“Of course you can’t,” she said, something he didn’t understand glittering there in her eyes. “But that doesn’t change the countdown or the consensus, does it?”
The song ended then. All the people around them were letting go of their dance partners, folks were clapping for the band, and the last thing in the world Riley wanted to do was let go of her. But he had no choice.
Just like he felt he had no choice but to follow her when she turned and dove through the crowd as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.
Did he ever have a choice when it came to Rae?
She didn’t go to her table the way he’d expected she would. Instead, she headed toward the large double doors that led into the reception area right outside the ballroom. The bar was out there in the middle of a happy throng, but she headed in the opposite direction.
Riley caught up to her in the lobby, filled with polished dark woods and gleaming chandeliers, none of which he cared about at that moment.
There was only Rae.
Nothing new there.
“What are you doing?” he asked, and only when his voice echoed back at him did it occur to him to look around, because this was a lobby. Not his house. Not anywhere private.
But they had the lobby to themselves, more or less. Almost everyone else who was here tonight was inside the ballroom—or, more likely, at the bar. Riley wished he’d had the foresight to grab himself a whiskey before trailing after his runaway bride for the millionth time. Maybe that would make the mess in him settle.
Not that whiskey had ever done him much good on that score.
“What does it matter?” Rae asked, sounding … weary.
It made everything in him go ominously still.
Because her tone reminded him entirely too much of that night on his front porch.
Good, he growled at himself. Maybe this time, don’t come out of it thinking something as stupid as the two of you trying to be friends.
“I’m sorry that you don’t like it that people have opinions about us,” he said to her back, and thought it came out remarkably calm, considering. Though the way she stiffened suggested maybe not. “I don’t know what you want me to do about that. The fact is, we can dance around this for another ten years, but it’s not going to change. You left me. You won’t come back. That’s the whole story right there.”
She turned slowly. Too slowly. And her dark eyes blazed when she finally faced him, but that was better than weariness.
“That’s nothing close to the whole story.”
“So you’ve hinted. A thousand times. But it might as well be the full story because it’s the only one you’ve ever given me.”
She pressed her lips together into a straight line that had never led him anywhere good.
“Let me point some things out to you, Rae,” he said, and sure, that didn’t sound as friendly in his mouth as it had in his head.
“I would rather you didn’t.”
“Tough.” He moved toward her until they were almost as close as they’d been on the dance floor. And after all these weeks of keeping his temper under control, he found he had a much lighter grasp on it tonight. It was that red dress. It was the feel of her in his arms, like she’d never left. It was the past eight years. He could feel temper pouring out of him, as if a dam had broken, and he knew that temper was only the start of it. “You can’t stay away from me, Rae. You don’t even try to stay away from me very well. Whatever we call ourselves, wherever you actually live, we’re still us. It hasn’t changed since we were in high school. When are you going to wake up and accept that it’s not going to change?”
“I’m trying,” she whispered.
“No, baby. You’re not. You can’t even stomach the idea of dating someone else. You barely tried. The moment it looked like maybe we we’re finally going to make a clean break, what happened? Friends. Then friends with benefits.”
“I didn’t mean for that to happen!”
“But it always does.” And again, his voice came back at him, suggesting he was much too loud—but Riley didn’t really care if the entire Longhorn Valley were standing there listening. Watching. Judging them the way Rae seemed to think they did when maybe they were just invested. “You’re good at a lot of things, Rae, but leaving me isn’t one of them. Can we just stop?”
Her chest was lifting and falling as if she were running. Sobbing. Breathing way too hard. Her hands were in fists and her eyes were so wide, so slicked with misery, that he couldn’t help himself. He reached over and gripped her upper arms, holding her still. Connecting them again, in case she needed the reminder.
Maybe he did.
“Can we be done with all the leaving?” he asked her, his voice low. “At last?”
Rae’s eyes filled with tears. He expected her to pull away, but she didn’t, and somehow that made it worse.
“You’re right that I’m no good at staying away from you.” There was something much too raw in her voice. He hated it. “I need to figure it out. Because I want things you can’t give me, Riley.”
Of all the things she’d said to him over time, that had to be the worst. He felt an icy hand squeeze tightly around his heart.
Especially because she didn’t sound angry. She didn’t sound like she was trying to score points. If anything, she sounded defeated.
“Name it.” He belted that out at her, his hands tightening slightly around her shoulders as if she were already pulling away from him again. “Name one thing I can’t give you.”
“It’s not a question of can’t. You won’t.”
“Name it, then.”
It seemed to take her a lot, then, to get in a breath. Then she exhaled, harder, clearly trying to steady herself. She met his gaze, and while hers was direct, it was also … defiant? Sad? He tensed.
“A baby,” Rae said quietly. “I want a baby, Riley.”
He was stunned by that. He frowned, but she didn’t change the way she was looking at him. Like she expected him to punch his fist through the nearest wall.
She nodded as if he had. “I told you. You won’t.”
He could feel his frown deepen. “You spent years saying you wanted nothing to do with kids,” he reminded her. “I’m not real clear on why you’re holding something you said against me.”
She flushed. “I said I didn’t want kids when I was a kid. You’re the one who was always so sure, Riley. But then Abby had Bart, and everything shifted for me. And I can’t seem to shift it back.”
She stepped away from him then, giving him no choice but to drop his hands. That usually meant she was about to run off, and he braced himself for that, but she didn’t. She stayed there in front of him, still looking at him in that way he liked less by the moment.
“I’m older now. And everything with us was…”
Rae looked as if she were casting around for the right word. Riley didn’t supply one, because what did he know? There were a lot of words to describe the two of them.
Quite a few he knew she didn’t want to hear.
“From the very beginning, we were either fighting or making up.” There was a different note in her voice now. It thudded through him. Resolve, he thought. “In high school. When we were first married. All these years since. That’s all we do. It’s always easy to start a fight, because we both know where that leads. But do we ever talk to each other? Comfort each other? We’ve only ever been intimate in one way, and it’s not enough.”
“Not enough,” he repeated, because the words didn’t make sense.
“No.” She stood a little straighter. “I want everything.”
“First of all,” Riley gritted out, trying not to show her that he was reeling when the truth was, he was amazed he hadn’t staggered back already. “We have all those things.”
“When’s the last time we talked, Riley? Just talked, no expectation of anything else, no playing games?”
“This entire past month.”
Well. That wasn’t entirely true. Bu
t he wasn’t sure he’d categorize what he’d been doing as playing games. Not really.
Not when it was their life he’d been trying to save.
“Right. This past month. When we were pretending to be something we’re not.”
“Rae. For God’s sake.”
“I don’t want to argue with you,” she said quietly. “This is not another one of the fights we always have. But, Riley. You must know you comfort your horses more than you comfort me. You always have.”
She might as well have punched her hand into his chest, ripped out his heart, and thrown it against one of the old brick walls.
“That’s a messed-up thing to say,” he managed to get out. “Even for you.”
He expected her to come at him. To hurl more accusations at him. To launch herself physically closer, eyes snapping and fingers pointing.
All the usual weapons that led them to the same place.
But instead, she wrapped her arms around her middle. And looked small.
Compared to all the other ammunition she’d used on him in the past, this one was the nuclear option. Because all he wanted to do was help her. Save her.
Even if he hurt himself in the process.
Rae shook her head, almost as if she were reading his mind. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not fair. We can’t be together, and now you know why. That’s the point. That’s why we need to divorce and stop pretending we can be friends.” She clasped her hands together. “Apparently, I’m so much of an addict when it comes to you that I can’t go cold turkey, but I have to, Riley. I hope you understand that. I hope you’ll help.”
“I can help.”
Riley hardly heard himself. Because all he could see was his Rae looking broken and earnest at the same time. And he couldn’t have that. He couldn’t allow it.
Not when it was in his power to change it.
“None of this has to be so hard,” he told her. “You want a baby? Great. Let’s have one. Problem solved.”
Then watched as her pretty face crumpled.
And his tough, stubborn, fiery Rae … burst into tears.
18
Rae couldn’t believe she was sobbing. Full-on sobbing, in a public place.
But she also didn’t have it in her to hold back any longer.
The weight of all the decisions she’d made, each one stacked on the one before like a precarious set of awful dominoes that had gotten higher and higher over time—it all crumbled. They all came crashing down.
That vicious knife in her belly cut her, deep.
And while some part of her was only too aware that they were standing in the lobby of the Grand Hotel, dressed like people they weren’t and in view of the whole town if anyone cared to look, she accepted that she’d run away from this for as long as she could.
She had to face it.
She finally had to face it.
“You want to have a baby,” she managed to get out. She wiped furiously at her eyes, not caring if her hands came away covered in mascara. She didn’t even look. “You, Riley Kittredge, want to have a baby.”
He looked back at her, his expression almost frozen, clearly aware that there was no right answer to that question.
“You used to go on and on about how little you wanted children. Even when we were in high school. You talked about it all the time. As long as I’ve known you, you’ve been outspoken about how little you want anything to do with babies, raising kids, all of it.”
“I don’t deny that.” Riley looked baffled. “I had to babysit my sister from the moment she was born. My parents were never very good at parenting in the first place, then they had a magical baby to hold us all together. But guess what? They had to work. Who do you think took care of her?”
“I know,” Rae threw back at him. “I know all of this. This is what I’m trying to say to you. When we got married, everyone thought it was a shotgun wedding. But it wasn’t. And each and every time people asked us when we were going to start a family, what did you say?”
His dark eyes looked hooded. “I don’t remember.”
“You do remember. You said, every time, Not in this lifetime.”
“I don’t understand how this is turning into a trial,” Riley shot back at her. “I don’t remember you feeling any differently. Are you telling me you did? And didn’t mention it all this time? That sounds like another you thing, Rae.”
And this was the moment.
A moment that Rae had been avoiding for so long now that it was second nature to do it again. She almost started. She almost threw up her hands, told him it wasn’t worth it, and walked away.
She almost curled herself around that ugly little secret inside of her, again, to shove it back down.
But she knew that if she did it again, it would be all she did. Because it was all she’d done. She would keep doing it, over and over again. And this holding pattern they were in would never end. They would keep right on circling the same drain until it ruined them both.
Or until they were so old and withered that they would have nothing left to do but carry right on hurting each other to death.
She didn’t have it in her any longer.
So she reached down and took hold of that sharp, terrible thing, then dragged it into the light.
“I got pregnant,” she told him.
It was such a simple sentence, in the end. Three words. That was all.
And Rae wanted to die. She wanted to wail, hit him, crumple to the floor. But she’d already done all that.
So instead, all she did was say the words.
Riley’s face went blank. She’d never seen that particular look on him before, and it felt like another blow.
It turned out there were still new ways to hurt each other. Even after all this time.
“What?”
He got that word out, but just as he didn’t look like himself, he hardly sounded like himself, either.
“I got pregnant,” she said again, and it was both harder and easier the second time. She nodded at him. “You know when.”
“I have no—” But he stopped. Blew out a breath. “That summer.”
“That summer,” she agreed.
Someone opened the front door to the hotel, and the blast of frigid air from outside washed over them. They both moved at the same time, until they were behind one of the pillars in the old lobby, about as hidden as it was possible to be while still standing in a public area. Rae told herself she was grateful for the slap of cold. For the reminder.
That there was a whole world outside this little circle of pain. All she had to do was step away from it.
She wiped at her eyes again, cleared her throat, and made herself look at him. Because that was only fair. All these years later, it was the least she owed him.
“I felt weird, and I didn’t know why,” she told him, trying to focus on him. On now. On Riley in a suit in the lobby of the Grand Hotel, not that lonely summer long ago. “We were so careful. I never missed a pill. I took it at the same time every single day, religiously. So religiously you used to tease me about it.”
His dark eyes glittered. “I remember.”
“I thought I had a summer flu or something that I couldn’t kick. Then one day, when you were over at the stables, I woke up late and got sick for no reason. And I figured I should take a test. Just to rule it out, because it was impossible.”
She’d never seen that look on his face before. And she could see the tension in him, making his entire body look like granite. That both broke her heart and spurred her on.
“You really haven’t lived until you’ve driven across the Rocky Mountains, halfway to Aspen, to buy a pregnancy test at a dollar store where no one would recognize you.” Did she think he would laugh at that when she didn’t think it was very funny herself? He didn’t. She swallowed, then hurried on before she thought better of this. “The first one was positive, so I went back and bought about ten more. But they all said the same thing.”
Rae stopped then.
To breathe, maybe. To grieve.
It seemed to take Riley a long while to unlock his jaw. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“How could I?” And it was worse then, because she wasn’t hiding behind anything now. Not even that self-righteous sense of injury that had carried her for so long. “Every time someone we knew from high school had another baby, there was another rant from you. I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do.”
“I can’t believe that none of your friends told you that the best thing you could have done was tell me,” Riley gritted out, his eyes gleaming with a terrible sort of brightness. “Sure, maybe you getting pregnant wasn’t the plan, but I would never—”
“I didn’t tell anyone else. That didn’t seem right. If you didn’t know, it seemed like a betrayal to tell other people.” She laughed a little, but not with amusement. “Last Sunday, Abby was telling me how a big turning point for her was when she realized she needed to talk to Gray about the stuff that affected them both. She needed to be in her marriage, not off talking about it.”
“But you never told me. You were never in the marriage after that, were you?” She could see him swallow, hard. She saw something stark move over his face. “What did you do, Rae?”
That wasn’t exactly an accusation. But it wasn’t not an accusation, either.
Rae laughed again, and this time, it was such a bitter sound that she was half-afraid it stained her lips. “You and Jensen were taking horses up to Montana. I planned to tell you everything. When you got back, I was going to sit you down. I was going to break the news. I was so nervous about it that I was practicing speeches in the mirror, Riley.”
“What…” He shook his head as if the words themselves didn’t make sense. “What did you think I was going to do?”
“I didn’t know what you were going to do.”
Her heart was beating so hard she thought it was going to explode. There was nothing but a bruise where that sharp thing had lodged inside her for so long. And Rae wanted nothing more than to run away from this conversation, the way she’d always done. It would be easy enough. She could run out into the street or back into the crowd. She didn’t have to do this.
Secret Nights with a Cowboy Page 22
