Slow Burn Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  She knew there was genuine pain beneath his words. They were coming from a place of hurt. But she didn’t really care. Because right now she was hurting. Because she was watching him ruin this thing between them, this thing he had pushed for, this thing he had wanted, because now he was being asked for something. Being asked to give everything she had.

  And that just made her mad.

  “You were the one that wanted this,” she said, her voice low. “You were the one who pushed for this. And this is what you wanted? To hold us in some kind of weird limbo for all of eternity? Yeah, I get that we were both in pretty deep denial when this started, thinking that we could do that, but I don’t think either of us actually believed it. Of course there were going to be feelings, Finn. But I’m ready to deal with them.”

  “I made my position clear.” He took a step back.

  “You’re willing to let me walk away? For what? For pride?”

  “You won’t walk away,” he said, his confidence staggering. “You never have. And I don’t think you will now. You need me.”

  He said the words in a monotone, but they were vibrating with urgency. With emotion that betrayed the fact that he wasn’t as unshakable as he was trying to appear.

  “You’re right,” she said slowly. “I do need you. I need you for so many things, and I always have. But I need you to need me too, Finn. Anything less isn’t going to work.” Slowly, she walked over to where her clothes were and began to pull them on. They felt heavy, and her limbs felt like they were filled with lead.

  She waited for him to say something. Waited for him to stop her, but he didn’t. Instead, he let her get dressed all the way. Let her walk to the bedroom door.

  She stopped, her throat tightening. She bit her lip to keep from crying right there in front of him. She had already broken down in front of him too many times. And yes, he’d held her. He’d braced her. Because he was a wall. And that was easy for a wall. But asking him to bend, asking him to soften, asking him to make himself vulnerable to her in any way... He wasn’t going to give in.

  And it reminded her too much of the life in her past. Of living with inflexible, distant people. Of feeling alone in a home that had an actual staff. Because if you could maintain that kind of detachment then you could easily send your own child off to have a baby on her own, to hide her pregnancy from the neighborhood, from the garden club.

  Because your own self-preservation would always be more important.

  Finn wasn’t her parents. She knew that. But it was far too close. Far too close to everything she had run away from once already. To the things that had damaged and wounded her beyond repair—or so she’d thought.

  As she opened the bedroom door and began to walk away, something broke inside of her, and she wondered if she was right back where she’d been as a seventeen-year-old girl driving into town the first time. If there was something in her that would take another decade to heal.

  Then, as she made her way down the stairs and out the front door to her car, all the time hoping that he would come after her, she realized something. That it might take ten years for this pain to heal all the way, that it might never heal all the way. But that she would be able to live even with the pain there.

  Because she was stronger now. Because she refused to hold on to it. Because she refused to be defined by all of the things she didn’t have. By all of the second-guessing. By the life that someone else was living.

  She was broken. She wasn’t destroyed.

  That was because of Finn. Ironic now that he was the one causing this destruction when he had been the one to heal so much of it before.

  No less ironic, she supposed, than the fact that he was the one ending things when he was the one who had pushed for things to begin. That he was the one who was afraid now, when he had been as confident as a bulldozer in the beginning.

  Tears slid down her cheeks as she drove down the winding highway toward her house. It was dark outside and her headlights bathed the road and the bottoms of the pine trees in a wedge of yellow. It was the only light in the darkness.

  She laughed. She supposed since it was so dark she was going to have to make her own light.

  She would. She would make her subscription boxes, she would laugh with her friends. And sometimes, only sometimes, she would cry.

  Because she loved Finn Donnelly with all of herself. Without reservation. And he refused to let himself love her back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HE HAD DAMN well expected her to fight for this a little bit harder. For their friendship. The one that she had elevated above everything else that first day he’d kissed her.

  But no, the minute she wanted something he didn’t, she walked away.

  Typical.

  Typical of every damn person in his life.

  Finn took the bottle of his grandfather’s favorite whiskey off the bar and didn’t even bother to pour himself a glass. No, he just uncorked the top and took a long drink. He wiped his mouth, starting to feel the effects, since it wasn’t the first drink he’d had in the last few hours.

  He couldn’t sleep. There was no point. She wasn’t here. She was gone. As she felt was justified.

  He ignored the voice inside of him that called him a raving hypocrite. The same voice that had been poking at him from the time down by the lake when he demanded that she give him her burdens.

  But hell. He’d told her. He’d told her that his mother had called the police on him. That he had caught her being beaten bloody by some bastard, had done as much damage as a skinny sixteen-year-old could do, and she’d still left him.

  That his grandfather had taken years’ worth of work out of him, and then whatever the reason, everything he’d done still hadn’t been enough to prove that he could run the Laughing Irish on his own.

  “What’s that about?” he asked the empty room. “You old Irish jackass. I did everything you asked me to do. And you didn’t love me more than any of the rest of them, did you? I was probably just cheap labor.”

  A searing pain went through him at the thought. One person had said she loved him. Lane Jensen. And he’d told her he couldn’t love her back.

  The truth was, he didn’t want to. Even if he could.

  “What’s going on down here?”

  Finn turned and saw Cain standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Inquisitive bastard. Finn missed his isolation. He wished his brother would go the hell back to Texas. And that Alex would go the hell back to the army. And that Liam would go back to wherever the hell he’d come from. Hell, most likely.

  “You live in a house with about a million other people. You come down to check on every noise?” Finn asked, noticing that his words sounded a little bit soft, thanks to the liquor.

  “I have a sixteen-year-old daughter. I assume every noise that happens in the night is her sneaking out or a boy sneaking in. Granted, it’s less likely here, since she doesn’t know anybody and there’s no way she could walk to town, and she wouldn’t be able to hot-wire my car, but my paranoia has served me well so far when it comes to parenting, so I go with it.”

  “No teen angst down here. Do you want to see some ID?” He turned back to the bar and picked up the bottle of whiskey again, tipping it back as he pressed it up against his lips.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No. Does any man on earth ever want to talk about it?”

  “What do you want to do then?”

  “I want to drink about it,” Finn said, doing just that. “If you want to join me, you can do that. Otherwise, why don’t you go back to bed.”

  “Wow. My cold, empty bed, or, stay here and get hammered. Tough choice. But, I’ll have a tumbler of the Jack Daniel’s.”

  Finn slid a glass across the bar, and then pointed to a bottle. “This is a no-service establishme
nt. Help yourself.”

  “I take it,” Cain said, taking the stopper out of the bottle, “that you had a fight with Lane.”

  A fight. He wished it had been a fight. A real fight. One where she stood her ground. One where she had pushed back. She had just left.

  You let her.

  Yeah, well. Enough people had walked away from him that he had learned not to go chasing after anyone. After a while it just started to look sad.

  “Not really,” he said, lifting the bottle to his lips again.

  “Oh, come on,” Cain said, grabbing hold of the bottle and wrenching it away from Finn. “Have some damn pride. Pour it in a glass. Don’t get sloppy over a woman.”

  Cain poured a measure of the amber liquid into a glass and handed that to Finn.

  Finn glared, but took it without argument. “Do you know of a better reason to get sloppy drunk?” Finn asked. “If you do, I’m happy to hear it.”

  “Teenagers,” Cain said, lifting his own full glass. “But, since you don’t have one, women I guess. But only women that mean something.”

  His chest ached. Of course Lane meant something. She had always meant something. That wasn’t up for debate.

  It was all this other stuff, her asking for things, saying things. The kinds of things that a man like him had decided he never wanted to hear. And then she was saying them. Lane. If he had ever wanted to hear it from any woman, it was her. Except, it was bull. Because she had immediately walked away. That was the kind of love he was used to. And if that was all the love he could ever get? He would do without it. He would deal just fine.

  “Well,” Finn said, “she’s my best friend.”

  “I have a buddy back in Dallas—we call him Slim, because it’s Texas and they really do things like that. We had our disagreements. I’ve never gotten drunk over him. I just don’t feel that strongly about him, even though he’s great to go out skeet shooting with.”

  “Well, unless you’re also sleeping with him, I guarantee that you don’t have the same attachment to him that I have to Lane.”

  “No,” Cain said, “we are not that close.”

  “Right.”

  “This looks like love stuff to me, I’m just saying.”

  “You can just say your way back to Dallas,” Finn said, taking another drink. “I don’t think I asked for brotherly advice from the brother that I didn’t even grow up with.”

  “All you have are brothers you didn’t grow up with,” Cain responded. “Grandpa is dead, your best friend is mad at you, so, who else are you going to talk to?”

  “No one is a good option.”

  “Yeah, that’s an option. It’s definitely the one I went with when my marriage was falling apart. It worked out well for me. I ended up without a wife, and my daughter ended up without a mother. I definitely endorse that.”

  “Lane isn’t my wife,” Finn said, “and she isn’t going to be.”

  “Right. Not if you keep avoiding the problem. Not if you keep existing in deep denial.”

  “Did you see a therapist after your wife left you, or something?”

  Cain shifted uncomfortably. “I took Violet to one. A family therapist. I was there too. I was worried about her. And I may have internalized some things.”

  Finn arched a brow. “Okay.”

  “My point is, you obviously want more. You’re not letting yourself have more. Why is that?”

  “She’s all talk,” Finn said, the alcohol and his anger warming his blood, making the words flow free and easy. “She says she loves me. But what does that mean? I wasn’t ready to say it back to her and she walked out.”

  “Yeah, women don’t like that.”

  “So, she changes what she wants,” Finn went on as though Cain hadn’t spoken. “And I’m supposed to change right along with her, on her schedule. She would have left anyway. Sometime, she would have left. The fact that she couldn’t handle this proves that.”

  Silence settled between himself and Cain, and his brother’s expression took on an uncharacteristically serious look.

  “That’s what you wanted to prove, though, isn’t it?” Cain asked finally, his words quiet and steady.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You were trying to prove that she would leave. You pushed her away. That’s what you do to people, Finn, if you hadn’t noticed. You were a mean son of a bitch to all of us from the moment we got here.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I just don’t want you here?” Finn asked. He lifted the glass to take another drink, and Cain wrenched it out of his hand, setting it down on the bar top with a loud click.

  “No,” Cain said, “it did not occur to me that you didn’t want us here. You do want us here. You want a family, Finn. We all do. That’s why we’re here. If we can be honest for a second and just cut the bullshit I think we’d all have to admit that. This ranch means something. Grandpa meant something to us. We are all each other has. Collectively, our parents sucked. Dad is God knows where. My mother can’t be bothered to leave the casino for two seconds to deal with me, let alone her granddaughter. I assume you don’t even know where your mother is.”

  “You assume correctly.”

  “I made a family. I got married. That went to hell, so here I am. Alex was in the military. Clearly that didn’t work out—he came here. Liam... Who the hell even knows. But he’s here too. My point is you do want us here, just as much as we want to be here, but you can’t admit that. Because you have to push. You have to push and push until people prove that they won’t walk. I get it—I do. But there’s a certain point where you make it impossible for people to do anything but disappoint you. You tell a woman you don’t love her... She’s gonna leave.” Cain blinked, a muscle in his jaw working. “That’s how it goes. You’re a self-fulfilling prophecy, Finn. How does it feel?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Your mother raised you, at least. She might not be mom of the year, but she was there. You know where she is. If you needed to go drag her out of a casino, you could.”

  Cain lifted a shoulder. “We all have a sob story. But do you want to be the sob story or do you want to be a man?”

  “You think it’s that simple? Well, of course you do. Because in the end, this all worked out for you, didn’t it? Did you ever think just how insulting it was to me that our grandfather left us equal shares in this ranch after I lived here for all this time, worked it, invested my time, my money. I took care of this place. I took care of the old man. And apparently, he thought I was about as useful as my parents did. Because he brought in all of you. Apparently, what I did didn’t matter.”

  “Dumbass,” Cain said. “That’s the only thing you can figure it is?”

  “You think you know,” Finn said, snatching his glass of whiskey back. “You didn’t even know him. Not really.”

  “From the sounds of it, neither did you.”

  “Great,” Finn said, setting the glass down again before crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell me about it, Cain. Maybe when you’re finished I won’t want to punch you in the face.”

  Cain rocked back on his heels, and once again, Finn was conscious of the fact that the two of them were standing in exactly the same position. That they were brothers, even if they felt more like strangers.

  “Did you ever think that he didn’t want to leave you the whole burden to carry alone? Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, he thought we needed each other?”

  Cain’s words hit Finn hard. “No,” he said, “I didn’t.”

  “Of course you didn’t. Because you’re lost in your own little world where nobody loves you and everybody leaves you.”

  “My own mother left me. My mother called the police on me, tried to get me arrested for dealing with her abuser.” And there it was. He’d admitted it. To Lan
e, and to Cain. That his own mother hadn’t even seen the point in sticking around with him. That she’d found life more worthwhile with an asshole who beat her than she’d found it with him.

  “I’m not saying you didn’t go through hard times. I’m not saying I’m not messed up too. I’m just saying, if you can be close enough to something that matters, this close, close enough that you’re trying to drink away the pain, maybe you just deal with your issues instead.”

  “Right. Give me the number of your therapist.”

  Cain snorted. “Unfortunately for you, I’m the only therapist you have. Let me tell you, I can’t be pushed away. I stayed with my wife even when our marriage sucked. Eventually, she had to leave because I just wouldn’t. And now I’m staying with my daughter even though she kinda hates me, and I have to deal with her attitude all the time. I am not an easy man to scare away, Finn. I’m the wrong person to test. I might end up beating your ass, but I’m not going anywhere. Lane loves you. Any idiot can see that. But you have to give her something.”

  Everything inside Finn rebelled against that. Because hadn’t he given her all of his support? Hadn’t he listened to her as she’d told all of her secrets?

  Except, Cain was pushing against exactly what Lane had just yelled at him about. About him keeping everything from her. Everything locked down inside. About her being the only one who was vulnerable.

  Yeah, well, he wanted to be vulnerable about as much as he wanted a stick in the eye.

  “Do you want to prove yourself right or do you want to be happy?” Cain asked. “You can only have one of those things. But you need to be honest with yourself. And you need to stop being such a dumb fuck.”

  “I don’t think therapists say stuff like that.”

  “Older brothers do. And you have one. You could have a lot, actually. A lot of family. A lot of love. If you weren’t so afraid of it.”

  Those words hit hard. Like an arrow right on target.

  No man wanted to be told he was afraid. He wanted even less to find the words true.