CHAPTER 21 BEN
Nobody ever asked me why I own horses, so it’s not a story I ever had to tell.
But Kaylee just has this way about her that makes me want to reveal all the secrets of my past. She seems to know exactly the words to ask to get me to open up—and sometimes she doesn’t have to say anything at all. She simply has to exist in the same space as me.
Out of nowhere, she’s somehow become my best friend over the last couple months.
Even Jack doesn’t know some of the things I’ve revealed to her.
I never told him about Tatum and the baby.
I never told him about the horses or the impulse control shit from when I was a kid—a term that still bothers me to this day.
I was just a kid being an angry kid, taking advantage of my parents in their divorce as I needed some attention at the time, and somehow hanging around a horse helped shape me into a different person.
I discovered football shortly after that, and the rest is history.
I drive slowly through the forest toward the lake.
I’ve traveled these grounds enough that I know the area well, but the compass built into Brewski’s dash helps.
When I say there are no houses around me for miles, it’s not an exaggeration.
My property is nearly four hundred acres, which is over a half a square mile.
The nearest house is two and a half miles away.
It’s glorious.
It’s private, and it’s quiet, and it’s all mine.
Kaylee Dalton is the first woman I’ve ever wanted to share it with.
I drive us toward the dock where I like to sit and fish, and Buddy waits for the vehicle to come to a complete stop before he leaps out and runs toward the water, bypassing the dock completely.
For as scared as he is of his own shadow, he can’t resist water…
even though the little fish swimming around in there have scared him out of it on more than one occasion.
We walk down the dock toward the end, my hand gripping hers. She’s quiet as she takes it all in. A kayak and a small canoe are tied up on one side of the dock, and when we get to the end, we both sit with our legs dangling off, still a few feet away from the water.
We’re quiet as we both turn to watch Buddy splash around, skipping near the shore so he doesn’t get too deep. He slips on a rock and falls all the way in, but he swims his way out, shaking the way dogs do and spraying water everywhere. Luckily he’s pretty far from us, so we don’t get wet.
“He seems like he’s in his element here,” she says, laughing at his antics as he puts his nose down into the water then snorts outward, spraying himself with water in the face.
“He’s a good boy.” I chuckle. “And he gets that from me. This is my element, too.”
“I can tell. You’re different up here,” she says.
My brows dip. “How?”
She lifts a shoulder and keeps her gaze out on the water. “I don’t know. You’re more…open. Like you’re letting me see the real you rather than the Big O party guy everybody knows and loves.”
I stare out over the water, too. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t really know who I am.
I’m not the Big O party guy twenty-four-seven.
I mean…he’s me. I’m him. But there’s a real person underneath the character I’ve built, too.
I’ve just become him in so many ways at this point that I tend to lose the man underneath it all. ”
She reaches over and rests a hand on my thigh, and she squeezes it. “You’re starting to show me who he is, and as much fun as I have with the party guy…” She pauses and looks at me, and I meet her gaze. “I think I like the real guy underneath the mask even more.”
I lean down and brush my lips softly to hers in part because I don’t know how to respond to that and in part to thank her for accepting me as I am.
I’m quite sure nobody else has ever done that before…and it’s because since I left Great Falls, I never let anybody get to know the real guy who lives inside.
So for her to accept me so lovingly and so completely…it doesn’t just mean everything to me.
It’s also the most terrifying aspect of all this. Because if I lose her at the end, I don’t just lose her. I will lose myself again, too.
And then what? Where will that leave me?
We walk on the path near the lake a while as Buddy dries off, and then we hop back into Brewski and head back toward home.
I give Buddy a quick outdoor bath to get the lake smell off while Kaylee makes us sandwiches inside, and then we sit on the deck overlooking the pines and the mountains off in the distance while we eat.
“I could get used to this,” she says. She stares out over the view and glances at me. “I can hear Ellie telling me to take a picture to post on Instagram, but I want to be selfish. I want to keep this view just for us. I want to keep this entire property just for us.”
“I don’t post about this place,” I admit. “I don’t want people to know where I am, for one thing, but I feel the same way. I’ll share a lot of myself with my fans, but this place?” I shake my head. “It’s just for me. I don’t want to stop you from posting if you want to, though.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to. I’ve got plenty of older images saved that I can use.
And if I need to post sponsored products, I can do it without giving anything about this place away.
In fact, since I’ll need my own room once my family gets here,” she says, pausing to roll her eyes, “I’ll only take pictures in that room while we’re here. ”
“You’re getting the room closest to mine, by the way,” I say. “Easier to sneak in and out of.”
She giggles. “Oh boy. It’s going to be a real adventure once they get here.”
We finish our lunch and go for a hike, and as the sun starts to descend in the sky, I can’t help but think how different she is from the women I usually hang around.
Although, to be fair, they’re usually strippers or one-night hook-ups who don’t show much interest in evening hikes.
She’s always up for adventure. She sings country music at the top of her lungs with zero fucks to give.
She kicks her feet up on my dashboard, but she reminds me to wear my helmet when I’m off-roading.
She’s outdoorsy and athletic and she can’t cook for shit, but she’s intelligent and funny and fucking gorgeous.
And she wants me for me. She doesn’t give a shit that I play football or that my bank account is padded with paychecks from the league and twice that in endorsements. She’s maybe the first woman who has ever treated me like I’m just a normal guy because to her, I am.
She’s peeling away my layers in a way nobody ever has before her.
And when she gets to the core…I hope my instinct is to cling to her rather than to run away.
But I have the menacing feeling that old habits die hard.