Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
WINNIE
Burnt Beans
The sun rises and I’m still in Wilder West’s arms for the second time ever. And he hasn’t run away to the bunkhouse at the ass crack of dawn either, so…
“I guess we’re even,” West murmurs, flicking hair off my face that obscures my vision in a crisscross pattern. He blinks in the bright sunlight just as he did at my place. “You’re thinking so loud you’ll wake the house.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Good thing there’s only four people in it, then.”
He leans down and kisses me. “Cord’s already up. I heard him talking to Sally earlier. He’s cooking.” His mouth takes a slow tour of mine, tracing patterns I don’t know across my lips, as he heads lower, pushing the sheet down to bare my breasts. His touch is utter heaven.
“Since when can my brother cook? Did he fire Levi? Did he tell you about Lanie?” My brain fires up without its usual dosage of shitty, all-I-can-afford-to-buy, responsibly sourced instant coffee.
“I haven’t seen Cord since I arrived, remember?
You took up all his time with your fight last night.
The two of you went at it for hours, longer than I’ve ever heard you fight with him before.
I had no idea you had stamina like that, Rand.
” West rolls over me, bracing his forearms over my head, caging me in.
Need blazes from his coal-dark eyes. “Otherwise I would have pushed you for more last night. Gone another round, or three.”
The promise in his darkening gaze sends a thrill pulsing through me. An ache I’d forgotten blooms between my legs. “I’m not sure you’ve got it in you, Wilder,” I sass him, staring straight into his eyes.
A dare that neither of us backs down from lingers in the pensive air between us as his knee presses against my legs, nudging them apart. The soul-deep ache develops into a throb that won’t freaking quit.
“I’m sure we can make it last, Rand.” West drops a kiss to my lips, pushing his tongue inside my mouth as he pierces my pussy with his cock, which I swear is thicker than it was last night. Harder too. Our teasing has done it for him, or maybe he’s just a morning-wood man.
Either way, the moan that works its way along my throat is cruel as I swallow it back. The scents of breakfast cooking and fresh, snobby coffee brewing permeate my sex-addled mind.
“Dammit, that’s not fair,” I murmur as West thrusts slow and deep. “I want both.”
“So have both.” He pushes deeper, harder, but still slow. “Have all the things you want. Let me give you everything.” His hand drops to my hip, his thumb seeking that same place he found before, tracing a burning path of sensation across the nerve endings that scream like I need to for him.
Pleasure builds as he drives me into the too-soft mattress I love that’s nothing like the hard, lumpy thing I sleep on at home.
I bite back a sob of pure lust—for the cowboy who wants me, the best lover I’ve ever had; for the luxury of the soft bedding beneath me; for the way West’s cock works inside me. It’s too much.
And he’s right. I do want it all. I also know I can’t have any of it.
I’ve stayed strong for so long. And what he offers…
it’s too tempting. If I let him give me anything now, the girl who wants it all will cave.
And she’ll be soft, not hard like I have to be for my life.
Against him. The asshole. Hard to keep my daughter safe.
The woman who can’t be with West has to be hard. I don’t get luxuries in my life. I don’t get to accept gifts from my brother.
I can’t be soft.
I can’t have everything. Not now or ever.
And I won’t let West take that level of hard-ass from me, all the nights of sleeping on a shitty mattress and saying no to gifts I want to take so badly to make life easier because saying yes just once means saying yes always.
I. Won’t. Let. Him.
I shove at West’s shoulders, rolling him off me. “No,” I whisper, pushing him away. My body regrets the motion, but I shove and shove and shove until he’s gone.
West lies on his back, his arms open by his sides as he frowns up at me. “Winnie? Where did I hurt you?”
“Everywhere,” I whisper, grabbing a handful of material, hoping it’s my clothing, and dash for the hallway. I’m such a liar.
Liar, liar, liar—
My feet pad too loudly on the sassafras flooring, pretty in the dawn light. I pray that Sally doesn’t see my nudie run as I stumble in the direction I think is the bathroom and lock myself inside.
And press my back to the black slate tiles, letting tears course down my cheeks as my empty body aches and aches for the man who loves me. The same man who loves me back, whom I can’t have.
“Even if you shy away from me tomorrow, and I have to convince you to stay all over again. If that’s the dance we do every morning, every day, forever, then that’s what we do.”
West’s words from last night scream in my head as I cry into the silence of the locked bathroom. It’s a fallacy, the sort of fantasy that I lived in the darkness of last night while we loved each other for stolen moments.
Moments that we both knew could never last. We’re too similar, too different. He spent so many years with my brother, working alongside him, that he thinks that we’re all alike.
But we’re not.
Wilder West came from a family who loved him.
Who put him through college. Who understood him.
Cordell and me… we barely speak to our parents, and even that is new.
I can’t have a relationship without it falling apart around me, and my habit of destroying a good date on the second or third try is in action right now.
Cord? He doesn’t know how to support the woman who loves him, even though he’s trying.
We’re all a bunch of broken fuckups in my family. Proof that money can buy options but happiness remains elusive.
I pull the clothes on that I grabbed in my blind exodus from the bedroom.
Fantastic. Panties—that’s helpful. No bra, but I can deal.
The jeans are mine. The shirt—not so lucky.
West’s scent surrounds me as I pull the soft T-shirt over my head and wrap my arms around myself.
Even here, when I’m running away from him, I can’t get away.
I snuggle into the soft hug of him without meaning to—or maybe I do. The tears run faster.
Why am I like this?
Answer: because I married an asshole straight out of high school who spent the next years abusing me like I was his personal overused chew toy.
I tried to tell West I was damaged goods. He didn’t seem to believe me. Worse, seems to think that he can fix me.
Neither of those things are true in any respect.
A soft knock beside my head leaves me almost wetting myself. “Winnie. Unlock the door.” West doesn’t beat around the bush. Not that there’s any bush left to beat around. We flattened that sucker and ran it right on over hours ago. Days ago.
“Leave me alone, please. Have breakfast. I’ll go find Sally in a minute. Make sure she’s had enough to eat.” All the domesticated normalcy when there’s so little of that around me right now. But I’ll force it out until it’s real. Fake it ’til you… Ah, fuck it. I’m crying again.
West sighs. “Guess I’ll starve then, waiting for you to come out.”
Don’t you dare guilt-trip me, Wilder West.
But I don’t think that’s what he’s doing. West is just stating a fact.
I stare at my tear-streaked reflection in Cord’s perfect, unmarred mirror and hate both myself and my brother a little more for its perfection in the face of my flaws. “Go, West. I don’t want to be like this.” I don’t want you to see me like this.
His voice is low and soft, without a hint of the derision that I’ve come to expect from a man. “That’s tough. Because I’m here whether you like it or not. You have no filter. I’ve got no boundaries.”
Just ask your brother.
He doesn’t have to say that last bit. We both know how he was in Cord’s space while he healed, never let him out of his sight.
And I’m grateful. I am. Because Cord wouldn’t let me near him back then. He wouldn’t let anyone be around him, actually. West kind of… stayed. But I don’t want that same treatment.
Do I?
“You’ve got no sense,” I mutter through the door, resting my cheek against it. My tears stop, leaving my skin sticky. The wood is cool, though. “Why won’t you go away?”
West doesn’t answer for a moment, but I know it isn’t because he’s short on words.
“Because I need to be here,” he says softly.
The tears start again. He waits them out, or maybe it’s me he waits out.
When the tears stop and I manage to work the lock, West’s there, his back pressed to the wall opposite the heavy wooden door.
I crawl across the hall, into the space he makes in the vee between his knees, and curl into his arms, which fold around me.
And that’s how Sally finds us, carefully balancing a mug of overfilled coffee full of overcooked beans and burnt milk that Cordell’s obviously made himself. Because my brother is an expert at burning beans and milk in one cup with a preprogrammed machine.
It’s the best peace offering I’ve ever tasted as my family finally comes together over the silliest thing in the world.
Weirdly, me.
And in the end, I stay there, cuddling a shirtless West because I stole his tee, with my daughter wedged between us.
And it’s perfect.