Impulsion (Station 32 #1)(82)
“That’s stupid.”
His glare was murderous. “It’s stupid for me to earn what’s mine?”
“It’s stupid for you to think that gift came from anyone but me.”
“And why would you give me a truck?”
“Why do I need one? Maybe I just should have said, ‘Here is our new truck.’ What else do we need to add to it?”
Wyatt leaned back on his arms and stared out into the distance. His jaw line was sharp, that stare near lethal. “The first threat that was used to divide us before was money and power. I don’t give a damn about either. Just you. This place.” His eyes moved back to hers. “There is nothing I own that does not have more value than the almighty dollar, it’s all priceless in my mindset.”
“I can say the same.”
“You? You can say the same?” he said, lifting his brow, daring her to press on.
Neither one of them had ever wanted for much beyond each other, but it was different all the same. The Tatums purchased what they wanted, if it was broken they bought a new one. Not the case with the Doran’s.
In Wyatt’s family it meant more to have something that had been carried down, something that was ripe with loyalty. Whether it was a saddle his father had won medals in, tools that his grandfather had mended the fences with before, or the tact trunk that had traveled across the globe with his mother as she staked her claim in the jumper world. Even the home he was raised in carried generations of priceless gems that meant more to the Dorans than any dollar that had been offered, simply because their legacy was attached to every piece.
That truck. His truck. It was his first. And in that truck his father taught him to drive. He’d held Harley, crossed lines that made his heart thunder; it had carried him across state lines. It was the truck that Lucas Armstrong, Memphis’s dad, had helped him build a customized motor for, and he was long gone from this world now. Each time Wyatt cranked his truck a flash of some past would surface. It was like that with everything he owned.
If something didn’t have meaning, it was not worth owning in his mindset.
Harley’s skin was flushed, not with fear, but with anger. “That truck that I totaled, it was a graduation present. That rig, a Christmas present. I could go on, occasion by occasion. I didn’t wake up and ask my dad to buy me anything. What I was given, I put in my name. All mine.”
“And you think that’s an average, everyday graduation present?”
“You’re giving me shit about this when your mother signed over a horse to me that is worth just as much as that truck, if not more. A horse that she is boarding right alongside Danny Boy for free.”
His stare searched her face as he gritted his teeth. His mother had given her something that had meaning, emotion—that would have a legacy. Bottom line it was a lesson to the pair of them. This truck was a machine, an object, one that could be made a thousand times over. There was a difference. In his mind there was.
“That’s debatable. He hasn’t made a name for himself yet.”
“He will. And that’s not the point.”
“And what is the point? I’m in the good graces with the Tatums so I should accept their gifts humbly.”
She squeezed her legs around his waist like a vice, heard him grunt. That was all the pain she could bear to bring him, even though she wanted to slug him, for him to get over whatever macho bullshit this was. This had nothing to with the Tatums, it had to do with her. This was her possession and she wanted to share it with him.
“The point is, I’m not going to spend the rest of my life wondering if I should or should not give you something, if you will take some chauvinistic defense to it. What is mine, whatever it is, it’s yours, and if you don’t like that, we have an issue.”
He felt his heart thunder. That one rapid line, the one that promised some kind of forever, those were rare. Even though this was wrapped in anger, he felt it slam into him.
They stared endlessly at each other, a silent dare.
“I love my truck.”
She threw her hands in the air. “Easton and Memphis are helping you do something to it every other week.”
“Yeah, the basics may be something off the wall, but I earned that truck.” His hands reached around her waist, putting her all the way on his lap once more. “Harley, a lot of good things happened to me in that truck.”
That damn southern charm was her weakness every time. The way he said her name, slow and deep, still made her chest hum with anticipation.
The anger in her expression started to fade.
“Do you have any idea how many people have offered to buy it from me? How many even went above any blue book because of everything me and the boys did to it?” She shook her head slightly. “A lot. That’s all I meant, Harley. I meant that what I own means something to me.”
“You meant more than that,” she said quietly.
He’d hurt her feelings, and he could kill himself for doing that. Then again, he knew, from watching his parents, you had to say what you felt, you could not live your life with someone and not expect there to bumps in the road, different views. He was always a little guarded when it came to pushing Harley’s buttons. Her mother had pushed enough for a lifetime, taught Harley to see every disagreement as a threat, instead of the stage for reasoning, compromise.