Page 33 of Awaiting the Storm
I look away.
He leans closer. “Matty, I was miserable. This past year, I tried, I really did. But nothing felt right without you.”
I grit my teeth and force myself to breathe evenly. “I’m sorry you were miserable, Carl. But I didn’t have time to be.”
His grip tightens just a fraction. “I know I messed up. I know I left when I should’ve stayed. But I didn’t know how to fix things.”
“You didn’t need to fix anything,” I say, my voice sharp. “You just had to be patient. Instead, you left me to do everything alone. And the worst part was, you broke our engagement with a damn note scribbled on the back of a work order.”
He exhales like I gut-punched him. “I didn’t know how to help you. You wouldn’t let me in. And every time I tried to talk to you about it, you got upset. I didn’t want to be another burden.”
“So, instead, you made me carry the weight and the guilt of your absence too.”
The song plays on. But we’re not dancing anymore. We’re just turning in place like ghosts. Memories of who we used to be.
“I’m here now,” he says. “I want to help. I want to make it right.”
I shake my head. “It’s not that simple.”
“Matty—”
The song ends, and I step back, putting space between us.
“I’m going to sit down,” I say.
He reaches out and clasps my wrist. I glance back at him, and for a brief second, I fight the urge to step back into his arms. It would be so easy to go backward. But I just can’t. Not right now. He must see it on my face because he lets go, and I feel the heat of his gaze burning between my shoulder blades as I make my way to our table.
He calls after me, voice loud over the start of the next song, “I’m not giving up on us, Matty.”
I don’t answer.
I just keep walking forward.
Matty walks back to the table like she didn’t just leave a man on the dance floor, nursing a bruised ego.
Head up, shoulders back, footing steady. That braid of hers swinging as she walks and the black lace clinging to her every curve with the same possessiveness I felt in my chest a few minutes ago when he tapped me on the shoulder. I wanted to pull her in tighter and tell him tofuck off. I don’t even know the man. I know nothing about their past, except for the little that Albert and Charli told me, but something inside me has a bad reaction to his presence and has me wanting to shield Matty.
Not that she needs my protection. She’d probably have my balls in a vise for even thinking it.
She doesn’t look flustered. Doesn’t look back at Carl. Just slips into her seat like nothing happened. Like everyone’s eyes aren’t on her and their thoughts aren’t filled with a million questions.
And I’m still standing off to the side of the bar like a damn fool, watching her.
I swallow the last of the liquor in my glass, but it does nothing to drench the fire licking just under my skin. I’ve never been the jealous type. I don’t have time for drama or jealousy or any of that juvenile, macho, chest-beating bullshit.
But watching her dance with Carl, watching him put his hands on her where mine had just been?
It lit something in me I hadn’t seen coming.
I barely know her. In fact, we’re practically strangers. We’ve had, what, four conversations? A couple of sidelong glances, one and a half dances? Yet it feels like I’ve known her forever.
What the hell is that?
I’m here to gain her trust and earn her respect for onereason—to convince her to part with a stretch of Wildhaven Storm land that could benefit us both.
I’m not here to fall for the girl with an attitude the size of Wyoming, who runs herself ragged for a struggling ranch she’s hell-bent on trying to save.
And yet all I can think about is how right she felt in my arms.
