Down Home Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  “I love her. More than my own fucking life. Everything that I’ve done over the course of the past couple of years has been for her. Everything. Right now, I’m working to make us a place to live, on top of working at the ranch. I brought her here so that we could start healing. So that we weren’t living in this house full of ghosts. With both of us waiting for her mother to walk back through the door one day and say that she was an idiot, and that she was sorry. I couldn’t put either of us through that anymore. I gave up everything that I had worked for for her.”

  “And I don’t think she sees it that way. Have you said that to her?”

  He leaned back in his chair, taking the two front legs up off the ground. “No. But I shouldn’t have to.”

  “Why? Because she should recognize what you’re doing perfectly with all the great and wizened maturity she has at sixteen? Because she should have to change the way that she feels appreciated, rather than you changing the way that you show it?”

  Oh, that was just too damn close to being valid criticism. He didn’t like it. It jabbed him right in the side. “Just because you’ve spent a few hours with Violet doesn’t mean you know her. And just because you’ve spent a couple of naked hours with me doesn’t mean you know me.”

  “You asked me to do this, Cain. You wanted me to talk to her. Don’t get mad now because I’m telling you something you don’t want to hear.”

  “I wanted you to tell me if she was getting into any kind of trouble I needed to know about.” He was digging in now, getting defensive. And he could feel himself doing it, even knew that it was maybe a little bit unreasonable. But he couldn’t bring himself to care.

  He was mad. Because apparently Alison spent two seconds in Violet’s company, and Violet unloaded everything onto her. And he had... Well, he had nothing. He had nothing from her at all. That was unacceptable.

  “Well, she is having trouble. She’s having trouble with you. She doesn’t know how to talk to you. She doesn’t feel like you care about her. Don’t you want to know that?”

  He damn well didn’t. Not from the woman he was sleeping with. Not from anybody, really. But most especially not from her. It was all that tangled up string. Those different lines they had running that were a serious problem.

  “I’m going to go. I’m going to go work. To build something for myself and for my daughter, which is important, even if a sixteen-year-old who feels like she’s not getting enough attention—because she’s not the center of the world as she can see it twenty-four hours a day—can’t see that. She is the center of my world, that’s what’s infuriating about this. Everything I do is for her.”

  He stood, shoving the rest of the turnover into his mouth, and walked out of the bakery. He started to walk down the street, headed toward where his truck was parked, when he heard footsteps angrily stomping behind him on the pavement. He turned to see Alison coming after him, her cheeks red.

  “She can’t see it,” Alison said. “She can’t. It doesn’t matter what you think she should see, she can’t. Maybe my parents did love me, Cain. But I never thought they did. And it led me to a really bad place. I made a complete mess of my life because the people who were supposed to love me couldn’t show me that they did. You’re better than they are, you are. But Violet has been through more than I had at that point. Even if it doesn’t feel intuitive to you, even if it’s hard, you need to drop some of this brick wall you’ve built up in front of yourself. Because it isn’t her fault that your father left you, it isn’t her fault that you’ve learned to protect yourself because people have abandoned you in the past. None of this is her fault.”

  “You don’t think I know that?” he growled, advancing on her. “I’ve never blamed her. Not for one second. I blame myself, if anything. So now I’m trying to fix it.”

  “Is this how you tried to fix your marriage too?” The question was hushed, but it hit him with the force of a fist to his gut.

  “You don’t have the right to comment on my marriage,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Why not? You just build fences around everything and nobody has the right to remark on it, because it hurts you? Honestly, Cain, I don’t think you know how to talk to anybody. I think you keep everybody at a distance, including your daughter. I assume you did the same thing to your ex-wife.”

  “It figures that you would take her side without even ever having met her.”

  He turned away from her again, stalking around the corner, and he could sense Alison following behind. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “By your own admission,” he said, stopping and turning to face her. “You ended your marriage. You left your husband. Why was that? He didn’t make you feel loved while he went and worked his knuckles bloody for you? Is that what it is?”

  She drew back like he’d hit her, her eyes full of anger, and pain, and he regretted his words almost immediately. But he was mad. Because here she was passing commentary on the woman who had abandoned him and his child as if he had been in full control of something that could have fixed it. There was no fixing somebody who was awful enough to abandon her own daughter. There just wasn’t. There was nothing he could have done. Even if he could have been better, he couldn’t have stopped her.

  “If she had only left me, Alison, we would be having an entirely different conversation. But she didn’t. She left Violet too. She was broken. I could’ve been the best damn husband in the entire world and I couldn’t have stopped her from doing that. If it had just been me... If she had stayed in the area, if she had told us where she was going, if she had showed up to court to work out a custody agreement rather than me ending up with full custody by default... Then maybe I would say that you’re right. But she didn’t. And so you’re not.”

  Alison wrapped her arms around herself. “The way I see it, it’s two separate issues. Your ex-wife was definitely messed up. And what she did was wrong. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to identify some of the things that went badly in your relationship and make sure you’re not repeating them. It doesn’t mean you don’t have to change.”

  “Right. So your husband had to change?”

  She took a step toward him, her expression furious. “I had to change. I had to change everything that I was. To get up enough courage to leave him, to start over, I had to change everything about myself. I have spent the past four years painstakingly changing everything that I became when I was married to that monster. You don’t know my marriage. You don’t know my life. If I were you I would tread really carefully around that subject, Cain.”

  He wanted her to tell him. He wanted her to tell him so that he could know what they were fighting about. He wanted to be able to have that conversation, but it was futile, and it was fruitless.

  Because they weren’t supposed to get to know each other. They were supposed to talk about Violet. They were supposed to have sex. Those things didn’t need to wind together, they didn’t need to have a confessional between the two of them. Talking about past sins and failures. They weren’t supposed to change each other. They were just supposed to soothe each other, give each other a little release. That was it. He shouldn’t want to know. And yet he did.

  He wanted to keep having this fight, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. Except that he felt like she was close to scratching at the truth, to knocking down that brick wall she had accused him of building up between himself and the world, and he found he was curious to see what was behind it.

  But he wasn’t going to. He was going to walk away.

  “We just won’t talk about that subject, then,” he said. “Because that’s not what this was supposed to be about. I appreciate you talking to Violet.” He wasn’t sure he did. “But I think it’s something I’m going to have to work out for myself.”

  “And us?”

  He paused. “Maybe not the best idea. Beca
use it’s messy. It wasn’t supposed to be messy. It was supposed to be good. Neither of us needs complications.”

  She shook her head. “Good point. I’m way too busy for complications.”

  “Yeah, well. Me too. I have enough drama and fighting in my life without adding it here.”

  Her cheeks darkened with rage. “This is hardly drama. I was trying to have a conversation with you. Don’t make it about me being hysterical. I’ve had enough of those accusations to last me a lifetime.” He knew that they were talking about her first marriage again. Something in him felt hungry. When she brought it up, when she skirted around the edges of that particular topic, he felt hollow. Starving for a little bit more of her.

  That was a new feeling. One he couldn’t say he had ever experienced before.

  With Kathleen, the only thing he had been hungry for was her body. And it had resulted in a connection that had been a lasting one. Because they’d had Violet. And from there they had tried to make a marriage.

  He paused there for a moment, looking at Alison. He had never really wanted to know everything about Kathleen. They had known each other, sure. They had been married for thirteen years. But he didn’t think they had ever screamed at each other on the street. Not like this. He had never wanted to get to the bottom of what a fight was really about. Not like this.

  Thirteen years and he had never once yelled at her. She had never yelled at him. No, it had been a whole lot of quiet resentment that both of them had let brew because neither of them had wanted to examine it. Least of all him.

  That was... It was unsettling to realize he had now experienced something more with a woman he had been involved with for only about a week than he had with the woman he had pledged to stay with forever. The woman he had spent more than a decade with.

  What had he done with Kathleen? He had walked on eggshells around her while she had seemed to tiptoe on glass, and then he had gone out to the ranch to work. Work himself until he was exhausted and there was no question about them having a conversation. In the end, no question about them having sex because both of them were too tired.

  But they made themselves too tired. They both had.

  It was bleak. Just the memory was bleak. And so much harsher in hindsight than it had been in reality. Time and distance away from that kind of existence had made it look exactly like what it was. Something that nobody would willingly endure if they had a choice. Well, he supposed that Kathleen had had a choice. To just walk away completely. To make a clean break.

  Not spending the next few years arguing over custody. She had opted to not see him at all.

  Standing on the street, yet again, he felt like he was looking down at a stranger, rather than comfortably occupying the body he had inhabited for the past thirty-eight years. A stranger that he could see clearly, and without bias. A man who had been married without really being married. Sure, he had kept his vows, had never even thought about straying, but he had been no manner of husband. Not really. He hadn’t been plugged in, hadn’t been connected.

  It took two people to create that atmosphere, and he knew it. But his part in it had been very real. And that had all been covered up by blame. The blame on Kathleen for leaving, the blame on himself for being so terrible she’d had to leave. But the truth was actually much more insidious than that. It wasn’t about the way he was with her. It was about the way he was.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “I think Lane is picking Violet up from work.”

  He would make sure that she was.

  Alison wrapped her arms around herself. “Okay.” She looked miserable, small and devastated, and he hated himself. But he didn’t know what else to do. Or maybe he did and he just wasn’t ready to do it.

  “Great.” He tipped his hat and turned back toward his truck, jerking open the door and getting inside, gritting his teeth as he jammed the key into the ignition and started the engine.

  But nothing was great. Not about this, not about anything. He felt like he had missed an opportunity back there, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back and claim it. Wasn’t sure it was even possible.

  So he just drove away. And when he got to the ranch, he started work like nothing had happened. The only thing that was different was that he recognized the pattern. That he felt himself walking a well-worn track, even though he was in Oregon instead of Texas.

  Working instead of talking. Walking away instead of saying all the things that should be said, even if they were mean and unfair. Even if they made waves.

  There had been waves in his marriage—they had just been beneath the surface. And part of him had been convinced that as long as they didn’t grow into massive swells that everyone could see, they wouldn’t do any damage. But that foundation had been cracked beyond repair without shouting in the street.

  Now this conversation with Alison might have put a crack in him. And he’d be damned if he had any idea how to fix it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ALISON WAS FURIOUS. She was furious the entire rest of the day, all through baking, all through serving customers, all through doing everything that had given her joy for the last four years. Stupid Cain Donnelly had ruined her joy. Asshole.

  Of course, she supposed that wasn’t really fair. She was one who had taken off after him down the street like an enraged bat winging her way out of hell. She was the one who had pressed things. And she supposed that she shouldn’t really be surprised that in the end he had gotten nasty with her, because she had gotten nasty with him.

  She had felt angry and raw over what he had said about her marriage. Because it hit perilously close to the bone. To things that had been said to her in those initial years of mistreatment. When people had asked her what she could be doing to make her home a more peaceful place. What she had done to make her husband angry.

  Her own father had asked her that once, what she was doing to make Jared so upset. Because of course, it had to be her fault in some way. She hadn’t spoken to him again after that.

  From her father’s point of view Alison had always been trouble. She had certainly made her parents angry often enough, though they hadn’t demonstrated it with fists, but with cold silence.

  His assertion that perhaps she had been inflexible, that perhaps she had been the one who had needed to change, while expecting him to make all the changes, had come from him knowing absolutely nothing about the situation. But still, it was so close to being an echo of all those old, terrible things that it was gnawing at her.

  More than that, her blood was still humming with the fight. She wanted to go back at him. Wanted to find him again and scream at him. There had been something cathartic about it. Something freeing.

  To get angry. To feel angry. And to expend all of it all over this big strong man without any fear of him. Yes, his words had hurt, yes they had struck in tender places, but he hadn’t frightened her.

  She had been able to speak her mind at him, and God knew that she had about a million more things on her mind that she wanted to subject him to.

  Seething, she grabbed a rag and began to wipe down the counter where it was already pristine and clean. She hadn’t been so mad in a long time. She didn’t know what it was about Cain Donnelly that seemed to call up the extremes in her emotions. In her body. Extreme need, extreme rage.

  She threw the towel down into the milk crate beneath the counter that housed all of the dirty linen. Then she paced, each turn sharper than the last. She covered the small space back behind the register.

  No. She wasn’t done with him. She was not done letting Cain Donnelly have a piece of her mind. She was going to give him more. Several pieces. She wasn’t going to let all those things he had said stand. Wasn’t going to let him deflect all his own crap and make it about her.

  She didn’t start coming up with
justifications for her decision to confront him until she was halfway to her car.

  It was for Violet, of course. Because he had a relationship with his child that could still be salvaged, and she was now invested in that. Because Violet had made her a confidante, and she wanted to honor that.

  It certainly wasn’t just because Cain had made her really mad and now she wanted to go be even madder. No. That would be petulant.

  About halfway to the Donnelly ranch, she wondered if it was so bad if she was being petulant. If she didn’t deserve a few moments of petulance out of so many years of reason, out of so many years of hiding.

  And by the time she was driving up the winding dirt driveway and pulling up in front of the impressive log home, she had fully decided that it didn’t actually matter why she was there to yell at Cain, as long as she did. Because he deserved it. Bottom line, he was infuriating, and enraging, and she was going to let him know.

  Alex, the youngest of the Donnelly brothers, was walking across the driveway area when she pulled in. She threw her car in Park and got out. “Where’s your dumbass brother?” she asked, not bothering to modify her tone. She wasn’t going to modify anything.

  “I have three of them, you’re going to have to be more specific,” Alex said, crossing his muscular arms over his broad chest. The only thing she knew about him was that he was younger, and that he had been in the military. His hair was still cropped close to his head, and he certainly had the build of a man who engaged in a lot of physical labor. She should have chosen him to hook up with. He seemed easier. Easier in every way. Cain was tricky. But, sadly, Cain was also the only one she wanted.

  “Cain. I need to talk to Cain.”

  “I should have known you were here to see that particular dumbass.”

  She didn’t bother to ask him why he might have thought that. It was because of Violet, or because he suspected something was going on between the two of them. Her anger was making her reckless, and that in itself was a gift. Because recklessness was something that she hadn’t been able to afford for a very long time.