Chapter 12
We couldn’t get married in a church. It didn’t feel right for me to step inside. She told me God was out there in the sunshine and mountains anyway. But that’s how she is. She’s good for me. I wish I was as good for her.
—Austin Wilder’s journal, May 21, 1856
A ustin stood there for two full minutes after her car was out of view. Her words were ringing in his head. Echoing in his blood. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had gotten the better of him like that. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time he had stood there and....
Was this pining ?
This wrenching, aching, horrible . . . need ?
He had imagined that pining would be a little bit more emotional. What was happening right now was definitely sexual.
He remembered very clearly the first time he had ever read the original Austin Wilder’s journal. He could remember the outlaw’s description of seeing Katherine for the first time, wearing her prairie dress and standing outside the schoolhouse. He had just assumed that sexual attraction was different back then.
Because how the hell could you get excited about seeing a woman whose ankles you couldn’t even catch a glimpse of?
He understood it now.
How a woman who was such a . . . study in contradiction could tie you up in knots.
He was standing in his driveway, boots in the gravel, fighting a raging hard-on. At thirty-five years old. He took a sharp breath, hoping the night air would cleanse his lungs, his soul, his dirty fucking mind.
As soon as he was calm enough, he turned around to walk back inside the house, because maybe he would find some sanity there.
Maybe.
He opened up the front door and cursed. Because he was face-to-face with his little sister. Who was looking up at him as if he had grown another head.
“Can I help you?” he growled.
“What are you doing ?” she asked.
“Cassidy. . . .”
“I was watching you out the window.”
“You nosy little varmint.”
“I was curious. Because you walked her outside, like you’re a gentleman or something. But you are not a gentleman, Austin Wilder. I saw that .”
“You listen here, you little termagant, I will wear you to a frazzle if you don’t watch yourself. This is none of your business.”
“The hell it’s not,” Cassidy said, crossing her arms. “Millie Talbot seems like a nice girl.”
“A nice girl,” he said. “Do you hear yourself?” He realized it was a bit rich to get mad at Cassidy for referring to Millie in that way when he had just used the exact same words to shut down what had happened between them, but it was unflattering and insulting to have them lobbed back at him.
“I’m not as sheltered as she is,” Cassidy said. “She’s sweet . At least every interaction I’ve had with her has led me to believe she is. And you and I both know that we are not sweet.”
“When I get in the mood to take dating advice from a twenty-five-year-old virgin, I’ll let you know. Until then, why don’t you keep your opinions to yourself.”
He started to move past Cassidy, but she was gasping like a flopping fish on a dock. “You don’t know that I’m a virgin,” she said.
He paused and looked at her. She was right, he didn’t know that for sure. It wasn’t his business—Cassidy could do whatever she wanted. But the simple truth was the antics of their parents had messed them all up in a variety of delightful and interesting ways.
And to his knowledge, Cassidy had never had a connection to a man, so he’d made assumptions.
The idea that his assumptions could be wrong disturbed him in a way he didn’t want to examine.
“You don’t know,” she said, crossing her arms and leaning forward. “I have my own life.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. And anyway, this isn’t about my life. It’s about yours . And Millie’s. Everybody knows that her fiancé just stood her up. . . .”
“I turned her down,” he said.
Cassidy blanched. “You did?”
“What did you think I was doing? Standing out there playing the Big Bad Wolf, sharpening my teeth on unsuspecting Little Red Riding Hood? No. I told Little Red to run away. Why? Because I’m actually not the giant villain even you seem to think I am.”
Thankfully, there was still raucous conversation going on in the other room so they hadn’t been overheard.
He could only be thankful that his entire family hadn’t shown up to watch him kiss Millie.
That would be a nightmare.
“Don’t say anything to anybody,” he said.
“I . . . I won’t.” She looked offended.
“I’m serious. I told her no. You’re right, she did just get dumped, and she’s upset.” The words did a little something to calm the roaring in his blood. But just a little.
Millie wasn’t herself. She was acting out of character, and there was something about that which didn’t sit well with him. It probably did have to do with the outlaw in his blood, if he were honest.
“She is a nice girl,” he said. “And I don’t want to do anything to hurt her. So I told her to run the other way. She was mad at me.”
“Well, I can see why,” Cassidy said. “It’s very condescending.”
“Are you kidding me? You just lectured me about.... You just called her a girl .”
“I’m just saying, if that was what a man said to me after I kissed him, I would be furious.”
“She was furious,” he said. “But it was for her own good.”
“I’m sure it was,” she said, sounding placating.
“You’re infuriating, do you know that? I’ve got nothing to say to you on the subject. Keep it to yourself. Don’t tell anybody what happened. She doesn’t deserve to be embarrassed.”
“You’re the one who embarrassed her.”
“What do you want from me, Cassidy?”
She stared up at him. “I don’t know. I would like to go back in time and not see my older brother making out with a woman. But really.... Oh . . . Austin, you like her, don’t you?”
“What the fuck kind of question is that? I’m not in high school.”
“I mean it, though. Do you like her? Because if you do, then.... Actually, maybe you should do something about it, Austin.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t like her,” he said, something in his gut pushing back against that statement.
“It’s just that I’ve never seen you actually kiss somebody. Or associate with a woman outside a . . . bar or a seedy online chat room, or whatever it is you do.”
“Chat room? What the hell? How old do you think I am?”
She lifted her hands up. “I don’t know how you relieve those needs. And I don’t want to.”
“I would like to never speak to you about this again.”
He started to walk away.
“Austin,” she said. “I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you actually cared about her.”
“I don’t.”
She ignored him again. “I really didn’t mean to be mean. And I didn’t mean—”
“Cassidy, there’s no need to apologize, and there’s nothing to figure out here. It’s not anything.” He really wasn’t trying to be condescending to his sister, but he couldn’t help it. “You might understand if you had some experience with this kind of thing. It’s complicated, sometimes. And usually in those situations, it’s definitely not worth it.”
She looked scalded, but she let him go this time, and he went into his study and closed the door behind him. He rolled the chair over to the corner of his desk and picked up the journal.
He thumbed through it, until he got to the part where Austin was writing about marrying Katherine.
It wasn’t a joyful moment for him. Not even close.
The honorable thing to do would be to marry her. But in my case, it would be a damned dishonor to her. I should have told her to walk away.
I should never have touched her. But I did. I let my body get away from me, and my heart. Honestly, if it were only lust, that would be easier. I know how to say no, and I know how to say yes. I’ve never been attached before. Katherine is a good woman. An honest one. And she deserves the kind of man who can make an honest woman of her. I can’t. Not even through marriage. An outlaw is never going to be able to give her what she wants. I’m never going to be able to give her a home, a life, a family. I want to. I’ve never been angry about life, or the choices I’ve made. I jumped into this life rather than suffer. Rather than having nothing, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and when I took the reins, I let go of everything else. Of the right to be in love.
But now I’ve put my hands on her. She could be carrying a baby. Now I’ve well and truly ruined everything.
He remembered reading all this when he was younger and realizing how little people had changed. He felt that truth even more profoundly now.
But he was going to learn something from the mistakes of the past. If you didn’t learn from history, you were doomed to repeat it.
And so, he was determined not to get himself or Millie into an unwinnable situation.
He shoved the journal back and pushed his hands through his hair.
Here he was. Thirty-five years old, older than the Wilders who had come before him.
Losing his shit over a woman.
With age had not come wisdom. Or maybe it had.
He’d had the good sense to say no. Maybe he should just be grateful that he was a little better than the man whose name he carried.