Chapter 11 #2
“I don’t know. I definitely feel … I feel like everybody around me is moving on. I feel like everybody is doing new things. Austin has kids. Carson and Perry are married. Flynn is engaged to the town mayor. Do you ever feel left behind?”
She tilted her head and stared at him. She hadn’t meant to ask such a direct question, something that might feel as if she was trying to get a declaration out of him.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But I haven’t thought much about marriage or any of that.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know. My parents are still together, but I can’t say that they’re happy. I’m not sure I can say I’ve ever seen anybody who’s all that happy. Except your brothers. Maybe it’s good karma because of everything they did for you.”
She laughed, but there was something about his observation that hit her wrong. As if her brothers had done her a big favor. She felt that way, for sure, but it hurt a little to hear Dalton say it.
“Oh hey,” he said, looking instantly contrite. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way. I just mean they’re really good men. Definitely some of the best I’ve ever known.”
“Well. Same. But I kind of put you in the same category. Except you aren’t my brother.”
He looked at her, just briefly taking his eyes off the road for a second. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “No. I’m not.”
Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she took it out. “Oh, fuck, West.”
“That bad?”
“It’s not bad. He’s just … I don’t know.
He’s genuinely one of the most infuriating people I’ve ever met.
” Her face got hot thinking about him. Because now she couldn’t think about him without conjuring up images of that kiss.
“But he’s also insightful. It’s hard to explain.
He’s a very good coach. He’s interesting.
He … he does all this stuff, and no one even realizes it. ”
“I can’t say I know him all that well.”
“He didn’t graduate high school. But he’s very smart.
And everybody thinks he’s a menace, I guess.
I can see how he is in some ways. But he does things.
He earned all this money in the stock market, because he’s brilliant with investments.
I guess he has a knack for recognizing patterns and he’s good at forecasting trends or … something.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling a strange sort of pride swelling at the center of her chest. “And he’s building a ranch. He’s just really different than I thought he would be. I guess kind of like Jessie Jane. Everybody thought they knew the Hancock family, but I think we were wrong. We were wrong.”
They were on the asphalt now, and the only sound in the truck was the whir of the tires.
She looked out the window at the mist hanging low over the pine trees.
The sky was gray, the clouds heavy with potential rain.
“The Wilders have been misunderstood all this time, but we turned around and did the same thing to them. I feel bad about it.”
“I don’t think you need to feel bad,” Dalton said. “West earned his reputation with his own behavior. He really did put your brother through a bar window.”
“I think it was mutual animosity,” she said.
“Fair.”
They were silent for a moment. “It must’ve been hard for you. Moving in with your brothers. They were so wild when you got here. I mean, they toned it down pretty quickly, but right in the beginning they were just hellions.”
“Yeah. They were. But they were always good to me.”
This was a great opportunity for her to talk about her childhood.
For her to bring up the way it had been before she had come to Rustler Mountain.
Because her early life explained a lot about why her brothers hadn’t actually felt wild to her.
One house. One family. The same bed every night.
The certainty that she would be warm and fed.
Christmas trees and family dinners. It felt peaceful.
It felt like home in a way that nothing else ever had.
When she had come to Rustler Mountain, it had been like finding herself for the first time. It had been like finding family, finding hope, finding that Christmas card she’d dreamed of.
She had shared all that with West. She didn’t know why it was so difficult to open her mouth and share with Dalton.
“Let’s listen to some music.” She reached out and turned the radio on. And after that they just listened to music.
They stopped for lunch in Corvallis, then continued north up I-5, crossing into Washington in the early afternoon. When they arrived at the small motel, her stomach tightened as they went into the lobby and approached the counter.
“I have two rooms under Wade,” he said.
Two rooms.
A strange sensation unraveled inside her. Okay. So nothing was going to happen. Or at least he hadn’t made any assumptions. But then, nothing remotely romantic had happened on the drive.
Her phone buzzed.
She took it out of her pocket and saw that she had three more texts from West. She melted away from Dalton and went into a corner.
How is it?
Did you get a kiss?
Did he fuck you yet?
She felt her heart climbing up into her throat.
You are a menace.
Again, well documented.
Don’t ask me about this anymore.
But I want to know.
It’s not your business.
It is my business, because I can still taste you when I close my eyes, Cassidy.
Don’t
I don’t have to. But I should’ve asked you to stay.
She stared at that text, her stomach tense.
Why didn’t you?
It’s not a good idea. And I was still trying to be a good guy. I’m over it now. I don’t like that you’re up there with him.
This is my plan. He’s who I want. I’ve always wanted him.
I don’t think you want him. I think you have a fantasy of what love is and you wanted to be with someone safe. And maybe you do love him. But you don’t want him.
Don’t want you either.
Liar.
Dalton was getting their keys, and she felt the need to hide her phone, because she felt so guilty over what she and West were talking about. She was about to put it in her pocket when West texted again.
If you don’t sleep with him, you can sleep with me when you get back. She stared at the text. She didn’t respond. And then a moment later, another text popped up.
Even if you do sleep with him, you can still sleep with me.
I’m not like that.
She didn’t send the text, though. She typed it, then erased it and put her phone in her pocket. Dalton walked over to her and handed her a key card.
“Right next to each other,” he said.
“Cool,” she said, her mind spinning, all of her focus on the text West had sent her.
He couldn’t be serious. They had kissed one time. One time, and he wasn’t offering her anything other than sex.
She didn’t want anything more with him anyway. Love or whatever else. He was West Hancock. Austin would have a conniption fit. There was nothing safe about West’s life. It was quite literally a work in progress. He was a mess. That’s what he was. That was the honest truth of it.
He was a disastrous man, and getting involved with him would be nothing short of disastrous. Feeling something for him while she felt …
It was a nightmare. She would be better off ignoring him, but he was baiting her and she was doing a very poor job of not taking it.
She felt lost right now. Even as she followed Dalton to their rooms, she felt lost.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Doing great. Thank you.”
“Why don’t you go freshen up. I know I need to. Then we can go grab some dinner.”
“Yeah.”
Should she be offended that he’d said she should freshen up? She wasn’t really sure. And that was perhaps not what she should be thinking about.
He couldn’t invite anybody else to join them this time. It was going to end up being a date. This was what she’d hoped for. But she found herself scrambling into the hotel room and closing the door behind her. Then she started to text West but instead called him on video.
He picked up. He was standing in his half-finished kitchen, a drill in his hand. He was holding the phone up at a strange angle, and he looked beautiful. “I don’t think I’ve ever used this feature before.”
“Why do I not believe that?”
“What do you think I’ve used it for?”
“I don’t know. Phone sex?”
“Here’s the thing, Cassidy. If you weren’t interested, you wouldn’t respond to me. And you sure as hell wouldn’t have called me. You wouldn’t have come by last night.”
“Yeah. Well. People get tempted to do things they shouldn’t.”
“Why are you making it something you shouldn’t do?”
“Why haven’t you made a more decisive move? How about that? You … you bang everything that moves. We both know that. And it’s taken you this long to actually directly come on to me.”
“Babe, the kiss was a come-on.”
“Sure. Fine. There was the kiss. But only now you decide to tell me that you want me? Why? Is it just because you can’t have me? Is it because I’m with someone else?”
“No. It’s because I’m changing my view on the situation.
You have a point. I definitely thought of you as someone I couldn’t have.
Because my sister is marrying your brother.
And I don’t have anything to give but sex.
That felt like a problem at first. I didn’t want to have to deal with you if things went south, but here’s the thing: I like you.
I like you a lot. I’m not going to dislike you after we have sex. ”
His declaration was so pragmatic, so flat.
It was almost flattering, except it was definitely one of the strangest things anyone had ever said to her.
She had turned sex into something sacred.
Because she had seen what it looked like when people treated it lightly.
Casual sex was definitely not something she had ever considered for herself.
And she certainly hadn’t considered anything half so progressive as sex that was no big deal, where people could speak to each other afterward as if nothing had happened.
Hell, even her mom had never done that. There had always been broken dishes and screaming and threats.
Her mom had dated men with mullets, handguns, and even pet snakes.