His Cowboy Heart

by Jennifer Ryan

  Jamie woke like she always did, with her heart pounding and an ominous nightmare scaring her out of sleep. The haunting images of war and losing her friends transformed into Ford lying dead and bloody by her hand at her feet.

  She sat up in bed and made a grab for the gun she always kept close, but came up with nothing. Where the hell had she left her gun? Probably on the coffee table in the living room. That she’d gone to bed without it disturbed her. She always kept it close. She needed to keep it close.

  Trying to orient herself, she rubbed at her gritty eyes and scanned the room. She didn’t remember changing the sheets, but they smelled like spring, which only made her feel worse for some reason. Apparently, she’d picked up all her dirty clothes and dusted.

  What the hell?

  Why didn’t she remember any of this? She must really be losing her mind if she’d been driven to sleep-cleaning.

  She shook off random thoughts of her subconscious cleaning up the mess she couldn’t deal with while awake.

  The nightmare lingered, but something deeper made her hurt. It pushed against her hazy mind.

  Her tongue felt thick and dry in her mouth. She needed something to drink, probably something to eat, since she couldn’t remember the last time she’d attempted that without giving up after a few bites. She’d fled the restaurant after the fight with her brother and seeing Ford. Which probably induced the nightmare about him. That and the whiskey and meds that still fogged her broken mind.

  A light glowed down the hall. She’d left her bedroom door open. She never left it open. She must have been really wasted to throw caution to the wind and pass out without making sure she was safe, secure, and unreasonably barricaded in her room when no threat existed except in her head.

  Jamie swung her legs over the edge of the bed, ignored the rush of panic seeing the scar on her thigh evoked, and stood, stretching out her sore back and tight skin where the burns healed, but always seemed to pull. She went to her dresser and opened the drawer to pull out her sweats. Clean clothes sat in stacks, filling the drawer.

  Great. Not only did I clean up, I even did the laundry without remembering.

  Blackouts were a new phenomenon for her since leaving the hospital, but this, this was something else entirely.

  Maybe she well and truly had lost her mind. She raked her fingers through the sides of her hair.

  The savory smell of pot roast penetrated her foggy mind. No way she cooked in her blacked-out state. Besides, she didn’t have any food in the house. Maybe Zac came by to check on her and brought food with him, knowing her fridge and cupboards were usually bare. What was the point of eating when you could barely summon the energy to get out of bed each day?

  She quickly pulled on her sweats and headed down the hall. She spotted the cardboard taped to the window, the spotlessly clean living room beside her, and the wood patch on the front door. Her mind tried to put it all together, but it didn’t make sense until she heard his voice.

  “Hey, Firefly. How are you? Hungry?”

  Jamie spun on her toes and stared into her kitchen at the last man she expected to see in her house. The nightmare came back, of him dead at her feet. Blood covered his shirtsleeve and side. A bandage circled his upper arm above his bicep. She looked back at the window and door, then back at Ford. All at once, nightmare became reality.

  She covered her mouth with both hands to stifle the agonizing wail. Tears flooded her eyes and fell down her cheeks. Her legs let loose and she fell hard to the floor, buried her face in her knees, wrapped her arms around her legs, and rocked herself back and forth wishing herself gone. If only she’d disappear and this never happened.

  “No, no, no. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she chanted, hoping, wishing, begging God she hadn’t done this. She hadn’t shot the man she loved. Not Ford. She couldn’t have hurt Ford.

  Ford’s hand settled on her head and brushed down the back of her neck, touching some of her scars. She scrambled back out of his reach and slammed back up against the front door, her hands up to ward him off. Her mother’s voice rang in her head. “No man will want you now. Not with your kind of crazy and all those ugly scars.”

  Ford remained crouched in front of her. Five feet separated them, but really a gulf of pain and regret kept them apart. Mostly her fault.

  “You have to go,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to hurt you.” Her gaze shifted from the deep gash on his cheek to his bandaged arm and back and forth again. The thought that she might have killed him made the pit of despair she lived in swallow her whole and drag her down to an exceptionally agonizing level of pain and misery. “I’m sorry. I’m bad. I’m no good. Call the cops. They’ll lock me up where I belong.” She should turn herself in before she hurt someone else.

  Ford shook his head, his eyes filled with sadness and the same regret she carried with her every day. “No, Jamie. You don’t belong behind bars. You need help.”

  This time, Jamie shook her head. “What if I’m beyond help?” She leaned her head back against the door and stared blindly into that black hole in her mind. It held the secrets to what happened to her but refused to give them up, except for nightmarish images that made no sense. It drove her to do crazy, stupid things like trying to kill the man she loved.

  “The girl you knew is gone. I can’t find her.” She stared around the room. This house. This place. “I should have never come back.” From the war, or to Montana.

  Ford shook his head. “You don’t mean that.” He didn’t even want to think about the terrible things that happened to her and turned the girl who used to love to play Red Rover with the kids at day care and sing lullabies to the babies into a woman who was afraid of her own shadow.

  “Yes, sometimes I do.” She whispered her darkest truth.

  Ford didn’t know what to say or do to change her mind. He hated to see the defeat in her eyes, and worse, the deep belief that she’d be better off dead than living like she was right now. Her fear and sadness and grief and anger and desperation all showed in her eyes. The tumultuous emotions played out on her face like she couldn’t settle on one. Not a single sign of happiness or even contentment—hell, he’d settle for boredom—showed in her eyes. All of it was dark and bad and sad, and that was not his Firefly. She was bright and happy and yes, sometimes a little sad, but not in this tragic way.

  Words wouldn’t work, so he went with basic survival, because it seemed that was all she was capable of right now.

  “Food’s hot. I’ll plate it up. Get up. Sit at the table. Let’s eat.”

  Ford ignored Jamie’s wide-eyed stare, stood, and walked into the kitchen. He went to the stove and filled the bowls he got out earlier. He pulled the bread from the warm oven, broke it into chunks for each of them, and set them on a plate he pulled from the cupboard beside him. He set the food on the table and took his seat.

  Jamie hadn’t moved from her position sitting in front of the door, sniffling back her tears, though she never wiped away the ones that trailed down her cheeks. She kept a wary watch on him while he got dinner ready. He wanted to go to her, wrap her in his arms, and reassure her everything would be all right. But those were platitudes she’d never believe.

  She needed a push in the right direction.

  “It’s best to eat it while it’s hot. You’ve got to be hungry. You didn’t eat at the diner and crashed for the last several hours. Get over here.”

  She didn’t move. Didn’t say anything.

  “You need to eat, Firefly.”

  Ford picked up his fork and a big bite of pot roast and stuffed it into his mouth. He chewed and ignored Jamie, hoping she’d come to her senses and eat a meal with him. After he forced himself to eat five more bites despite his growing impatience over her refusing to join him at the table, she finally picked herself up off the floor and came to the table and took the chair across from him. He’d set her plate next to him, but she pulled it across the table.

  So, not going to even get that close to me.
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  Because of the way he’d ended things, or something more? She’d shot him. He’d seen how deeply that affected her. How sorry she was about what happened. Hell, she hadn’t even really remembered it until she’d seen his arm, the holes in the door and window, and put all the pieces together. He imagined she’d thought she’d dreamed it. Just like she seemed to think this a dream based on the odd way she looked at him and around the kitchen, like this was some warped reality and not the way she’d been living the last month.

  Ford took another bite of his food. Thirsty, he stood, making Jamie scoot her chair back two feet from the table, her body tensed and ready to fight or flee. He ignored her odd behavior and went to the fridge. He pulled out the jug of milk and poured two glasses. He put the milk away and set one glass in front of her plate and drank deeply from the other as he took his seat. He set his glass down and went back to eating.

  It took two more bites before Jamie scooted her chair back to the table. Three more before she picked up her fork and took her first bite. He let out a sigh of relief when she tackled the meal and ate with some enthusiasm, sopping up the gravy with her bread and drinking all her milk.

  She stopped midway to sliding the next bite on her fork into her mouth and stared across the table at him. He’d been very careful not to watch her directly, but he did meet her gaze this time with a questioning look.

  “Are you okay?”

  He wanted to ask her that very question. He wanted her assurance that she was all right despite what he knew and saw right before his eyes.

  “What are you doing here? Did you clean my place? Why did you come?”

  Ford stared at her, waiting to see if she rattled off any more questions. She ran out of steam, dropped her fork, and sat back, eyeing him.

  “Eat, and I’ll answer your questions.”

  Jamie bit her bottom lip, contemplating him and her options. He kept his patience intact, though he wanted to demand some answers of his own. Like what happened to her back? How did she get shot? What had she been doing the last ten plus years?

  Did she miss him as much as he missed her?

  So many things he wanted to know, but didn’t ask because she didn’t trust him enough to sit next to him, let alone open up and talk to him.

  Jamie gave in and picked up her fork again, taking a small bite of the stew. He’d take what he could get. For now.

  “I’m okay. Nothing but a scratch.”

  “I’ve been shot. It burns like a motherfucker. Hurts like hell.”

  He didn’t want to think about her wounds, the scars he’d seen that had been imprinted on his mind. “Yes, it does, but in my case, it’s nothing serious.” He shrugged, though moving his arm made the searing pain inflame all over again. He didn’t let it show. He didn’t want to upset her more than she already seemed to be, even if she tried to hide it.

  “I came over to check on you after that scene in the restaurant.”

  “I let her get to me. Every little thing gets to me these days.” Jamie shook her head and pinched her lips together, frustrated her emotions got away from her.

  “I wanted a chance to say, hi, I missed you. Welcome home. And why the hell would you come back here?” Judging by the way her mother behaved toward her in the restaurant and Zac’s statement that he’d had to move her out of her mother’s place for her own good again, this was the last place Jamie needed to be if she hoped to recover after all she’d been through.

  “The Army discharged me for obvious medical reasons. I served my time. Thanks for showing up. Now get lost.” Sarcasm filled her voice. Her real family had dismissed her. Now the family she’d volunteered to join had let her go, too. “I’d been serving overseas for the last fourteen months, which means I didn’t have a place to come back to, so I came here, hoping . . . Well, let’s face it, hope is for people who believe that things can be different. I know better. At least I should have, but I needed . . .”

  “What?”

  Jamie shook her head. “Nothing. The only thing I need is to be left alone.”

  He ignored that, because that was the last thing she needed. “I cleaned up while you were sleeping. This place was a disaster.”

  “So am I.”

  He ignored that, too, because she spoke the truth.

  “As for why I came, well, I’d think that’s obvious.” He waited to see if she’d say something, see in him what had always been true. The blank stare disappointed him, but didn’t really surprise him. She didn’t see what was right in front of her face. Maybe one day she would and they’d find a way back to each other. Maybe she’d forgive him for the way he’d ended things.

  The guilt engulfed him. If he’d gone with her, made her stay, something other than sending her off on her own, maybe she wouldn’t be sitting in front of him completely lost and broken and heartbreakingly sad.

  “I’m your friend, Jamie. That’s why I’m here. I care about you.”

  Jamie’s lips pressed together in a derisive frown. “Right. Friends.” She nodded. “Well, you’ll find,” she looked at his arm, “I guess you already know, I’m not someone you want as a friend. Friends don’t try to kill you.”

  “You didn’t know what you were doing. You didn’t know it was me. When you realized what you’d done . . . I know you didn’t mean it.”

  Jamie stared into space, silent tears streaming down her face. “I’d rather step on a land mine than hurt you,” she whispered.

  “Don’t ever say anything like that again. When you opened the door and saw me, I thought you were going to . . .” He scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to wipe the image of her with the gun and what he thought she intended out of his mind.

  “What? Shoot myself?” She shook her head. “I might be crazy, but I swore to Zac I’d never do that. I promised him.” Conviction and anger filled her voice. That promise meant something to her. “I would never do that to him.”

  He desperately wanted to believe her. “Good. Because the last thing I want is for you to be hurt in any way. You dead and gone just might kill me.”

  Anger narrowed her eyes. “What do you care?” she snapped.

  “Do you really need to ask?” After the way he’d treated her, she did. That was on him. “I guess you do. I care more than you know or I ever showed you.” Another mistake he’d like a chance to make right. He’d made so many mistakes. It would take him a lifetime to make them all up to her.

  He reached across the table and laid his hand over hers, hoping the contact eased her in some small way. She snatched her hand back like he’d burned her, gasped, and sat back in her seat.

  He held up his hand to let her know he meant no harm.

  “You should go,” she whispered.

  “I’m not leaving you here like this.”

  “Believe me, this is better than I’ve been on many nights.”

  “Exactly why you shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’m alone because I hurt people. Look what I did to you.” She flung her hand out toward his shoulder and let it fall back on the table with a thump. A fresh wave of tears filled her eyes and spilled over. “Go now, before it’s too late and I do something else that will make you hate me even more.”

  Ford leaned forward and looked her right in the eye. “I don’t hate you. I never did. Far from it, Firefly.”

  She slammed her hands on the table, making the dishes rattle, rose, and glared down at him. “I don’t want your pity.” She took three steps away, wrapped her arms around her middle, and hugged herself. Her head fell forward in defeat.

  Ford didn’t move. He wanted to go to her and wrap her in his arms, but she’d bolt or fight or break.

  He didn’t want her to do any of those things. He just wanted her to listen. “I don’t pity you, Jamie. I admire your strength and perseverance, the will you muster up every second of the day to endure.”

  Her head came up and fell back. She stared at the ceiling, her shoulders sagging under the weight of the world she carried.

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nbsp; “You’re still standing, Jamie. You’re still here, fighting to get through each and every day.”

  “Yeah, I’m doing a bang-up job. I nearly killed the one person I . . . You.” She gave him her back and shook her head. They still had so much distance between them. A distance he didn’t know if they could bridge and mend.

  Part of the pain she carried he’d caused her. He wanted to fix it, her, make it right and make her smile again. He really missed her smile. He wondered if she even knew how to smile anymore.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  She turned and stared at him like he’d asked for the secret of the universe. “Why?”

  “It’s a simple question, Jamie.”

  “The same thing I’ve been doing every day since I got here. Dying a little more each day.” She glanced over at the counter for the fifth time, to where he’d set her bottles of pills. Sweat broke out on her forehead and top lip. She must need another pain pill to take the edge off or just numb her brain because he made her think, and that’s the last thing she probably wanted to do.

  “Sit down. You look so damn uncomfortable, I feel like I need to tuck you back in bed or take you to the hospital.”

  “I’m fine,” she bit out.

  “Let’s agree on one thing between us.”

  Her eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. “What?”

  “We won’t lie to each other anymore.”

  One eyebrow shot up in question.

  He answered what she didn’t ask. “I lied to you before you left. I regret it. I’m sorry as hell I did it, but I won’t ever lie to you again. I hope you’ll agree to do the same for me.”

  “What was the lie?”

  He looked her dead in the eye. “That I didn’t want to go with you.”

  She wrapped her arms around her middle and stepped back like he’d hit her. Her eyes widened on him and filled with shock and questions he wished he didn’t have to answer, because what if nothing he said made her forgive him?

  “What? What are you saying?”

  “It’s complicated and better left to explain when you’re open to hearing what I have to say. Just know that I wanted to be with you. I wanted us to have that dream. But when it came time to make it happen, I couldn’t be what you wanted and needed. I couldn’t give you what you needed and wanted. But I wanted to.”