Cowboy Casual (The Calloway Ranch #1)

by Holly Renee

No. Not now. Not him. I’d buried him beneath years of careful compartmentalization, sealed him away in the darkest corner of my heart where dangerous things belonged.

For four years, I’d filed myself down, smoothed away any parts of me that might snag on propriety or expectation. Now something untamed and forgotten stirred beneath my ribs, screaming for me to be reckless,

I could feel myself being torn between the wild-hearted girl my mom had raised me to be and the dull woman my father had created.

I closed my eyes for a single, shaky breath, then wiped away a stray tear before it could mar my mascara. Just one tear was all I allowed myself to shed for the girl I used to be, the girl who’d been taught her worth came from men who never really loved her.

all the plans they’d fused around me like a glass cage.

One of the very first things my grandmother taught me was that men ain’t shit.

My father had told me that I was making a mistake, that I was making foolish emotional decisions because I was hurt. Maybe I was, but the anger felt cleaner and safer somehow. There had been so many times when I’d let my anger with him and with Grant dissolve into forgiveness, but I clung to it now, tight enough to make up for all the times I swallowed it down.

“Sometimes you gotta face the music, even if it ain’t your favorite tune,”

They’d know I was back after years of running with nothing but a busted-up heart and a canceled engagement to show for it.

That girl had been so desperate to be wanted, she shrank herself down into someone easier.

Working on the farm did that. It bled the venom right out of me and left nothing but the soft underbelly I tried to keep hidden.

She was fire, and I was fucking drowning in her.

She threw it back hard and fast like the liquor could burn the memory of me off her tongue. Good fucking luck, sweetheart.

He didn’t have to say a word. His eyes tracked over me, and I became hyperaware of my hair, my shorts, the flush in my cheeks. Did he see it? The way I’d traded pieces of myself until I barely recognized the woman staring back at me?

His accusations echoed in my mind like a record stuck on repeat, each play making them harder to dismiss as the lies they were. He had trained my doubt to surge forward before anything else could.

I’d given him every part of me when I still believed I’d always be his.

My daughter was the only light I had some days, the only reason to drag myself out of bed when the weight of the ranch and everything else felt like it was going to crush me.

“We all have to do what we have to do to survive this world.”

I stared at the broken run of fence, jagged and useless like the promises I'd made to myself.

I hadn’t realized how easily I was losing myself. Each day I’d grown more agreeable, more digestible, for the sake of earning their love. But love wasn’t something they gave in return.

A slow burn built in my chest, and I clamped my eyes closed. I wanted to scream. I wanted to reach through the phone and shake him until he rattled, until all the years of me swallowing my own voice came up and flooded every inch of this house.

It didn’t matter how they left, they still left behind the same emptiness. I couldn’t draw in a full breath as I realized I never wanted to be someone who created that feeling in her.

There was a hardness around her eyes that hadn’t been there before, a narrowing, like the world had taught her to expect the worst and she’d learned the lesson a little too well.

Her danger lay in the quiet persistence of hope. It was a splinter beneath my skin that worked deeper with every heartbeat, impossible to dig out no matter how desperately I tried.

Her father had told her I was a phase, something wild to burn through before she settled down and made herself useful, and standing here now, I could see what that had cost her. The walls she’d built around herself were so visible, brick by careful brick, and something in me raged against them.

I hated myself for ever letting her believe she was hard to love when loving her had been the easiest thing I’d ever done.

I wanted to kill him. I wanted to slam her against the wall, beg her for everything until her stubborn mouth yielded beneath mine, until her breath came in ragged gasps against my lips. I wanted her to see how fucked up what he did to her was, to obliterate every memory of that worthless asshole who hurt her. And I wanted to erase my own sins too, to burn away the years of regret with the heat of her skin against mine.

“Don’t call me daddy unless you want me to put you on your knees.” The words came out on a growl.

You may not want me, but let’s get real fucking clear that I have never stopped wanting you.”

Nothing about this felt sensible or safe, and yet I couldn’t make myself pull back from it, couldn’t quiet the part of me that leaned into the danger of him.

Some small, traitorous part of me wanted to lean into his words and believe what he was saying, but the rest of me recoiled at the idea of exposing one more inch of soft skin for the world to bruise.

Each stroke of his tongue was reverent; each breath we shared a communion. I could feel him worshipping every inch he touched, as if kissing me was both my salvation and damnation.

“I was so fucking sure I’d finally figured my life out, you know? I thought if I did everything right, if I kept my head down and my heart locked up, then maybe I could—” She went quiet, and I could practically feel her trying to find the right words. “But the harder I tried to move on, the less I recognized myself.

She blinked, and I could see the fight in her, the stubborn denial, the part of her that still believed she was all the things other people said she was.

I tried to rebuild my own goddamn soul from the pieces you left behind. But no matter what I did, no matter how many times I told myself it was for the best, loving you was the one thing I never figured out how to stop.” I said the last part so quietly I wasn’t sure she heard it, but she did. She heard every damn word.

“Every night I’d lie awake replaying everything, searching for the moment I became someone you couldn’t love anymore.”

I’m done letting men decide what I can bear.

Of course this was what I wanted. I wanted a family, a place to belong, something that could never be taken away, but every time I reached for it, it seemed to slip from my fingers.

My chest constricted, vision swimming as rage and protectiveness collided. I couldn’t bear the thought of her ever standing where I stood now, desperate for a love that should’ve been given freely.

Ruby would never stand where I stood now, trembling with the pathetic hope that maybe this time, just this time, she might be enough.