going to say next, but he was in too deep.
“I really didn’t know what I was going to do after the rodeo.
Maybe enlist again, because the idea of just going and having no connection again, that scared me.
I want to be alone, I value my privacy, you know that about me, but really, the idea of actually being alone… ”
He didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to say that it reminded him of being a kid walking through a house where no one was left alive.
But she seemed to understand.