CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HE HAD DAMN well expected her to fight for this a little bit harder. For their friendship. The one that she had elevated above everything else that first day he’d kissed her.
But no, the minute she wanted something he didn’t, she walked away.
Typical.
Typical of every damn person in his life.
Finn took the bottle of his grandfather’s favorite whiskey off the bar and didn’t even bother to pour himself a glass. No, he just uncorked the top and took a long drink. He wiped his mouth, starting to feel the effects, since it wasn’t the first drink he’d had in the last few hours.
He couldn’t sleep. There was no point. She wasn’t here. She was gone. As she felt was justified.
He ignored the voice inside of him that called him a raving hypocrite. The same voice that had been poking at him from the time down by the lake when he demanded that she give him her burdens.
But hell. He’d told her. He’d told her that his mother had called the police on him. That he had caught her being beaten bloody by some bastard, had done as much damage as a skinny sixteen-year-old could do, and she’d still left him.
That his grandfather had taken years’ worth of work out of him, and then whatever the reason, everything he’d done still hadn’t been enough to prove that he could run the Laughing Irish on his own.
“What’s that about?” he asked the empty room. “You old Irish jackass. I did everything you asked me to do. And you didn’t love me more than any of the rest of them, did you? I was probably just cheap labor.”
A searing pain went through him at the thought. One person had said she loved him. Lane Jensen. And he’d told her he couldn’t love her back.
The truth was, he didn’t want to. Even if he could.
“What’s going on down here?”
Finn turned and saw Cain standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Inquisitive bastard. Finn missed his isolation. He wished his brother would go the hell back to Texas. And that Alex would go the hell back to the army. And that Liam would go back to wherever the hell he’d come from. Hell, most likely.
“You live in a house with about a million other people. You come down to check on every noise?” Finn asked, noticing that his words sounded a little bit soft, thanks to the liquor.
“I have a sixteen-year-old daughter. I assume every noise that happens in the night is her sneaking out or a boy sneaking in. Granted, it’s less likely here, since she doesn’t know anybody and there’s no way she could walk to town, and she wouldn’t be able to hot-wire my car, but my paranoia has served me well so far when it comes to parenting, so I go with it.”
“No teen angst down here. Do you want to see some ID?” He turned back to the bar and picked up the bottle of whiskey again, tipping it back as he pressed it up against his lips.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. Does any man on earth ever want to talk about it?”
“What do you want to do then?”
“I want to drink about it,” Finn said, doing just that. “If you want to join me, you can do that. Otherwise, why don’t you go back to bed.”
“Wow. My cold, empty bed, or, stay here and get hammered. Tough choice. But, I’ll have a tumbler of the Jack Daniel’s.”
Finn slid a glass across the bar, and then pointed to a bottle. “This is a no-service establishment. Help yourself.”
“I take it,” Cain said, taking the stopper out of the bottle, “that you had a fight with Lane.”
A fight. He wished it had been a fight. A real fight. One where she stood her ground. One where she had pushed back. She had just left.
You let her.
Yeah, well. Enough people had walked away from him that he had learned not to go chasing after anyone. After a while it just started to look sad.
“Not really,” he said, lifting the bottle to his lips again.
“Oh, come on,” Cain said, grabbing hold of the bottle and wrenching it away from Finn. “Have some damn pride. Pour it in a glass. Don’t get sloppy over a woman.”
Cain poured a measure of the amber liquid into a glass and handed that to Finn.
Finn glared, but took it without argument. “Do you know of a better reason to get sloppy drunk?” Finn asked. “If you do, I’m happy to hear it.”
“Teenagers,” Cain said, lifting his own full glass. “But, since you don’t have one, women I guess. But only women that mean something.”
His chest ached. Of course Lane meant something. She had always meant something. That wasn’t up for debate.
It was all this other stuff, her asking for things, saying things. The kinds of things that a man like him had decided he never wanted to hear. And then she was saying them. Lane. If he had ever wanted to hear it from any woman, it was her. Except, it was bull. Because she had immediately walked away. That was the kind of love he was used to. And if that was all the love he could ever get? He would do without it. He would deal just fine.
“Well,” Finn said, “she’s my best friend.”
“I have a buddy back in Dallas—we call him Slim, because it’s Texas and they really do things like that. We had our disagreements. I’ve never gotten drunk over him. I just don’t feel that strongly about him, even though he’s great to go out skeet shooting with.”
“Well, unless you’re also sleeping with him, I guarantee that you don’t have the same attachment to him that I have to Lane.”
“No,” Cain said, “we are not that close.”
“Right.”
“This looks like love stuff to me, I’m just saying.”
“You can just say your way back to Dallas,” Finn said, taking another drink. “I don’t think I asked for brotherly advice from the brother that I didn’t even grow up with.”
“All you have are brothers you didn’t grow up with,” Cain responded. “Grandpa is dead, your best friend is mad at you, so, who else are you going to talk to?”
“No one is a good option.”
“Yeah, that’s an option. It’s definitely the one I went with when my marriage was falling apart. It worked out well for me. I ended up without a wife, and my daughter ended up without a mother. I definitely endorse that.”
“Lane isn’t my wife,” Finn said, “and she isn’t going to be.”
“Right. Not if you keep avoiding the problem. Not if you keep existing in deep denial.”
“Did you see a therapist after your wife left you, or something?”
Cain shifted uncomfortably. “I took Violet to one. A family therapist. I was there too. I was worried about her. And I may have internalized some things.”
Finn arched a brow. “Okay.”
“My point is, you obviously want more. You’re not letting yourself have more. Why is that?”
“She’s all talk,” Finn said, the alcohol and his anger warming his blood, making the words flow free and easy. “She says she loves me. But what does that mean? I wasn’t ready to say it back to her and she walked out.”
“Yeah, women don’t like that.”
“So, she changes what she wants,” Finn went on as though Cain hadn’t spoken. “And I’m supposed to change right along with her, on her schedule. She would have left anyway. Sometime, she would have left. The fact that she couldn’t handle this proves that.”
Silence settled between himself and Cain, and his brother’s expression took on an uncharacteristically serious look.
“That’s what you wanted to prove, though, isn’t it?” Cain asked finally, his words quiet and steady.
“What are you talking about?”
“You were trying to prove that she would leave. You pushed her away. That’s what you do to people, Finn, if you hadn’t noticed. You were a mean son of a bitch to all of us from the moment we got here.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I just don’t want you here?” Finn asked. He lifted the glass to take another drink, and Cain wrenched it out of his hand, setting it down on the bar top with a loud click.
“No,” Cain said, “it did not occur to me that you didn’t want us here. You do want us here. You want a family, Finn. We all do. That’s why we’re here. If we can be honest for a second and just cut the bullshit I think we’d all have to admit that. This ranch means something. Grandpa meant something to us. We are all each other has. Collectively, our parents sucked. Dad is God knows where. My mother can’t be bothered to leave the casino for two seconds to deal with me, let alone her granddaughter. I assume you don’t even know where your mother is.”
“You assume correctly.”
“I made a family. I got married. That went to hell, so here I am. Alex was in the military. Clearly that didn’t work out—he came here. Liam... Who the hell even knows. But he’s here too. My point is you do want us here, just as much as we want to be here, but you can’t admit that. Because you have to push. You have to push and push until people prove that they won’t walk. I get it—I do. But there’s a certain point where you make it impossible for people to do anything but disappoint you. You tell a woman you don’t love her... She’s gonna leave.” Cain blinked, a muscle in his jaw working. “That’s how it goes. You’re a self-fulfilling prophecy, Finn. How does it feel?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Your mother raised you, at least. She might not be mom of the year, but she was there. You know where she is. If you needed to go drag her out of a casino, you could.”
Cain lifted a shoulder. “We all have a sob story. But do you want to be the sob story or do you want to be a man?”
“You think it’s that simple? Well, of course you do. Because in the end, this all worked out for you, didn’t it? Did you ever think just how insulting it was to me that our grandfather left us equal shares in this ranch after I lived here for all this time, worked it, invested my time, my money. I took care of this place. I took care of the old man. And apparently, he thought I was about as useful as my parents did. Because he brought in all of you. Apparently, what I did didn’t matter.”
“Dumbass,” Cain said. “That’s the only thing you can figure it is?”
“You think you know,” Finn said, snatching his glass of whiskey back. “You didn’t even know him. Not really.”
“From the sounds of it, neither did you.”
“Great,” Finn said, setting the glass down again before crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell me about it, Cain. Maybe when you’re finished I won’t want to punch you in the face.”
Cain rocked back on his heels, and once again, Finn was conscious of the fact that the two of them were standing in exactly the same position. That they were brothers, even if they felt more like strangers.
“Did you ever think that he didn’t want to leave you the whole burden to carry alone? Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, he thought we needed each other?”
Cain’s words hit Finn hard. “No,” he said, “I didn’t.”
“Of course you didn’t. Because you’re lost in your own little world where nobody loves you and everybody leaves you.”
“My own mother left me. My mother called the police on me, tried to get me arrested for dealing with her abuser.” And there it was. He’d admitted it. To Lane, and to Cain. That his own mother hadn’t even seen the point in sticking around with him. That she’d found life more worthwhile with an asshole who beat her than she’d found it with him.
“I’m not saying you didn’t go through hard times. I’m not saying I’m not messed up too. I’m just saying, if you can be close enough to something that matters, this close, close enough that you’re trying to drink away the pain, maybe you just deal with your issues instead.”
“Right. Give me the number of your therapist.”
Cain snorted. “Unfortunately for you, I’m the only therapist you have. Let me tell you, I can’t be pushed away. I stayed with my wife even when our marriage sucked. Eventually, she had to leave because I just wouldn’t. And now I’m staying with my daughter even though she kinda hates me, and I have to deal with her attitude all the time. I am not an easy man to scare away, Finn. I’m the wrong person to test. I might end up beating your ass, but I’m not going anywhere. Lane loves you. Any idiot can see that. But you have to give her something.”
Everything inside Finn rebelled against that. Because hadn’t he given her all of his support? Hadn’t he listened to her as she’d told all of her secrets?
Except, Cain was pushing against exactly what Lane had just yelled at him about. About him keeping everything from her. Everything locked down inside. About her being the only one who was vulnerable.
Yeah, well, he wanted to be vulnerable about as much as he wanted a stick in the eye.
“Do you want to prove yourself right or do you want to be happy?” Cain asked. “You can only have one of those things. But you need to be honest with yourself. And you need to stop being such a dumb fuck.”
“I don’t think therapists say stuff like that.”
“Older brothers do. And you have one. You could have a lot, actually. A lot of family. A lot of love. If you weren’t so afraid of it.”
Those words hit hard. Like an arrow right on target.
No man wanted to be told he was afraid. He wanted even less to find the words true.
“Fix it,” Cain said.
Then he turned and walked out of the kitchen. Finn could hear his brother’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. But he just stood there, his hand wrapped around the whiskey tumbler.
Then he tilted it back and took it all in one swallow.
He closed his eyes, and all he could see was Lane’s face. All he could see was the pain he had caused her. He had pushed. He had pushed, and he had pushed.
His heart squeezed tight, like someone had punched a hole through his chest and grabbed it, yanked it out.
All he could do was picture the way he’d treated her before they slept together for the first time. That day he’d stormed into the Mercantile, yelled at her, taken her in his arms.
He had been pushing then. But she had stayed.
He had asked, he had taken, he had forced her out of her comfort zone. And she had proven that she was up to the challenge. The challenge that was him.
And tonight, when she had asked for something from him, he had done what he did best. He had done exactly what Cain had accused him of doing.
He had tried to make her run. To prove that he was right about himself. That there was nothing in him worth loving enough for anybody to stay.
He had decided, when she had walked away with all the hurt in her eyes, that it proved his point.
Right. He was an ass.
He braced his hands on the bar top, lowering his head. He closed his eyes, and images flashed through his mind. Lane, tonight, mixed together with that day his mother had left.
He didn’t even have a real image of his mom walking away. He had made one up in his head. A kind of strange vision of her walking off into the sunset with a small suitcase that didn’t even look like anything she’d actually had. And he was sure she hadn’t walked anywhere. She had most definitely gone with her boyfriend. And they had taken a car. Still, that was the image that lived in his brain.
There was nothing real there. Everything about it was imagined. Because it had been much less dramatic than that. He had come home from school one day to find the house empty of all her things.
She hadn’t taken the pictures. That was the most notable thing to him. All of the pictures of his childhood, the pictures of the two of them together, the life they had built after his father had left... She had well and truly left it behind. No reminders needed.
He swallowed hard, his throat aching, his limbs shaking.
He had tried to be everything for her. He had tried to protect her. He had gone to his grandfather’s ranch to give her space, to give her time alone over the summer. He had done his very best to be good. To never intrude on her life.
Except, he hadn’t been able to watch that man take his fists to her face.
But even then, she had found him wrong. Found him disappointing.
And it had been the final thing that pushed her away.
How would he ever know? How would he ever know what the last straw would be with anyone? His father had just left. There had been no warning. There was nothing to learn from. With his mother... He had tried. He had.
He had thought he was doing the right thing, and it had gone the worst possible way.
How would he ever know if that would happen again?
Trust.
He imagined Lane again, pressing her hands against his chest, looking at him with earnestness in her brown eyes. She was right. This wasn’t a hypothetical wife. Not a hypothetical love. It was her.
The woman he had damn well loved from the moment he first laid eyes on her more than ten years ago.
He felt like he’d been kicked in the chest by a horse. Following on the heels of feeling like he’d been punched clean through the chest, it was a very heavy feeling.
He did love her. He always had. And he was no better than she was. He was nothing but a coward.
He had told himself all those years he was protecting her, because she was vulnerable. That she wouldn’t be able to handle him. That he would ruin the friendship.
But he had simply been afraid of the strength of his own feelings. And when he hadn’t been able to control them anymore, he had taken a different approach. Had pushed the line to try and get what he wanted, while half expecting her to run the other way. And, deep down, part of him had figured that if she did run it might be a win anyway. Because he would know. Because it would be over. Because his heart wouldn’t exist in this damned limbo where he was desperate to regain all control of it while Lane Jensen held on to it.
Control. All of these years he had tried to keep control.
He had found some of it on the ranch, and then when his grandfather had died he had lost even that semblance of it. And now, he could really feel it all being wrenched from his grasp. He had messed everything up. He had nothing of his own. He didn’t even have his best friend.
Standing in this giant, beautiful ranch house, and outfitted with everything he could possibly want, everything he could possibly need, it seemed a little absurd to contemplate. But he had less now than he’d ever had at any moment in the past decade.
There was a freedom in that. A strange, exhilarating freedom. He had nothing left to lose. He was standing here in the middle of his worst fear. Lane had left him. He had succeeded in pushing her away.
But it didn’t have to be over. Like Cain had said, he could be a sob story or he could be a man.
Finn Donnelly was a damn man.