Chapter 20
TEX
Iwasn’t nervous.
I didn’t fucking get nervous.
But sitting across from Rowan at that table, watching her lower herself carefully into the chair, her hair freshly washed and soft around her shoulders.
Yeah. Something in my chest felt tight. Different.
She glanced at the candle, then at me. “You always do this for your patients?” she asked, a small smile tugging at her lips.
I huffed. “Only the difficult ones.”
Her eyes flickered with amusement. “Good to know I made the list.”
“Sweetheart, you topped it.”
She laughed softly, and the sound hit me harder than it should’ve.
We started eating, the quiet settling between us, but it wasn’t awkward. Not like before. This was easier. Lighter somehow.
“Okay,” she said after a couple of bites. “This is really good. You’ve been holding out on me. I’ll never go back to just eggs and bacon again.”
I smirked. “Glad you’re enjoying it.”
“No, seriously,” she added, pointing her fork at me. “This is suspiciously good. Did you order this in?”
My smirk stretched into a full-blown smile. “Did I order it…fuck no,” I laughed, only a little bit offended, “growing up, I had to learn.”
She tilted her head. “Yeah? Why?”
I leaned back in my chair, holding the bottle of beer in my hand, the thin neck of the bottle between my fingers.
“My old man wasn’t around much,” I said.
“And my mom worked double shifts half the time. If I wanted to eat anything that wasn’t out of a can or edible raw, well, I had to figure that shit out. ”
Her expression softened. “How old were you?”
“I don’t know. That’s just the way it always was. She was a good mom—she did everything she could to keep a roof over our heads.”
“I’m sure she was.” She smiled like she meant it. “And now you cook like this?”
“At least something good came out of it,” I said simply.
She smiled again, quieter this time. “I think a lot of good came out of it, Tex.” And by the way she looked at me and said my name, I knew she was talking about me.
I lifted the bottle of wine up, ready to pour her a glass. I’d asked Jordan to bring me a decent bottle when I’d called her about Rowan’s hair emergency earlier. Her eyes followed the movement of my hand.
“You want—” I started, then stopped, remembering she wouldn’t be able to drink.
She raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“You can’t,” I said, nodding toward her arm. “Meds.”
She groaned, leaning back in her chair. “Right. Fantastic. Another reason getting shot isn’t a good idea.”
She said it sarcastically and she clearly meant it to be funny, but my chest pinched with her words all the same.
It wasn’t funny. Not even a little bit. And every time I remembered her bleeding in my arms, her eyes rolling back in her head while guns went off all around us, a deep fury rolled through me.
I would kill every last one of them if it was the last thing I did.
I just had to find them first.
“You should drink it though,” she said, forking a piece of chicken and putting into her mouth.
“Wine?” I scoffed. “You think I’m refined enough for that?”
She giggled and the sound loosened the tightness in my chest.
“All right then. Better than it going to waste I guess.” I poured a glass for myself, though I had never drunk wine in my life, and I took a slow, deliberate sip and groaned. “Oh, that’s good!”
She narrowed her eyes on me. “Wow, okay then. You’re not even going to pretend it’s crappy?”
“Not a chance.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.”
“Life’s tough.”
“Yeah, especially for you.”
We finished dinner like that—easy teasing, small smiles, something warm building between us that I didn’t quite have a name for.
Afterward, I nodded toward the back door. “C’mon.”
The evening air hit us as we stepped out onto the decking, the sky already starting to shift with gold bleeding into orange, fading into deepening blue at the edges. The warmth of the day had dropped like someone had opened the freezer drawer to the world, and Rowan shivered.
“I love this sky,” she said with a dreamy voice.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
And I really did agree. It was the kind of sunset that made everything feel still. Like the madness of the world was going to be wiped away with a curtain of fire.
The prospects were posted where I left them, leaning against the railing, but they straightened the second they saw me.
“All quiet?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” one of them said quickly.
“Perimeter?”
“Checked twice.”
I gave a short nod. “Good. Get on your bikes. Do another sweep—full property.”
They didn’t hesitate. “Yes, sir.”
Engines roared to life a minute later, the sound fading as they headed out across the land.
I glanced at Rowan. “You good to sit?”
She nodded. “Only if you have a blanket.”
“I’ve got better.”
We moved to the edge of the decking, settling side by side as the sun dipped lower, stretching shadows across the ranch, and I pulled off my sweater and helped it over her head. Then sat in one of the chairs and pulled her onto my lap.
Her body tensed and then softened against me as I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her against my body.
“I guess that’ll do,” she said coyly.
“You guess, huh?” I raised an eyebrow and grinned.
“Yeah, I guess.” She looked across to the barn and for a while neither of us spoke.
In the distance, we watched the lights of the prospects’ bikes carrying across the land, and it felt reassuring that even from this distance we could see them. That maybe, if anyone else was coming, we would be able to see them before they got here too.
The horses shifted in the barn, a soft whinny carrying on the breeze.
Rowan turned her head, a small frown puckering between her eyebrows. “They’re restless.”
I pushed up to my feet. “You wanna go check on them?”
“Please. They probably just need to be ridden is all, but I won’t be able to relax until I know for certain.”
We stood up, and together we walked across the dirt, the ground still warm under our boots, until we reached the barn.
Inside, one of the horses nudged closer to the stall door, its nose pushing over the top.
It snorted when it saw Rowan and Rowan smiled, her whole face softening in a way I hadn’t seen before.
“When I was little I used to come out here with my dad,” she said quietly, using her good hand to scrub at the horse’s nose. “He’d lift me up to see them and tell me I had to be still and quiet or they wouldn’t trust me.”
I leaned beside her, close enough to feel the heat of her body. “Did you ever listen?”
She huffed a small laugh. “Not even a little. I talked the whole time. Just nonstop talking.”
“Sounds about right.”
She nudged me lightly with her shoulder.
“My mom would stand on the porch and yell at him for letting me get too close to them.” Her voice softened.
“He always said, ‘She’s gotta learn sometime,’ and she would argue back that she didn’t want me getting attached to the horses because that wasn’t the life for me.
I never understood it, but I do now. Now it all makes sense. ”
The words lingered between us.
Something about the way she said it. Like it meant more now. Like maybe it hurt.
I turned my head, noting that she was already looking at me.
She was close. Too close.
Her breath hitched slightly, though mine wasn’t much steadier.
My eyes dropped to her mouth without meaning to, and I couldn’t take my eyes away from her full, soft, pink lips, just waiting to be kissed.
My hands twitched at my sides, every instinct in me telling me to close the distance between us. To reach out and cup her face and lean down…to kiss her.
To finally seal the deal and take what I so desperately wanted.
But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
I stopped my thoughts in their tracks, because this wasn’t some bar, and she wasn’t just some woman.
Besides, even if she wanted me like I wanted her, what future could we have?
I exhaled slowly, dragging my gaze back to hers.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her words loaded with meaning. She reached out a hand, placing it on my forearm and I felt a tingle go up my arm like a current of electricity. Everything in my body was telling me to reach for her.
To hold her.
To wrap my arms around her and kiss her like my life depended on it, but instead I let my expression harden and I pushed away every other feeling.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
She cocked her head to one side. “Are you sure? You look like you’re contemplating something heavy there, cowboy.”
I sighed. “I wanted to kiss you.”
I blurted the words out before I changed my mind.
“Okay?” she said. “Is that such a bad thing?”
“Yeah. Real bad.”
She swallowed, but her gaze never left mine. “Why?” The single word came out a whisper.
“Because, Rowan.” I paused, already hating myself for what I was about to say to her. “There’s no future for us. You don’t fit in my world, and I don’t fit into yours.”
She stared at me, those beautiful big eyes of hers unblinking. “Oh.”
She looked away and her hand dropped away from my arm leaving a chill in its wake. A small frown fell across her face.
“It’s just that—” I began, but she cut me off.
“No, it’s fine. I get it,” she laughed.
“All right, well can I just explain?”
She shook her head and laughed again, but the sound held nothing but hurt. “Please, don’t. You really don’t need to.”
“Rowan…”
She backed away from me, the hurt in her eyes like daggers to my heart.
“Tex, I’m good. I agree. There’s no future for us, and I’m not interested in a quick hookup.
That might be your style, but it’s not mine.
My life’s already complicated enough without adding a commitment-phobe biker to the list.”
She turned and started walking away, and I realized how hard my heart was beating. How tight my lungs felt. How much I wished I could take my words back.
“Commitment-phobe…Rowan, please, can I just—”
“No, Tex, I’m good, thank you. I’m tired now. I need to get some rest. Goodnight.”
I stared after her, aching for all the wrong reasons and wishing I could get this woman out of my head before she ruined both of us.