Secret Nights with a Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  He took a healthy swig from his whiskey bottle, his eyes glittering.

  But he didn’t say a word.

  Normally, when she was in this house again, she was otherwise engaged. She didn’t have time to look around the place and remember that it had been hers too. Or she avoided thinking about such things, because she came here in the dark and she left while it was still dark, always. That was how she’d pretended she’d forgotten that she’d helped him build this house that summer after he’d graduated high school two years ahead of her, knowing with every nail and every swing of a hammer that she would move in here one day and live here. With him. As his wife.

  Despite herself, Rae remembered how happy they’d been at first. How overwhelmed with the sheer joy of it all. That they were married and could live here, wallowing in that attraction that had been like a pulse inside her almost as long as she could remember, and it was … perfectly acceptable.

  You know better than to let memory lane take you down, she told herself.

  She made herself look around. She made herself soak in all the details of the house they’d furnished together, piece by piece. He hadn’t changed much of anything. A new throw on the same old couch. New scratches on the coffee table they’d liberated from a yard sale in town and hauled back here, bickering all the way about why they needed a table for a beverage Riley had maintained would never be drunk on or near it.

  Rae was surprised he hadn’t chopped it up into kindling years ago.

  Because he always thought you’d come back in the end.

  She couldn’t pretend she didn’t know that. Even when he was standing across the room, studying her as if she were the devil.

  “This still feels like my house,” she said without thinking.

  And regretted it when that glare of his went molten hot and furious. Or maybe she didn’t regret it, exactly, because her pulse kicked over into high gear. Her cheeks felt hot. And between her legs, as ever, she felt the same rush of greedy excitement.

  But Riley didn’t explode.

  He did not come at her. He did not shout. He did not throw that whiskey bottle against the far wall. She didn’t rush at him. She didn’t throw the bottle herself. He didn’t haul her up against him, his mouth hard and perfect and always so demanding, then cart her away down the hall to the bed she still considered hers—

  Focus, she ordered herself.

  If she had to think about this house and all the dreams she’d indulged in here, surrounded by walls she’d helped put up, it was only fair to think about the nightmares too. That one lonely and terrible night she’d never been able to talk about, and had only that glowing-hot blade wrapped up tight, deep inside her as an unwanted memory. The way everything had changed after that, because she had.

  And how did you tell a man that you’d become a ghost right before his eyes when you couldn’t tell him why?

  “Are you actually, deliberately, trying to drive me insane?” Riley asked.

  Conversationally.

  That was new. And not … un-terrifying.

  “I am not.”

  “If this still feels like your house, why do you want a divorce?” he asked. Not unreasonably.

  “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  His mouth twisted. “Which part?”

  She couldn’t seem to do anything but sigh, standing there against the door as if it were the only thing holding her up.

  Riley let out a dark laugh and muttered something that she was glad she couldn’t hear. She told herself it was a mark of her seriousness tonight that she didn’t demand to know what he’d said. Maybe that was growth.

  He took another shot, letting the whiskey bottle dangle from his hand when he was done. And yet still not giving into the temper that was stamped all over him.

  Which meant they were both standing here. In this tense, layered silence that felt louder than all their fights put together. It made her chest feel so tight she wanted to cry—really cry, this time.

  But it also meant there was no other option but to just … gaze at him.

  That was a luxury Rae hadn’t allowed herself in ages. She couldn’t do it in public, because the entire town was always watching the two of them, spinning out theories as to how they’d gone wrong. And she never did it here, because everything between them was always a flash flood, a sudden thunderstorm, a mad blizzard. There was no gazing, there was only surviving it, then slinking off into the night again.

  But tonight, she was facing things. Including this.

  Him.

  Riley Kittredge in all his glory.

  The bracing, inescapable truth of the matter was that if Rae were forced to paint a picture of what the perfect man looked like, she would draw Riley. Any version of him. The hot-eyed teenager he’d been, too knowing and just this side of insolent. The boyfriend he’d been, holding her hand as gently as he’d kissed her fiercely, and never pushing her for anything she didn’t want to give—and then only laughing when she’d tried to push the boundaries they’d agreed on. The brand-new husband who had carried her into this very house, laid her down in the bed they’d picked out together, and taught her every last thing her body could do.

  And tonight, he was all of those versions of himself and more, all grown up in a T-shirt and jeans, bare feet, and that hard, glittering look in his dark eyes.

  He made her heart do things even when he was furious with her.

  He was dangerously beautiful. His hair was dark, his eyes were darker, and his mouth was a straight-up problem. He was big and lean and had been born to wear the cowboy hat she didn’t have to look for to know was hung up just inside the kitchen. Riley was a man who worked with his hands and his whole body, day in and day out since he’d been a kid, and she knew that every inch of him was fashioned out of hard slabs of muscle, powerful and determined.

  She knew his hands were gentle and firm, demanding and soothing. She knew he was as good at calming all his high-spirited horses as he was at making her body perform each and every one of his darkest desires, until they were her desires too. He had taught her how to kiss. He had taught her the kinds of things a couple could do way out in the woods in the back of a pickup truck without breaking any promises that might have been made. He had taught her that she was the prettiest girl alive, and he had made her a woman, and she didn’t know who she was without him. She never had.

  Riley Kittredge was the perfect man.

  But he couldn’t be hers.

  And it was far past time she faced up to that.

  “Okay,” he said, still almost laughing in that way that wasn’t remotely amused. “I guess I’ll bite. I can’t seem to help myself. Are you going to tell me why you want a divorce now? Tonight?” The grin he aimed her way was like a knife, a jagged rip right through her. “It could be anything, after all. Anything or nothing and me the last to know.”

  Rae had practiced for this. The whole drive here.

  “We should have divorced years ago.”

  “But we didn’t.” He slammed the whiskey bottle back down on the coffee table, and the look he gave her then … smoked. “Have you met someone else, Rae?”

  He might as well have punched her in the gut.

  She was outraged, when she shouldn’t have been. “Of course not. We’re still married.”

  “I didn’t forget. I’m not the one who has a problem with that. Historically speaking.”

  “I’ve never been with anyone else. You know that.” And she was finally doing this, so she asked the question she’d never wanted the answer to. Thanking the heavens above that her voice didn’t go all squeaky and vulnerable. “Have you?”

  That grin of his made him look like a pirate. Not an entertaining one.

  “If I were with other people, Rae, I certainly wouldn’t let you waltz in and out of my front door in the middle of the night every time you felt the urge to scratch an itch.”

  “Good,” she said, and meant it. “Make it ugly. That will help.”

  But what
she actually felt was relief, down to her toes.

  “Just tell me what you want.”

  “I already told you. I want a divorce.”

  It was harder to say again. This time in the light. Where she could see him and she could remember everything too well, and she now understood why the cowards of the world preferred to either send a text or simply disappear.

  Why would anyone do this?

  Yes, yes. She knew it was the right thing to do. But knowing that didn’t take away from her desire to sink into the floor and just … go away.

  “Why?” he asked again, his voice the crisp sort of demand that made untamed horses leap to do his bidding. “Why do you want a divorce now?”

  Rae felt the same urge to leap but repressed it.

  She was not a horse.

  And she was horrified when she realized she’d almost said that out loud.

  “I’m not a kid any longer,” she said instead.

  She saw his eyes flare at that, but he didn’t say anything. All he did was continue to watch her, looming there across the room, dangerous and for some reason more in control of his temper than he normally was.

  And she knew she owed him an explanation. She wanted to do it right this time. She wanted to do at least one thing right.

  Her stomach twisted, but she made herself keep going. “I look at Abby. She’s settled now. And happy. Happier than she ever believed possible.”

  “So were we.”

  His voice was quiet. Not an accusation, and that somehow made it worse.

  Rae’s eyes burned. “That was a long time ago. We were different people.”

  “If you say so. But fine. Please keep telling me about how happy your friend is. And how that has something to do with you showing up here in the middle of the night, wanting a divorce.” He made a very male sort of noise. “Instead of what you usually want when you show up here.”

  “You’re never going to give me what Gray gives Abby,” Rae said, her voice cracking a little bit. “If you’re honest with yourself, you know that.”

  “I do know that,” Riley shot back at her. “Because I’m not a cattle rancher, praise the lord. I’m a Kittredge, not an Everett. I didn’t have a previous, tragic marriage, aside from this one. I don’t have a teenager. And my father is a challenge, but he’s not a mean drunk like Amos Everett was. Also, he’s alive. Oh, and most of all because I’m not Gray Everett and you’re not Abby Douglas.”

  There were a lot of things Rae could have said to that. So many ways she could have explained what she meant. But she’d made her choices a long time ago. She didn’t know if she would make the same choices now, but that was the funny thing about time. It only went in one direction, and there was no taking it back.

  She cleared her throat as best she could. “I thought you be happy about this. You’re the one who always says you want to stop playing games.”

  Riley shook his head. “I don’t even know why I’m surprised.”

  “Great,” Rae said then, a little more hotly, because it was easier to lean into her temper. It had always been easier. That and a dose of self-righteousness with some martyrdom thrown in and she was good to go. “Then it shouldn’t be a big deal, should it?”

  The way Riley looked at her then made a prickling, shivery sort of thing start at the back of her head and snake its way down her spine.

  Rae chose to ignore that. “The good news is, we’re the only ones who know that we’re not divorced already.”

  “Yeah. Good news.”

  “And there’s no need to divide anything up,” she continued brightly as if she could neither see nor hear all that darkness that coiled around him.

  It was what made him who he was, and she’d always thought it was the real reason they called him dangerous. Rae knew him best, which was to say completely and not at all, and she knew it was because of this. That clear signal he gave off that if he wanted, Riley could shake the mountains apart with a single look.

  Or maybe just her.

  She ordered herself to focus on the necessary details, because she needed to leave. Before she forgot how, the way she often did. “I’m not going to try to take anything from you. Not this house, not your horses, nothing. I certainly didn’t bring anything to the table. So.”

  “So,” he repeated.

  One single syllable that shouldn’t have exploded inside of her like buckshot.

  It seemed like a lifetime spread out there between them. Their lifetime. The roller coaster of it that she could still and always feel in the pit of her stomach.

  He never made it easier … but this wasn’t the time to talk about that. He stood there like a wall and wondered why she couldn’t talk to him. She’d always been undone by that dark, brooding glare of his. Particularly when she was younger and could seem to do nothing at all but cry, which only made him angry … and around and around they went.

  But there was no point debating any of that.

  Because they had. And gotten nowhere. Ten thousand times or more.

  “It’s coming up on midnight,” he pointed out, gravelly and too intense, and if she wasn’t mistaken, daring her. “What’s your plan? Are we going to have a divorce like our marriage? You want to go out and make it legal and then still show up whenever you feel like it?”

  “Is that what you want?” she found herself asking, though she shouldn’t have.

  It was this cabin, maybe. The warmth from the stove that sank into her bones and made her forget herself. All their history, soaked into the floorboards and making the walls seem bright when she knew it was because he repaired them. Every time one of them did something foolish, he patched it up like it had never been.

  But Rae didn’t want patches and lies and pretend.

  She wanted a life.

  He was shaking his head. “When has what I want had anything to do with this?”

  “Yes, of course. What a saint you are, Riley. Burdened with this messed-up relationship that you have no part in.”

  She really needed to stop doing that. She had promised herself that she would stop doing that.

  “If the shoe fits,” he replied, almost in a drawl.

  And their usual patterns seemed to shimmer there between them. Their history and their routine and them. She could surge forward, let her temper get the best of her. She knew he would meet her. They could fight, they could make up, and they would end up right where they always did.

  Rae knew the journey would be amazing, because it always was—

  “No,” she said then, as much to herself as to him, “I want to be done.”

  “Rae. Why.”

  It was a demand, not a question. And the way he belted it out made her wonder whether or not her knees could do their job.

  Whether she could really do this after all.

  “Because.” She held his gaze because she owed him that much. “I want a life. You should want that too.”

  “What makes you think I don’t?”

  Rae wanted to shout at him. She wanted to throw all their history in his face, again, as if that could change their future. She knew it couldn’t, or it would have. She wanted to sob, but that never worked—because he was the only one who ever managed to make her feel better.

  “You deserve that life,” she managed to say. “So do I.”

  He was quiet, though that didn’t make him look any less brooding or dangerous. His mouth formed that thin, hard line, and she hated that. She hated all of this.

  “Rae…”

  She hated that most of all. Her name in that mouth when she’d never been any good at resisting him.

  “We’re going to get a divorce,” she told him, maybe a little too fiercely, while her eyes burned all the more. “We’re going to move on. We’re going to live wildly happy lives, Riley. The way we said we would when we were in high school.”

  “Rae.”

  “Just not with each other,” she managed to get out.

  Without breaking down, though she would never know
how she did it.

  But if she stayed even a second more, she would crumble. She would dissolve into a puddle, or she would throw herself at him—to punch him, or kiss him, or something to shift the intense weight of these feelings inside of her. And if she did that, he would do what he always did. He would pick her up. He would soothe her and seduce her the way he always did, and much too easily.

  He would carry her into their bedroom, lay her down, and for a little while, make them both forget.

  Rae couldn’t let that happen.

  Not again. Not anymore.

  So before he could do something with that thundercloud on his face—or she could do something with her traitorous heart—she turned around, wrestled the door open, and finally threw herself back out into the blessedly cold night.

  It wasn’t running when she’d done the thing she’d come to do. It was a strategic retreat.

  Better still, it was a step forward.

  At last.

  And for the first time in as long as she could remember, when Rae gunned her engine and peeled out down that long dirt drive, she didn’t look back.

  4

  “I need to move out,” Rae announced the next afternoon, after she’d spent her day in the back office of the Flower Pot balancing figures, tracking shipments, dealing with the relay service that funneled orders to them from outside Cold River, and all the other parts of running a flower shop that she loved a lot less than the flowers themselves. All while absolutely not obsessing over the fact she’d actually, finally asked Riley for a divorce. “I need my own place. Or not my family’s place, anyway. And if I’m moving out, why not closer to work?”

  Rae was sitting with Abby and Hope in the comfortable back office of Cold River Coffee. Hope and Rae were taking turns holding a passed-out Bart while Abby worked on her own paperwork as the longtime manager of the coffeehouse that was considered an institution in the Longhorn Valley.

  “Really?” Abby blinked as she looked at Rae from behind her desk. “You’re going to move into town?”

  “Apparently, there are apartments over the Coyote,” Hope said with a smirk.

  Because Rae’s former sister-in-law, Amanda—who had worked for Abby here in the coffeehouse for years and was now Abby’s sister-in-law—had moved into one of those apartments last fall. A move that had scandalized half of Colorado and had somehow led to Amanda getting together with Brady Everett, Gray’s youngest brother.