Cowboy to the Core

by Maisey Yates

  “And I have? Look at me, learning all of these things.”

  “You don’t understand, Jamie. I am like my dad.”

  “Right, as evidenced by the trail of broken hearts in your wake? You even told me that the first time we had sex, how you have this act and you only sleep with women you can’t hurt and...”

  “I had one girlfriend in high school. After Dad sold the horses. I put all that feeling into her, and I made her promises. I was going to make a life with her. The life we wanted. Her parents sucked, and she wanted—She dreamed of making a life with me. I thought I was immune to acting like my dad. I hated my dad right then. And then what did I do? I had unprotected sex with her.”

  Jamie’s breath felt like it had been sucked from her body. “Oh... I...”

  “And then her period was late and she thought she might be pregnant, and do you know what I wanted to do? I wanted to run. As far and fast as I could.”

  She swallowed hard, trying to collect herself. “Gabe, anyone would want to do that. I would want to do that if I found out I was... I mean, let’s not even talk about that. But I think everyone gets scared when something like that happens.”

  Her heart was pounding hard and she was fighting against the fierce need to demand the details of what had happened.

  She felt scarred and battered from just hearing he’d had unprotected sex with someone else. She knew he had a past, but he was hers and she didn’t like thinking about it.

  “Well, I sure as hell didn’t get down on one knee. A few days later she got her period. False alarm. And I was so damned relieved. She was devastated. The fight we had... That girl kicked a dent in the side of my truck that someone her size shouldn’t have been able to accomplish. I screamed at her because she was being crazy, and before I knew it, I was...standing out of my body looking at my parents. And that was when I knew. I was just...I was just gonna be part of that cycle. I’m not different. I’m not better.”

  “You are, though,” she said. “You are. Look, you made this whole life for yourself...”

  “Because my mom told me about my dad’s other kids, and coming off what had happened with Trisha, I wanted to make him pay. Because you hate the ugliness you see in yourself most of all, don’t you? I’m not any better than he is.”

  “Yes, you are, but you’re bizarrely committed to the idea that you aren’t. You’re scared,” she said. “So I want you to just be honest about that. You don’t want to do it because you’re scared. And I understand that, Gabe, because it’s a whole hell of a thing. But pushing me aside isn’t going to help you. Not in the long run. Hiding from it all... It’s not going to make anything better. Believe me. I know.”

  “You’re going to lecture me with the best wisdom of your twenty-six years and one lover, Jamie?”

  That hurt. Stabbed her right in the heart and made her eyes sting. “How dare you use that against me? You experienced all this with me. How dare you minimize it? And make me into...just a twenty-six-year-old virgin, or whatever. It was more than that. This is more than that. And you know it. And you never saw me as somebody beneath you in experience, or silly because of my age, and you never acted like I was. So don’t go pull it out now when it’s convenient for you. I want... I’m so tired of this. I’m so tired of living a life that makes me feel alone. I just want... I don’t want to stay the same. I want to change. You changed me. And that’s what I want. And I want...I want to change you. The way that you did me. It’s not fair. It’s not fair for me to have lost all my armor. To be all cracked open, and crying all the time, and for you not to have changed at all.”

  “It’s like you said,” he said slowly. “When you haven’t experienced things before, sometimes you don’t know all there is left to learn. You have more to learn than me, Jamie. That’s just a fact. I’ve lived more. That’s not me insulting you, or using your inexperience against you. It’s just how it is. It’s how it is, honey, and I’m not trying to be a dick about it. But it’s life.”

  “Don’t you dare,” she said, her voice shaking. “Don’t you dare lecture me. You...you coward.”

  She was firing on all cylinders now, and she could feel it.

  Could feel the old her rising up inside like granite, but this version of her was different still. She was full of sharp edges and pain, and she wanted to use those edges to hurt him back.

  Because she was Jamie Dodge, and she didn’t want to cry for a man, not one she’d cried for so many times already. She had given him every damn thing.

  Everything.

  And he was just going to stand there and stare at her with those blue eyes. He was just going to stand there and let her brother be right. About the fact that she was just going to get her heart broken. And she was going to have to face the fact that at the end of the day, she was vulnerable to it just like everyone else, and she hated it. She hated it, and she didn’t want to let it be true.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing right now, any more than you knew how to handle Gus when I first showed up at the ranch. You’re being...you’re being an absolute ass!” she shouted, her heart thundering, her hand shaking. “You’re afraid to make a damn choice. Because then it might be your fault if you fail. It was easier to go into the rodeo to piss off your old man, and then blame him for all the success that’s been thrust on you over the years. Poor you, Gabe. Poor fucking you.”

  She could feel her emotions completely spinning out of control, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop them. He was protecting himself, and so she wanted to hurt him. Wanted to hurt him the way he was hurting her.

  “Both your parents are involved in your lives, and they’re not perfect, but you could talk to them, and you could deal with it,” she continued. “My mom is dead. And that’s it. There’s nothing I can do about that. There’s no way that I can have that back. I think of it every time the anniversary comes around.” He looked stricken by the mention of it. “There’s no way I can have it at all. And you can have me. You could. But you won’t, because you’re too damn scared. And you’re hiding again. Behind all these excuses. You’re a big, tough guy. Big Mr. Alpha, out riding the rodeo and banging groupies and starting a ranch for troubled boys. Help your damn self. You’re the most troubled boy around here.”

  She spun on her heel and started to walk away, and he grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her toward him, pressing a kiss on her mouth.

  And oh, she wanted to sink into it. Into him. Let that kiss swallow up all the words that they’d spoken. Even her words of love. To go back and pretend that the past few minutes were nothing.

  That this kiss was everything.

  The only thing.

  But she couldn’t do that.

  She struggled against him, hitting his chest with her closed fist. “Don’t kiss me. Don’t kiss me if you don’t love me. Don’t touch me if you don’t love me. Hell, don’t even talk to me if you don’t love me.” She was shaking, rage pouring through her like a river. “Because I deserve better than that. Because I had to figure out what giving everything meant. And then once I did I offered it to you. I changed. And I dug deep. And I found pieces of myself I didn’t even know were there for you. And you want to stand there and tell me everything I don’t know. Want to tell me what I want, and how you have less growing to do. That’s bullshit, and I’m not here for it.”

  “If you really did it for me, Jamie,” he said, his voice rough, “that was your first mistake. Because I didn’t ask you to.”

  “I didn’t need you to,” she said. She lifted her chin, her expression defiant. “Some people don’t need to be asked.”

  “Jamie, you’re going to be a hell of a lot happier if you go do your barrel racing, live your dream, and then when you’re finished, find a guy your own age.”

  “Oh, you think that I want your advice? Is that what you’ve been thinking this is? I give you advice about horses, you give
me life advice that I didn’t even ask for? That’s not how this is going. That’s not...that’s not what this is. I love you. You big, stupid, scared...asshole idiot.”

  “If that’s what you think I am, what you know I am, shouldn’t you be happy to let me go?”

  “No, jackass. I love you knowing that you’re all that. I love you, and it’s not about life experience. I thought... When we were out camping I thought that I could have happily stayed out there with you forever. And then it hit me—that’s the problem. I think anyone could be in love for life if they were just separated out of the real world. Away from family. Away from problems. Away from work. Conflicting schedules, and all of that. But I love you here. I love you even though I’m mad that you didn’t include me when you went to talk to your half brother’s mom. Because I would’ve helped you. And even if I couldn’t have helped you, I would have been there for you. Because that’s what you do when you’re in love. When you’re really in love.”

  His lip curled, a growl rumbling through his chest. “How do you know? How do you know it’s real? Because let me tell you, Jamie, I think my dad thought it was real. But he never kept it in his pants once. My mom thought it was real, but she’s let herself stay in this...toxic, ridiculous relationship. She’s had fifteen good years with him. These past fifteen. In thirty-five of pain. So you tell me, how do you think you know it’s real?”

  “Because I’m choosing. Believe me, when you’re as protected as I am, when your heart is as hard as mine...you have to choose to fall in love. And I did. Because I could see what was over there. I could feel myself... I could feel myself. Me. And not this person that I forced myself to be who was brave and strong, and didn’t need anybody. I want to need someone. I want to need you. Because...needing you has made me feel more things, deeper things, than I even thought were possible. And I don’t care if it hurts. I mean, I would rather it didn’t. But it’s better than feeling nothing. It’s better than feeling alone.”

  The terrain inside her seemed to shift, and as it did, her rage seemed to shift, as well. A sense of heaviness, of sadness, joining it now. “You make choices, Gabe,” she said, the words softer. “And if you can’t make choices, life will make a few for you, but then you can’t bitch when you wake up one day all by yourself, realizing that your glory days are behind you in every sense of the word. All because you didn’t reach out and grab better when you had the chance.”

  She waited. She waited for him to say something. She waited for him to step forward and kiss her. She waited for him to tell her to stay with him. She waited, as her anger drained away and a sense of futility filled her body, her limbs getting weak.

  She waited, and he didn’t speak. His blue eyes had gone glacial, and then something shifted in them. A dawning realization, and she knew, in her gut, that it wasn’t one she was going to enjoy.

  “I went into the rodeo to hurt my father,” he said. “But do you know what I actually found out?”

  “What?” she asked, the word whispered.

  “I am my father. I wanted to be different. I thought I would choose something different. Ranching. It’s inevitable, though. I ran from the frying pan to the fire. From the potentially knocked-up girlfriend to the rodeo. Once I got a taste of glory, that’s all I wanted. Do you think I said no to any women who threw themselves at me? Because I didn’t. On the night you found me in the bar, I would’ve slept with that woman, Jamie. Even though I wanted you. It didn’t matter. Sex has been cheap for me for as long as I can remember. And that’s... I’m not different. I’m never going to put myself or any woman in the position that my mother is in. I’m standing here hurting you right now, and you would be signing up for a lifetime more of that. And I just don’t want to do it. You shouldn’t want to do it, but you don’t know better, because you didn’t see it. So I’m going to be the one to tell you. To tell you that you don’t want it. To tell you what you do want. And that might make you mad, but you have to understand. I watched it. And I will never be part of putting someone through that.”

  “So choose not to,” she said.

  “That’s what I’m doing. Whether you can see it or not, that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Well, from here it looks a whole lot like running,” she said.

  “You can think what you like.”

  “You have to tell me you don’t love me,” she said, facing him head-on. “You have to tell me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not going to let you take the coward’s way out. I’m not going to let you try to make this about me not knowing what I feel. I’m not going to let you talk all around it. You better look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me, Gabe Dalton. Because if you can’t do that then why should I walk away?”

  “Love doesn’t mean anything. My dad tells my mom he loves her all the time. He did it before they were married. When they got married. When he would come out of the bed of another woman. What the hell does love mean either way?”

  “Say it,” she said, crossing her arms. “I dare you.”

  “I don’t love you, Jamie. I’m not the kind of man who falls in love.”

  She steeled herself against the words, let them glance off her like a blow. She swallowed hard, her hand shaking. “Then I think we’re done here.”

  “I think it would be best. It was good working with you, Jamie.”

  “You don’t need me anymore?”

  She kept a sharp eye on his face. “I’ll manage.”

  “You either could have managed without me before, or not. So which was the lie?”

  “Just go, Jamie.”

  She turned, feeling strangely numb, her feet feeling disconnected from the earth as she walked on. And in her head, that refrain rang on.

  Stand up. Wipe the blood off.

  Stand up. Wipe the blood off.

  Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

  She got in her truck and closed the door, starting the engine and heading down the road. She didn’t look back, her shoulders held straight, her body stiff. And it wasn’t until she made it a few miles down the highway that the first tear rolled down her face. And another. Then another.

  She pulled over to the side of the road and put the truck in Park, burying her face in her hands, a sob breaking through her body.

  She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t get up.

  She couldn’t just wipe the blood off and go on. There was no Band-Aid for a wound like this. There was nothing to stanch the flow of misery that was pouring through her. She cried, cried and cried, and the whole time she kept thinking about the realization she’d had on the camping trip. Some things couldn’t be fixed. But they had to be felt.

  And losing the man you loved... You had to feel it.

  She had always thought that something like this was a weakness. Something that she would never fall prey to.

  But she realized as she sat there on the side of the road, the highway on one side and a wall of pine on the other, that this was the strongest damn thing she’d ever done.

  She felt this. And it was terrifying.

  Because what if she never felt okay again?

  This was what she’d been protecting herself from all of her life. She hadn’t wanted to feel the grief of the loss of her mother, because it might never end. She hadn’t wanted to be soft because then she might be easily damaged.

  She hadn’t wanted to be in love, because she might lose it.

  But she couldn’t stop this, and she couldn’t cover it. So she had to live in it. Pain broke over her like a wave, as intense as any pleasure that Gabe had ever given her.

  This, she realized, was strength.

  Opening your heart even when it might be wounded. Feeling all this, even when it might bring only pain. It was the one thing that Gabe wouldn’t allow himself to do.

  He was a coward.

  But at the moment she envied h
im just a little bit. Because he was still standing, and she was the one crying by the road.

  But in the end, she was the one who was strong. And he was still hiding.

  Though at the moment that was cold comfort, indeed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  GABE DIDN’T HAVE any time to overthink the way Jamie had left earlier. He had shit to do...

  Ellie came by his office with a folder filled with information and program ideas.

  “I talked to some people down at the district, and they’re very supportive of the program. They have some suggested students already. Meanwhile, I’ve put inquiries out elsewhere and there are some parents and officials who also have kids they’d like to have here. Rather than doing detention, what they would like to do is get the kids who earn what would typically be referrals into doing ranch work for two hours after school. They would bus them over, and what you would have to do is basically do work training. An outdoor art class is another thought, working with various mediums. Eventually, when you have kind of a halfway house set up, I would be able to teach classes. The boys could go part-time to Gold Valley High and to the middle school, and they could go part-time here. What we would do is kind of a hands-on project-based learning. Alternative education.”

  “Hell, I would’ve liked that better than school,” he said.

  “I think it will work great. This is the funding available through the grant that I got to hire an art teacher.” She presented a figure that made Gabe’s eyebrows rise.

  “Not bad,” he said.

  “I’ll say. So we’ll have to find somebody that’s well versed in various mediums. I also like someone who’s not completely unfamiliar with these kinds of kids. It’s going to be a lot of back talk and possibly harassment.”

  “Well, we’ll make sure whoever we choose has been sufficiently warned. They’ll definitely be well compensated.”