by Cora York
I sucked in a breath between my teeth and held it before I unleashed hell or beat him over the head with my crutches. I had more willpower in my pinky than he had in his entire body.
“Listen here, Judgey McFuckface, you have no idea what I go through every day, so keep your opinions about my willpower or lack of it to yourself.”
He smiled softly, and his hazel eyes connected with mine. I wanted to smile, and sigh and swoon, but I bit all three reactions back. He didn’t need to see how much he affected me.
“Noted.”
Dylan helped me out of the truck, and once again, his touch sent tingles throughout my body. It was as if the span of his hands were made for the width of my waist.
It’d been a while since I’d been in a man’s arms, or I should say, it’d been a while since I remembered being in a man’s arms.
Drunken hookups weren’t something I ever recalled the morning after. The bruises and not being able to walk straight told me exactly what had happened the night before.
I liked rough sex occasionally, but not the kind that hurt for days after. Every time I woke up saddle sore, I promised myself the next time I slept with someone I would be stone-cold sober, but just like every other promise I’d made to myself back then, I’d broken it within a day or two.
Dylan held onto my elbow. I flinched when my ankle hit off one of the crutches, sending spikes of pain shooting up my leg.
“You sure you don’t want me to fill the script?”
I shook my head and gritted my teeth against the pain. The last thing I needed was to get hooked on opioids. “A few Advil will be fine. I don’t need hydrocodone.”
“You need me to help you in the house?”
“I’d appreciate it.” He helped me shuffle inside and over to the kitchen table. The one I sat at when going back and forth with Tricia almost every day for the past few months.
I turned my phone over and over in my hand. “If I accept your challenge and agree to spend less time online over the next three days—not give it up, you understand—you have to do something for me.”
“Depends on what that is.”
“Why are you going against your doctor’s orders and planning to ride when you already have a concussion? Don’t bullshit me by saying it’s all for the glory and the rush of winning.”
Dylan
“It’s a family thing. My granddad and dad were bull riders. My older brother retired from the circuit and runs the farm for my mom. My younger brother is up and coming. My two younger sisters are barrel racers. We were born to it.” I sat down opposite her and spread my hands. “No bullshit. I want the championship buckle. I came close last year. Close the year before, too.
“I wish I could explain the high you get from lasting eight seconds on an eighteen-hundred-pound bull. It makes you feel invincible. Like you’re unbreakable.”
“But you are breakable.”
I chuckled but inwardly flinched. “I haven’t died yet.”
Her brows furrowed. She wasn’t buying it. I didn’t care. My business was my business. She might be an open book, but I wasn’t. Someone I met a few hours ago didn’t need to know about the last few years of my dad’s life. How he’d slipped away from us and had become someone we didn’t know. How he forgot our faces, our names.
“All for a gold buckle?”
“It’s hard to understand if you’re not from that world.”
“I understand wanting something so bad that it physically hurts. But I also wouldn’t risk putting my life in danger to get it.”
I was done with this conversation. As determined as she was to find out my life story, I was done talking about myself.
“Coffee?” I asked, pushing away from the table.
“Black, no sugar.”
“Tell me about your music. You any good?”
She reached back and twisted her hair into a ponytail before letting it tumble over her shoulders in golden waves. An image of her on her hands and knees with my hand fisted in her hair flashed through my mind.
“Used to be. My earlier stuff when I wasn’t so jaded or disillusioned was good. I wrote most of my old songs when I was with Colt. But my last album,” she said and cringed, “I wish I could burn every damn song on that record and never ever have to hear or sing them again.”
“Your music, your choice. You don’t want to sing them, don’t.”
She snort-laughed. “Not really. People relate to songs for all kinds of reasons. The songs that make me want to puke get people out of their seats. They make them dance, cry. Feel emotion. There’s a song I wrote about my parents that I hate, but my fans love. I’ll be singing that one till the day I die.”
An incredible sadness shrouded her, but if I pointed that out, she could clam up and start asking me more questions so as not to talk about herself. The sassy woman she presented to the world wasn’t who she actually was.
Montana was the kind of person who didn’t let her mask slip often, and I wanted to get to know that part of her better—the real her.
I closed my eyes for a second and shoved those thoughts away. I didn’t like where my mind was headed. Neither of us was in the right place for any kind of entanglement, but I couldn’t help but want to be around her, want to spend time with her.
I grabbed two mugs and set them by the coffee maker. “Where do you go from here?”
“Who knows? Some days I think I’d be more than happy to stay on the ranch for the rest of my life and never go back to that world.”
“Do you miss the spotlight?”
She forced out a laugh. “I was too drunk to remember most of it.”
“You’re as sober as a judge now. You can’t hide out here forever.”
“I’ll hide for as long as I can get away with it.”
I filled the two mugs and set one in front of her. “I’m headed out to the stables to see how the horses are doing. Tricia said she might drive up this weekend. Have to make sure nothing happens to her pride and joy.”
“Just when I thought I’d gotten rid of the old crone.” I didn’t miss the smile in her voice or how her eyes lit up at the mention of my aunt. Whatever kind of relationship Tricia had with Montana, there was a lot of affection there.
I walked around the stables, checking in on the horses and shooting the shit with the other ranchers.
The stallion Tricia needed me to break would arrive sometime tomorrow morning. A shiver of anticipation swept through me. There was nothing like gaining a horse’s trust without breaking their spirit.
I was a big believer in gentling a horse. Breaking them in nice and easy, earning their loyalty. Back in the day, my dad was a believer in doing it the Old West way by scaring a horse half to death and forcing the animal to his will. I didn’t agree with him. Something we almost came to blows about more than once.
I believed forcing an animal to do something it didn’t want to do could cause resentment. But that was my dad all over. If someone didn’t want to do something he wanted, he forced them and would bend them to his will no matter how much they fought back. In his mind, his way was the right way. That didn’t make him a bad person, it was just who he was.
A knife of sadness sliced my heart. What I wouldn’t give to be in the paddock with him again arguing about who was right and who was wrong.
Back at the house, I busied myself making food while Montana snoozed on the sofa. Every now and again, she whimpered in her sleep. I should have filled the script for painkillers whether she wanted me to or not, but since I didn’t know how deep her problems went or what effect painkillers would have on her recovery, it was best to follow her lead.
She’d come this far, and I didn’t want to be the one who set her spiraling by pressing her to take pain meds.
I didn’t recall ever hearing her music. I was more of a George Strait and Garth Brooks kind of guy. The stuff I grew up listening to, but I was curious. “Alexa, play songs by Montana Chambers.”
The first song that came on was about k
icking ass and not taking any prisoners. Her voice was as dirty as a bucking chute after a weekend rodeo. The lyrics held a lot of anger and resentment. I smiled to myself and made a mental note not to cross her for fear of ending up in one of her songs. The second song was a ballad about someone not being able to hurt her anymore. The pain in her voice chilled me to the bone.
“Alexa, off,” came Montana’s irritated voice from behind me.
I looked over my shoulder to see her glaring in my direction. “The last thing I want to hear is my music. Especially that song.”
“What’s wrong with that song?”
“That’s the one I wrote about my parents.”
“I take it they’re not part of your life anymore?”
“They’re six feet under. The best place for them.”
I winced and wanted to ask more, but I let the subject go. Whatever her parents had put her through, it seemed they were the root of her problems.
Chapter Three
Montana
For the past three days, I’d been strong and had cut down on the amount of time I’d spent scrolling through my phone. My electronic addiction was nowhere near as bad as my alcohol-based one. If I could control that, I could control anything.
The limited access I’d allowed myself hadn’t given me enough time to do a thorough search on Dylan, but I had found out a few things. Like how much of a big deal he was in his world.
There were countless photos of him beside big boobed women who wore spangly outfits. Photos of him on ginormous bulls and photos of him face down in the dirt. There were also videos of the times he’d been bucked off and the times he’d won. I needed to get back to my cabin so I could cyberstalk him on my laptop until I discovered everything there was to know.
No matter what he said about me staying at the main house, I was going to my cabin tonight and barricading myself in. Before he came on the scene, I was content with my little routine of waking up and spending the majority of my time alone and online.
He walked up to the porch where I sat, looking every inch a modern-day cowboy in his T-shirt and backwards baseball hat. Sweat misted his skin, and dirt covered his Wranglers. If I weren’t so irritated and antsy, I would have pounced on him and licked him from head to toe.
“How’s the new horse doing?” I asked, genuinely interested.
“Sampson’s doing fine. It’s a case of monkey see monkey do with him. He likes to have other horses around. Likes watching what they do, then following their lead. He’s skittish, but he’s starting to trust me. Much like someone else I know.”
I ignored his teasing. “I guess you really are the horse whisperer.”
“I guess I am.”
He leaned against the railing, his gaze meandering all over my body. “Now that you can put some weight on your ankle, you want to go up to the waterfall?”
My ankle had improved enough that I no longer needed crutches, and the cuts on my hands and forehead were healing, but I didn’t want to do anything outdoorsy or something that required being around people.
“I thought I’d go back to my cabin.”
“Why? So you can vanish into cyberspace for hours on end?”
I clucked my tongue. “It makes me happy being in my own bubble.”
“It makes you a coward is what it makes you.”
I shot out of my seat and smacked my hands against my hips. “Oh no, you did not just go there. Have you ever gotten up on a stage in front of fifty thousand people and sang your heart out for two hours?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Well, until you do, don’t call me a coward.”
He tilted his head. “Were you sober when you got up on stage and sang in front of those fifty thousand people?”
Asking that question had put his toe well and truly over the line, and I wouldn’t be held responsible for my actions if he went any further.
“What the fuck did you say?” I jabbed my finger in his face. “You do not get to say anything like that to me ever again. You have no right.”
He grabbed my finger and lowered it. We were so close our lips were within inches of meeting. “You’re getting in the truck. We’re going to go to the waterfall, and you’re going to have a good time. After that, I’ll take you back to your hiding hole where you can punish yourself all you want.”
“I don’t like you,” I spat.
“Sure you don’t.”
I liked him very much. Too much. Over the past few days, I’d grown to like him even more. And for the first time since I’d moved to the ranch, song lyrics looped through my head. My fingers itched to write down the words and get them out of my brain before they drove me mad.
I couldn’t quite grasp all the words yet, but they had to do with Dylan and the secrets we keep even from ourselves, and how it sometimes takes someone we don’t know to help us see the truth.
“Promise you’ll take me back to the cabin tonight if I go with you.”
“Deal.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
****
On our drive up the twisty-turny roads, we didn’t pass another soul. It was as if no one else in the entire world existed. As if we had the entire planet to ourselves.
I turned to Dylan and brushed my windswept hair out of my face. “Do you think we’d be safe staying here when the zombie apocalypse happens?”
He glanced over at me like I’d lost my mind. “Where did that come from?”
“I’m serious,” I said with a smile. “No one would find us up here. We’d go hunting and fishing. We could be self-sufficient.”
“The zombies would get us before we had a chance.” He pulled up a narrow dirt road, and when he stopped, we both got out. He grabbed a backpack, and I grabbed blankets from the back seat.
“The zombies would have been killed by a nuclear explosion,” I explained, “which is the only way to kill the undead.”
“Obviously,” he said and grinned. “How would we survive the nuclear explosion?”
“Duh! Because we’d be in our underground bunker.”
He slung the backpack over his shoulders and handed me a bottle of water. “How could I have forgotten about the bunker? Stupid me.”
“We’d have to have sex,” I added. “It’d be up to us to repopulate the world.”
He gave me a thoughtful look. “The entire world? Sounds exhausting.”
“There would be other bunkers and other people. We’d have a network.”
He nodded as if seeing the benefit of my hypothetical zombie/nuclear-ravaged world. “So having sex would be mandatory.”
I snickered at the ridiculous turn of our conversation. “I guess having sex with me would be a chore.”
We stopped walking for a second, and he looked at me. His pupils dilated, his eyes filled with lust. The intensity I saw in his face sent shiver after shiver through me.
“I can’t think of anyone I’d rather live in a post-apocalyptic world with than you.” He idly ran a thumb across the back of my hand. “And there’s no one I’d rather repopulate the world with. For the record, sex with you would never be a chore.”
My cheeks and chest heated. “Oh, good. Great.”
“We’d better get a move on before it’s too cold to swim,” he said, breaking the moment.
“Swim? You didn’t say anything about me having to swim. I don’t have anything to swim in.”
“Who said we were going to wear anything?” There was that heart-stopping, toe-curling, panty-melting grin again.
I firmed my lips and followed him up the narrow trail. Now and then he looked back and asked if I was doing okay. To which I answered I was fine. That was a lie. I wasn’t fine. I was the furthest thing from fine. I hadn’t shaved my legs in days, and my bikini line was as untamed as the woods we now walked through.
The pasty, sun-starved sight beneath my clothes would scare a blind man away. Months of comfort eating with no real exercise except for walking to and from the ranch hadn’t done
me any favors, but I’d be happy to sit and watch him skinny dip.
The sound of cascading water echoed all around us. We turned a bend, and there it was, tumbling down from miles above. I held my breath and fought the urge to jump into the crystal-clear pool beneath the waterfall.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Dylan said, raising his voice over the crash of the falls.
“I wish I’d come up here sooner,” I whispered, still in awe.
He winked and grinned. “Ready to get wet?”
Cowboy, you have no idea how wet I already am.
Dylan
The intensity on her face showed me we both had the same thing on our minds—getting naked and sweaty.
I liked her, and selfishly, I didn’t want her to go back to the cabin tonight so she could lock herself away again. Having her around kept my thoughts occupied. Instead of obsessing over when I could get back on a bull, I was obsessing about when I could get her into bed.
I wanted to be near her, talk with her, laugh with her. Over the past three days, I’d done my best to keep a respectable distance while she healed, but there was only so much a man could take.
Sleeping with her could backfire and put stupid ideas about love in her head, but I was willing to take the chance. Besides, she already knew the score. I would be here for another week, maybe less, then I’d be on my merry way.
I yanked off my shirt, kicked off my boots, unbuckled my belt, and shoved down my jeans until I wore nothing but my boxers. Her eyes never left me.
“Here goes.”
I climbed up to a rock overhanging the pool. The faster I got over the shock of the cold water, the better. Despite it being a ninety-degree day, the water was always moving and didn’t sit still long enough to warm up.
“Yee-haw,” I shouted as I dove.
Man, it was colder than a crypt in winter. My cock agreed and shriveled up.
After a few seconds, I broke the surface and pushed my hair back from my face.
“Get in here,” I called to Montana, who was eyeing the water like one of her enemies.
“Are you out of your ever-loving mind?” She’d kicked off her hiking boots, dipped her toes in, and visibly shivered. “I’ll catch my death.”
