Page 94 of Ride Me Cowboy

I can’t answer that. It’s so much more complicated than he knows. “He wasn’t just some guy I knew. He was my husband. I was his wife.” Tears pour down my cheeks. My stomach is inknots. “She thinks we were happy and that I loved him. She thinks?—,”

“So, tell her the truth. Why does that jackass deserve your protection now?’

It is a very complicated thing, I know that. Perhaps, before meeting Christopher, I might have felt as Cole does. That is, that my situation is black and white. Christopher was bad, I was good, I am therefore right and he is wrong. But when you love someone, as I once thought I loved Christopher, and they betray that love, so it turns to hatred, it is a far messier, more complicated proposition. I don’t love him any longer, and yet the love I once felt is a part of the swirling feelings I have for my husband. So too, the weight and power of our lost dreams, my lost hope.

On the day I married him, I imbued our promises to one another with decades’ worth of expectation. I saw beyond the ceremony, the rings, the champagne, to the days that would follow: the laughs, the failures and joys, the children, grandchildren, for better or for worse.

Accepting that my husband was abusive, that every day might be my last, and at his hands, was not only shocking, it was jarring. It was the slow release of those dreams, and yet they’re still a part of me. It is an essential disconnect, and I have no idea how to explain any of that to Cole.

How can I tell him that in defending Christopher, I am simply defending the girl I once was? Protecting the innocence and sweetness of her hopes?

It’s all so futile.

But as I look at Cole, through a now unbreakable film, as though he is a full football stadium away, I acknowledge that if I weren’t still that damaged girl, so broken on the inside, I would be reaching for him with both hands, and holding him so damned tight. I would admit to myself that Cole, and Cole alone, is the sum total of what I want and need. Because he really truly is.

“Listen to me,” he says, his voice calm, when his eyes show a swirling torrent of emotion. “This isn’t something you can just run away from. She’s a part of your life, and if you keep lying to her, it’s only going to hurt you. You can’t keep pretending?—,”

“How do you know?” I hiss, heart racing, because Elsie must be down there, somewhere, still looking for me. “I spentyearspretending, just fine.”

“Is that what you call it?” he demands. And because he’s right, I go on the attack.

“Look who’s talking, anyway. You run around this place like everything’s hunky dory and all the while you have the weight of the world pressing down on you. You’re lying to your family every single day.”

He goes very still, staring at me, expression like iron, body totally static. I suck in a deep breath, aware I might have gone too far, but not able to care. I’m panicked and guilt-ridden, and feel totally adrift. The one person I’d come to think of as a sort of anchor is spinning away from me—because I’m pushing him.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go talk to Elsie.”

“Beth, wait,” he says, when I’m almost at the top of the stairs, and this time, when he pulls at my hand, he draws me against his body, one hand at my cheek, his fingers in my hair, and then he kisses me.

I need this kiss more than I can say. I wish I didn’t, but there’s something in the way his lips mesh with mine, his body molding against me, that makes me feel like I’m myself again. It somehow washes away all of my uncertainty and doubt, all of my angst, and plonks my right back in the middle of my safe space.

His arm wraps around my waist, tighter, harder. This is such a perfectly familiar embrace, a connection that starts in the very middle of me and wraps all the way around him. I zone everything else out and exist purely in this moment, soaking it up, feeling tranquil and at peace.

“You aren’t alone, Beth,” he says against my mouth.

I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know how to reply. I don’t get a chance, anyway.

Elsie’s voice is unmistakable, out here, in the middle of Coyote Creek Ranch. “Beth? What the actual fuck?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Beth

IJUMP APART FROM Cole so fast I likely would have fallen down the stairs if he hadn’t quickly caught me around the waist and held me to the spot. I look over the railing and see Mack, Caleb and Elsie staring up at us, all with very different expressions on their faces.

Mack’s, bemused. Caleb’s, surprised. Elsie’s…I can’t even begin to describe Elsie’s.

The hurt and betrayal I see on her features is like a physical slap.

She mouths my name, but can’t hear it. I swear, and quickly pull away from Cole. I know he’s right behind me, as I move quickly down the spiral staircase—for once, not scared by the way it shakes with our steps.

But when I reach them, I have no clue what to say. I just stare at her, and she stares at me, so now it’s the others I’ve tuned out. Ican’t even imagine what I must look like to her, how much I’ve changed since I left Manhattan.

“What is this?” she says, finally, recovering before I can, her eyes flicking to Cole, a frown pulling on her lips.

“It’s—,”

“You’re—are you—I don’t understand,” Elsie says, her eyes filming with tears. “Hejustdied, Beth. Your husband—my brother—just died and you’re out here playing cowgirl with, with, this?” she jerks her thumb at Cole.

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