WYATT COULDN’T MOVE. He was frozen above her, his heart pounding hard against his ribs, a dull pain he wished to hell would stop. Except that would mean he’d stopped breathing.
Hell, maybe he had stopped and his heart was trying to get it going again.
Something had happened. Something big. Something transformative. And he had no idea if it had come from the waterfall, from around them, or if it had come from straight inside Lindy.
She had changed. Not into someone different, but it was like she had become the woman he had always sensed was there. Right before his eyes. Bare in the sunlight, her pale skin glorious, her pink-tipped breasts more beautiful out here somehow, bathed in the glow of the sun.
Naked. Unprotected. For him.
And when he had slid inside of her... It wasn’t sex. Not like he knew it.
With her, it never had been. Had never been that handshake he had always joked about sex being. No. It had always been more. Deeper. Better.
But this had been something new. His skin felt too sensitive.
He couldn’t...breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. Didn’t want to.
He wanted to stay inside of her forever. Nothing between them at all.
He’d never, ever been with a woman without a condom before. It had felt... It wasn’t so much the difference between latex and skin, not physically. It was the fact that there had been no barriers at all. Nothing between them. He felt it.
Not down where their bodies were joined, but in his heart.
And he had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do with that.
“Lindy...”
He had nothing else to say. Just her name. And it echoed inside of him.
It may very well have been echoing in him for the past five years.
She reached up, those blue eyes clear and focused. Not clouded like he imagined his own eyes were. He had no clarity, no focus, nothing but her name.
And a deep, wrenching pain started at the center of his chest and moving outward, spreading like an ugly, dark oil spill he couldn’t contain.
He didn’t know what was happening to him. To them. Only that it was. And he couldn’t stop it.
“Wyatt,” she whispered. “I think you could love me.”
He stiffened, moving away from her, his heart lurching. “What?”
“I... I think you could love me. And I’ve never really thought anyone could. But I think you could. All of me. Not the parts I show the world. Or even myself. Stuff that only comes out with you. This... I would have never said this was me. But with you it is. Maybe it always was. But it took you to bring it out. You.”
Everything in him recoiled at that. Screamed inside of him for release. For escape. She had no idea what she was talking about. No idea at all.
She didn’t know him.
She was talking about him like he was some white knight who had showed her the right path. Instead of just a marauding cowboy who knew how to make her come. He couldn’t save anyone. He couldn’t love anyone.
“Lindy,” he said, his voice steady. “What I can and can’t do has nothing to do with you.”
She looked at him, her eyes large, luminous. Different. Something had changed in her, it had changed in them, over the past few hours. Or maybe it hadn’t. Maybe it was all coming to the surface. Because of her. Because whatever was true about the two of them, something had changed in her. Something big and scary, something he wasn’t ready to face. Something he couldn’t confront in himself or with her.
She stood, her eyes meeting his, level and cool. “I don’t understand what that means.”
“I think... I think you’ve been going through some things. And, I am damned glad that you’re... Whatever this is. I am. But it’s not me. Whatever you feel like is changing you, whatever you feel like is fixed, honey, it isn’t because of me. I don’t have anything to do with that.”
“Yes,” she said. “You do. Wyatt, you have everything to do with it.”
“Lindy, I didn’t change you.”
“Yes. You did.”
“If Damien couldn’t make you see the worth in yourself in ten years, I don’t see how I’m supposed to have been responsible for it after a few orgasms.”
The air between them cooled, and he felt like an ass. But not enough of one to stop, not now.
“I didn’t love him,” she insisted.
He felt like he had been stabbed through the heart. “Yes, you did.”
“I did,” she said, amending quickly. “You’re right. But it wasn’t the same. I didn’t give him everything. It wasn’t... It wasn’t being in love. The amount of time doesn’t change that. Because it was stagnant. I was stagnant. So was he. He was a convenient shelter, Wyatt. And every traveler loves a shelter when they’re trying to escape a storm. But that shelter isn’t a choice when you’re in a desperate place. I’m not trying to hide anymore. I’m not hiding right now. I don’t need a shelter. I need a partner. I made a life secure enough that I didn’t need anyone. I’m like my mother in that way. So now it’s not about needing someone for survival. It’s about wanting somebody. Because you know my heart. I think you might know it better than I do.”
“I don’t think that can possibly be true,” he said, shaking his head. “Lindy, why do you think... Why do you think I can give you something that your husband of ten years couldn’t give you?”
“Because you’re a better man,” she said. “And you make me want to...”
He took a step back, his heart hammering. “I’m not a better man. That’s the problem. You think I’m a better man because I haven’t made you any promises. And because I haven’t made any promises I haven’t broken them. Because you spent a few weeks in my company, you think I’m a better man. Because you don’t know the things I’ve done, you think I’m a better man.”
“That isn’t true. I’ve seen the way you are. With your family. With this ranch. Your determination to prove to your father that you can do it. You’re stubborn, you’re like me. I think we recognize that in each other. I think we respect it in each other. It’s one reason we partnered up, I think. But all that attitude you carry around, all that acting like you don’t care, I know that you do. And I understand that losing your mother was hard for you, I understand why you hold people and things at a distance, but that’s not all that you are. It’s not all that you’re capable of.”
Nausea flooded him, and he took a step back. “That’s real sweet, honey, that you think you can be my armchair psychiatrist because you know a couple of things about me. You think that’s the beginning and end of what I am. Lindy, I don’t know how many women I’ve slept with. I’ve lost count. I doubt even Damien could say that for himself. I don’t... I don’t treat it with respect. I haven’t. I’ve been responsible about it. I didn’t make vows to any of those women. I didn’t have unprotected sex with them. But how is that being a better man? That is doing whatever the hell you want. That’s what I’ve done for the past twenty years of my life. Whatever the hell I want. I’m not the kind of man you should be looking for promises from. I’m not the kind of man you should be hanging these revelations on. You are someone that deserves love. Of course you are. But dammit, don’t put that on me. I’ve never loved anyone more than I love myself.”
“That isn’t true,” she said, insistently, “you do. Every day. You love this ranch more than you love yourself.”
“It’s penance,” he said, the words sliding up his throat like broken glass, shredding him up on the way out. “Do you know what that is? That’s not love. That’s just crawling across broken glass until you’re cut up enough that maybe you’ve come close to experiencing the amount of suffering you’ve caused other people.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head slowly.
They were still naked, and he felt like that was fair enough. Because if she wanted to know him, if she wanted to see him, if that was what it was going to take for her to understand, then he would damn well be naked. He would show her. What he was. Really.
“I am as selfish a bastard as I look like I am,” he said. “If you count on one thing, you can count on that. When I was eleven years old my mother died, and you know what that worked itself into over the years? Anger. Anger because when I lost my mother I lost my father too. Because he poured all of his emotions into everyone else. Everyone and everything. My baby sister. My younger brothers. But I had to be a man. I had to be strong. But I was still... I still had to be home when he said. I still had to do what he said. But he didn’t give me a damn thing. Nothing but work, responsibilities, because he thought that would keep my head on straight. I rebelled against that. And then...”
Wyatt shook his head. “Then he started dating again. When I was seventeen he brought a woman home. Louisa. Said they were going to get married. And he was going to give us a mother. Give Jamie a mother.” He swallowed hard, battling against his anger now. Because he had never told this story before. Not to anyone. Not even in his own mind. He’d never laid out all the events from start to finish like this. He was angry. And he didn’t realize how much. At his father. At himself. At her.
At every damn person who had been involved.
“I can see how that would have been hard...”
He laughed. There was nothing else to do but laugh. She couldn’t even imagine. Because it would never occur to her.
“Yeah. It was. But you know, she was really nice. She paid attention to me. She said that I was special. Strong. And yeah, I was. I was strong. I’d been carrying the weight of everything for a long time. And no one had noticed. But Louisa noticed. I was lonely. I had been doing so much to hold things together. She didn’t just tell me that I needed to be a man. She treated me like one. She said I’d been doing the work of one all that time. And then she started telling me about her life. The abusive husband she was with before she was with my dad. How she needed someone to make her feel safe.” Wyatt firmed up his jaw, stood straight and met Lindy’s eyes. “She said I made her feel safe. And she made me feel like I was the most important person in the world.”
He started collecting his clothes, because it turned out he couldn’t tell the story naked. He threw her clothes toward her because...he couldn’t look at her.
And he couldn’t have her looking at his body while he talked about what happened next. Because it made it all feel sordid. As if he could look and see Louisa’s handprints on him. He felt sick with the shame of it. And he hated that too. He hated everything about it.
“I lost my virginity to her,” he continued.
Lindy looked like she’d been hit in the face with a two-by-four. One that Wyatt had been wielding. And that made him feel even worse. He tugged his shirt on, covering himself completely. “I was in love with her. Plain and simple. At least, that was what I thought at the time. She wanted me. She needed me. She said I was the only person who made her feel safe. Who really listened to her. My dad was distracted by his other responsibilities. His kids. But not me. I was a real man. I died... I ate that up, Lindy. My ego... I felt like a king. My dad didn’t pay any attention to me. And then he brought home this woman and she treated me like I was the most important thing in her world. She was broken and weak and she needed me. She let me be there for her. She let me play at being a man. She made me one.”
“Wyatt, you were seventeen.”
“Yes. And there’s laws that make that illegal, I know that. But that’s all BS anyway. People used to get married younger than that. They were sure as hell having sex and babies by then. That’s all just numbers. It doesn’t mean that it was actually abuse.”
“It’s not your age that makes it abuse, Wyatt. Your dad trusted her with you. She was in a position of authority, because you were seventeen years old and you would have seen a woman her age as being in authority. She played on your weaknesses. On the things she saw in you that she knew she could manipulate. That’s what makes it abuse.”
“I was a seventeen-year-old boy desperate to get laid. That’s not abuse.”
“It doesn’t sound like you were desperate for sex. It sounds like you were desperate for someone to show you that they cared.”
Those words hurt more than any condemnation could have.
“It doesn’t matter now. It was wrong. And I jumped in with both feet. That’s what matters. That’s who I am.”
“Is that why you left?” Lindy asked. “Is that why you had to leave your home and join the rodeo? Because of her? Because I would argue that that proves that it wasn’t okay.”
“I’m not telling you this story to make you feel sorry for me. It was a situation. I handled it.”
“Did you? You left. And then you... You sent money back home. That’s why you gave your dad money. Because you were trying to fix it.”
“The ranch needed it. If I could help, I was going to help. Though, I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t trying to make up for what I did. My dad had one chance at being happy, all these years of grief, and I was so lost in my own that I couldn’t... I didn’t care about anyone but myself.” He shook his head. “That’s who I am. Deep down. If I want something... I can move everything else out of the way to justify having it. You tell me how that’s different than Damien.”
She looked up at him, her chin jutting out, her eyes flickering like a blue flame. “I’ll tell you how it’s different. Damien had a wife. He had parents who loved him. He did what he wanted to do and he found a million ways to justify that. So that he could please himself. You were a boy. You were lonely, and your father hurt you. And maybe you did give in partly because it would hurt him. But you were drowning, Wyatt. I can hear it in the way that you talk about it. You were drowning and she was there.”
He hated that. Hated that she saw him as a victim. Because that was too kind. He’d made his choice. And if she knew why he’d done it...well she wouldn’t have any sympathy for him at all.
He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t want it. He’d wanted what had happened between Louisa and himself. She made him feel strong. She was there for him in a way his father hadn’t been.
And best of all...
Best of all...he’d taken her away from his father. Had taken away what he’d used to distract himself. The person he’d clung to instead of Wyatt.
He felt guilty about it. About what it said about him. And sometimes...
Justified. Justified as hell.
“Maybe he felt like he was drowning. And she was there,” Wyatt said, meaning Damien and Sarabeth, and he knew that Lindy realized that.
“No,” Lindy said simply.
“I’m just saying, if I can justify this... What else can I justify? I’m not a better man. I’m just another man who gets led around by his private parts.”
“So you think that you would cheat on me? Is that what you’re saying?”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t think that. But I... I wouldn’t make that promise to you. I wouldn’t. There’s a reason we have a time limit, Lindy, and it’s because I know myself. In that, maybe I am a better man, but that’s as far as it goes. I have this ranch to run. I have to meet my father’s obligations. I have to prove that I can do this. I can’t take on anything else.”
“Maybe you could if you would let someone in.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s the same as me. You were hurting, and you’ve never told anyone, have you? You’ve never told your dad how he hurt you.” She paused for a moment. “Did your father ask you to leave, or did you leave on your own?”
“I left on my own,” he said. “I needed to go figure myself out.”
“Right. Without letting anyone in.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t exactly going to sit around and talk to my dad about all the sex I had with his fiancée.”
“That’s not what you would have talked about, and you know it. Did you ever talk to one of your brothers?”
“No. Bennett knows now. But... He only just found out.” Wyatt shook his head. “And it wasn’t my intention for him to know.”
“Wyatt, you hold everyone at a distance. Because you don’t... I don’t know what. You don’t want to admit that you’re not bulletproof? Is that it?”
He grabbed hold of her hand and held it steady, let it hover right above his chest. “You’re the one that said I was bulletproof, Lindy. You saw it. Maybe in the same way that I saw you. You should trust that.”
She shook her head. “No. I think you’ve done your best to make the world think you’re bulletproof. To make yourself think you’re bulletproof. But underneath that... Honey, I think you’re a mess.”
Honey was what he called her. He’d called her that dozens of times. But he didn’t mean it. He was being flippant. Her words felt serious. Real. He didn’t want serious and real. Because it made him feel other things, made him want other things. And he couldn’t... He couldn’t.
“Lindy,” he said. “We have until the barbecue. Let’s not do this.”
“Wyatt,” she said, looking at him square on, and he knew, better than he knew anything else in the entire world, that she was about to ask him a question he didn’t want to answer. “What happened when your mother died? You were eleven. I know you have to remember. Remember how things changed.”
His back went stiff, his entire body freezing up. Memories crowded in like a cloud, things he didn’t think about ever. There was no point, because there was no fixing it. No bringing her back. No restoring their family to what it had been.
“I don’t remember,” he said.
“Yes, you do,” she said softly.
“I don’t remember,” he said, the words ground out. “Why don’t we talk more about the day your mother called you a whore? Or the day you found your husband kissing some other woman? How about that?”
“Okay,” she shot back. “I remember those things. Do you want to hear about it? I walked into the wine cellar, at the winery that I had worked so damned hard on, that I had been spending all of my time on, and found my husband with his tongue down another woman’s throat. Backed up against the wall. And you know what? I’m a coward. Because I never asked him how many other women. I let myself think it was just her, but I’m sure there were more. It wasn’t the one he got caught with... That wasn’t the first one. That was when he got careless. And I didn’t see what I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want my shelter to be taken away from me. But once I saw, I had to deal with it. Except... I didn’t. Not until today. I didn’t deal with all of the reasons that I protect myself. It’s going to take years to sort it all out. But that’s okay. It’s not the end of the world if it takes time. I found a reason to do that work. It’s you.”
He shook his head. “Don’t you dare make me the reason. You be the reason, Lindy. You. Be enough all on your own. Don’t you put this on me. I can’t have it. I have enough, dammit. I don’t need you to...to make you my responsibility. Because that is just like Louisa.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t do that to me. It’s not the same. And you know it. Don’t use it now that you’ve told me just to hurt me. That’s not fair.”
“I can’t,” he said. There was nothing else that he could even say. Because there was a rising tide inside of him that he couldn’t stop. That he couldn’t roll back. Memories. The ones he didn’t let himself have.
The one that made him who he was.
“We need to go. Your brother is literally laying in a hospital bed unconscious. I think we should deal with all of that before we deal with this.”
“Not me,” Lindy said. “I want to deal with you. Because you matter that much. Don’t make this all about me. This is about you too.”
He took in a breath, but it was sharp, and it cut him, all the way down, the jagged edges of the air painful in his lungs. Maybe it wasn’t the air. Maybe it was her. Breathing her in like this. Looking at her. And the way she looked at him. Like he damn well might be something, when he knew that he wasn’t.
He couldn’t ask for love. For help. Not again. Not ever.
“I’ll walk you back,” he said.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “Not unless you want to talk the whole way. And when I say talk, I mean really talk. Not about the weather or how much you like my ass. You have to talk to me.”
“I don’t want to fucking talk,” he said. “I made that clear.”
“I don’t care what you want. You getting your way, me getting mine, that’s how we’ve stayed this messed up for this long. Have you ever thought of that?”
He reached out, and he grabbed her arms, drawing her forward. “Maybe I like it like this. Maybe it’s the way I keep going.”
She looked at him. “But what’s the point? What’s the point of walking forward when you’re headed toward nothing?”
“I have my ranch.”
“And I have my winery. I pour a hell of a lot into it, but it doesn’t pour anything into me. I’m standing here, and I’m telling you that I would give you everything. Everything I am. Everything I have. All the parts of myself that I kept protected for all that time. When I got naked for you that first day in the living room... It was more than just my body. And today it really was everything. My heart. My soul. That’s all. I’ll give it to you, everything I am. Wyatt, please.”
And he was frozen. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Because he was lost. In another time. More than twenty years ago.
Dad, please.
Into that moment that he did his best to never remember. When he’d been down in the dirt, crying. When he felt like he couldn’t stand up, never would again.
Every time he hit the dirt in the arena and he stood back up he defied that moment. That boy. That weakness.
All that anger.
He’d spent years defying that moment. And now he felt like that little boy all over again. Crying like he’d lost his mother. Because he had.
With no one there to give him a hand. To help him back up.
So he’d learned to pick himself up. And he’d done it ever since.
You have to be a man now, Wyatt. No more crying. You have to be a man.
“I’ll drive you back to Dane if you need me to,” he said, letting go of her and taking a step back.
“I don’t,” she said, dressing slowly now. Finally.
“Lindy...”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand. “But I want you to realize something, Wyatt Dodge. You’re alone because you choose to be. You’re alone because you won’t reach a hand out.”
She finished dressing and she turned and began to walk away from him, heading up the path.
Showed what she knew. He’d done it. He’d reached out. And he’d learned he had to stand on his own.
He wasn’t going to go back now.