“Me either,” she says, and when she backs away I want to pull her to me. I want to forget all the reasons this thing between us can’t be a thing at all.
She whirls around and then she’s gone, and fuck, I huff out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. I pick up the old unit and carry it out to my truck. By the time I’ve installed the final unit and loaded the junk into my truck she’s filled two plates with steaks, potatoes, corn, and macaroni and cheese. “I have no idea where this is from.”
“Carl’s Bar and Grill in town. It’s good eating.”
“You want to eat in the living room? The barstools are kind of awkward for me.”
“I’ve got the plates, if you’ll grab a couple of beers.” I hesitate. “Or does a city girl like you even drink beer?”
“I drink beer and wine. I’m versatile like that, but after that vodka last week, I’ll stick with water.”
I carry the plates toward the couch. “When you got my grandmother drunk.”
“She got us drunk,” she argues, following me then sitting down next to me, setting a beer in front of me. “And she’s really fun. I love her for too many reasons to count.”
“She’s special,” I agree, digging into my food, as she does the same. “She’s a rare breed. That’s why I don’t want her hurt.”
“And you still think I’m the evil city queen here to burn cookies and devastate cowboys?” She takes a bite.
“I know you are,” I tease.
“Well, at least we’re being honest with each other now.” She takes a bite and moans her delight. “You’re right,” she says after another few bites. “This is great. I love it.”
“We don’t have a lot of choices round here, so it’s good when it’s good.”
“Do you ever miss the choices, like running to Starbucks or McDonalds?”
“Yes, I do. I traveled the world, Jessica. I’m not without an understanding that this place comes with limits.”
“But it comes with your grandmother and the men who work and live here. They count on you.”
I’m stunned that she sees this. “Yes. Exactly.”
“Do you miss playing ball?”
“According to you, I do.”
“Do you?” she presses.
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“Do you?” she repeats.
“Yes, Jessica, I miss it.”
She twists around to face me, energized by my reply. “There has to be a way—”
“Don’t go down that rabbit hole. I can’t go down that rabbit hole. Entire families count on me.”
“You’re still young. It can change. We can plan and—”
“We?”
“I feel a part of this. I know I’m not, but I adore your grandmother and you called us friends.”
“We are friends.”
“Well, then, let me aspire to be the pain in the ass to you that Shelley is to me.”
“You already won that contest.”
“And I’m not even done yet. You need to be on the mound with a ball in your hand.”
“A new, faster, better pitcher will come along well before that. I’ll still be here when you’re back in luxury in Dallas.”
“Doing what? I don’t want to divorce people anymore.” She breathes out. “That’s the first time I’ve said that out loud. It feels kind of liberating. I don’t want to divorce people anymore. That’s the reason I’m struggling with this book.”
“The romance or the divorce guide?”
“I was never supposed to write a romance. Shelley and your grandmother think that if I write a romance, it’ll humanize the divorce guide.”
“And you?”
“I don’t believe in love. How do I write romance?”
“You didn’t love Craig?”
“I thought I did, but I think losing someone you love feels different than what I felt when we broke up.”
“Different how?”
“I listened to him having sex with another woman in our bed, from the next room, and I didn’t cry, I didn’t shout, I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t cry until I was here that night, standing in the rain. You know why I cried here?”
“Why?”
“I was alone. I felt so damn alone and that’s why I think Craig was all about security to me. He was stable. He made money. He had a plan. He was predictable.” She laughs bitterly. “Until he wasn’t, but that’s not the point. My mother really is a revolving door of marriages.”
“And so you embraced divorce? Isn’t that a contradiction, the exact opposite of stability?”
“Bad marriages don’t equal stability, but in the process of playing what I turned into a heroine role, I really lost touch with what a healthy relationship is. If they even exist. I’m cynical. I really sound like a catch, don’t I?”
She’s not talking about her job. There’s more to that statement. “You think you aren’t? You’re beautiful, smart, and tough, Jessica.”
“Thanks, but you know, I didn’t cry for Craig, but that doesn’t mean having your man in bed with another woman doesn’t gash a girl’s self-esteem.”
I notice how she switches to third person, how she removes herself from the girl she’s talking about, which is herself. Or the way she turns away and takes a bite of food. “I didn’t love Tessa, either,” I say.
She turns a surprised look on me. “She hurt you. I see that in you.”
“She woke me up.”
“Taught you that all city girls are the devil?” she teases.
“It would seem that way, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes, it would. I take it she was here at the ranch. Did she, too, come in high-heeled boots and get stuck in mud? Or perhaps drop an air conditioner on one of your men?”
“No, she just fucked a few.”
Her eyes go wide. “Oh, I—I guess I know why you don’t want me to date your men now.”
“I bought that woman a ring, Jessica. She wasn’t you.”
She sucks in air and turns away. “Right.”
I catch her arm. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I’m sorry. I tend to get angry talking about this. After my parents died, she wanted me to sell out and leave everyone here to fend for themselves. She was angry when I declined. Because that wasn’t who I was or am. I convinced her that we could live here, out of the Hollywood spotlight, and that was a mistake. In turn, she fucked three of my men and told me that it was because when I left baseball I lost my balls. Looking back, I don’t know what I was thinking. Aside from being in love with the success. I wanted the actress wife, the pro-ball career, the enviable position in life. I don’t like what I became, and I owe her for waking me up. That was enviable.”
“I guess we both had our own version of storybook lives that weren’t the fairy tales we’d hoped.”
I turn away from her and rest my elbows on my knees. “I guess we did.”
“Playing ball doesn’t have to make you become that again. You know that, right?”
I straighten with rejection. “It does. It will. Maybe that’s a flaw in my personality. I do one or the other. I’m this or I’m that. When I play ball, I become that world.”
“That world can be what you want it to be. You were young and on a high you hadn’t yet matured into handling.”
“I was thirty. That’s a damn man.”
“Who did what needed to be done for the ranch and your family. Who stepped up when your parents died.”
“I should have stepped up sooner.” The words are out before I can stop them. I grab our plates and take them to the kitchen.
She doesn’t follow me, clearly understanding I need a minute, but when I grab another beer, and this time bring her one, too, she readily accepts it. And she proves a walk to the kitchen doesn’t make a change of topic. “What you’ve do
ne since your parents died, going through that, it changes you.”
“Maybe too much to go back.”
“Maybe. That’s an open door. Is your arm healed?”
“My arm is fine. My arm didn’t keep me here.” I open her beer and mine. “This place and family did. I’m not going back.” I hand her the beer. “Darius reminded me that I need to stay here.”
“Darius? You mean me?” She takes the beer and sets it on the table. “Don’t say that. Don’t use me or him as an excuse to quit. If you just want to quit, if you can’t take the pressure, that’s one thing. Quit. If you’re afraid of not being good enough or you’re worried about the ranch, those are two different things.”
“Are they now?”
“Yes. They are. And I’m not going to ask you to bare your soul and tell me if it’s choice A, B, or C. I’ll just say this. Life is short and you have to chase your dreams. And I’m not saying that because I want you to go be famous and rich and I can chase you into luxury. You had your dream in your hand. Jason, you can still have it.”
“And you, Jessica? What’s your dream?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not what I was doing before. Right now, I’m just having fun baking with your grandmother.”
“From almost-partner in a top law firm to baking cookies with my grandmother. We both know that won’t last.”
“I’m glad one of us does. Because right now, this place feels pretty safe.”
Safe.
Her comment about security comes back to me. “You’re hiding here.”
“Aren’t you, too?” she challenges. “Don’t you avoid everything to do with baseball?”
She’s officially hit about ten nerves. “I couldn’t if I wanted to. Everyone wants to talk about fucking baseball.”
“Okay, well me, too. I love to talk about baseball.”
“You actually really like baseball, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. My boyfriend in college played. He was a catcher, which really makes you appreciate pitching, by the way. I swear he and I dated because I became passionate about ball. We had that bond. That love.”
“Where is he now?”
She waves him off. “I have no idea. He transferred to play with a bigger team and I stayed behind, but he left me baseball. I never lost that love.”
“Did Craig like baseball?”
“Hated it. Shelley likes it, though. We watched it together. What about Tessa?”
“Loved the idea of being with a pro pitcher. Didn’t know shit about the game. She just wanted me to win for the press.”
“She really sounds shallow and horrible. Maybe we should introduce Craig and Tessa. I’m sure Craig will dump his secretary for her.”
My lips quirk. “How did two nice people like us end up with them?”
“I’m nice. You’re still an asshole.” She angles my direction. “I missed the draft. Did you watch it?”
“You didn’t miss the draft.” I grab the remote. “I recorded it on this television.”
She gives me a sideways look. “Because you’re still obsessed and you hide it by watching here.”
She sees too much. “Do you want to watch the draft or not?”
“I would love to watch the draft and hear perspective from an insider.”
I really want to kiss those fucking comments off her lips right now. Instead, I turn on the draft. She asks me questions, and I find that talking to someone who loves the game feels good. She feels good. This feels good. She feels good, too good, but just as I think I need to go before this gets out of hand, she falls over onto my shoulder. She’s asleep and I don’t want to move. But I do. I need to go before I make a mistake, but when I shift, she makes a soft sound and nestles closer to me. A woman who never feels safe, feels so damn safe that she doesn’t even know when I move. I test her; that’s what I tell myself at least. I lay down and pull her under my arm, and she doesn’t wake up. And once again, it’s clear.
I’m not going anywhere.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Jessica…
I wake to an explosion of my senses. There’s a hard body beneath mine, a hand on my head, the familiar scent of delicious man filling my nostrils. I jerk up and look at Jason, to realize we’re on the couch and sunlight is breaking through the blinds. “Did we have sex and I don’t remember? Because that would really suck.”
“If you think you can have sex with me and forget it, then I did it wrong.”
“No. I didn’t mean. Sex with you was—”
He arches a brow. “Was?”
“Very good,” I breathe out, the flex of his hard body and the thickening of his cock against my hip impossible to miss, and why would I want to?
His eyes light. “Which is why I’ve been lying here for four hours, thinking about having sex with you.”
“Friends don’t have sex.”
“Right. Friends don’t have sex.” He sits us up with such a sudden force that my head spins as I go upright. “Which is why I should go before we do,” he adds.
I grip the edges of the couch and, afraid he thinks I just rejected him, and because rejection sucks, I decide to go bold. “We could—”
He drags me to my feet, his hands on my arms, our bodies facing each other. “If we do, this goes to a place that neither of us needs right now. You’re rebounding. You’re hurting. You’re leaving. I’m fucked in the head for ten different reasons.”
Now I’m feeling the sting of the “friends and rejection” thing. “All named Tessa.” I don’t even try to hide the bitterness in that statement. It’s there. It’s ripe for the picking.
“There’s not one moment that I’m with you that I think of Tessa.”
“All the moments that you’re with me, I’m the city girl. I’m the girl trying to write a romance novel to remember what love is or figure it out for the first time ever.”
“So now you’re writing the romance novel?”
“Why is that a bad thing? Are we friends? Because if we are, maybe you might have some advice. Maybe you can give me a guy’s point-of-view without us having to get naked to do it. I had a good time with you last night. Maybe we’re just—maybe we’re going too fast. Maybe we need to shoot for somewhere between hot and cold instead of only having two temperatures.”
“Right. You’re right. We can land in between. We’re friends.”
“Don’t sound so stiff and angry about it.”
His phone buzzes with a text, and he grabs it from the coffee table, his eyes narrowing as he does. There’s something about the text, the way his expression shifts, that I can read. “I need to go,” he says. “Let’s talk later.”
I nod, disappointment filling me. For all I know, that message was from Tessa. For all I know, he’s so damn obsessed with her that I’m not really here. “Yeah. Later. I need to go pee and brush my teeth anyway.” It’s not a sexy thing to say, but why do I need to be sexy? We’re not having sex. Ever. Again. I turn and walk away. He lets me. It’s a jag in my belly, but that’s okay. I’ll get some good, cynical, divorce guide pages in today. He’s done me a favor. Maybe that’s the only way to write a divorce guide. Straight up and no bullshit.
I step into the bedroom, and I can hear the moment the front door opens and shuts. I squeeze my eyes shut and sit down on the bed. My body aches from being pressed to his. My heart aches because it didn’t matter to him. Because it does to me.
…
Jason…
I walk out to the truck and get inside, staring down at the text message from the Rangers’ manager, Russell James, a man I’ve known and respected for years: I was told you wanted to talk about a training camp. All we need to know is that you’re involved. Come talk to us about it and you. You’re too damn gifted to sit on the sidelines. Whatever is holding you back, we’ll find a way to get by it.
I inha
le on that unexpected message, taking a moment to just breathe because it’s pretty fucking impossible right now. The Rangers want to talk to me about me. They want me on the mound, and fuck, I want on the mound. I want to go. I want to talk. I want to dream again, but while I’m off playing ball my grandmother is getting older. Before I sat there talking to Jessica about dreams, I wouldn’t even be thinking about talking to them. I don’t know if she’s a good or bad influence on me. I don’t know if she’s my next Tessa who makes me block out everything but success or if she’s a voice of reason. What I know is I need to step back from her and get her voice out of my head. This decision has to be about the ranch, my grandmother, and my responsibility. Not dreams.
Whatever the case, I text Russell back: Name the time and place, but I need you to know, the arm is still strong, but the obstacles are big. The only reason I’m talking is because you’re in Dallas. This is as close to home as I could get.
I start the truck and drive home, take a hot shower, and play last night with Jessica over and over in my head. I can’t keep that woman and her body, and mouth, especially the words coming out of it, from playing. I step out of the shower to my cell ringing. It’s a Dallas number and I answer to hear, “Monday morning,” from a familiar male voice. Russell James.
“Can you do it?”
“Yes. I can do Monday.”
“Good. And, man, the owner is looking forward to this right along with the rest of us. I want you to know I’m rooting for you. I get it. I know your parents died in a really shitty, sudden way, but I met them. They were proud of you. They want this for you. I want you to have it.”
“The camp—”
“We’ll support you any way we can on that, but we’d rather do it on off-season, while you’re playing for us.”
“You haven’t seen me pitch lately. No one has.”
“Come ready to throw, then. We’ll have our gloves ready.”
We hang up, and I grab the counter, lower my chin to my chest. “What am I doing?” I whisper.
The Truth About Cowboys Page 23