Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Nolan didn’t feel like having fun at all.
The whole evening up to this point had been such a specific, strange disaster.
And he knew that nobody really felt it except for him. Lila was mad at him, but she didn’t know how much he had nearly messed up. She didn’t know that he had almost kissed her. With Cody and Marlowe just behind the door to the bar.
He had almost kissed her.
It was the most jarring, awful realization.
This whole thing — her having a date — had gotten under his skin, and perhaps even worse than that, Lila had gotten under his skin.
He had meant everything he’d said to Cody tonight when he’d made that toast. They were his family, they mattered to him more than anything, and he had been telling the God’s honest truth about love.
The idea of trying for a nuclear family and failing at it? That made him feel like he was free falling.
He hadn’t even loved Darlene or seen any kind of future with her and still that rejection back when he’d been in his early twenties had been a potent reminder of what he was. Not worth it. Not for anyone who had another option in life.
He hated the thought of even trying to have something like love, like a family. It was risky enough for him to try to connect with his half-siblings. The rest felt like some particularly horrendous regurgitation of childhood trauma that existed just for him.
He didn’t want it.
He rejected it.
Goddamn, the very idea was a horror show.
And that meant that Lila was off limits. Forever.
Because what he couldn’t offer her was what she deserved, and he couldn’t risk the relationship that he had with the Graysons by laying a hand on her, by potentially fracturing what they had.
Better that they continue on their particular path. The way that they were.
Better that they keep on. It was just the way that it had to be.
But the physical draw toward her was something he’d never felt before. He wished he had a woman waiting for him at his house tonight. Six months since he’d gotten laid, and this was the place that it had landed him. Lusting after the last woman on Earth he should ever want.
It was a fucking nightmare.
And Lila looked...
She looked beautiful tonight, and also, she didn’t look different, but somehow did wholly and completely.
Almost all the other women in the place were wearing dresses, had their hair fixed some kind of fancy, were wearing a full face of makeup, and Lila was wearing her everyday uniform, and yet it felt like she was just like they were.
Felt like she was dressed to the nines, made up some singular sort of way that grabbed his attention and wouldn’t let go.
Like he was seeing her with all new eyes, even though she hadn’t had any kind of dramatic makeover, or even a small makeover. It was something inside him that had undergone a transformation, and he couldn’t say what it was, any more than he could make it stop.
Addison gave a rousing speech about all the work that Marlowe and Cody had done on the Painted Ridge Resort, and how their vision for the place had brought them together, but more than that, they had been brought together by a glorious twist of fate at just the right time.
Addison did a wonderful job of retelling their story.
Cody had hired Marlowe and her husband to come and run the resort, but right before they had been set to move, her husband had announced that he was having an affair, and that he wanted a divorce.
That had brought Marlowe and her former sister-in-law across the country, hoping that they could make a new life.
And that was how the worst thing that had ever happened to Marlowe had become the greatest gift she’d ever received.
Nolan wasn’t a romantic, but even he had to admit, their story was one for the books.
Maybe that was the key. Cody was kind of Marlowe’s karma. So all of his baggage, everything that he had ever believed about relationships before, none of that mattered all that much. Maybe that was what had to happen to people like them. You had to be somebody else’s good karma.
Though, he couldn’t quite sort out Cara and Zane in that way.
Because he was the damaged one, but maybe that was it. Everything he had lost had meant he had somehow earned her bright and sweet love because most of his life had been so filled with deprivation.
Walker and Addison were something else altogether. They were, in many ways, very similar people. Great at PR, good looking, able to put a spin on anything. And yet they had always clashed with each other, until they had finally admitted that all that clashing might have been a cover for attraction.
That ought to sound familiar to you.
He shoved that thought to the side. It was a useless thought.
It wasn’t the same thing.
There was a wonderful buffet dinner served by the Painted Ridge dining room, courtesy of Laney and her wicked kitchen skills. But it wasn’t only the buffet. There was also a gloriously beautiful cake – white frosting with fresh flowers cascading down the side.
Nolan noticed that Pike was standing at the buffet, leaning against the wall, and Laney was chatting to him.
More than chatting, she was flirting. And Pike, given that he had that gift of charm, was doing it right back, although Nolan could see that there was more of a wall up around Pike than most people would ever perceive.
That one evening out with him had given him that insight.
He filled up a plate, and he couldn’t help but watch as Lila did the same. Though they were several people apart in the buffet line, and he went out of his way to not engage her in conversation.
He went to a table set up at the back of the barn, and eventually Walker joined him, followed by Zane and Cara. Addison was busy chatting with everybody in the room.
“I’m going to have to shove a dinner roll in her mouth at some point,” Walker said. “When she gets in these social situations, she gets to talking, and she forgets to actually eat.”
“I never forget to eat,” Cara said, plate piled high in front of her.
Zane smiled at her. Seeing Zane smile was still surprising. “With you around, neither do I.”
Nolan was trying to figure out if that was a double entendre or not when Lila came and sat down at the table. She left a seat between them, but also very deliberately chose not to sit across from him.
“Hey,” she said, directed specifically at everybody but him. He didn’t know why, but he could tell.
“Good job keeping them away.”
Then Lila did look at him. “Well, I can’t say that we did the best job. I think we pieced together a series of extremely unbelievable stories, but they were too weirded out to figure out why we were being weird.”
“True,” Nolan said.
“We’re good in the rodeo, good at trailblazing, very good business minds, I think, but maybe bad at surprises.”
He chuckled. Well, maybe he was imagining things. Maybe they were more okay than he thought.
Maybe all the weirdness was on his end. Maybe she hadn’t noticed that he had been about to be the world’s biggest idiot.
They had hired a band to come out and play, and once they started, people went out onto the dance floor in couples, and he and Lila still sat at the table.
Even Zane took Cara out to the dance floor, held her close, twirled her in front of everybody.
Nolan and Lila exchanged a glance. Maybe she wanted him to ask her to dance, but it was a bad idea. He knew that it was a bad idea.
“That cake is really beautiful,” Lila said, looking across the barn.
“Yeah, it is.”
“It’s a shame to cut into it, honestly, it’s more like art.”
“Well, that’s why they say you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
Lila wrinkled her nose. “I’ve never understood that saying.”
“It means exactly that. You cannot both possess an item, and consume it.”
He understood that all too well. If he had Lila, he would only consume her, and that meant she could never actually be his.
Which meant he needed to get a fucking grip.
Lila’s phone was sitting on the table, and he noticed it light up. She did too. She picked it up and smiled at it.
Then she started typing a response.
“Is that your date?”
“Yep. It’s happening in two days.”
It’s happening.
She made it sound like more than a date. Like, she was going to sleep with him too. She made it sound like it was a whole lot of everything happening.
“Great. Glad for you.”
“Me too.”
“You should dance with me,” he said.
Goddamn it, he had no idea why that had come out of his mouth.
“Why?”
“Do you know how to dance, Lila? You ever been asked? Maybe Jason will want to dance with you.”
She lifted a brow. “I know how to dance. I’ve done it before. In elementary school, we had to do a little ballroom dance. One time as part of a Christmas play, and I did just fine.”
“You think they ballroom dance in honky-tonks?”
“I used to ride in the rodeo. I’ve been in honky-tonks.”
“Oh, I know you have,” he said, knowing what he was about to say was bad, and teeing it up anyway. “You’ll recall I was there when you got drunk off your ass in a honky tonk that first time.”
Something hot was burning in his gut, hot and reckless. He was pushing, and he knew it. Pushing them somewhere that could end badly. Badly was the sole option, and there were no others.
“I’m aware,” she said. “Which is why I can’t believe you’re doubting me now.”
“All right then, show me what you got.”
“Sure. Come on,” she said.
He could see the same fire in her eyes.
And he could see the destruction, but he didn’t care to change course. Didn’t care to stop it now.
They got up from the table together and he didn’t take her hand, but they walked over to the dance floor together, their elbows awkwardly brushing. It was a pretty fast song, and that meant there would be minimal handholding, but there would be some.
Still, it was almost like a dare at this point. Like they were waiting to call each other’s bluff.
The trouble was, he wasn’t sure it was a bluff anymore. Not for him. He wasn’t sure if it was for her either, or if it ever had been. She wanted him. He’d seen it.