Brokedown Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  Instead, he released his hold on it and let it crash to the hardwood floor, sending a spray of glass across the pine surface.

  He would deal with that in the morning. Right now he couldn’t give a rat’s ass.

  He walked across the kitchen, stepping on remnants of the glass, knowing he would regret that in the morning, too. Right now, though, he didn’t care. Mainly because he knew he would have a whole host of regrets in the morning, and all of them bigger than a few pieces of glass in his feet.

  He walked up the stairs, taking a quick look at Liss’s room, and noticed that the door was firmly shut now. For the best. He continued on into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him, lying facedown on the bed, not bothering to get dressed.

  His head was already starting to pound, which just seemed like adding insult to injury, since he had skipped the alcohol.

  He closed his eyes tight and spent the rest of the night in that uncomfortable space between gritty-eyed exhaustion and unconsciousness. Peppered with images of his brother standing on the front porch, a ring of light all around him, his expression grim. And interspersed with that was the image of Liss, her breasts bare, her name on his lips like a prayer.

  * * *

  LISS SAT AT the kitchen table, her eyes feeling like they’d been rubbed with sandpaper, her hands wrapped around a hot cup of coffee. She was simultaneously terrified and praying with intensity that Connor would show up and they would be forced to interact.

  She took a deep breath, her chest aching as she did. She drummed her fingers on the mug, fighting back a feeling of misery and some tears.

  Huh. She hadn’t really imagined that the culmination of a decade and a half of fantasies would end in her having the sensation of being dipped into a vat of feelings and wrung out to dry. No, when she had imagined all this going down, she had focused decidedly on the physical aspect of it.

  Right now she wished that she could recapture the simple buzz that had come with the physical side of what had happened. Because right now? Right now it was all feelings. Damn, miserable feelings.

  She wanted to see him, to try to gauge whether or not they were okay, or if things were terminally weird. She also wanted to avoid him for the rest of her life. Possibly move to Bulgaria, change her name and work in an apple orchard.

  Those two very strong desires warred with equal force inside her. But since she didn’t have a passport she figured hanging out and trying to face this thing head-on was probably her best bet. Anyway, Felicity Foster was many things, but a coward wasn’t one of them.

  She heard the front door open behind her then footsteps on the threshold, and she jerked her arms backward, sloshing coffee over the edge of her mug.

  She rolled her eyes at herself and got up from her seat, making her way over to the paper towels, which had been refreshed since she had moved in. She pulled one off the roll, getting ready to turn around and face both the coffee spill and Connor.

  But when she turned she came face-to-face with the only person it could possibly be more horrifying to see right now than the man whose brains she had thoroughly screwed out the night before. His little sister.

  “Good morning,” Kate said, walking into the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” Liss responded, moving back to the table and awkwardly dabbing at the spill. “What brings you by?”

  “I have the day off at the Farm and Garden, so I figured I would come grab a coffee and maybe see if Connor needed any help today.”

  “Oh, well, I haven’t seen him this morning,” Liss said, her face heating. She had the distinct feeling that she was telegraphing all of her memories from last night straight into Kate’s brain. All of her X-rated memories. The horror of that did not even bear pondering.

  “That’s okay. He was doing something with the fencing today, right?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, feeling really uncomfortable and a little bit as if she was getting the third degree. It made her feel like a kid with her hand caught in the cookie jar. Or a teenager caught with condoms in her purse.

  “Just wondering. Jack usually comes by to help with things like that.”

  And suddenly Liss felt relieved, because she realized that the line of questioning had nothing to do with her and Connor. “Were you hoping to see him?”

  Kate’s expression went through several different incarnations. Shock, embarrassment and finally disgust. “No, not especially. I was just curious.”

  Liss had a feeling Kate was a little more than curious, and she could think of nothing worse besides her own current situation than dear sweet Kate having a crush on the much older, much more experienced Jack. “Right. Idle curiosity about the whereabouts of Connor’s dear friend.” She was pushing, mainly because it was better than focusing on her own issues.

  And as diversionary tactics went, it wasn’t a bad one.

  “Idle curiosity about the amount of help Connor was receiving on a project,” Kate said, her tone measured.

  Kate certainly didn’t look as though she was out trying to impress a guy. She was dressed in her typical daily wear of extremely untrendy work jeans, a shapeless T-shirt tucked into the waistband and a belt with a silver buckle. Her dark hair was restrained in a braid, a cowgirl hat firmly in place on her head. As far as Liss knew, Kate did not own makeup of any kind, and she had never seen evidence to the contrary.

  Still, she wondered.

  “Well, I’m very sorry that I can’t answer the question. Because I haven’t seen Connor, Eli or Jack today. I have seen coffee, and that’s about it.”

  “I would like to see some coffee,” Kate said, obviously letting her subtle Jack accusations go.

  “Feel free,” she said, smiling back.

  Kate was like a little sister to her, which meant she felt at liberty to give her some grief.

  Up until recently, she would have lied and said that Connor was like a brother to her. She would’ve been very aware of the fact that it was a lie, but she would have tried it all the same. But now she wouldn’t even be able to pretend. Because now it would be creepy.

  She heard the front door open again, and this time it was Connor who came walking into the kitchen, freezing when he saw both her and Kate standing there.

  Great, the only thing that could be more awkward than Connor walking in earlier was Connor encountering her for the first time in the broad light of day with Kate there.

  “Good morning,” he mumbled, crossing the kitchen and heading toward the coffeemaker.

  “Morning,” she and Kate said in unison.

  “Are you doing the fence today?” Kate asked.

  “Yep,” Connor said, bypassing Kate and grabbing a mug, taking the carafe from the coffeemaker before Kate could and pouring himself a cup.

  “Do you need help?”

  “I could always use an extra pair of hands,” he said.

  “Great,” Kate said. “I’m happy to do it in exchange for coffee.”

  “After I have some.” He finished pouring his cup and walked back to the table, his expression contorting when he put weight on one of his feet.

  “Are you okay?” Liss asked.

  Connor gave her a measured look. “I’m fine.”

  “Why are you limping?” Kate asked.

  Connor shot her a deadly glare. “I stepped on a nail. Luckily, my tetanus is up-to-date.”

  Liss frowned. “Are you okay?”

  “I already said I was,” he answered, clearly in a vile temper.

  “Great.” Fine for him to be in a mood. He was the one who had stormed out last night after they’d had sex. He was the reason she felt so teary this morning. He had no right to be grumpy. She was grumpy.

  The stupid thing was, it wasn’t even surprising that he had done that. It was a classic Connor move. He was not the kind of guy w
ho talked about his feelings, and yet last night he had started talking about them. Logically, she knew he was hardly going to cuddle with her after doing something that made him feel so exposed, so uncomfortable.

  But dammit, whether she understood or not, it still hurt.

  “Yeah, Connor,” Kate said, “you seem totally fine. Like always. By which I mean you seem like a jackass.”

  Connor gave Kate a look that could only be categorized as deadly, but Kate didn’t seem to notice. She was busy getting her coffee, and probably thinking she was just dealing with normal everyday grumpy Connor. Liss knew differently. Liss knew that Kate was treading on dangerous ground. However, jumping in to save Kate might put her in the line of fire, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to do that or not.

  Mercenary, perhaps. But she wasn’t all that concerned about it at the moment.

  “Watch it,” Connor said.

  Kate crossed her arms, her expression fierce. “Or maybe you lighten up and stop acting so much like a guy who just peed into a live electric fence.”

  “Stay out of this, Katie.”

  “Don’t. Call me that.” Kate’s eyes were glittering fiercely now.

  “Stop being such a baby and get out there and fix my fence.”

  “First of all, I own one-third of that fence, you raging asshole. Second of all, I don’t have to be here helping you. It’s my day off,” Kate said, her cheeks flushed red. “And third of all.” She held up her middle finger and said nothing else.

  “Go home, then,” he said.

  Kate scrunched up her face, took a sip of coffee and set it down on the table with a mighty thump. “No. See you out at the fence line.” She turned on her heel and stormed out of the kitchen.

  All things considered, Liss was not surprised that she had still opted in to fence work. And if she was right about Kate’s Jack feelings, all she could do was feel sorry for her. Because she knew all about harboring feelings for someone who would never return them.

  Though in Kate’s case, it was for the best if Jack never looked twice at her. Because as bad bets went, he was like going all in on a pair of twos.

  Of course, Connor was a close second. So she supposed she should probably work on her own issues, rather than focusing on someone else’s. But it was a lot more fun, and less crazy making, to focus on someone else’s.

  “What was her problem?” he asked.

  “You. You were her problem,” Liss said.

  Connor grunted. “She shouldn’t be this annoying this early.”

  “And maybe you shouldn’t treat her like she’s fifteen. But that’s a different conversation.”

  “Is it a different conversation? We could have it now.”

  “You mean instead of the one we should have?”

  Connor looked up from his coffee, his expression baleful. “Pretty much.”

  “How long do you think we can avoid it?”

  “I’d give it another ten minutes. For the caffeine to hit my system.”

  “What happened to your foot?”

  “I told you I stepped on a rusty nail.”

  “And for some reason I don’t believe you.” She didn’t know why; she only knew she didn’t.

  “Fine. I broke a glass. And I stepped on the broken glass.”

  Liss frowned, a growing feeling of unease rolling over her like fog. “How did you manage that?”

  “Not pouring myself a drink last night. Okay, well, I did pour myself one. But then I dumped it out. I didn’t drink it.”

  Suddenly, Liss’s eyes felt prickly. “Well, that’s good.”

  “Right. Glad you think so.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I don’t know. Progress, I guess. But you know, I slept like hell. Alcohol probably would’ve helped.”

  “Staying with me might have helped, too.” She shouldn’t have said that. It sounded needy, which was fair, because she felt needy, but she should have played it a little bit more cool.

  “Couldn’t,” he said, lifting his mug to his lips and taking a sip.

  Really, she should not expect more out of Connor than one-word answers. But unfortunately, she wanted more out of him than that. Because it was one thing to accept being shut out of his emotional storage locker as a friend. But as a lover?

  Yeah, but are you really his lover?

  Good question. Maybe one night of sex didn’t make her a lover. Really, it wasn’t fair for her to want things to change in some ways, when she desperately wanted to believe that one night of sex wouldn’t change other things. She imagined it wasn’t something you could cherry-pick. Which just sucked. She wanted to cherry-pick, dammit.

  She wanted a customizable menu of options with boxes she could check. Access to his finer feelings? Check. Awkward self-consciousness? No. A solid, unshakable friendship? Check. Crippling loneliness and despair? No.

  Consequence-free orgasms on tap? She would double check that.

  She had a feeling, however, she would not be getting any of those things. Except the things she didn’t want. Those she would probably get. Because life was a superhelpful bitch like that.

  “Right,” she said. “Probably should’ve just grabbed your penis again instead of trying to talk about feelings.”

  Connor sputtered, coffee sloshing over the edge of his mug. “What the hell, Liss? You can’t just say stuff like that.”

  “Now is not really the time to get precious. The horse has left the barn, run across the pasture and trampled the daisies. If you go after him now, he’ll just get spooked and kick you in the head.”

  “Come to think of it, I do feel a little bit like I’ve been kicked in the head by a horse. Which just reinforces my theory that I probably should have just gotten drunk last night.”

  “Instead of having sex with me?” She was just digging herself in deeper and deeper.

  “I meant...after the sex. Probably, though, your idea is better, and I should have just gotten drunk before we had sex instead of having sex, because then we wouldn’t be having this discussion now.”

  “Wow. You’re really good for my self-esteem.”

  “Come on, Liss.” He sighed, a heavy, defeated sound. “I needed last night. I’m not going to lie to you. But I have no idea what it gave to you. And there’s really nothing...beyond what happened that I can offer to make it more for you.”

  “Who said I needed more? I think it’s pretty obvious what I got out of it. The same thing you did.”

  “I don’t...”

  “I did not have sex with you under sufferance, Connor. I wanted to. I liked it. I got orgasms, and really good oral sex and skin-to-skin contact out of it. And you’re not sure why I enjoyed it?”

  “Well, it’s just that you’re a woman...”

  “Whoa. Put that truck in reverse, cowboy.”

  “I’m worried about your emotions.”

  She let out a sharp, one-note laugh. “Oh, my emotions! I forgot about those somewhere around the time I was screaming your name.”

  “Not just your emotions. I’m worried about our friendship. But I feel like a massive jerk seeing as I’m basically using you for therapy.”

  “I thought I agreed to that.”

  He dragged his hand over his face and let out another long, drawn-out sigh. “You did. But that doesn’t make me feel any better about it.”

  “After the fact. Which is very convenient.”

  “Nothing about this is convenient,” he said, shouting now.

  Well, this was going worse than she had imagined it might. Which was really saying something, because her imagination was not overly optimistic. “Good. I don’t want to be convenient sex.”

  “Congratulations. You aren’t. You’re the most inconvenient sex I have ever had.”

  “Wh
at, you are... You are just...the most post-orgasmically grumpy human being on the face of the planet. Being this unpleasant after getting some that was that good is a real commitment to being an asshat.”

  “I’m good with commitments. Long commitments. Marriage. Being a jackass. It’s kind of my wheelhouse.”

  “Oh, go build your barn.”

  “I’m working on the fence today. The crew is coming by later to deal with the barn.”

  “Whatever. Just get out of here. I’m trying to drink my coffee, and you are ruining it.”

  “This is my kitchen.”

  “For the time being it is our kitchen. I live here, too.”

  “If you want equal share, you need to pay at least half of the mortgage,” he said.

  “Well, no, thank you.”

  “Somehow, I thought that would be a deterrent. I think I’ll stay in my kitchen for a while, all things considered.”

  She picked up her coffee mug and raised it in salute. “You do that.”

  “I did a lot of thinking last night. Sometime after I stepped on the glass and before I got up this morning. And then a little bit more thinking when I walked on cut feet out to the barn.”

  “And?”

  He took a deep breath, his dark eyes meeting hers. “We can’t do that again.”

  Her stomach withered and sank into her toes like a dried-out leaf falling from a tree. “Oh?”

  “I’ve lost too much. And you know, the reasons we did it still stand. You were right. I was building it up to be something huge in my head. It was like a mental block. And now I’ve pushed past it.”

  “So...you pushed past your mental block...with the help of my vagina?”

  “Dammit, Liss. I’m trying to be sincere.”

  “I’m just trying to figure out what exactly is happening between us.”

  “Nothing. Nothing new.”

  “So you can just forget? You can just pretend that you never saw me naked? You can just pretend that you never...you know, all those things you did? Everything we did?”