Chapter 6 #2
That couldn’t be it. That couldn’t be the whole problem between the two of them, could it? Was that why she had pushed him away last night? She had been flirting with that other guy. Openly. She’d been having a great time by all accounts.
So, it couldn’t mean anything that she...
She bit her lip and turned away, grabbing hold of the cup of coffee. “I’ll stick it in the microwave for fifteen seconds for you. Then we can go.”
He watched her retreat quickly, like a scurrying mammal, and he could not think of any other explanation. He had been close last night, but he’d been too drunk to sort it all out, and even if he had sorted it all out, he would have decided that the whiskey was doing the thinking for him.
Lila Grayson was attracted to him.
Lila.
When had that happened? When had it started?
She was—he wanted to think that she was damn near a sister to him, and it seemed wrong.
But she was. And she had called him her brother yesterday.
And she was... she was wary of older men and things like that because of what had happened with her mom, and she—he sure as hell was never stepping in the middle of all of that and...
She returned from the kitchen holding the coffee, and he took it from her, their fingertips brushing, and he was incapable now of reading her body language in any other way.
Hubris? Maybe.
But he had a lot of experience with women.
He knew what it looked like when a woman was attracted to him. He read the signs clearly whenever he went out to hook up, but he had missed it with Lila because she was Lila.
Because how often did he actually stop to look at Lila?
He had done it the other day. And sometimes he watched her, the things that she was doing, the way that she engaged with things on the ranch, and he felt proud. But he wasn’t sure how long it had been since he had actually stopped and looked at her.
When he did, he usually ended up having a moment, however fleeting, that he felt the urge to shove down. To lock behind that door.
And that suddenly felt a lot more dangerous than it had before. He felt a lot closer to labeling those moments than he ever had before, and he did not want to fucking do that.
“What?”
“What do you mean? You look like you just got hit over the head,” she said.
“Well, I am hungover, Lila, thanks for noticing,” he said, taking a very aggressive swig of his coffee before grabbing hold of the pastry box and setting his cinnamon roll on it so that he could walk out the door with all of it.
Lila followed behind him and climbed into the driver’s seat of her truck. Then she leaned across the cab and opened his door for him.
“Thanks,” he said. “Feeling like a passenger princess today.”
He was trying to sound like his usual self. He felt completely off his game.
“I think we’re going to make some really significant progress because we don’t have to hike back out today. And I think we’ll get to do a little bit tomorrow before we have to try and make the trek.”
“Yeah. Should be good.”
“I’m really proud of us,” she said. “I think what we’re doing is really cool. And, you know, yesterday when I was talking to Jason, I kind of realized that I think I tend to downplay my own skills. I’m sure that we all do, because we can all do so much shit.”
“Such as?”
“Well, you’re an amazing artist.”
The words sat uncomfortably in his gut, mainly because he didn’t actually think of himself as an artist. He didn’t know why.
There was something about that word versus being a woodworker, and one of them felt more...
Emotional maybe. Tied to some things that felt uncomfortable to him because they were things that he didn’t associate with himself.
But when people talked about art, it was all opening your soul up and shaping a medium into your deepest, darkest parts. Nolan just did wood sculptures of animals, trees and mountains. That wasn’t art, it was more mimicry.
“I’m not really an artist,” he said.
“Do you think it’s not masculine to be in the arts?”
“Oh. My masculinity is good,” he said, looking at her over the top of his coffee cup.
She looked at him, and he felt something stir in his gut. That same thing that had come up in the shower that had made him start to get hard. This was terrible. Really, honestly terrible.
Was he that hard up that he was starting to get horny for Lila Grayson?
She was evil, first of all. And yes, evil in a way that he liked, generally speaking, but they were incompatible in every way.
They couldn’t even have a conversation for ten minutes without sniping at each other.
They were actually doing so good this morning it was weird, and that was only because Lila felt guilty about flipping out at him yesterday.
And then there was the fact that she was Cody’s little sister. Walker’s little sister.
Cody and Walker were family. Lila was family.
He had put her hair in a ponytail before school. Had poured her cereal for her. Towed her bike behind his when she was just on a tricycle and couldn’t keep up.
Thinking about her in any other capacity was fucked up. He needed to get laid. Badly.
And he’d struck out on that twice, and both times it had ended up with more Lila issues than it had in satisfaction.
Something about the opening of the resort that had shifted something inside of him, and it hadn’t just been his desire to find his family.
It was like a whole emotional sea change had happened within him, where he had felt like he just didn’t want to be the same person he’d been.
The person who was so shaped by his childhood that he didn’t have very many connections in his life, at least none that he had formed after the age of nine.
He had his chosen family, and he had kind of stuck with that. He had gone into the rodeo, and he’d made acquaintances with people, but he’d never gotten close with them.
He’d slept with more women than he could count, and they’d had a great time. He liked women. It had nothing to do with that. Nothing to do with the fact that he didn’t want to talk to them or anything like that. Attachment wasn’t his thing, but sex like that was starting to feel hollow.
And about six months ago he’d just gotten tired of the monotony of it.
Hell, it had been six months since he’d had sex. He’d been busy with the ranch, busy with figuring out finding his family, and then deciding what he wanted to do about all of that, and he hadn’t even really missed it.
He just didn’t feel hungry for those brief physical encounters anymore.
Except this was a wake-up call that just because he wasn’t thinking about it didn’t mean that it wasn’t lurking underneath the surface.
And he needed to do something about this expeditiously, because there were changes in life that he was ready for, but he was never going to be ready to blow up his entire existence by pursuing this weird errant attraction to his best friend’s younger sister.
“You are impressive,” he said, because he felt like that was a good redirect. “I’m sorry if you don’t feel that way all the time. I suppose we do take for granted that you’re younger than us and keep right up anyway.”
That was a great idea. Emphasize the age gap.
“I always have,” Lila said.
And he could see her then again, riding her bike with training wheels after them down the street. They had gotten those bikes from a charity in town, but they’d all been as proud of them as if they’d come brand new from the store.
Lila’s had a bell, and he could remember her ringing it angrily as she had pedaled with twice as many strokes to try and keep them in view.
“You did,” he said. “You always have.”
“Exactly. Doesn’t mean it’s not really impressive, Lila. I know that everything when we were kids... It was pretty shitty.”
She shook her head. “Not for me. I’ve realized in the last few years that for Walker and Cody, it must have been really scary.
Cody had to take care of all of us. Make sure we were all okay.
I know he was stealing food sometimes. I know Walker was literally shoplifting.
You would make sure we got stuff from your grandma’s fridge sometimes.
I didn’t have to do any of that. So yeah, I had to keep up with you guys, but that was the only thing that I had to focus on. ”
“Yeah. I used to help fix your hair.”
She looked at him, a sort of reluctant realization on her face.
“You used to like me, Lila,” he said.
“I don’t... Not like you.”
Silence hung thick between them, and he took a sharp breath, trying to pull himself away from the moment. Trying to ratchet it back.
“You just think I’m the most annoying person in the world?”
Shut up, Nolan.
“I don’t think you’re the most annoying person in the world.”
“Really?”
“You’re like the third most annoying person in the world. And probably fourth or fifth if I account for the fact that I don’t know most people. And there you go. You can’t actually maintain niceness.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said.
Though this didn’t feel as pointy as a lot of their more recent interactions.
At least this felt a little bit like good-humored ribbing rather than her being ready to tear a chunk off of his body.
They were mostly silent the rest of the drive back to the trailhead.
When they got out, they had to gather the burdensome packs that Lila had prepared for them.
Hiking in camping stuff wasn’t impossible, of course, particularly not for two people with as much experience as they had, but it wasn’t a leisurely stroll in the park.
Lila was efficiently getting her own stuff together. She certainly didn’t need his help.
He thought about what she’d said. About keeping up with all of them. It was true.
And she’d had to take twice as many steps, pedal her bike twice as quickly, put on a brave face at an age when the rest of them hadn’t been doing that.
He marveled at her efficiency, at the professionalism that she exhibited when it came to running the ranch, at the way that she controlled things. Not with him, because she didn’t seem to control her emotions very much around him.
Unless she did.