Slow Burn Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  “The point of girls’ night is not to bring work,” Rebecca said. “You’re not honoring the spirit of the get-together.”

  “Yes,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I am. Because while you help me make a list to figure out what items I want in my Best of Copper Ridge subscription box, I’m going to talk.”

  She felt a little dizzy the moment the words left her mouth. She didn’t know if she wanted to get into all of the minute details about her past, but... She had to stop giving it so much power.

  And by making it a giant monster that she shut the door on, that she was working to keep out of this existence, she was also hiding herself from her friends.

  Keeping things buried, like she had done with Finn for so long. All the little separate compartments inside of herself where she kept her secrets, where she kept her desires. Things that kept her distant from everyone around her.

  Things that were starting to make her feel like a prisoner inside of herself.

  She was done. If there was one thing she knew for certain after that encounter with him by the lake it was that she couldn’t go on the way that she had been.

  Well, she could. She could keep on stuffing everything down. Keep on lying to everybody about who she was by cleverly concealing all that she’d been through. But she might very well implode.

  There was something about being open. About taking that first step to revealing her past. About stripping off her clothes, stripping off her mask, about knocking down all those carefully placed walls she had constructed between the two of them, that made her want to do it in other ways. With other people.

  Well, not the naked bit. That was just for him.

  Her stomach clenched tight. She was more than a little afraid that it would always be that way when she thought of him. That, from now on, it would only ever be him for her.

  “Okay,” Alison said. “Then let’s get listing.”

  They broke out the snacks—mini pies from Alison’s bakery and wine from Grassroots that Lane had in stock—and began to work on the list.

  Which came together with surprising speed. Cheese from Finn she would be able to ship well enough with ice packs. Preserves, wines, and Alison wanted to contribute dry mixes with recipes. There were a few local coffee roasters and including a pound of beans every so often would be good too.

  “You should talk to Ryan Masters,” Rebecca said around a mouthful of pie. “I know you carry some of his stuff already, but maybe there are more options. Like smoked salmon. Also, I wonder if the Garretts would be interested in doing beef jerky or something.”

  “Okay,” she said, “that’s good. I wish there was more in the way of local candy. I mean, I can get some from a few places down south, but it would be nice to have something here.”

  “With the way things are expanding to accommodate tourism I have a feeling you won’t have to wait too long for it,” Rebecca said. “Oh,” she continued, “if you got Chase and Sam McCormack to make bottle openers or something, that might be cool.”

  The McCormack brothers had made quite a name for themselves even outside of Copper Ridge through both their practical products and Sam’s artistic skill.

  “This is great,” she said, feeling incredibly self-satisfied. “I mean, there are more things than I even thought of initially.”

  “You might be a genius,” Alison said.

  “I might be.” She felt... Well, she felt like she was taking steps in new directions. After being stagnant for so long it felt exhilarating. A little bit scary. “Thank you, guys, for helping me with this. For dealing with how obsessive and weird I’ve been lately.”

  Rebecca rubbed her hands together. “Oh, are we getting to the talking?”

  “Cord McCaffrey is my ex,” she said, wincing when the words came out of her mouth.

  “What?”

  “Senator Good Hair?”

  Both questions were asked at exactly the same time, and Lane wasn’t quite sure who had asked what. But it didn’t really matter.

  “Yes,” she said. “From high school. My first boyfriend. My first...”

  “Oh,” Alison said, “holy crap.”

  “Yeah,” she said. She didn’t really think she could get into the baby thing right now. Because that would require... Well, more alcohol. Possibly some crying. They would look at her like they felt sorry for her, and she wasn’t in that space right now. What she needed was what Finn had given her.

  He had been... Supportive. But also pragmatic. He had been strong, something for her to lean against, but not something for her to dissolve with. Maybe someday she would be ready for that. But not now. It was a little too demanding at the moment.

  “Anyway, I guess seeing him and how successful he is kind of messed with my head.” That was true. “I felt like... What was I doing with my life? He has all of that. This family, children, the promising career. He’s famous. And I just...suddenly wanted to kick-start what I was doing.”

  “That’s understandable,” Alison said. “Wow. I can’t imagine that. Basically, if my ex-husband is doing well it means he’s not currently in prison. So... I won. I won the divorce. I have my own business, I’m happy. I have a little apartment, and it’s clean, and it’s mine. I feel nothing but extraordinarily happy with what I’ve made, and when I look at his existence—which I try not to—I only see a million reasons why I left.”

  “That would be so much better,” Lane said. “Not because I want to be with Cord. I don’t. I mean, I know that I’m unfairly judging his sexual performance based on what he could pull off as a teenage boy, but let me tell you, I have had better since.” She was having the best right now. “I don’t want him at all. I don’t want to be part of his life. I just want... My family was really rich. And, you know, I lived in the kind of neighborhood that you would expect a future senator to come out of. And when he’s old enough, I imagine a future president. Or at least a presidential candidate. But that’s what everybody in my hometown is groomed for. I left it all behind. It’s not what I wanted. I couldn’t handle it. And I guess I feel like I need to make something out of my life here.”

  Alison wrapped an arm around her and squeezed her tight. “I get what you’re saying. But you’ve already done so freaking much, Lane. You have a business, a home, friends, and the most important thing is that you’re happy. And if you’re happy it doesn’t matter if you’re on TV, if you own your own store, or if you collect seashells on the beach and sell them on the roadside. Success, like what you’re talking about...it doesn’t make you happy. All of that comes from inside you.”

  “I guess so.”

  “No, not you guess. I’m right. I spent a long time looking for it in other people. In my husband. He would hit me, Lane, and I would try to tell myself that it didn’t matter, because without a husband I wasn’t anything. That was success to my family. Getting married, having children. It didn’t matter if the marriage sucked. A divorce was a failure. So I thought because they defined success that way that’s what it was, no matter the quality of my life. But that’s not it. I left him, and I had absolutely nothing. No house, no husband, nothing but my waitressing job at Rona’s. But you know what? I was the happiest I’ve ever been, because I was standing on my own strength.”

  Lane thought about that. She thought about all the years of general discontent. And she thought about what she talked about with Finn by the river. About how angry she was that Cord had moved on and she didn’t feel like she could.

  She wasn’t standing on her own strength because she was still holding on so tightly to the past. Afraid to let it go. She was looking for answers back there. For some kind of moment where she would find satisfaction in the decisions she had made. Where she would know beyond a shadow of a doubt she had been right. Or maybe even that she’d been wrong.

  But she didn’t think that moment existed. Not reall
y.

  She had done physically what Alison had done. Cut ties. Walked away. But emotionally, she never had. Emotionally, everything she felt was curated, protected. Preserved.

  For the first time, she wondered if keeping the baby such a well-protected secret had to do with the fact that she didn’t want it touched by anyone else. Hadn’t wanted anyone else’s opinion. Because she hadn’t wanted to be absolved. She had wanted to hang on to the guilt. And with a few insightful words, Finn had pointed out to her why that wasn’t right or fair.

  That was why she was holding it back from her friends now. Because she didn’t want to feel certain things. She wanted to feel only what she was ready to feel. She wanted to retain control over her perception of that moment, that event, that memory.

  She took a deep breath. “There’s more.”

  Over the next hour, she told them all about the baby. Getting sent away from her family. The pregnancy. And they did cry. They all ended up sitting on the floor, surrounded by empty pie plates weeping pathetically.

  But neither of them asked why she hadn’t told them before. Nobody accused her of not trusting them. Nobody condemned her at all.

  She wiped her face, her sleeve wet with her tears. “Wow,” she said, taking a shaky breath. “That was kind of as hard and sucky as I was afraid it would be.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Rebecca said, shaking her head. “Though I do know a little bit about keeping secrets. And I know that they get so gigantic inside of you... I never told anyone that Gage caused my accident until years later. My anger felt so personal. It felt like mine. He was my monster, and I didn’t want to share him. I didn’t want to make him human by giving that name to anybody.” She took a deep breath. “It just makes it more powerful, though. And in the end, I think it’s always better to talk about it. Or maybe not always. But, when you’re ready, if you can...”

  Lane nodded, her throat too tight for her to say anything.

  Alison reached out and gripped her shoulder. “Life is hard sometimes. But at least we have pie. And friendship.”

  Rebecca reached down and lifted her wineglass. “To pie and friendship.”

  Alison did the same. “Pie and friendship.”

  Lane repeated the motion. “But don’t forget alcohol.”

  “Hear, hear,” Alison said, tipping her glass back.

  Lane took a long sip. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sleeping with Finn.”

  The shriek that followed was high-pitched enough that Lane was surprised it didn’t shatter her wineglass. “I knew it!” Rebecca shouted.

  “Well,” Lane said, “I wasn’t back when you almost picked him up.”

  “No,” she said, “I know. Because he never would have hit on me if he was already sleeping with you. But I knew that you weren’t neutral. You were trying to tell me that you were just friends with him all while you practically turned green you were so jealous.”

  She scoffed. “I wasn’t jealous. Much.”

  “I feel like my world just shattered,” Alison said. “So much for believing in platonic male-female friendships.”

  Lane snorted, then tapped the side of her glass with her fingertip. “I’m not really sure if that’s ever what ours was. What I think is that I’m the master of denial.”

  “Well, that is true.”

  “And he apparently always wanted me.” She lifted a shoulder and took another drink of wine. “I just wasn’t ready. But that’s why I had to tell you the whole story. About Cord, about the baby. It all kind of leads to Finn. To what’s happening now. I guess I’m just... Ready to deal with it. Ready to move on.”

  Of course, what exactly moving on meant, she wasn’t totally sure at this point. It was scary. Scary to think it, let alone say it.

  It meant doing things because she wanted to. Or not doing things because she didn’t want to. It meant expanding the business because it mattered to her, not because she needed to prove something.

  It meant... Well, it meant looking honestly at her feelings for Finn. Not in the context of everything she was afraid of. But in terms of what she actually felt.

  “He clearly always wanted you,” Alison said.

  “Really?” Rebecca asked. “I mean, I always got a little bit of a weird vibe off of both of them, but I didn’t know they wanted each other.”

  “You’ve known them both for too long,” Alison said pragmatically. “When I met them I just assumed they were a couple, or at least that they were sleeping together. Until Lane introduced me to her boyfriend.”

  Lane squinted and thought back. She had been dating a guy named David back then. The last guy she had dated, actually, before Finn. He had been nice. Very nice. And he had also been separate from her friends, and from her relationship with Finn.

  It struck her then, with incredible clarity, the way she had structured her life. Finn had been right. Completely. He played the part of boyfriend, or even husband, without any of the romance. She had always chosen some other guy for that. While she had kept Finn close. While Finn had held her heart.

  Oh, good Lord.

  She didn’t want to ponder the full implication of that. Not right now. She had already been through too much.

  “Well, it’s nice to know that you were all more in touch with me than I was.” She looked around, annoyed by the fact that they were all out of pastry. “I should probably go,” she said, “otherwise I’m going to chew my own arm off. Or break into Pie in the Sky and get some more food.”

  “You just want to go bang your new boyfriend,” Alison said, her tone knowing.

  “I know I would like to go bang my fiancé,” Rebecca returned.

  “I’m not jealous,” Alison said, not sounding all that convincing. “I’m really not.”

  “Oh, hey, how did everything go with Violet?”

  Alison nodded. “Good. She’s going to start at the end of the week. Which is nice, because seeing as I have a lack of men and sex in my life I could really use more work to fill it with.”

  “I mean, that’s what I did for years,” Rebecca said. “Bear in mind, I had never actually been with anybody until a few months ago.”

  “Yeah,” Alison said. “That kind of confirms the fact that I should be able to stay busy but celibate. Actually, if I keep hiring cynical teenagers I can just make them all my surrogate children and live my life vicariously through them.”

  “That’s depressing, Alison,” Lane said, slinging her arm around her friend as they all walked toward the door.

  “Maybe a little,” she conceded. “Although, at least I’m standing on my own feet. Whatever happens... Whoever I end up with... Or more likely, don’t, I know who I am.”

  “And I think I might be figuring that out, myself,” Lane said.

  They all stepped outside onto the darkened street and Rebecca killed the lights to the store, then locked the door.

  “Same time next month, ladies,” Alison said, stuffing her hands in her pockets and backing away. “Hopefully Cassie will have dipped her kids in antibiotics by then.”

  “I’m sure we’ll see each other before then,” Rebecca said, patting Lane on the back before she headed toward her own car. “If Lane can be bothered to come up for air.”

  “You guys are the worst.”

  She shook her head and walked back toward the Mercantile, back to where she parked her car. And all she could think of on her way was that her friends weren’t the worst at all. They were actually the best.

  And moving forward, moving on, didn’t feel as scary as she had thought it might.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  LANE TEXTED HIM a little after three to let him know that she would be coming with dinner. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that. Yes, she had come before while his brothers were there since the two of them had started sleeping toget
her, but something had changed down at the lake. And as protective as he had felt over their relationship then, he felt even more protective now.

  He didn’t want to answer questions. He didn’t want any of his douche bag brothers to have questions. Mostly, he liked it when it was just the two of them. It seemed simple then. At least, as simple as a situation like theirs could be.

  But, given their pasts, he wasn’t entirely sure there was anything other than this strange antechamber between friendship and love for people like them.

  “Are you daydreaming over there?”

  Finn turned at the sound of Cain’s voice. “Do I look like the kind of person that daydreams?”

  “You’re doing a damn good impression of one. Thinking about anyone special?”

  “You know, Cain, sometimes I’m sad about our childhood. About the fact that the two of us didn’t get to be raised as brothers should be raised together. The fact that we know each other about as well as strangers I pass on the street. Right now is not one of those moments. Right now, frankly, I’m more than pleased that I mostly grew up as an only child.”

  “Well, I grew up mostly as an only child too, so I can only guess, but I think that making you hate my very existence means that I’m really killing this big brother thing.”

  Finn snorted and wrapped the barbed wire around his hand, his leather work gloves keeping it from piercing his skin.

  He had been out repairing fences with Cain all afternoon, and for the most part his brother hadn’t made him want to crawl out of his skin. This was the exception.

  “Hey,” Finn said, “I just decided not to kill all of you in your sleep and tell law enforcement it was an unfortunate accident so that I could claim all parts of the ranch back for myself. You might want to tread lightly.”

  Cain smiled. “All things considered, I’m not really sure that you’re the one who has the monopoly on brother killing jokes.”

  Finn frowned. “Why did they name you that, anyway?”

  Cain shrugged. “Hell if I know. Probably my mom’s idea of something different and interesting. Or maybe they figured I was doomed to be an ass from day one. But better Cain than Abel, right?”