Page 93 of Ride Me Cowboy

I pull away from him, shaking my head. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand you,” he says, in a way that makes my heart beat faster. “You will destroy yourself if you keep living this lie.”

“What choice do I have?”

“Be honest with them, so you can move on. Think about your future.”

That’s the problem. When I think about my future, all I see is the present. This ranch, this family, this damn man. My throat thickens and despair flares inside of me.

“No,” I say, hard and fast, rejecting what I’m pretty sure is impossible. A quick glance downstairs shows two shadows sliding through the open door of the stables—they’re almost here. “I appreciate your concern, but this is my problem, not yours.” I sidestep him, needing to intercept Elsie.

“Beth, wait,” he growls, lacing his fingers through mine as I pass and squeezing them. “Just wait.”

I shake my head quickly, because there’s nothing he can say that will fix this. I will always be Beth McMahon. I’m Beth Tasker, too, but being Christopher’s widow is a part of my whole future. My whole existence. I was stupid to think, for a time, it wasn’t.

“What for?” I bite back a sob of raw emotion. I wish, to bits and pieces, that I could control my feelings better, but the truth is, I’m so spent. It has been a long road, since Elsie’s birthday party, when I met Christopher for the first time.

“Wait for me,” he says, slowly but like it’s the most important thing he’ll ever say in his life. “Let me do this with you.”

“No,” I shake my head quickly, my heart racing. In that moment, I’m looking at Cole, but all I’m seeing is Christopher. All I’m feeling like is Christopher’s wife. I don’t know how else to explain it, but to say that it’s like I’m on one side of a cracked mirror, and my old life is the other. It’s distant and distorted, through cracks and fissures, but it’s still rightthere,within easy spotting distance, easy reach. I feel far from untouchable. Far from safe. Not with Elsie here, bringing it all back to me.

Trauma is a schism, splitting me into a trillion shards.

But I am not the only one reacting out of emotion. Cole wraps his other arm around me and pulls me against his body, hard and fast, shocking me with his intensity, in the same way a Jane Austen heroine might have felt when smelling salts were wafted beneath her nose. “I know what we are,” he says throatily. “I know you’re leavin’ here. You and I have been clear about that from the first. You have a whole life ahead of you, and it will be a wonderful life, darlin’. But I also know that?—,”

Elsie is down the far end of the stables now. I hear her. I need to pull back, but my body is begging me to just hold on a second,to take a beat and inhale this intoxicating moment. To build strength from Cole, and let his goodness and warmth soak into me and prepare me for what I know is going to happen.

“That what?”

“Above anythin’ else we’ve got going on, we’re friends. I care about you. I don’t want you to face this alone. I can help you.”

Friends.A profoundly deep sadness washes over me—for myself, and also, for Cole. “You are broken by your past. You must see that. You couldn’t save your mom, or your dad, you’re worried you can’t save this place, and all the while, you beat yourself up for things that aren’t your fault. You want to fix everyone and everything, just like your dad did. Maybe you even think that if you make me all better, put a big fat plaster over everything that’s happened to me, you can redeem whatever you think you’ve done wrong in the past.”

His jaw clenches and I can’t tell if it’s from pride or anger.

“But you can’t fix me, Cole. No one can. I’m not your redemption; I just can’t be.” Saying that is both a breaking point and a relief. It’s an admission I’ve been fighting, so hard. I came here hoping that with time, and the right circumstances, some breathing room, I could come back to myself. But Christopher has permanently broken me, morphed me into something and someone I no longer know. He is dead; and yet he wins. He’ll always win.

He was right: I will never be free of him.

Finally, in this place that has become my home, my heart, my hopes, I accept the truth of my reality, the burdens of my cage. I stare at Cole, but now, I’m staring at him through an impenetrable barrier.

He is a reality I can never have.

This whole time has been a fantasy.

I ran away. I pretended. I faked it.

But I was wrong.

I sob, but this time, no noise emerges. It is just a guttural, aching, throat-burning sensation that bubbles from the deep pit inside of me, and I have no way to stem the pain that floods my entire nervous system.

“I should never have let this happen,” I whisper.

“Are you kidding me?” He lets go of my wrist, my waist, and instead grabs my face with both hands, staring at me like he’s desperate to get through the barrier, even as I’m furiously raising my shields, making sure he can’t. “All because his sister is here, Beth?”

“Yes,” I say, then shake my head, so his hands drop away. “And no.” Another sob chokes in my throat. I know Elsie is down there somewhere. I feel almost disconnected from reality—another defense mechanism from my marriage.

“Your husband was a bastard,” he says, but I flinch at that. Elsie’s being here has thrown me—hard—back into the role of dutiful wife. I cannot hear that reality without a deep, abiding sense of guilt and an almost heart-stopping panic. The visage of Christopher is so close. “But his sister is not him. It’s pretty damn clear she cares about you. She’s here out of concern, not anger.”

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