Lone Wolf Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  And she knew her family was hurt. She knew she’d hurt them. And she felt awful about it. Guilty deep down. But she couldn’t go back. She couldn’t fix it. She couldn’t change it. And she couldn’t erase her own pain either. Her own feelings of loneliness.

  She’d left, it was true.

  But she often felt like they’d left her first.

  Maybe not physically, but emotionally.

  And yes, there were things she hadn’t told them. Things she didn’t feel she could tell them.

  She felt the need to protect herself still.

  “I wanted to be near you,” Vanessa said. “But not everything can be about you or Mom or Dad. My sobriety is for me. Coming back home is for me. You’ve all gotten along fine without me for years now, so acting wounded by the fact that I was adjacent to you for a couple of weeks and didn’t give you the entirety of my plans is a little bit disingenuous.”

  “No one would have chosen to live without you. You left. You left, and half the time we didn’t know whether or not you were alive or dead.”

  “And you let me leave,” Vanessa said, standing up, knocking her chair backward and onto the floor. She felt enervated. A disaster, yet again, in the face of Olivia’s cool fury. But then, she always was.

  The fighting might be unfamiliar, but the dynamic was not. They had always been like this. And as Vanessa had unraveled, more and more, Olivia had taken all that thread and wound herself tighter. And in the face of her tightness, Vanessa could only be more of a mess. It had always been that way. Because she couldn’t compete. Not remotely. So she didn’t even try. Why bother. She couldn’t compete with all that perfection. So she became a spiral.

  She could feel it happening now.

  “You’re so angry at me,” Vanessa said. “Because you think I just left. That I abandoned you. That I made you worry. You watched your mirror crack in front of you and you didn’t do anything to reach out and stop it.”

  “You pushed me away,” Olivia said, angry tears in her brown eyes.

  Vanessa wasn’t going to cry. And she wasn’t going to allow Olivia to excuse herself either.

  “You never asked me what was wrong. You never... You saw me sinking and you couldn’t even reach down a hand. You just doubled down on being the perfect one. On being the easy one. The one Mom and Dad loved best. I think you all did perfectly fine without me. And maybe my mistake was thinking that we could find a way to integrate back into each other’s lives. But I’m not sure if that’s possible.”

  She took a deep breath and then turned away, trying to gather her emotions before she walked out the door.

  “I swear, Vanessa, if you came back to hurt Mom and Dad again...”

  “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”

  “You have no idea what it did to them.”

  And Olivia had no idea that their father hadn’t even been able to look her in the eyes by the time she’d left.

  “You have no idea what life has done to me,” Vanessa said, anger pouring over her now. “I know I did hurt you. I know I hurt Mom and Dad. But what I did...it wasn’t for the purpose of hurting you. I did it to escape. And along the way I hurt myself too. Getting sober was saving myself. And as much as I’ve wanted to restore our relationship, it has been a lot more important for me to heal myself before I try to heal things with other people. I went through everything I did alone.”

  “No one wants to upset you,” Olivia said. “Mom and Dad are walking on eggshells, and now you’re here yelling at me because we didn’t reach out, when everyone is trying to be nice. No one wants to send you into a relapse.”

  Relapse.

  The word was like a slap to the face.

  “I told you, I did the work. And this is why I stayed away for a long time after I got sober, because I thought some distance might let us build new patterns. Might let you see more than a junkie. But you don’t. And no amount of time is going to fix that, is it?”

  “I changed my life because of you,” Olivia said, her voice tight. “I almost married the wrong man. I had to do everything right because you did everything wrong, and you left Mom and Dad to collapse. If it weren’t for me they would have had nothing.”

  The words hung in the hair, stinging Vanessa’s soul.

  “I’m glad you were there for them,” she said. “But I did have nothing. And maybe if Mom and Dad had done some actual parenting when they needed to, instead of worrying about appearances, they wouldn’t have had to lean on their daughter like she was their last remaining crutch.”

  “That isn’t...” Olivia closed her eyes. “We never knew where you were. We thought you were dead half the time, and we were imagining you in a ditch somewhere, but you’ve been sober? How long did you wait? How long... How long have you been sober?”

  Her own weakness, thrown back at her so clearly and concisely, burned. Because she’d felt guilt for that. She had. But she’d also felt fear for her sobriety when it had been fragile and new. Afraid of how well she could handle her new self if she went back to an old place.

  She’d chosen herself.

  And she knew Olivia thought she’d done that when she’d left, but that wasn’t true. She’d chosen oblivion. And she’d chosen drugs. And she’d chosen to hide away. But she hadn’t chosen herself.

  She hadn’t chosen herself until she’d stopped using.

  “Five years,” Vanessa said, knowing with absolute certainty that, as far as Olivia was concerned, that was a dropped bomb. “Because I knew that if I came back before I was strong enough, I would fall back into all my old patterns. Because look at us. We’re right back to where we always were. And I can’t afford to go back to where I was, Olivia. I can’t.”

  She got in her car and started driving back up toward her place, almost blind with fury and pain. Disappointment in Olivia, and in herself.

  But she wasn’t going to cry. No, she was not. She didn’t owe Olivia her tears any more than she owed her contrition.

  She had... She had done an amazing thing out of the shady things that she had gotten involved in. And no one would ever give her any credit for it because they would just maintain that she never should have become an addict in the first place. Like she had chosen to become a damn dentist and decided she didn’t like it. She had just chosen to be an addict. That was definitely what they thought. And probably she had chosen it to hurt them.

  She was breathing hard, feeling utterly and completely beyond herself now. She hadn’t realized she was so angry at her sister.

  But their fight kept playing over and over in her head, and the more that Vanessa listened to herself rant, the more she realized how deeply she believed those things. It was true. They had let her walk away.

  They had let her sink into the swamp. They had all just stood there and watched. Unsure of what to do. Afraid to get their hands dirty. Maybe, when it came to her parents, they were afraid to investigate and see what they’d done wrong. Or what might have happened to her to make her behave that way.

  She hated that she’d hurt them.

  She’d hated that they’d hurt her.

  Poor Olivia... She had the feeling her sister didn’t know what to do with anything in life that wasn’t pretty or perfect. Maybe that wasn’t fair, but she’d never seen evidence of the contrary. All the way down to that beautiful husband of hers. Her perfect baby.

  The perfect baby that she’d had while she was married and not a teenager.

  Perfect Olivia. With her perfect house.

  Who had probably never woken up next to a man and not remembered how she had gotten there or what had happened.

  Who had very probably never lain on a bathroom floor crying while endless cramps rolled through her body as a pregnancy she hadn’t even been sure she’d wanted cut itself short.

  Hadn’t lain there in a haze while a beautiful paramedic with mesmerizing blue eyes stared down at her, telling her that she was brave while she gave up all semblance of control and screamed and cried like she was dying
.

  She had come to the turnoff for her driveway, and turned left, barely noticing the truck that was coming in the opposite direction, trying to turn in at just the same time. Instead of hitting the brakes, she floored it, powering herself through and up the driveway ahead of the truck.

  The truck driver laid on his horn. And even in the darkness, when she looked in her rearview mirror, she could tell. It was Jacob. She lifted her hand, raising her middle finger, hoping that his headlights shone into the window just enough for him to see. He honked again, revving his engine and coming up on her butt.

  She shouted obscenities, letting them fill the car.

  Because she was pissed off, and she didn’t have time to deal with his manly road rage issues.

  She couldn’t even begin to care how stupid they looked, worked up into an absolute rage on a dirt driveway over nothing in particular.

  She whipped into her driveway, and the asshole followed her. She pulled up to the house, killed the engine and got out, pushing her keys through her fingers, making a closed fist. Realistically, she knew that Jacob wasn’t going to get in a fight with her. But old habits died hard. And anyway, she relished the idea of coming at him with her makeshift claws, if nothing else. She was spoiling for a fight. She wasn’t done with the one she’d left behind at Olivia’s, and if he wanted to give her fodder for it, she was all for it.

  And it had nothing at all to do with the fact that she had just been thinking of him and his kindness. Of him seeing her in the most vulnerable moment she’d ever experienced. No. It had nothing at all to do with that. She kicked her way out of the car, just as he was getting out. “You know what,” she said. “Screw you. Screw you and your giant truck. What are you doing? Honking at me?”

  “What the hell are you doing? Turning in front of me. You drive that pansy-ass little car, I could have flattened you.”

  “You should’ve seen me coming. I had my turn signal on.”

  “So did I. I had the right-of-way.”

  “Ladies first.”

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell that you were a lady by the way you were driving. I just thought you were a bog-standard jackass.”

  “I’m not a standard jackass. I am an extravagant one,” she said, holding her fist up, her keys shining through her fingers.

  “Are you honest to God threatening me with your car keys?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “No.”

  “I will cut you,” she said.

  “Great. I will...not let you, but I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “You sure as hell should,” he said. “I don’t punch anyone shorter than six foot. Look at you,” he said. “You were just lecturing me about feelings, and here you are, acting like a hissing, spitting cat.”

  “You’re the one who followed me to my house.”

  “To see what the hell was happening. For all I knew, you were some psycho pulling into your driveway. All those little red Camry cars look alike. I wasn’t sure it was you.”

  “Oh, you knew it was me.”

  “Fine,” he said, advancing on her. “I knew it was you.”

  She growled. Then she stepped forward, dropping the keys and opening her hands, shoving him. He didn’t budge. “Oh, did you? Were you checking to see if I was high? Because I hear I’m a real lost cause.”

  “No,” he said, the word so firm and sure it did something strange to her.

  Washed over like a soothing rain.

  But she was still mad. And she refused to be placated.

  “This is not how I am when I’m high, I think. I don’t really know. Because I usually don’t remember in the morning. But I’ll remember this. I will remember that you are an immature asshole who had to come have a fight about a turn.”

  “I’ll remember this too. I’ll remember that you’re a crazy person.”

  And then, she curled her hands into fists, grabbing hold of his T-shirt. And she had no idea what the hell was running through her head as she stood there looking up into those crazy blue eyes, the present moment mingling with memories of that night long ago when she had cried and bled in front of this man.

  While he witnessed the deepest, darkest thing she’d ever gone through. Something no one else even knew about.

  He was the only one who knew.

  The only one who knew what had started everything. Olivia didn’t understand. Her parents didn’t understand. And they had never wanted to understand.

  But he knew. He knew and he had already seen what a disaster she was.

  There was no facade to protect. No new enlightened sense of who she was. No narrative about her as a lost cause out there roaming the world.

  He’d already seen her break apart. For real. Not the Vanessa that existed when she was hiding. Hiding her problems from her family. Hiding her feelings behind a high.

  Hiding. And more hiding.

  No. He had seen her at her lowest when she hadn’t been able to hide.

  And somehow, he seemed to bring that out in her. Because she wasn’t able to hide her anger either.

  And she wasn’t able to hide this. Whatever the wildness that was coursing through her veins was. No, she couldn’t hide that either. And she wasn’t sure she cared.

  So she was just going to let the wildness carry her forward.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she had done that. The last time she’d allowed herself this pure kind of over-the-top emotion.

  It had been pain. The pain she felt that night she lost the baby. That was the last time she had let it all go. In all the time since then when she had been on the verge of being overwhelmed by emotion she had crushed it completely. Hidden it beneath drugs. Hidden it beneath therapy-speak.

  She had carefully kept herself in hand since she’d gotten sober. Kept herself under control.

  What she hadn’t allowed herself to do was feel.

  She was feeling now. And she wasn’t going to stop it.

  She launched herself forward, and her lips connected with his.

  And before she knew it, she was kissing Jacob Dalton with all the passion she hadn’t known existed inside her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JACOB DIDN’T KNOW what the hell was happening. All he knew was that he’d gone from getting yelled at to being kissed in the space of about thirty seconds.

  He had been there for the yelling. Fully committed to being involved in the insanity of anger that had exploded between them.

  And he was no less involved in this case. No less committed to it. It was lightning. It was fire.

  And it was nothing like he’d experienced for the last four years.

  Four years since he’d touched a woman, and now one was pressed against him, all soft gorgeous curves and pliant mouth. Slick, tempting tongue.

  He parted his lips and consumed her. Near about swallowed her whole.

  He gathered her up in his arms, so that she was up on her toes, as firmly pressed against his body as was humanly possible.

  She trembled, grabbing his face and pulling him more tightly against her, deepening the kiss, wonderfully. Impossibly.

  There had been a purity in that anger that had erupted between them just now. It had wiped away the ghosts of the past, specters that had loomed above his head for years now. Guilt. Because there had been no place for it. The anger was too damn big.

  But as big as the anger had been, this explosion of need was enough to decimate everything. Everything but this.

  He didn’t know why. He didn’t know why her, when every other woman hadn’t managed to arouse any interest in him after all this time.

  But what had started as vague interest yesterday, as he looked at the shape of her breasts through her blouse, had turned into something completely beyond itself today.

  There was no question of stopping. At least, not in his mind. He maneuvered them so they could walk and kiss, so he could guide her up the porch steps while he ate his way down her neck, slidin
g his tongue over her collarbone, until they stumbled backward, her back against the door. He arched his hips forward, grinding against her body, and she arched against him, a harsh, hoarse cry on her lips as she panted and rubbed herself against him.

  He met her gaze, and it was the strangest thing. It was like looking into the past, and looking into the future all at once. He could remember her, scared but so very brave that night she called for help.

  He could see her now. Reckless and untamed. But there was something else. Something deep and wide that stretched out beyond the present moment, and for the life of him he didn’t know what the hell that was. What it meant.

  It was so momentous, he had to look away from it. It echoed inside him, and in places that he didn’t want her to touch.

  And just then, she moved her hand from his face, right down to the front of his jeans. Where he absolutely did want her to touch. She pressed her palm over his denim-covered arousal, finding the shape of him through the thick fabric.

  “Oh my,” she murmured as she tested the length of him.

  “I hope that’s a good ‘oh my,’” he muttered, nibbling on her ear.

  “I doubt you’ve ever had a complaint,” she said, working at his belt.

  They weren’t naked. They weren’t inside. They weren’t horizontal. But he wasn’t about to complain.

  Wasn’t about to ask about foreplay or anything else, not when the woman was undoing his pants, which he wanted more than just about anything else.

  He wanted her naked. He wanted to see those breasts, to see her nipples go tight with need. He wanted to get her completely naked so he could look at all of her soft skin.

  But his brain wasn’t working very well, and immediate satisfaction was at hand, so he was happy to just follow that.