Chapter 15
INSTINCT URGED KENZIE to salvage the situation, to explain why she’d done what she’d done, then make it right between them. One look at Ty’s face, though, and she knew with absolute certainty that that was no longer an option.
Fury slowly bled over his countenance, replacing the raw, unadulterated shock of her initial admission.
She’d always intended to tell him the truth.
Every day that passed had made it harder, though.
Her realization only an hour before that she loved this man had totally thrown her and scattered her good intentions to the four corners.
Understanding and despair collided in her and left her reeling, exposed and terrifyingly vulnerable.
Worse, she’d been a fool, had never expected him to call her out like this, to use her promise to talk about Michael to garner an admission of guilt from her. “Ty, I—”
He sliced his hand through the air, cutting off her explanation. “Don’t.” Breathing so hard he was nearly panting, he gripped his shirt and yanked it away from his chest. “Just...don’t.”
She stepped closer, hand outstretched. “Are you having a panic attack?”
His movements were almost spastic, uncoordinated even, as he pushed off the wall and shuffled toward the barred tack room door. Shoving things out of the way with total disregard, he wrenched the door open and gasped, breath condensing on the rush of cold air. “You don’t need to pretend anymore.”
Her mind slowed, comprehension warped by the tendrils of panic spreading through her. “Pretend?”
“I get it, Kenzie. Your dad’s been after me for more than two years, trying to get me to stud Gizmo out to the Malone Quarter horse empire.
” He barked out a bitter laugh, and she recoiled.
“You know, I just realized that’s about the same time you showed up in my life.
” He shot her a hard look. “Was that what this was all along? An attempt to get me to fall for you so I would sell Gizmo’s baby batter to you?
Because you realized you couldn’t beat me in genetics otherwise? ”
Kenzie stood still as death while inside she figured she more closely resembled a crash-test dummy—arms akimbo, head at an odd angle, one foot twisted the wrong way.
She should answer him. She knew that. Yet words eluded her, refusing to coalesce into any semblance of coherent thought.
Her mind was a landfill of expired good intentions and discarded hope.
So she stood there, silent, and bore the wrath of the man she would have done anything for—had done everything for—cringing when his smile grew brittle, hard but breakable.
“I think the worst part of this is that you used my memory loss to your advantage to gain the thing you wanted most from me. Gizmo.” He spat the horse’s name like a vile curse. “He’s all that mattered to you. And the second you saw an opening, you took him under the guise of a false partnership.”
“I saved him,” she objected.
“You saved him so you could use him,” Ty countered.
“I did what—”
“What you wanted, Mackenzie,” he shouted.
“What you asked me to do!”
His grin was colder than the wind chill at the peak of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
“See? I can’t dispute that because I don’t remember.
” His voice had been cold, but his eyes suddenly became glacial.
“And that’s why you brought Indie, isn’t it?
You intended to breed her to Gizmo while proximity wasn’t an issue. Nice, Kenzie. Real nice.”
She met that desolate gaze head-on. “No.” After months away with Gizmo, she’d simply wanted her horse’s company.
She’d needed to be able to ride when she wanted to and without asking for the equine equivalent of a Hertz rental car.
But her response didn’t matter. All Ty was willing to see was the worst possible interpretation of what she’d done and why.
Jaw knotted, skin pale and lips almost nonexistent in his face, Ty stared at her, unblinking. “I want you to pack whatever’s in that cabin, get your gear and your horse out of my barn and get off my land before I call the sheriff.”
Kenzie straightened at the threat. “And just what are you going to report, Ty? That the woman you’ve been sleeping with off and on for years spent over one hundred thousand dollars on you and your horse, and she screwed you senseless this morning?”
One corner of his mouth curled up, the expression uncharacteristically cruel. “No. I’m just going to report she screwed me.”
She’d expected heartbreak to sound like a gunshot.
It didn’t. There was a very quiet internal fracture, a tiny gasp.
Then came the onslaught of pain, an emotional riptide that pulled her under.
It stole her breath. It darkened her vision.
It wrapped tentacles around her chest and bore down. It hurt more than anything ever had.
“Get off my ranch, Mackenzie, and don’t come back.” No steadier than the town’s resident drunk on a weekend binge, Ty stumbled out of the tack room and out of the barn.
By the time Ty made it to the house, the fear of falling had surpassed “probability” and moved straight to “inevitability.” That was why he didn’t shout when he collapsed in the foyer. He couldn’t sit up, couldn’t get up, so he simply lay there and fought to catch his breath.
The door opened, exposing his clammy skin to a blast of outside air. He shivered, silently fighting through the additional discomfort it caused. Screw that. It hurt. He hurt. All over. He rested his forehead against the hardwood floor and groaned.
“What the...” Cade’s large hands ran over his back and arms, searching for injury. “Talk to me, Tyson,” he ordered, voice gruff. “Tell me what happened.”
“Life. And don’t go soft on me. Not now.” Using arms and legs weaker than a newborn foal’s, he fought to roll himself over. Cade tried to help, but Ty uttered a sound suspiciously growl-like, and the larger man backed off. “I’m not a freaking damsel,” Ty said through gritted teeth.
“Damsel?” Cade said, confused. “I’m at a loss here, man. What does a damsel, or being one, have to do with you being sprawled out on the floor?”
Irony, you’re a real bitch. “Everything. And nothing.” If it wasn’t so painfully true, he’d have laughed. If only...
Using the last of his reserve, Ty managed to roll over.
Cade tried to help him sit up, but Eli chose that moment to open the door. Caught unprepared, Cade was shoved forward. Ty had to give credit where credit was due, though. His older brother managed to throw himself clear of Ty’s semiprone form, presumably in an attempt to keep from crushing him.
“What are you two pony jockeys doing crouched in front of the door?” Eli demanded absently as he dumped his wet boots into the boot tray.
Ty cradled his face in his palms and batted his eyes at his eldest brother. “Oh, you know. Hanging out. Discussing fashion trends and the latest E! News gossip. We were going to use the living room, but furniture is so passé. It’s all about casual living now.”
“Smart-ass.” Eli looked Ty over. “You fall?” he asked quietly.
“Flat on my face.”
“Break anything?”
My heart. “No.”
Eli offered Cade a hand and then the pair turned to him. “Let’s get you up, then.”
As a unit, they worked to help him to his feet and continued to support him until they made it to his room and perched him on the side of the bed.
Cade pulled Ty’s boots off and Eli helped him get laid down on the bed. Ty ignored the soft scent of perfume on the sheets.
Kenzie.
Ty struggled to sit up. “I need to change my bed before I lie down.”
“You’re worn out, Ty. Leave it for now,” Eli answered. “We’ll handle the sheets later, when you’re up to it.”
He couldn’t stand it. “I want the sheets changed. Now.”
Eli faced him with slow deliberation and arched one brow. “Do I look like Cinderella?”
Anxiety rose within him. Fighting to draw a slow breath, to calm himself down, Ty considered his options.
He didn’t want to admit that the smell of her would make him crazy, didn’t want to own the fallout, the fact that he’d been had.
Lying here with her scent surrounding him, though? Totally worse.
Chucking pride aside, he looked first at Cade and then Eli.
“Mackenzie Malone lied.” That was, apparently, all it took to free the words he’d held in check.
He dumped the whole story at his brothers’ feet, starting with how he’d first met Kenzie and ending with him walking away from her less than an hour ago.
Nothing was left out. Nothing was off-limits.
When he finally finished, Cade and Eli were quiet.
He didn’t understand. He hadn’t expected them to grab their ropes and scout the tallest tree for a hanging, but neither had he expected them to hold their opinions to themselves.
They were all opinionated. Always had been.
Rule of thumb said they were also brutally honest with one another under every circumstance.
Nope, he didn’t get their silence at all.
“She lied. She admitted it.” He rubbed at the crease between his eyebrows.
“So why do I suddenly feel like a total dick?” Shifting around in bed, he adjusted his pillows and looked first at one brother and then the other.
The way they both avoided eye contact sent up his internal “shark in the water” flag.
“What did you guys do?” No answer. He pushed himself higher up his headboard.
“One of you will tell me or I’m calling the women in. ”
“No need for that,” Cade said, sinking to a crouch beside the bed.
Ty rustled up a teasing smile. “Chickenshit. Emma’s a total softy.”
His older brother quirked a brow, the gesture speaking volumes even though all the man himself said was “Keep telling yourself that, little brother.”
Eli pulled up the room’s only chair, dropping into it as though he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders. He still wouldn’t look at Ty.
The action, or inaction, seasoned his brothers’ hesitation with discomfort and flavored it further with guilt. He was about to call them both on it and demand answers when Cade finally broke the silence.
“You have to understand, Ty, that we thought we were going to lose you, first physically—” he reached up and pinched his upper lip hard enough to turn it red “—and then emotionally.” Blue eyes met Ty’s brown ones.
“You checked out on us after you came home. None of us in this house were willing to risk losing you, either physically or mentally.”
Ty stared at the other man. “When you did you go all Dr. Phil on me?”
Cade didn’t bat an eye when he answered, “When it seemed to all of us that you’d stopped caring whether you lived or died.”
He flinched. “Well, that was about as subtle as a kick in the nuts.”
Cade exploded off the floor, at eye level one minute and in Ty’s face the next.
“You want subtle, discuss the nuances of fine wine with Emma. From me you get the hard truth, little brother.” He grabbed Ty by the front of the shirt.
“There’s not one of us who wouldn’t have done worse than we’ve done if it meant saving your sorry ass when you were too broken to do it yourself. ”
Blood rushed through Ty’s head at a frenzied rate, the swooshing white noise so powerful it almost drowned out the sound of his voice in his head. “What have you done?”
Cade looked over at their eldest brother.
“Answer me,” Ty shouted, startling the two men and bringing Emma racing into the room.
“What happened?” she demanded, breathless. Her gaze traveled the room and came to rest on Cade’s ruddy complexion. “You told him.”
Ty zeroed in on his future sister-in-law. “They haven’t told me anything.”
She joined the rank and file, fixing her gaze anywhere but on him.
“Emma. Please.” He didn’t remotely regret the pleading in his voice. Every second that passed left him feeling sicker, more certain he’d somehow committed the worst mistake of his life.
Emma moved to stand by the side of the bed, edging Cade out of the way and, at the same time, placing herself between Ty and Eli. “Get out.”
“This is between us, Emma.” Eli’s admonishment was soft yet firm.
“I would have respected your position if you’d admitted everything when you and Cade first concocted the idiotic plan. But you didn’t. Now you’re refusing to tell him what you’ve done because you don’t have the guts to own your mistake.”
“I would’ve thought you’d have learned from that,” Reagan said from the doorway.
“I did.” Eli stood and faced his wife. “He’s my baby brother, Reagan.”
“He’s a grown man, Eli. You and Cade have to stop trying to keep life from happening to him.” The brunette closed the distance to her husband. “I’m with Emma on this. Get out.”
Cade crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you going to do?”
“What you two should have done from the beginning,” Emma answered.
“Give him the truth.” Cade opened his mouth, no doubt to argue, and Ty watched Emma shut the big man down with a single look.
“If you’d owned this before, I’d have kept out of it.
You didn’t, which means Reagan and I are going to clean up the mess you two have made. We don’t need your help—”
“Or your blessing,” Reagan added.
“To do it,” Emma finished with a nod to the other woman. “Respect me on this, Cade. I told you that you and Eli were wrong to try to manipulate Kenzie.”
Ty forced himself to sit up. “Come again?”
“Out. Now,” Reagan said, her tone brooking no argument, and yet it was compassionate for all that.
His older brothers left the room. Eli was pulling the door closed behind him when he paused.
Staring at the floor for a moment, he seemed to need to work up the courage to face Ty.
When their eyes met, Ty’s breath seized in his chest at the sheer remorse on Eli’s face.
“I’ll ask you to remember one thing. We did this because we weren’t willing to lose you. Nothing, nothing, is worth that.”
Then he closed the door.
Side by side, the women Ty loved like family faced him. And what they told him upended everything he thought he knew.
But he’d been right about one thing.
He was a total dick.