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The real problem was that I was in love with Jackson Ford Myles. I had been for years. Boys like Jackson chased after the girl next door types while I just pined silently after my best friend. While it fucking hurt sometimes, I’d come to accept that this was my reality.
And then his mouth was on mine again. I melted into the cool grass as I made out with my best friend under the stars.
Memories. Memories of shit I didn’t want to go back to. My life had been fucking hell since I ran to get away from Harrison. I’d accepted that my life was crap. I’d accepted just how fucking broken and worthless I was. I made do with working to get by, staying alone, and keeping my head down.
Black ink covered his tanned skin in a wild array of tattoos. The most prominent was the pair of angel wings coming out of his shoulder blades, covering both arms, and ending in roses on his hands. Barbed wire spiraled down his spine while stars cascaded over his right side.
She should’ve stuck with that. Instead, she picked the one guy with a broken dick. It hadn’t worked in years, and that wasn’t changing. Not for her. Not for anyone.
“I’m puttin’ myself between you and him so you don’t fuckin’ break what’s already broken, you hear me?” he told me, his voice deadly quiet. “I like you, Jackson. You’re family. But he needs someone. Don’t put me in a fuckin’ way here.”
“No, y’all decided to bury your fucking heads in the sand, and for what?” I gestured around me. “For some fucking land? For fucking cows? You failed him—all of you—when you decided his worth wasn’t more than this stupid fucking business. Than a stupid fucking job!” “Now, it ain’t like that—” “It is like that!” I interrupted. How could none of them understand that?
“I would’ve burned the whole fucking place to the ground before I let him run away afraid for his life.”
My mother’s suicide. No one else knew I’d been in the room with her the night she killed herself.
“No one fucking moves a goddamn muscle until that house is as dead as Harrison fucking McNamara,” Jackson ordered. “My ranch, my rules. I want the whole damn thing gone.”
A bucking horse made to be wild and then wouldn’t let them tame him didn’t deserve death. He deserved freedom. And I could give him that. Me.
The look on Jackson’s face as he watched me was unnerving. Like this meant more than it was. It couldn’t. He had to see that my mess wasn’t worth it.
“I told you I’m not fucking worth it.” “I’ll keep believing you are for the both of us.”
“Don’t…” he began quietly, “don’t… don’t give me the power to break your heart. I’m not fucking worth that.” This man. This fucking man. He just didn’t get it, did he?
“It’s too late for that,” I whispered. Taking his face in my hands, I kissed him once. Twice. Three times. Each kiss lingered longer than the last. “I loved you back then just like I love you now.”
“Your stables, your rules, West,”
The man I loved was falling apart in ways I couldn’t begin to fathom—tortured by memories and trauma I didn’t understand. Could never understand. It fucking killed me.
I’d broken into someone’s house just so I could see Jackson’s first ride. It was stupid as fuck to do, but I’d gotten away with it. Probably not a thing to be proud of, but I just couldn’t imagine breaking that fucking promise.
I wasn’t leaving West out there alone. Grabbing a pillow for me and a blanket for West, I stormed right back outside. Fuck everything else.
“I told you I’d be there for your first ride. I just never said at what rodeo,”
“You’re in fringe,” West commented. I refused to look at the fucker. He was judging me. “I mean I… I watched you on TV but shit… it’s so much fucking worse in person. And assless chaps.”
A cowboy hat and a horseshoe.
