Chapter 29: A False Start: Chapter 29

I wake in my house alone. Hidden away in the mountains. I only have a few weeks left to work at Gold Rush Ranch, and I know we just spent a weekend up here prepping for winter, but after that trail ride with Nadia, I needed some space. To think. To figure out what the fuck I’m doing. Because it seems like everything I’ve been running from is about to hit me full force.

My lawyer has warned me it will.

Anxiety coils in my chest. Digging my grave and lying in it never really bothered me, but with Nadia around, I’m suddenly overwhelmed. I should have dealt with this years ago.

The urge to drive to the local diner and order a drink surges inside of me.

how I’ve washed my issues away for years. Well, before I started hiding from them.

But I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m thirty-five years old. It’s about goddamn time I pulled myself up out of this pity party.

I’m lonely in my bed for the first time in years. It seems impossible after nearly a week, but I swear I’m still getting whiffs of Nadia’s scent on my sheets. I fisted my cock last night thinking of her soft skin, her tempting moans, the way our souls wrap around each other at the same time as our bodies. And then I spent my night dreaming about her, all the things I want to give her, and about the type of man I want to be for her.

I know connections like ours don’t come along very often in life. And that fucking terrifies me.

So, I’m starting with coffee rather than liquor. I throw my duvet back and push my messy hair out of my face.

I pad across the rancher to the kitchen, where I make my shitty plain coffee in my shitty plain coffee maker.

My lips tug up as I watch it pour out of the machine. I’m pretty sure coffee will forever remind me of my mother now. My sweet mom, who has stood by and watched me spiral but always lends her support. That scolding last weekend was the most incensed I’ve seen her over the state of my life in a very long time. Not since she picked me up at Neighbor’s Pub one night has she put her nose in my business. I’ll never forget that night. You’d think being as drunk as I was it wouldn’t register in my memory, but somehow it does. It’s fuzzy and warped, but a turning point all the same.

Home.

A knock on the door pulls me out of the memory. I shake my head, still cringing over that night. My parents left the car a mess and told me to clean it in the morning when I got up sober.

I bought them a new car instead.

And if that isn’t a metaphor for how I’ve dealt with my life, then I don’t know what is. No responsibility. And now, taking it back feels downright daunting.

The knocking sounds again, but this time it registers. No one knocks on my door up here. No one visits me up here. What the fuck is going on?

I eye the hunting rifle and length of rope I leave mounted by the front door, just in case, but decide against grabbing it. That’s for cougars and wolves, or if a horse gets loose, neither of which knocks at the door. As I inch my way across the room, I peek out a window and recognize the pearl white car in the driveway.

I pull the door open and there she is. Looking a little ticked off. I can’t help smiling down at her. I love the little ragey streak in her. Firecracker that she is.

“Hi, Wildflower.”

“What are you smiling at?”

“You.”

“Well, knock it off. I went to see you and couldn’t find you. I called your phone, and you didn’t answer.” Her hands find her hips, like that might make her look tougher.

“I came back up here for the weekend.” I stretch one arm up the door frame and clamp my fingers there to keep from touching her.

“Didn’t think to mention that to me?”

“Well, I didn’t think—”

“Exactly.” She points at me, cutting me off. “You didn’t think. You didn’t think that I might be worried about you? You didn’t think that telling me you love me would change anything? Sometimes you make it really fucking hard to love you back.”

I stare at her. “I know I do.”

“You’re a real dick sometimes,” she huffs out, looking away. Wildflowers blow in the breeze over her right shoulder.

“You’re not wrong.”

“You can’t just keep hiding up here when the going gets tough. There are people who care about you. Including me. I’m people.”

My voice drops along with my eyes. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“It scares me when you won’t tell me things.”

“I’ve spent the last several years of my life promising myself I would choose a simple life. That I didn’t need fireworks and longing and that consuming sort of love so long as I had a safe, honest partner.”

I just grunt. That sounds fucking terrible. It also sounds distinctly like not me.

“And then you waltzed in and fucked everything up.”

I bark out a laugh and scrub my hands over my face. “Yeah. I’m especially talented at that, it would seem. Throwing a football and fucking everything up.”

“Also eating pussy.” She cracks a smile, always tossing something in to lighten the mood.

“I’ll add that to my resume.”

We stand on the front step, smiling at each other. But there’s a tightness. Her smile doesn’t touch her eyes, and I’m certain mine doesn’t either.

“Want to come in? I’ll make you a shitty coffee and tell you everything.”

crosses my mind as she nods.

But as I watch her pad into my house, her acid wash jeans creasing beneath her perfect ass and waves of blonde hair trailing down her back, I realize it’s more like Because deep down, I know she’s not going to stick around now.