The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(72)

“I wasn’t expecting... You in my house cooking breakfast.”

“We always eat breakfast together. And I had a feeling you didn’t actually have any breakfast supplies up here. I brought your coffee maker.”

“Oh... Thank you.”

“The house was awfully quiet.”

“Even with a screaming baby?”

“She doesn’t scream,” he said.

Lily was strapped into her car seat, happily grabbing at her feet.

“But she could,” Mallory said. “At any moment, really.”

“A risk I’m willing to take.”

Still sort of shell-shocked by his appearance, all she could do was stare.

“You know, if you’re not going to fill the silence, you leave me no choice but to ask why the hell you took off last night without saying anything?”

“You didn’t need me. I mean... I don’t mean to say it like that. It’s just... I didn’t want to intrude. This is... It’s a big thing that’s happening. And I didn’t feel like I wanted to go and make it about me.”

“Since when have you ever second-guessed making it about you?”

She frowned. “Ouch.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. You’ve thrown yourself in the middle of my business since you first came into town.”

She cleared her throat and sat down at the small bistro table in the corner of the room. “I fail to see how you picking me up in a bar was me flinging myself into your business.”

“I’m going to ignore the obvious pun available here. All right, maybe we kind of crashed into each other. And ever since then we kept on crashing. So why the hell stop now?”

“Things are changing,” she said. “And when it was all sort of uncertain and... You needed my help. But now you... You don’t. It’s okay, Colt, because I have this whole new life thing that I’m trying to do. And you know, I should probably focus on that instead of just being involved in yours.”

“Okay, there’s a few things wrong with that. The biggest one being that you’re acting like you being involved with Lily and I wasn’t somehow just part of your life. Because I think it was. Not mine alone, is it?”

She took a deep breath, and suddenly a mug of coffee appeared in front of her, and her heart contracted. “Colt,” she said. “I just... I feel a lot like I replaced one crutch with another, you know? I’m supposed to be independent.”

“Okay.”

“And you needed me. Because you didn’t know what to do with her, and I was really happy to help.”

“Okay,” he said, sounding maddeningly placating.

“And,” she said, “now that you don’t need me...”

“You keep saying that. You keep saying that, and I don’t know what the hell it means. Maybe I want you. Is that something? Does it not matter?”

“You... You want me?”

“Yes, Mallory. I want you. I enjoy having you around, Lily enjoys having you around. I don’t know why that seems impossible to take on board.”

“I just don’t know what it has to do with anything.”

“Why were you with him?”

She blinked, feeling a little bit like she was staring down at the darkened bottom of an abyss that she didn’t want to traverse. She let Jared go. She told him where to shove it. She was proud of that. Happy with it. But now he was dredging it up like it was still a factor. Like it was still part of what she was reacting to, what she was doing.

You spent fifteen years in that relationship. Did you really think that you were going to banish it in a month?

She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to give weight to it.

But he was looking at her with those eyes, and she’d never been very good at staying neutral when he looked at her.

He made her feel things. All kinds of things. Big and bright and far too much for her frame.

“I was with him because... Because there was a time in my life when I was very lonely. I had trouble making friends and... My parents weren’t very interested in me. Griffin was gone and... And Jared was interested. He was interested in me and it felt really good. He was funny, and I wasn’t. I was too insecure, and he never was. And I could do things for him that other people wouldn’t. It made me popular. Because I was the first girl in my group of friends to have sex, and then everybody wanted to know what it was like. I’d tell them. And then later... I guess it didn’t change. I guess I kept on liking what happened when I did things for him. It made me feel safe. It made me feel worthy. To be needed.”

The words felt frozen on her lips.

“Well, you know you can be with someone for different reasons than that.”

“Right. Well, you’re adopting a baby and you want...”

“Don’t tell me what I want. I’m still figuring out what I want. Mallory you’re the only person I’ve ever... I’ve never talked to anyone about my mother. About how I feel about living while she died. I know all about trying to figure out how to feel worthy.”

“Colt...”

“And I have let those fears dictate what I’ll be, what I want and don’t want. Whether or not I sing.” He looked like a revelation had just crashed down on him. “Mallory, I’ve built my whole life on that loss. On the pain of being sure that if my dad hadn’t died, he’d leave. And I can’t ask him, can I?”