Breathe for Me (The Langston Brothers Duet #1)

by Brittany Ann

To the ones who try to save everyone but themselves. Remember that you are just as important as the person beside you. Remember to live.

It had been six months since I got to bury my cock in something warm. She was pretty, not a knockout by any means, but pretty. She wasn’t my type either. Her hair was fake blonde, her tits just as manufactured. She wore too much makeup and aside from her fake tits, she had no curves, nothing for me to hold on to. Still, she had a cunt and I needed to fuck something.

What happened to hello? Or how are you?

“Gonna call you a cab. You can wait downstairs.” Her dull brown eyes went wide, astonished. “What?”

Damn

That’s when the lies began. That’s when the betrayal took over, seeping into the already damaged bond my brother and I shared, destroying it completely. That’s when I lost my brother. The woman I’d just fucked like a whore was my brother’s fiancé.

Oh shit

The plan—the original Valerie Cross Life Plan—was to become a lawyer, then open my own firm in Dallas. I planned on having a kickass, high-rise apartment and a dog. I hadn’t decided on the breed yet, but I would’ve gotten to that later. Included in that plan was falling in love with a sweet man, a kind man. One who wanted children, who wouldn’t leave when they entered the world.

He told my mom he would see her after work. She told him that she was making his favorite for dinner, fried chicken. He gave her a kiss and walked out the door. He never came back.

Asshole

“I know you do,” she said, looking back at me. “It pays the bills, Mom. You know that. It’s shitty, but sometimes you have to make a deal with the devil to survive,”

Fast forward to now, at twenty-seven years old. Now, I wanted to learn how I could convince a rancher named Denver Langston to sell his land to Moonie Pipelines, the company I worked for. No, I needed to know how I could convince him. Why? Because if I landed the Hallow Ranch account, my commission would cover two years of my mom’s medical bills. Two more years with my mom on this Earth. Yeah. That’s all I needed to know: how to convince Denver Langston to sell his ranch to me.

Something tells me this isn't going to be as easy as she thinks it will be.

My son was the only person who got a smile out of me. Then again, he was the only person who fucking deserved it.

The ranch encompassed ten thousand acres of pure, untouched beauty. Mountains stretched around us, surrounding my ranch, other ranches, and the town of Hayden in a valley. Home.

Nature doesn’t show mercy, even to the ones creating life. No one is safe from nature’s wrath.

My boys say it’s a miracle he has a good soul. That boy’s soul was made of rainwater, pure, untouched, directly from heaven above.

Especially for a cowboy like me.

My eyes caught Mags riding up to the barn on his black mare.

MY MAN

“Let me guess; they wanted you to come out here and see if I would follow suit,”

“No. No—Denver that’s not it,”

“What’s happening to your ...

“That’s why I’...

“Six of your cows dropped dead ...

“Yes but—” “You’re dumber than you look if you came over here to sell ...

“You shut the fuck up when I am speaking to you. Don’t you dare interrupt me,”

Mags was a retired Marine, like me. We never served together but a year after Pop died, Mags wandered into the barn.

I kept my promise. Mason didn’t. Mason hasn’t stepped foot on this ranch in ten fucking years. All because of Cathy.

In the beginning, I doubted the seeds would even grow. Green thumbs weren’t a family trait that I particularly possessed.

The road cut straight through them. The drive to Hayden from Denver was mesmerizing, but the drive from Hayden to Hallow Ranch felt I had died and gone to heaven. Colorado was beautiful.

Not just any house. The house every woman dreams off. A house filled with memories. A house that needed to be filled with children and laughter. A house that would be warm and welcoming in the dead of winter, with a Christmas tree glowing in the front window. A house of love.

This wouldn’t be my last time on Hallow Ranch. There was beauty here. Peace.

The third thing I noticed—which pissed me off the most—was that my cock twitched at the sight of her. She was gorgeous. Tall and curvy. A fucking vision. Christ.

This woman had her back to me, her dark hair flowing down her back in waves that stopped at her waist, the overcast sky making it look even more striking. She was a city girl, that much was clear, dressed in a tight pencil skirt that covered every fucking inch of her perfect, round ass and a dark green silk blouse. A woman like that had no business being out here.

A woman like that didn’t come to ranches for shits and giggles. A woman like that was a threat to Hallow Ranch.

Christ. Those fucking eyes. Green. Forest green. Eyes a man could get lost in. Eyes that made a man want to get lost in.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

A woman could get lost in those eyes. I wanted to get lost in those eyes. This was the most gorgeous man that I’d ever seen. He was big—huge. He was taller than me, and that’s saying something, because I was in heels.

I blinked at the tall—huge—man. He had on a black cowboy hat and it looked damn good on him, made his smoke gray eyes stand out. Judging by his dark, short beard, his hair was also dark, maybe black. His skin was tan, evidence of years spent working under the hot sun. His face—God.

“City Girl, I’m fucking talking to you.” I blinked again, shaking my head. “Hi,” I squeaked. It was his turn to stare. “This is private property. Get the fuck off it,”

“Hey!” I protested. “Let me go!” “You and your long legs with your fancy shoes and your fancy fuckin’ hair need to the hell off this property,”

“The answer is no, City Girl. Go on back to your paved roads and dirty air. Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want it. The answer will always be no. Go back to your city. Go get your suit wearing boyfriend to lay you down and fuck you until you fake it. Then, in a year or so, he’ll put a ring on your finger and a baby in your belly. You’ll be a stay-at-home wife. You’ll go to yoga and hire a nanny. You’ll be living off his money, so you won’t have to deal with men like me.”

“The owner of the ranch your fancy ass is standing on. Get the fuck off my property,”

“Sir, I’m here as a representative of Moo—” “Bitch,”

And I oooop

“Whatever you have to say, I don’t want to fucking hear it,”

“Sir, please,”

“I just need a moment of your time.” “I don’t have a moment and even if I fucking did, darlin’, I w...

“Mr. Langston, if you would like to me leave, then I need you to please move.”

Every few weeks or so, I would do this. I called it, emptying the emotion tank.

“Mom—” “—but I did not raise my daughter to give up,”

“He said ‘no’.” “You said you didn’t even get to introduce yourself, right?” “Yeah, that’s right,” I sighed. “Then he doesn’t even know what he is saying ‘no’ to, Valerie.” “Mom—”

“You have no friends, besides me. You don’t go out. You have a job—one you’re working for me, to pay my bills—that takes you to the most beautiful places in the country but that you don’t experience. Then, you come home and take care of me. That’s not the life I wanted you to live, Valerie.”

“You are a beautiful woman, Vallie. You have your whole life ahead of you, but I’m not going to argue about this with you anymore. So, the way I see it, you’ve got two options…”

“Option one, you call it quits, drop that stupid company, forget all about that cowboy, and come home to me. Option two, you wipe

those tears, tell your boss you would like another chance, go back to that cowboy, and try again.”