The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(73)

“No, you can’t...”

“You thought I didn’t need you or want you, but I do. I... I don’t know what he wanted. I...”

He crossed the room, knelt down in front of her, and then he kissed her. Hard and deep and long. It was decisive. And it cut through all the fog inside of her in a way that... Well, damn near terrified her.

“Mallory, look how much damage it does when you think you know.”

“I should be here, though. I mean, this is my house, and I should be... Here.”

I’m not playing house with him.

He was setting up a real life, a permanent life, and he needed to be able to be in that. And she needed to not trick herself into thinking she was part of it. Because it just wasn’t... It wasn’t a good thing, that much was certain.

“Do whatever works for you,” he said. “But it doesn’t work for me for you to disappear with your tail between your legs, suddenly acting like we haven’t been living together for weeks. You didn’t ask me what I wanted, Mallory.”

“I just figured...”

“What? You just figured because now I knew how to change a diaper I wasn’t going to want you?”

“I... It’s not practical.”

“Who the hell cares about practical? Have you met me? I’m a former bull rider with issues out the ass, and I just said that I was going to adopt a child. None of this makes sense. None of this is practical. But I know what I want. I know what I’m going to do. You figure into that somewhere, Mallory, you don’t get left out.”

And then she couldn’t look at him. She just couldn’t. She had turned her gaze away to focus on the ground.

“Well, I...”

“Well nothing. Eat breakfast.”

“Okay.”

She didn’t have a choice. So she did. Because she might have been able to slip away last night in a little bit of self-preservation, but when he was looking at her like that, even if she was looking at him, she couldn’t deny it. Couldn’t deny him. Even if she wanted to.

She should have told him the truth. The whole story. But it... She had never told anyone outside of work. She told people in a very specific context and not...

Not when her heart was involved. Not when she already felt so tender.

Not when she felt like she would be confessing a failure.

So, instead she just ate her bacon.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


FOR THE FIRST time in a good while, Colt let himself remember. It had started with that conversation—that confession—he’d made to Mallory in the car.

He’d finally said out loud what haunted him, and the world hadn’t come down around him. Mallory had listened. And she hadn’t run from him.

It had made it feel...

It had made it feel okay to remember.

He had been working alone on Jake’s ranch all morning, and he got into thinking. He had Lily in a carrier strapped to his front, and he had a feeling this was just what his life was going to look like for a while.

It didn’t bother him.

No, he felt more settled, more grounded than he ever had. It was a weird thing to accept his life rather than fight against it. Different from where he’d been ever since he was a teenager. It was a strange thing that happened when he set aside the anger. The rage against fate.

Yeah, there were a whole lot of things that weren’t fair. Still a whole lot of things that didn’t make sense, but what was in front of them right now did make sense. This moment. This kid. This life.

And it was the strangest damn thing, because he felt the melody and lyrics stir inside of him that he hadn’t heard on the radio, and he hadn’t had access to that in a long time.

Even when it had happened in the last few years, he’d done his best to shove it down because he hadn’t wanted to think about it. Because it was too painful. Too painful to remember what it had been like. When he’d written music and poured out his heart and his mother had praised him for it. When she’d been excited and happy about his gifts and what he might do with them. Because it made him hopeful and excited too, and he learned to put that away. Because in order to write songs he had to touch part of himself that he decided now he didn’t want to.

Right now it was like he didn’t have a choice. Because these changes in his life had started to pry his chest open wide, and he could no longer keep thoughts and feelings out of them. He didn’t even want to.

And when he heard music, he saw Mallory’s face.

That sense of freedom was what set him out to finding Jake. Because he wanted to talk to his brother. Really talk to him. Because he was beginning to understand what had changed inside of him. Why he wanted to talk about things now when before he hadn’t.

He was beginning to understand, and even if it still... It terrified him a little bit, he was beginning to get it. And he was wanting to... He was wanting to explore it. Wanting to see.

“Come on, sweet pea,” he said to Lily. “Let’s go find your uncle.”

Jake was somewhere at the back end of the property, and Colt was surprised that he was by himself. He half expected to stumble upon him and Callie making out, but he supposed that they had to work sometime.

“Been looking for you,” Colt said.

“Hello,” Jake responded. “That’s the most surprising thing I’ve heard in a while. Usually you avoid me.”