Page 103 of My Cowboy Trouble
"Kenzie, wait!"
She doesn't stop, doesn't even slow down. Just keeps walking toward the road like she can't hear me calling her name.
"Kenzie, please, just stop for a minute!"
"There's nothing to talk about," she says without turning around. "I've heard everything I need to hear."
"No, you haven't. You've heard Clara Mae's version, which makes us sound like complete bastards. But that's not the whole story."
She finally stops but doesn't turn around. "What's the whole story, Gavin? That you made a bet about me, thought I was a joke, and then decided it might be fun to sleep with me before I left? Because that's what it sounds like to me."
"That's how it started," I admit, the words feeling like glass in my throat. "But it's not how it ended. It's not how any of us feel about you now."
"How do you feel about me now?" She turns to face me, and the pain in her eyes nearly brings me to my knees. "Because you said you loved me. But how am I supposed to believe that when this whole thing started as a joke at my expense?"
"Because it's true. Because somewhere between that first day when you told us all to go to hell and this morning when you looked at me like I hung the moon, everything changed. The bet stopped mattering. Youstopped being a challenge and started being... everything."
"Pretty words," she says, echoing what she said in the barn. "But they don't change what you did. They don't change the fact that I feel like a complete fool for believing any of it was real."
"It was real. All of it. Especially?—"
"That was a mistake." The words hit me like a physical blow. "All of it was a mistake. I should have known better than to think three cowboys would actually want to keep a city girl around for anything other than entertainment."
"That's not?—"
"Isn't it?" She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Because that's exactly what I was, wasn't I? Entertainment. A distraction. A hot piece of ass. Something to keep you all amused until the real world came calling."
"Kenzie," I mutter.
For a moment, I think I see a flicker of the woman who was in my arms, telling me she might love me. But then a car appears at the end of the drive, her cab, and the moment is gone.
"I have to go," she says, already walking toward the waiting car.
"Where? Back to New York?"
"Does it matter?"
"It matters to me."
She stops at the car door, her hand on the handle. "You should have thought about that before you made me into a joke."
"We can fix this. Whatever it takes, however long it takes, we can fix this."
"No," she says quietly, not looking at me. "You can't. Because I'll never be able to trust you again. Any of you. And without trust, all the love in the world doesn't mean anything."
She gets in the cab without looking back, and I stand there watching as it drives away and don't move until the taillights disappear around the bend. I continue to stand there for a long time, staring at the empty road and the growing darkness. Because this is it. This is the moment that it's all gone.
The bet was my idea. Running my mouth about it was my choice. And losing her because of it is my responsibility, just like Trent said.
By the time I finally walk back to the house, Trent and Asher are waiting on the porch. They don't ask what happened—they can probably see it written all over my face.
"She's gone," I say anyway.
Neither of them responds. What is there to say? We all knew this was coming from the moment Clara Mae opened her mouth. We all knew that once Kenzie found out about the bet, there'd be no coming back from it.
"Now what?" Asher asks finally.
I look at both of them, my best friends, my brothers,the men who've been by my side through everything for the past eight years, and realize I don't have an answer. Because for the first time since we came to this ranch, I don't know what comes next.
