by Maisey Yates
“Maybe that’s all he knows how to give.”
“I think it is. But I don’t want it. And the best thing that I can think of to do is take that money and benefit animals. Do nothing to benefit myself. To stay exactly where I am and prove that it’s enough. That even if I have Jamison Leighton’s money that’s the life that I’ll choose. Because it’s good enough for me.”
“Bea, I didn’t realize that the cabin meant so much to you. And I didn’t realize that you’d been through all of that. But I have to tell you that any man who takes a payout to walk out of your life is a damned fool. The problem is not with you, sweetheart. It never was.”
“Easy for you to say, Dane. You’re the man who formed an entire career around proving to your father that you mattered.”
“That’s true, and I can’t deny it. But I also know that living to spite somebody else, to show somebody else what you are... It’s empty in the end. And it’s selfish. Because it’s taking all of your hurt and everything that person did to you and putting it at the center of all that you are. And that doesn’t give you a happy life. That I can promise you.”
“Why can’t I be selfish?” she asked. “No one else ever considered me first. Why can’t I consider me first?”
“You can. Hell, honey, you should. We don’t need to move in to the winery house. We just need to move a bigger bed into the cabin. And maybe we won’t have a bunch of room to move around, but it’s okay.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to move in to the cabin, Dane, did you think of that? I’ve made a life. A life that matters to me. A life that means something to me. And even if all of you see it as small, what you don’t see is that it’s mine. I fought to be happy with who I was. I fought to see the meaning in the things that I loved, when everything around me told me, with words and without, that it was small and silly and insignificant. I worked to be sure that it wasn’t. Not for me.”
“Beatrix,” he said slowly, his blue eyes gazing into hers, melting her. Making that ache in her chest expand. It was all getting so big. So impossible. The sex this time had been terrifying. And the words that had followed it had been even worse. And all she wanted to do now was run away and hide. Go back to what was familiar. She didn’t want to stay here and do this. She didn’t think she could.
She was never supposed to have to deal with this.
It was supposed to be a fling. It was supposed to be fun. But this wasn’t fun. He wanted things from her. He was asking her to change. He was asking her to give him things. And she just didn’t know... She didn’t know.
“You matter to me,” he said. “And I want to be able to give you a life. A life with me. We can...we can build something. I have my rodeo contacts and I can use that to give us the life we should have.”
“You have one foot out the door, that’s all it is. You can call it whatever you want, and say you’re building something for me, but it’s for you.”
“You’re making excuses,” Dane said.
“What are you offering me? You’re offering us living together for a little while. You want me to uproot everything to live with you. And... I don’t...”
“I’m not talking about for a little while,” Dane said. “That isn’t what I want. I want to live with you. I want to be with you. Just you, Bea. I know that you spent a lot of years with a crush on me. I know that you spent time fascinated by me. And I didn’t have that with you. But you know what I did have? A life. A whole lot of lovers. And it wasn’t this. I know that. I know the difference. You don’t know how amazing this is. How much it means. How much it matters. Because you haven’t slept in bed next to somebody and felt more alone than you did when you were by yourself. I don’t feel that way with you. With you I feel like I’m home. With you I finally feel like I can sit still for a little while.”
She took a step back, her heart pounding. “I’m glad that I’m comfortable for you. But when comfortable wears off I think that you’re just going to want to find someplace new to go.”
“That’s where you’re just going to have to trust me, Beatrix. I can’t show you the future. I can just tell you what I want. I want you.”
He was standing there offering her what she had imagined would be her biggest fantasy. Dane was willing to live in her cabin with her. Willing to be her lover. Those were the things she had dreamed about. Okay, maybe when she was younger, she had dreamed about love and marriage and things like that, but she knew better now. She knew those things were one in a million. Fifty-fifty, really. That Lindy had to go through Damien to get Wyatt. That her parents had never even found that.
Dane was offering her something wonderful.
And she didn’t know how to take wonderful. Because the only thing she’d ever had in her life that felt wonderful had fallen apart. Betrayed her.
And in the end, only Mabel had been by her side. People failed constantly. That was her experience. It was her life.
And Dane wasn’t settled. Not like her. He was at a crossroads in his life. In a position that he’d been forced into by an accident. And what would happen when he got back out there and saw all the options available to him?
Bea and her cabin would seem so small then.
She was what he wanted when he had to be here, but he wouldn’t be stuck here forever. She had been great when he’d been eight months celibate and unsure of what he wanted.
And when he had the whole world before him, why would he choose this? Why would he choose her?
“No,” she said. “That isn’t what I want. I told you what I wanted. I wanted to have sex until we decided it wasn’t fun.”
“That’s really all you want from me?”
“Yes,” Beatrix said, feeling like she was being torn in two. “It’s what I need. Some people are better off doing things by themselves, Dane. And I’m one of them.”
“So all these months of us existing together on the property, helping each other, that didn’t mean anything to you?”
“It did. It was nice, but it’s not my life and it isn’t going to be.”
“Why not? Because it seems to me that you’re letting an awful lot of other people decide what your life is going to be, Beatrix. And I thought that you were stronger than that.”
His words hit hard, square at the center of her chest, where that hideous ache had already taken root earlier when they’d made love.
“Is that what you think? Or are you just upset because what I want isn’t what you want? That doesn’t make you any different from any of the other men that have ever been in my life, Dane. That makes you exactly the same. You can’t understand why I value what I’ve created for myself. You can’t understand why I want...”
“To protect yourself? Because that’s what I see. You get so angry that everyone treats you like a child, but you know that you encourage that. You are the one that hid yourself away in a cabin in the woods and acted like you were some hapless fairy. You want people to underestimate you because then you don’t have to put yourself out there or try to rise up to anything. You want to be able to barricade yourself in that little space you’ve made. And I get it. I do. Don’t tell me that I don’t understand. Honey, I see it clearly. From one person trying to protect himself to another. We might have done it in different ways, but it’s all for the same reasons. I wanted to set myself up big, so big that I was invincible. And you wanted to make yourself small so that no one would notice. You’re like a creature hiding away in a den, and you can call it a choice, Bea, but I don’t believe that it is.”
“Yeah, because you know me better than I do,” she said, the words beginning to fray, beginning to tremble. She hated this. Hated how exposed and raw she felt. Because that’s what this was. He was right. He was pulling her out of her den, kicking and screaming, and if there were earth to hold on to she would have done it. Would’ve ended up with bloodied fingers with dirt wedged under the nails. That’s how hard
she wanted to hold on to that safety.
She remembered a little over a year ago when she had found Evan. On the side of the road, his mother and brother killed by a car. The way that he had clung to the blanket she had handed him like it might protect him from the world. And maybe that was her in her cabin. But it had protected her. It had. And now she was trying other things. She had tried to do this thing with Dane, and she was terrified. Like a small animal left out in the open with no defenses. It wasn’t right, and she hated it. There was no creature in the natural world that would ever subject itself to it.
No creature except for humans. But humans were stupid. They ignored their protective instincts in favor of other things, and it only led to destruction.
Bea knew better.
She knew better because she had watched animals and how they behaved. Because she had observed closely how to survive.
“I want to go home,” she said. “I need to be done.”
“We don’t have to leave for a few hours,” Dane said.
“I didn’t want to stay here in the first place,” she said. “You were the one who thought you could treat me like any other woman. Who thought that I was supposed to melt because you took me to a hotel suite and got me room service. But when have I ever acted like I cared about that?” She clung to that, as thin as it was, because it gave her ammunition. And she wanted to be angry at him. She didn’t want to be scared. And she didn’t want to be upset at herself. But she was running low on things to accuse him of, and this seemed like as good a thing as any.
“You thought that the same tricks would work with me. That I would give you whatever you wanted because you put me in a big bed with high thread count sheets. Because you fed me strawberries in it. I’m not just done with the hotel. We need to be done.”
“Don’t you dare do that to me,” he said. “I’ve been honest with you. Honest as hell. More than I’ve ever been with anyone else. I’ve never hid the fact that I had other lovers. You know that. I also never hid the fact that I think you’re different. You’re different with me. For me. Do you think I’ve ever asked a woman to live with me? What did I just say? I built a life out of being bulletproof. Out of building up a tower for myself that was so high no one could land a hit. I never hid, you’re right. I put it all out in the open, but I made myself a target that no one could land a punch on. Well, I’m down here now. And I’m letting you land a hit. The idea of not being able to go back to the rodeo was something I couldn’t stand because I couldn’t see another way to live life. Until you. I am... I am bleeding here. For you. I bled out in front of a crowd once. Before I passed out, I remember. The way the blood was pumping out of my side, soaking into the dirt. And I remember thinking I’m just watching myself die. That was nothing. That was nothing compared to this.” He took hold of her arms, his blue eyes blazing into hers. “I’m watching myself die, Bea. But you’re the only one that can stop it.”
She didn’t know what to do with that. With this man looking at her like she had some kind of power. Like he needed something from her. She had always kept her head down low, and tried not to get hurt. At least, after that last time. That last pain. That rejection that had wounded her so mortally. She knew how to hide. She knew how to put her head down and protect herself.
She didn’t know what to do with this gruff, strong cowboy who had been the center of her fantasies for so long. She didn’t know what to do with him asking her to save him.
She had saved animals. At no risk to herself. But what Dane needed was something she didn’t know if she could give.
“I can’t be your Band-Aid,” she said, her voice husky. “Because then I’m just here until you heal.” She spoke the words, allowing each one to widen the chasm in her chest. To make her hurt worse. “Mark my words, Dane, the minute that you can go back, the minute you can have those other women, you will.”
“That’s bullshit,” he said.
“Is it? Because you can’t prove that it isn’t. You can’t prove that you won’t. I even think that you believe you won’t. But I know better. Because I’ve watched people leave me.”
“You should know better because you know me,” Dane said.
“All right. If that’s how you want it to be. Maybe it is you. Maybe it’s you I don’t trust, Dane. Because it was sure fun to learn about sex from you, but if I wanted to learn about unending devotion I would’ve picked anyone else. You were never around. And I attached to you because I was a kid. But I’m not a kid now. And maybe that was my big mistake. Thinking that I could take this the way a kid does. As a learning experience. We are adults. Which means that we just... Please take me home,” she said, feeling suddenly flat and defeated.
His face went blank. Flat. “If that’s what you want, Beatrix. That’s what we’ll do.”
“It is.”
They suffered through the awkwardness of taking a walk of shame through the lobby that wasn’t anything like what Bea thought a walk of shame should feel like. Of having to ride in the cab of the truck, while he played country music instead of talking to her. Which was probably for the best, because there really wasn’t anything else for her to say.
She had said everything. She had said too many things. Told him everything about her past and about what scared her. Had said all the hurtful things she could think of to say to him so that she could find ways to be angry.
They finally arrived back home, and much to Bea’s relief nobody seemed to be there. She didn’t quite know what to say to him. Didn’t know what to do.
“Beatrix,” he said, his voice rough. “I can give you whatever it is you need. I’m going to make something of myself with this agent thing. I know that I can.”
“Is that what you think my problem is? You think that I’m saying no because you’re not enough?”
“Isn’t that it? You adored me when I was in the rodeo.”
“Don’t give me that. It was never that. And you know it. I adored you when...”
She adored him now. But back then she couldn’t have him. And he was safe as a result. Now he was here and he was offering her...well, almost everything. Almost.
But it was that bit he was holding back that scared her the most. All these grand plans of his that had nothing to do with her, but everything to do with him. That hotel, as beautiful as it was, was all about him giving things.
She wanted the things, because they came from him. But that wasn’t what he was doing. He was building another platform. And she could see that clearly.
And actually...
It made her think so much of Jamison. Jamison Leighton, who couldn’t stand the idea of looking like less, of having his life look out of order. Oh, it wasn’t about order or appearances for Dane. Not in the same way.
But it wasn’t about love, or choosing to be with someone just because you wanted to be. It was about giving himself a stage to stand on. Putting himself at the center of that performance. Because whatever he had said about leaving bull riding behind, he wasn’t ready to leave all of that behind.
“You’re the one who doesn’t think this is enough,” she said. “You don’t think I’m enough. And you don’t think you’re enough. You’re still trying to buy affection, and it isn’t going to work.”
“Because I’m that bad of a proposition to you?”
“No, because I’m not going to be part of anyone’s performance anymore. That’s all I am to Jamison. A performance.”
“You think I’d offer to move in with you because of a performance?”
“No. I think that you would offer me a fancy hotel room and a life that looks like a triumph as a rodeo agent’s wife because you think that is going to make you feel like enough.”
“You’re twisting this up. It’s not a hard decision to make. You either want to be with me, or you don’t.”
“Do you love me?” she asked, exhaustion infused into each word.
>
She watched as he faltered. “I care about you.”
“That’s not love.”
“What is love, Beatrix? Because let me tell you, I stood in the street and I screamed at my father how much I loved him. As he got in his car for what turned out to be the last time and started to drive away. And you know what he said to me?”
“What?”
“He said he’d see me again if I managed to get myself on TV.”
Her heart twisted for him. For the little boy he’d been. But it ached for the woman she was now. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that he did that to you. I’m sorry that he made you feel like you had to perform to matter. But you don’t have to do that with me. Just drop the bullshit, Dane.”
“It’s not bullshit. It’s me.”
“It’s not. Give me you. And give me love. And then maybe we can find a way to move on from there.”
“You don’t trust me,” he said.
Maybe she didn’t. Or maybe she didn’t trust the world. But if he’d give her those words...she would trust them.
“You don’t trust me. You don’t trust me to want you enough. You don’t trust me... And I’m sorry. If what you’re after is glory you aren’t going to find it with me.”
“I will give you everything I have. I’ve earned a hell of a lot, Beatrix. I’m proud of that. I can give you the winery house. Help support the sanctuary. After I get my life back on track. After I make myself into something again.”
“You’ll come to me with all of that. But can you come to me with nothing?”
“No,” he said. “I can’t. I won’t.”
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t. I can’t live my life as part of someone’s performance. Once you get back to that life, you’ll have all these things that make you special and I won’t be one of them.”