The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(84)

She couldn’t stand to live this... Raw unprotected life. It was too dangerous. And she would only end up being hurt. She had learned that a long time ago... But it didn’t help to be soft. You didn’t win anything by being soft. You just had to keep doing things so that... They stayed busy enough, so they stayed important enough.

But she wouldn’t be able to keep her distance with him.

Because he was demanding everything from her, and what would happen if he decided later that he wanted nothing? What would she do?

She would die of it.

She had watched the way that Griffin’s grief had nearly consumed him.

And she already knew what it was like. To lose her own love. To lose her dreams. To be exposed, vulnerable and grieving and to have no one who was able to comfort you because you were too ashamed to confess your sins.

She couldn’t be that needy again, that vulnerable again.

Oh, there was a reason she’d stayed with a man who hadn’t had access to her innermost heart, and there were a thousand things she’d told herself. A thousand reasons she’d given. Guilt and necessity and history.

But he’d kept her safe. Because he’d wanted nothing. Given nothing she couldn’t live without.

And Colt would want everything. He’d see everything and know everything and she just... She couldn’t.

“I can’t do it. Can’t be this thing you need me to be. You want a nanny, and I get that.”

“I want a wife.”

“Put out an ad, then, Colt,” she said, her voice breaking. “I bet like three hundred women would answer it in the first day.”

“No. Dammit, listen to me, Mallory. I want you to be my wife. Stop taking what I said and making it mean something else. I want you to be my wife. I want you to be the one that I come home to every night. I want you to be the one that I... That I unload this unimaginable grief on. I’m sorry. I know I’m asking a lot of you. But I want you to be the one who understands me. The one I let in. I want you to be the one I write songs about. Because I’m going to write songs. I want you to be the one that’s with me when I freak out because Lily started driving. And you know what, I want to have more kids.”

His voice fractured, and the shards of it dug into her soul. “With you. I’m going to be afraid the whole damn time. Afraid that something’s going to happen to them because I know the world to be relentlessly cruel. I want you to be the one to hold my hand through that. You’re right, I guess. I do need you. I don’t need you to pay my bills. And I don’t need you to be my mother. I need you to be my partner. I need you to shoulder a hell of a lot. And I think you can. Because I think you’re my fate, Mallory. But we have to take it. It doesn’t ask, believe me. It just takes what it feels like. But when it gets here, you have to put your hand out. You have to grab on. Because it doesn’t force your hand and it never will. And that’s why it can feel like it’s relentlessly cruel. Because you’re passive when it’s taking. But you’ve got to show up for the giving. You just damn well do. So I’m here, and I’m showing up. I’m opening my hands. I’m saying all, take it all. Hold it all. What do you need me to carry, Mallory? Because I will carry it.”

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t put that on him, couldn’t expect that of him. She just couldn’t do it. How could she give him all of her... Her mess.

She’d wanted to be happy with herself.

But that was easy.

This... This was impossible.

“I don’t want this,” she said. “Colt, the things you want... I don’t even know if I can give you. I already lost a baby. What if I can’t carry one?”

“I don’t care,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I said that. I just... I would love to have a baby, but if we can’t, that’s fine.”

“You say that but you don’t know, and it’s...it’s too much. I need time. I need to start my clinic. I need to spend more time with my brother. And this wasn’t part of the plan. I just can’t... I can’t be that for you. I’m sorry. But I can’t. I won’t.”

“I’m going to need you to find a new place to live, then.”

Her heart slammed against her breastbone. “What? Are you... You’re punishing me for rejecting you?”

“No,” he said. “But I can’t look at you if I can’t have you.”

“I thought we were at least friends. Lily is attached to me and I...”

“You can’t be halfway with her either. I’m not doing this. I’m not playing a game with you. I opened my damn self up. I feel it all. Everything that I’ve been protecting myself from for all these years, I feel it now. For you. But you can’t have one foot in this. You can’t have one hand holding on to me. I realize you had an entire relationship like that for fifteen years. But I am not him. I am not some whiny ass mama’s boy who needs your money. I need your heart. I need your damned soul, Mallory Chance. If you can’t give that to me then you can’t give me anything.”

“It’s not fair,” she said.

“What’s not fair?” he asked, zeroing right in on her tentative handhold. Zeroing right in on everything she feared most. “That I won’t let you turn me into something easy? That I won’t let you make me into a shield? I don’t really damn well care. I don’t care if it’s not what you want. I don’t care if it’s not what makes you comfortable. I want you to be uncomfortable. Because I’m bleeding. My mom said that I was brave, and I took that to mean that I needed to do something dangerous. I told myself that’s what it meant. Because I knew that the kind of brave she really saw in me, the kind of brave she really wanted me to be would destroy me. But here I am, daring your destruction. Because I’ll have it all, or I’ll have none of it. Because we are not playing at intimacy. It won’t be sex without love. Or a relationship without intimacy, or a transaction. Is that it?”