In Debt To The Cowboy (Miller Brothers 0f Texas Book 2)

by Natalie Dean

She shrugged, and the small movement made him acutely aware of how close they were to each other. “What happened?”

  “It was a childish accident. My brothers and I were playing with fireworks that we had no right to be around when we were kids. I happened to be the unlucky one who got hurt. I threw this firecracker in the air, but something must have been wrong with the fuse or the mix because it exploded right in front of me. Burned me from my right collarbone down to my first ribs. I got some skin grafts for some parts of it, but I still ended up with some nasty scars toward the top.”

  “Oh.”

  She went quiet again, and for a moment he thought she was going to drop it. That didn’t seem to be the case, however, because then she was speaking again. “Can I touch it?”

  “What?” Surely, he misheard her. She couldn’t have said that.

  “Can I touch it?”

  No! Of course not! Why would someone so beautiful, so soft and perfect, want to touch his ugly old scar? It was a testament to his stupidity. To recklessness. He’d learned a lot that day, and he bore the reminder with plenty of chagrin. Maybe that was why he wasn’t as cocky as his brother, Sterling, but he wasn’t sure the outcome was worth the price.

  “You don’t have to let me if you’re not comfortable,” she said.

  Oh.

  But the way she said it, the way she looked at him, and he felt himself wanting to agree. Teddy was one of the kindest people he knew. If he could trust anyone with a twisted part of him, it was her.

  Trust.

  They kept coming back to that. Over and over. It almost felt like God was trying to teach him something but was doing so by swatting him repeatedly with a newspaper.

  “No,” he said finally. “It’s alright.”

  He let go of her hand, undoing about half of the buttons on the shirt he’d picked especially for the date. It was a light blue, and his mom said it looked lovely with his darker features, the features that he’d gotten from her. Each button made the fear rise in him a little more, as well as the certainty that this was going to be the straw that pushed Teddy away in revulsion.

  It seemed an age until his white undershirt peeked out from underneath his top layer, along with his old cross necklace. He couldn’t go any farther, afraid his hands might start shaking and reveal how scared he was, so he let them drop to his sides. That didn’t seem to matter, however, because soon her fingers were in the gap, pulling back the fabric until the area was revealed.

  She couldn’t see all of it, not with his undershirt there, and so those same fingers tugged gently at the collar of it, easing it down until she could see the jagged, biting edges of the wound.

  “It looks like lightning,” she said, her tone almost reverent.

  And then one of those fingers touched it.

  It was an inexplicable sensation, her living digit against his dead flesh. But she didn’t poke, she didn’t prod, and when he looked down, he saw that she was gently tracing it. Like a map. Not like a hideous, bubbled, twisted thing.

  “Like lightning?” he asked, swallowing hard. Why wasn’t she shuddering? Why wasn’t she pitying him?

  “Yeah, like lightning.” Her finger continued moving, feeling the bumps of it. The pits. The artificial and stitch-whipped lines where the skin grafts hadn’t taken and where they bled into his uninjured flesh. An eternity passed as she mapped him out, him standing there in his stupor, watching as the most beautiful woman he’d ever met caressed the most hideous parts of him.

  When she finished, he felt shaky. Like reality was crumbly at the edges and he’d just imagined something that couldn’t be true. He’d been aware that he was a relatively handsome guy ever since he finished puberty, but there was a line of what a handsome face could get people to look past, and his scar was it. And yet… it didn’t even seem like a line at all to Teddy. Which didn’t make any sense. People like him were supposed to be flawless on the outside, like all his brothers.

  “Why do you hide this part of you?” she asked gently.

  He blinked at her, trying to catch up. She had to know. Surely, she was teasing him. “Because it’s ugly,” he answered as if it were a matter of fact. Because it was a matter of fact. He’d been told by people at school, seen kids pointing at water parks when he was younger. Even his doctor had commented that it was a doozy of a scar.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, just as plainly. “It’s a story. It’s a marker of something you survived. Something you beat. It’s like my hair.”

  “Your hair?”

  She nodded, smiling softly at him. That sort of smile that dug into the dark thoughts of his and shoved them back. “Yeah. Some people tell me that I should dye it. That it’s tacky, or that people get the wrong impression, but I like it.”

  “You like it.” He wasn’t sure when he had turned into a parrot, but his brain was hard rebooting, and all that he could do was copy her while it tried to catch up.

  “Yeah. It’s a scar, sure. An injury to my body that came from me doing something real dumb, but it’s me. It’s my life. It’s a reminder of a lesson I learned, along with a whole bunch of memories of how my mom cared for me after that. I’ll never forget her holding my hand the entire time we were in the emergency room, or how she would clean and change my bandages at home, a worried expression on her face.

  “Yeah, it hurt like a whip at the time, but after long enough, all that pain is gone and what I have left is the story and all the nice things.” Carefully, she buttoned him back up, gentle and tender as ever. Once he was covered up, she leaned forward to press the tiniest of pecks to his collarbone, right where the reddest, most taught part of it was. “Not to trivialize things, but I think your scar is pretty cool.”

  He let out a long breath that he didn’t even know he was holding. “Cool, huh?”

  She sent him a mischievous look before her face was buried right back in his chest. He knew that her cheek had to feel the bottom part of the raised scar, but she didn’t care.

  She was incredible.

  “One might even say hot,” Teddy said.

  He couldn’t help but grin at that. “As long as they don’t say it around my mom.”

  “I’ll remember to be on my best behavior then. Assuming I ever meet her.”

  Goodness, he desperately hoped things worked out enough where they would meet. He could only imagine the gardening paradise the two would build with each other.

  And just like that, the rising panic in him, the nausea, all of it was gone. She didn’t care about his scar. She thought it was cool. A testament to his life. He wasn’t magically alright with it, but maybe if he tried to look at the raised mass of skin, he could see it like she did.

  He supposed he owed it to her to at least try. Silently, he told himself he would do just that, and the pair slipped into a comfortable quiet.

  They kept holding each other, in each other’s spheres longer than they had ever been before. With all of his worry and disgust about his scar out of the way for the moment, all that was left within him was a strange mix of feeling like he was amped for a fight but also perfectly content. His heart was hammering in his chest, thumping away steadily like the engines that Teddy spent so much time working on, but it wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, he would be content to feel so elated all the time.

  Except he still wanted… more.

  “Teddy?” he whispered, telling himself to shut up, but the words were coming out anyway.

  “Hmmm?” she murmured, and he felt the vibrations against his chest.

  “I would very much like to kiss you now.”

  There, he said it. Come what may, if he was asking her to trust him and be vulnerable, the least he could do was be honest with her.

  And he did want to kiss her. Desperately. He’d thought about her lips probably much more often than was polite, and all of it felt like it was reaching a boiling point. She was so beautiful, so kind. Was it wrong for him to want to show affection for her in the way that was always lauded by every romantic wo
rk?

  She pulled away from his chest again, both of her cheeks red as she looked up at him with half-lidded eyes. “I was hoping you’d do something like that.”

  His heart jumped, somewhere between shocked and ecstatic. She wanted him, or at least wanted to try. And that was all he could ask for, all things considered. More than he deserved.

  The dam of reserve within him cracked, and then he was bending down to crash his lips against hers, Teddy going onto her tiptoes at the same time. They met in a clash that probably should have been sloppy, should have been full of clicking teeth and discomfort, but instead it was everything he could have ever wanted and more.

  They let go of each other’s hands, if only so that her arms could wrap around his neck, pulling him down to her, and his arms could encircle her soft, generous middle.

  He could hear her breath quicken as their mouths moved against each other. It thrilled Silas to know that she was just as affected by it as he was. He wasn’t alone in his insanity for her, in the rush, the excitement of it all.

  Everything she was giving him was borderline intoxicating, and he wanted to show her that he was grateful for every ounce of it. He knew he didn’t deserve her, that he’d spent almost thirty years of his life doing not much besides helping his dad hurt people like her. But she forgave him. And although she didn’t fully trust him yet, she wanted to. It was more than he could ever ask for, ever expect, and yet that was exactly what she was giving him.

  Boundaries, his conscience reminded him.

  With a ragged breath, he broke the kiss, taking the scantest of steps back as his chest heaved.

  “What’s wrong?” Teddy asked, looking up at him with a hazy gaze, her face flushed and lips puffy from his affection.

  “Speaking of trust, I think that’s as far as I trust myself right about now.”

  Teddy regarded him curiously, not seeming to understand.

  Clearing his throat, Silas searched for words. He had a lot of them—usually—but at the moment he was doing a terrible job of remembering any of them. “I might have wandered in college. Made some mistakes and decisions that I wish I could take back now. But one thing I learned is that there are certain parts of a relationship I don’t want to rush into. Certain things that should be cherished. Waited for.”

  He knew he sounded old-fashioned, but it was true for him. When he’d first stumbled, it had been with a girl that he thought he would be with for life. But then she had turned out not to be who she said at all, and when things had fallen apart, he was left feeling like he had given a chunk of himself to the wrong person.

  “Are you telling me that you want to wait?” Teddy said, sounding surprised.

  He supposed it was an odd thing in a man of his age, but maybe that was another reason why he’d never dated after college. Too much was expected that he wasn’t comfortable giving to just anybody.

  “Yes. I would very much like that,” he said.

  She had an odd expression on her face, one that made him feel self-conscious despite how high the kiss had sent him flying.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she answered quickly, and the answer hung heavy between them. But then she was sighing and speaking again. “I guess I’m used to guys chasing my body more than… other parts of me,” she said finally. “The same sort of thing happened to my mom.”

  More about her mother. He really did have so much to learn about her, and he was excited about every single crumb she would bequeath to him. But that could come later; first there was the moment they were in and the unwelcome uncertainty in her eyes.

  He cupped that wonderful, beautiful face of hers.

  “I assure you, from the bottom of my heart, that I am interested in more than just your body.” He leaned forward, having the will power to gently press the softest kiss to the tip of her nose before pulling back. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t attracted to you. If I tried to deny that kissing you doesn’t make me want to maybe… rush things, but you deserve more than that. I want to know you, Teddy. All of you. Your mind, your body and your soul. That’s what’s important to me.”

  She let out a laugh that sounded almost like a sob, winded and open. Raw. It made him want to wrap his arms around her and hold her forever, protect her from all those memories that made such a terrible sound come out of her.

  “I don’t think that anybody’s ever said that to me before.”

  “That’s a sin if I ever heard one,” Silas murmured. “But I’ll be happy to say it over and over again until you’re sick of it.”

  “I don’t think I’d ever get sick of it.”

  “Then I’ll keep on saying it forever.”

  Another ragged sound came out of her, and when her eyes flicked back to his, they were damp with unshed tears. “Can I have one more kiss? A small one? Then it’ll be goodnight.”

  “Of course.” He would hold himself back for her. She deserved respect. She deserved the effort. The idea that no one had been willing to wait for her, that she felt valued as an object rather than a whole person, helped cool his desire that had been burning unchecked. No matter how much his body wanted her, he wanted what was best for her first and foremost. “A kiss goodnight, just for you.”

  “Just for me,” she whispered, and then their lips were molding together once again.

  It was different than the first one. Gentle, slow. More vulnerable when the urgent desires were taken out. But it made his heart ache in all the right ways. Made him hurt for her in a way that he never wanted to stop.

  And when they broke the kiss, the look she gave him was worth every ounce of restraint.

  “See you this weekend,” she said, taking a step back.

  “See you this weekend,” he confirmed before turning toward the door. It did take a great deal of effort, but he managed to get himself all the way out and onto the street before he looked back over his shoulder. There he saw Teddy closing the door, but not before she sent him out one adorable little wave. If the men of her shop saw her, they would probably never let her live it down, and he promised himself he’d never forget it either.

  But then the door was closed, and it was time for him to get in the car. He had a whole hour plus to think about what had happened—to replay every minute detail until it was burned into his memory like a scar.

  And that was a scar he would have no problem cherishing.

  Epilogue

  Theodora

  Eighteen months later

  Somehow, a whole year and a half had passed in the blink of an eye.

  Teddy didn’t know what happened. One minute she was just starting to date the middle son of a ranching empire; the next she was helping to host a massive dinner and children’s play at the community center that the Miller family had sponsored.

  So much had happened in between, seemingly a lifetime’s worth, and yet it’d all been accomplished in eighteen short months.

  First of all, Teddy did end up meeting all of Silas’ family. Not all at once, thank goodness, but even broken up it was always a somewhat overwhelming experience. His mom was lovely, and they ended up getting on as thick as thieves. It turned out Mrs. McLintoc Miller loved anyone who knew which plants were beneficially cohabitable with others and proper timing for planting different seedlings. The two of them had plans for making a very impressive community garden together in a vacant lot on the very south edge of the neighborhood, where they could help their own area but also their neighboring one as well.

  As for Silas’ dad… she could tell that he wasn’t overly fond of Frenchie or her. He always managed to not be around when they were over at the manor. But that was okay with Teddy. Solomon and Silas were supportive of her and Frenchie and never made her feel inadequate.

  She’d met Samuel once when he came down with his lovely fiancé for Simon’s graduation party. Now she talked with Virginia fairly regularly, even if it was only to send memes and jokes about fighting to each other. She was one of the only women Teddy
had ever met who liked to throw down as much as she did.

  Of course, Virginia kept insisting that she needed to meet someone named Missy, who apparently was just as much of a brawler as them, but Teddy hadn’t managed to get the free time to go up and visit Silas’ extended family.

  “Hey, Teddy, everything’s handled. Why don’t you come and sit down for a minute?”

  She looked up to see Jamani, all dressed up for her role in the show. Teddy had had a feeling that the girl would be perfect for the after-school drama program that Mrs. Sanchez had started as soon as the community center was up and open, and it turned out she was right.

  “I just have—”

  The young woman cleared her throat and crossed her arms, looking every bit of the rising star that she was. “Teddy. You sit. Now.”

  It was hard not to chuckle, so Teddy put her hands up in surrender instead. “Since when do you get to talk to me like an adult?”

  “Since I turned thirteen. I am an adult.”

  “Right, because that’s definitely the marker we’re going by now.” She gave another hard look, and Teddy finally surrendered entirely. “Alright, alright. I give in. Lead me away to my prison—I mean, my seat.”

  Jamani rolled her eyes but seemed all too happy to march Teddy out. It didn’t take long for her to lead Teddy to a table, as Sterling, Mrs. Miller, Andre, and Roman were all there. Solomon and Frenchie had wanted to come, but they were off helping one of her friends who had gotten into a spot of trouble in another state. Teddy didn’t mind. She knew Solomon and Frenchie supported her entirely.

  Sterling had taken longer to come around.

  He was a nice person, in general. And funny too. But it was clear that his sibling rivalry streak with his twin had grown stronger as Silas pulled away from the mold his dad tried to force them all into. Teddy kept hoping that he would realize he could forge his own path and grow. One time, when he’d made a crack about Silas’ scar, she’d drawn a strong line and chewed him out so hard he had avoided her for a month.

  He was better now. He respected her boundaries and tried to be a good friend to the both of them.