The Cowboy

by Molly O'Keefe

  23

  BEA

  “I don’t know why you keep thinking you’ve hurt me,” I said, trying to get up onto my elbows, but my body wasn’t working. My bones and muscles and blood just needed a minute. One minute to remember what to do.

  Had I ever been fucked like that? And not just the thing without the condom, though that had been hot. But that fucking intensity. Like I couldn’t breathe for a few minutes there. And was still having trouble.

  He’d asked me if he hurt me. And it was sweet that he cared and exciting that he didn’t totally realize how into it I was. How much further we could go with this thing between us.

  He was silent and when I turned his eyes were closed. He was asleep. His face was soft and relaxed. His mouth open a little. His eyelids twitching like he was having a real good dream.

  I brushed the hair back from his face.

  You’re mine. He’d said that. Yeah, in the heat of things, but he’d said it. And I said it back and it was crazy how much I meant it. How hard I felt it in my body. Like a truth I couldn’t get around.

  It was scary. This feeling was like the first part of that roller coaster ride. The chug up the hill, when you were giddy with nerves, but you knew something bad was coming.

  I couldn’t be this happy. I couldn’t actually sustain it. Something bad would happen and if it didn’t—I would make it happen.

  I got out of bed and cleaned myself up in the bathroom. Downstairs, I heard my phone ringing. Ronnie’s ringtone. Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” because sometimes if she had just the right amount to drink, she liked to sing it at the top of her lungs. I skipped my dress and instead threw on Cody’s T-shirt and set a record getting down the stairs to my purse in the kitchen. I managed to get her, right before it went to voice mail.

  “Ronnie!” I gasped, out of breath.

  “Hey, Bea!”

  “How was New York?” The dogs were whining on the porch and I opened the door, wondering how they got caught in there.

  “Very good. How are you? What have you been doing the last two weeks?”

  It was funny, it really was, how there was no way to answer that question. Had it really only been two weeks? How had I blown my life into so many pieces in so short a time? That had to be a new record.

  “Bea?” she asked, with that tone I knew so well. She was trying not to imagine the worst while at the same time bracing herself for it. “Are you okay?”

  So, of course, I did what any fuck-up little sister did—I burst into tears.

  “Bea. Bea. Are you safe? Are you at your apartment? Do you need the police? I can be there in—”

  “I’m at The King’s Land,” I said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Ronnie,” I whispered like I was afraid to say it too loud, to chase away this feeling. “I think I’m happy. And I’m so scared I’ll mess it up.”

  “Okay,” she said, sounding somehow even more alarmed. “I’ll be there in an hour. Two max.”

  “No. No. I don’t want you to come. I don’t need you.”

  Her silence was telling, and it seemed for that moment that something snapped between us. It wasn’t painful. And it wasn’t sad. Whatever broke wasn’t needed anymore. A training wheel that was finally getting taken off.

  “Why do you think you’re going to ruin it?” she asked carefully.

  “Because, isn’t that what I do?”

  “No. Honey. You don’t ruin it. You just…don’t expect enough from it.”

  I swallowed. “Expecting more seems like I’m asking to be disappointed. Expecting more—” I stopped.

  “Seems like something you shouldn’t have?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, because she couldn’t see me nod.

  “What have I been telling you your whole life?” she whispered.

  “That I deserve more.”

  “Yeah. And Mom used to tell me the same thing and she made me believe it. After she died I tried to do the same thing for you, but Dad and the stepwitch were just so much louder than me.”

  “I deserve more,” I said.

  “And you’re not going to mess it up.”

  It wasn’t like a light switch got turned on and I suddenly believed this shit. But a light switch got turned on and I wanted to believe it.

  And maybe that was the first step.

  “Can you come this weekend?” I asked.

  “Of course. We were having dinner at Sabrina’s—”

  “I’m going to be there, too,” I said. Reinviting myself. Poor Cody was going to get a King Family Extravaganza.

  “Really!” Her joy was so pure. So real.

  “Yep. And I’m bringing a date.”

  “Holy shit…is my sister falling in love?”

  “I don’t know, Ronnie,” I whispered because, again, I didn’t want to startle this feeling away. “I just know I’m happy. Really happy.”

  Once Ronnie and I hung up I headed back up the stairs and down the hall toward the closed door of my room. Earlier, I’d skipped my old bedroom for Ronnie’s simpler place. She’d let our stepmother paint her walls and dictate what she could put on the shelves until there was no real sign of Ronnie in her own bedroom.

  It hadn’t seemed to matter to Ronnie when all of it mattered to me. I’d fought every fight that came my way. Losing most of them hadn’t slowed me down at all.

  The gold doorknob was cool in my sticky hand and I had that kind of full-body memory of every single time I’d slammed this door. A million. I turned it and pushed it open, and as it always did, it got stuck a little on the carpet. My room was the same as it had been when I was teenager trying to figure my shit out.

  The four-poster used to have pink and white fabric wrapped around it and I’d torn it down and replaced it with black and silver. I’d painted the walls a midnight blue and covered them with Nine Inch Nails posters. All my books were romance novels and erotica. No math trophies for me.

  I had a dressing table with a mirror and…yep, in the second drawer down was the My Little Pony pencil case with a fifteen-year-old stash of weed.

  The dogs started up the stairs, their tags jangling at different rhythms. Louise came in first and Thelma pushed the door open further with her body. There were face licks and some very investigative smelling of my body.

  “Go,” I muttered, giving them a push. “Get.” They jumped onto the bed and curled up against the bare mattress together like they did at home.

  My body still smelled like Cody and sex and I liked it.

  “Bea?”

  I closed my eyes at the sound of his voice, but I straightened my spine, too. Part of me was still braced to be hurt. For one of us to fuck this up. To get it wrong.

  “In here!” I cried and I heard his step coming down the hallway until he stood in the doorway of my room. He’d pulled on his jeans but nothing else, and my mouth went dry and my body went wet at the sight of that lovely chest. Those bare feet. The rumpled hair.

  His smile.

  “You had a real vibe, huh?” he asked, taking in the dark splendor of my room.

  “Goth wannabe,” I said. “It made my stepmother crazy. That was reason enough to light the whole world on fire. ”

  Louise on the bed got up and growled at Cody.

  “Holy shit, how did you get out of that porch?” he said.

  “You put them in there?”

  “The little one was cock-blocking me.”

  I laughed while Cody went over to the bare mattress and stood there while Louise sniffed him until she must have realized we smelled enough alike that he was acceptable.

  He was quiet for a long time, like he was waiting for me to say something, and then I realized I was doing the same.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “I feel like I still want to apologize.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and we smiled at each other.

  “I’m gonna screw up agai
n. I mean, I don’t know when. And I’m not going to go seeking it out. But I feel like it’s pretty inevitable.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m probably going to do the same.”

  “So?” I asked past the lump in my throat. “Do we shake hands? End it here—”

  He cradled my face in his palms and kissed me so gently on the mouth. “No,” he breathed across my lips. “That’s not what I want.”

  “Me neither.”

  “You said…you said you were mine.”

  During sex. We’d been frantic saying that to each other. Like we needed to say it or die.

  “You said I was yours.”

  “That’s what I want,” he said, kissing me again and then again. “That’s all I want. For you to be mine and for me to be yours.”

  This sweetness was nearly unbearable. It was changing everything. The way I saw the world, the way I lived in my skin. It made anything seem possible.

  Absolutely anything.

  “Hey.” I leaned into him. Pushing my belly against his until I felt his cock twitch.

  “Yeah?”

  “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything.”

  “I need you to fuck me in every room in this house so the dogs and I can live here.”

  He leaned back. “You’re joking.”

  “I’m dead serious. I need good memories in this place, to replace the bad ones.”

  “Okay.” He nodded solemnly. “How many rooms are we talking about here?”

  “Including the bathrooms?”

  “If you need me to fuck you in the bathroom, then I will fuck you in the bathroom.”

  “Fifteen rooms.”

  He smiled and then laughed, and then I was laughing, too. We held each other up as we howled and the dogs got into it, as well.

  “Hey,” he said, turning to shoo the dogs off the bed. They listened like he was another one of their humans and I felt my heart get too big in my chest. “You guys get. We better start if we’re going to clear out a few of these rooms tonight.”

  He booted the dogs out the door and shut it behind them.

  “You ready for this?” he asked, grinning at me. My broken-down cowboy with all the rules we shattered.

  “So ready.”

  24

  BEA

  Six months later

  Cody was down at the barn. This was not a surprise. He was often down at the barn. It’s where Bonnie was, and the dogs, and the two new horses he’d taken on this month. One was blind. The other was an ornery cuss.

  Cody was a sucker for both of them.

  “Hey,” I said, walking between the stalls. “Cody?”

  “Back here,” he said, and I walked down the aisle carefully in my heels. This wasn’t a formal dinner, but it was Christmas and it was a party. And…well, Cody liked me in heels. I turned the corner to see Cody in Bonnie’s stall.

  He wore his black suit that fit him like he was a superhero. Swear to God, that suit was probably going to get me pregnant one of these days.

  “Am I late?” he asked. “I thought I had an hour—”

  “You do.”,

  “Sabrina making you crazy?” he asked, grinning at me.

  “Not at all. Jack on the other hand…”

  “Well, he’s in love. It’s hard to blame him.”

  I was borrowing The Bar’s chef for this party and Jack was supposed to be a guest but he couldn’t quit keep that line clear. Cody and I had invited all our family—excluding his mother—Jack and the staff at The Bar, and a few other people around town. It was our first real shindig at the house.

  Bonnie turned her head to rub her nose against me. A little head butt to the chest and I scratched her behind the ears. Louise, in the corner, farted and sighed. She’d taken up residence in Bonnie’s stall about as easily as Cody and I had taken up residence in the house.

  Which was to say, so easily.

  Home like I never knew. And Cody worked some construction and he took in horses that needed love and I helped run The Bar and we were happy.

  Which was to say, so happy.

  “You nervous?” I asked, trying to keep my grin under control.

  “Nah,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t be,” I said. “My brother is a normal guy.”

  “You Kings got a skewed idea of normal.” Cody eyed me sideways but he was smiling. Dylan and Madison were coming in from Los Angeles for the party and staying with us at the ranch for a few days.

  Cody was a little nervous.

  I leaned over and kissed his mouth, right where his smile started.

  “He puts his pants on one leg at a time,” I whispered.

  “Right before he kills people?” Cody asked.

  “With his bare hands,” I said, and we both laughed. I laughed a little harder than he did.

  “Please don’t be nervous. He’s really a nice guy,” I said. “And Maddie is super nice once you get to know her.”

  “Yeah, you said that about Clayton.”

  Clayton was taking the role of big brother to me very seriously. And it was sweet, but he had yet to warm up to Cody. Ronnie assured me it just took a little time and they needed to find some common ground. Which wasn’t easy to locate between the self-made billionaire and the former rodeo star turned contractor.

  Cody and Garret, Sabrina’s husband, on the other hand, got along like a house on fire and suddenly Sabrina and I were double-dating. It was so weird.

  “Charlie said he’d be a little late,” Cody told me for the third time. His nerves were so sweet. His family meeting my family and all that stuff. “How are you not nervous?”

  “I’m drunk.”

  “Bea!”

  “Kidding. I’m not nervous because I love you, Cody.” His face always went a little red when I said that. His ears got hot, like my words changed his chemistry for just a moment. Which made sense, because when he said it to me, I felt like I was floating. Like I was stoned on some powerful drug. “I love you so much. There’s nothing to be nervous about when you’re by my side.”

  He sighed and pressed his forehead to mine. Bonnie tried to nibble on his ear, but I saved him, wrapping my arms around his neck.

  “I like this dress,” he said, running his hand along all the sequins.

  “I know you do.”

  “I like how it looks all crumpled up on the floor.” I laughed as his hand swept down over my ass. “I like how it looks bunched up around your waist.”

  “Yeah,” I breathed. Getting hot under those silver sequins. And I’d come out here because he was nervous. And I had a little something on under this dress that would make him feel better. “I’m not so sure.”

  His chuckle was dark and dangerous and lit up every single thing inside my body.

  “You need me to show you?” he breathed against my mouth. “You need me to show you how good you look with your dress up around your waist? Maybe I need to bend you over—”

  His hand was pulling up my dress and I knew right away when he realized that what I had on under this dress was nothing.

  “Bea,” he groaned.

  “You got about twenty minutes, cowboy. Make them count.”

  And that’s the thing about my Cody. He made every single one of those minutes count.

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  25

  Excerpt of Bad Neighbor

  Chapter 1

  In the end the futon was my downfall.

  It wasn’t having my sister leave for par
ts unknown.

  Or giving her most of my money.

  Or moving out of the condo I loved so much, only to move to this shit hole apartment, where there was a good chance I was going to get knifed before I even got my stuff in the door.

  So far, none of that had made me so much as swear. Much less cry. Or scream.

  That stuff is just my life. It’s the shit that happens to me. Part of being a twin to my sister.

  But this futon…

  This futon is a punishment from God. It is the universe laughing at me.

  It was stuck in the door of my new apartment, folded up like a taco. An immoveable three thousand pound taco.

  And it wasn’t moving.

  This is just what you get for not hiring movers. Or having a boyfriend. Or anyone really, who could help move a girl with five boxes, three garbage bags and a futon mattress to her name.

  Oh and several thousand dollars in computer and drafting equipment. All sitting safely in the corner of my apartment. I moved Izzy in first (yes, I named my system. It seemed only right, considering how much time I spend with her) and threw a sheet over her. Paranoid about this new neighborhood I locked up between trips to my rental truck to get the rest of my stuff. Which was now all sitting behind me on the cracked cement walk way.

  Except for the current bane of my existence.

  The futon.

  Which, I’d like to point out, I got out of the back of the truck, dragged down the path from the parking garage to this point, actually folded it up like a taco and got it halfway through the door.

  But now my shaky-exhausted-unused-to-this-amount-of-work (any kind of work actually that doesn’t involve a mouse, a pencil or a stylus) muscles have given up.

  And to add insult to injury, my hair was getting in on the joke, by pulling out of my hair elastic and head band to pop up in white blond corkscrews and fall into my face. It was sticking to my neck.