In Love With A Cowboy (BWWM Romance) (11 page)

Chapter 10 - Tanner

I sat on the bed with my head in my hands, trying to figure out how I was going to tell Jada I was leaving. We’d spent the morning in bed, tracing the contours of each other’s body and relearning the few things we already knew about each other. Whenever I was with her it felt like the rest of the world fell away, and nothing else mattered.

After we parted it always came crashing down on me. When she’d left earlier it had been no different. She had the café to check on, and then she had to pick up Keisha and go back to work. And I was left in the hotel room feeling like my other half had just walked out the door and my time with her was running out.

The receptionist had called minutes after she’d left and told me the car had been booked for this evening. That meant that I had time only to say goodbye. To see my brother one last time, for what it was worth. To see Jada. To peel myself away from the life here that had somehow managed to suck me back in.

I got in the rental car and I drove toward Cosmos Valley again. Why did I keep coming back here? Because when a place had shaped so much of who you were, leaving it behind was like dropping pieces of yourself along the way like a trail of breadcrumbs that led back home. And you could never really get those back.

It looked even more dilapidated than the last time. I hadn’t gotten the horse again, mainly because I couldn’t keep looking back. It hurt too much to be the person I was once upon a time. Horses and wilderness and farm life. That was me.

I also didn’t expect the owner to give me another horse after the state I’d returned the first one in.

I turned and faced an empty field across from the land that my parents used to own. It was wide and open and free, with wheat-colored grass almost hip-high, and the wind running through it like water.

I could come back here. I could start a life here, have a ranch, be the old me again. A cowboy. The person I hadn’t really forgotten.

I shook my head. What was I thinking? I had a life in Houston. I couldn’t stay here for her. I couldn’t leave everything and come back to a woman who already had a man that was insisting on staying in her life. Even though Dean wasn’t her husband, he was Keisha’s father, and he supported them. He did most of the things a husband should. If I stayed I might get in the way.

I was more afraid that I might end up punching him in the face on a regular basis. I didn’t like who he’d become, and I didn’t like that he was around them all the time.

I walked to the car, glancing back at the open plot of land once more before I got in and started the engine.

I pulled up in front of Casa Bonita and walked in. The waitress , whose name I’d found out from Jada was Christine, looked up at me from behind the counter and grinned.

“Coffee and a sandwich?” she offered. I had a ‘usual’ at a place I’ve only been at for a few weeks. I shook my head.

“Not today, thank you. I’m looking for Jada.”

Christine looked at her wristwatch. “She’s not back from picking Keisha up yet,” she said. “Try the house.” She flashed a brilliant smile at me. I walked out of the café again and around the house to the front door. Jada’s car was parked outside. When I knocked on the front door an old woman answered.

“Hi,” I said. It had caught me off guard. “Is Jada here?”

Jada appeared behind her.

“It’s fine, Mrs. Cole. I’m heading out now anyway. There’s food in the fridge so you don’t have to worry.”

Jada stepped round the older woman who closed the front door behind her.

“My babysitter,” she said, nodding at the closed door.

I took a deep breath. My hands were trembling and my stomach felt hollow. Jada frowned.

“Why does it feel like we’ve done this before?” she asked. I swallowed hard and my throat was tight. “You look like you have something important to say to me.”

I did. It was very important.

“I’m leaving tonight,” I said. Easier just to throw it out there than torture myself with small talk. She narrowed her eyes at me, and it suddenly got a whole lot harder.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“My work. It’s finished now, and I’m going back to Houston. My boss wants me in the office before the weekend.”

“So you’re just leaving? How long have you known about this?”

“Since last night, but..."

I didn’t get a chance to explain. She changed from sunshine skies to stormy clouds in the blink of an eye.

“You didn’t think to tell me this before we did it?”

The way she said it made me flinch.

“It wasn’t just a good lay, if that’s what you’re implying. It meant much more to me,” I snapped, and it was totally not the point. Her face closed and I hated that I’d lost her already, before I’d come to ask her what I’d had in mind. I took a deep breath.

“Look, I only knew what time I was leaving after you left.”

“But you knew you were leaving.”

I opened my mouth to argue, and closed it again. She was right. I had known. When I didn’t answer she turned and stormed toward the café.

“Jada, wait,” I said and I grabbed her arm. She glared at me and I dropped it immediately. “I’m not finished.”

She turned to me and pursed her lips. Looking at me with raised eyebrows that told me to get on with it. I took a deep breath and forced the words out before I had a chance to be a coward and not say them.

“Come with me,” I said. She blinked at me, processing my words. “You can open up a place in Houston. There are great schools around, and I’ll make sure you’re both okay. I can…” The words stuck in my throat. I was jumping with my eyes closed here. “I can take care of you. Both of you.”

She looked around herself like the road, the side of the house, would help her find the answers.

“And what about Dean?” she asked. I hadn’t thought about Dean for one second, if I had to be honest. And I really didn’t want to. I rolled my eyes and caught myself too late.

“Surely you can work something out?” I finally said. I didn’t want Dean in the picture, truth be told. I wanted him out, away from Jada. He wasn’t doing her much good anyway, and the things that he did offer her I could easily make up for. And I could give her more.

“He’s Keisha’s father,” she said. “I can’t take her away from him. That would be cruel.”

“And what he’s been doing to you hasn’t been cruel?” I asked and my voice was raised.

“He’s not a bad man, Tanner. You of all people should know that.”

“He has problems!”

“Don’t we all?” she asked and I suddenly felt like a heartless idiot. But I wanted her to have a better life. I wanted her to be able to not worry about money, and have the time to spend with Keisha, and sleep in when she wanted to. She was too beautiful, too perfect to live a life like this.

“I want to be with you,” I said. “I want you to come with me so we can be together.”

“Why can’t you stay here, then? Keisha is six, I can’t uproot her now and take her away from everything she knows and loves. She has a life here too. Both of us have. I won’t be the only one that will be leaving that behind.”

“I can’t stay here,” I said, feeling numb.

“Why not? Isn’t this home?”

I breathed in deeply and blew it out again. Slowly.

“There are too many things here I can’t live with,” I said. “And Dean and I… we don’t get along. I don’t know how that would work.”

“So you’d rather leave, even if it means that it will be without me?”

I looked at her for a long time, tracing the shape of her face with my eyes. Her full lips, her smooth skin, her braids. Her drowning deep eyes that made me feel like the world was an okay place as long as I was staring into them.

“Are you saying you won’t come?” I asked. My tongue was thick in my mouth and I struggled to shape the words. My heart started hammering in my chest and my palms were sweaty. My body was reacting to the answer she hadn’t given me yet.

“I can’t go with you,” Jada whispered, looking down. I wanted her to look at me again. But I’d lost. That would be the third time, counting all the times she’d walked away, or shut down. And as it turned out, tonight would be the fourth time I would lose her. The fourth and the last.

“I can’t pretend I understand,” I said. A sharp pain drove in between my ribs and I tried to breathe around it. Jada’s face was serious. Her eyes sad.

“I don’t know how to explain it to you. As a mom I have to think of Keisha. I can’t ask her to make this kind of sacrifice.”

“So you’ll sacrifice your happiness?”

Her face changed. Something flickered across it, something that looked like pain. It settled in the black of her eyes before she spoke again.

“If that’s what it takes to keep her happy,” she said. She glanced over her shoulder towards the front of the café. “I really have to go.”

“So I guess this is goodbye then,” I said and my voice sounded cold and hard, even to myself. She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again. A moment later she answered me.

“I guess so.”

I turned and left. If she didn’t want me, fine. I wasn’t going to beg her to come. I wasn’t going to torture myself and try to hug her or kiss her. If she wanted out, she had to get out now, while I could still keep everything together. I walked to my car that was still parked in front of the café. I didn’t look at her when she walked past me and pushed the door open. I drove to the Lazy Eye and started packing.

In a few weeks I’d managed to tip my whole world upside down, and now I was the only one in it to pick up the pieces.

When I’d finished packing I drove to the sheriff’s office. Dean sat at the desk. He had a black eye and a scowl that complemented it. When he looked up at me the scowl only deepened.

“What do you want?” he barked at me.

“I’m leaving,” I said. Dean stared at me, motionless, for a second before he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arm.

“Really.”

I nodded.

“Are you planning on coming back at all?” he asked.

“I don’t have any immediate plans, but work is unpredictable.” That was as close to a no as I could get without being rude.

“So you’re running again,” he said. That was enough to push me over the edge. I was filled to the brim with emotions that were pushing me over, and he’d just made it worse.

“What the hell do you want from me, Dean?” I shouted. “I’m not good enough when I stay, I’m not good enough when I go. I’m just the little brother that keeps messing up your life and you get to drink and be merry and do whatever the hell you want while I’m always picking up the pieces. It’s always been like that and I can’t do it anymore.”

“Oh no, no, little brother. You don’t get to throw a pity party. You really don’t have it that bad, considering, and you want to cry because you chose to run again? I’m the one that picks up the pieces. You leave and I have to stay behind with the mess that no one else will fix. Who do you think cleaned mom up every time he got like that? You went out with your friends because you couldn’t deal with it. I had to fix the blood and the bruises and beg her to leave him. Not you. So don’t tell me how horrible your life is.”

His voice started cracking at the end of his speech and he stopped talking, glaring at me because I had a feeling it was easier than crying.

“Dean…”I started, but he shook his head and took a deep breath. When he spoke again he was calm again, but the words sliced through me.

“At least you still get to cope with life without having to drown yourself. I couldn’t save her. And you ran because you didn’t even want to try. So go. Go back to your carefree life. I’ve managed just fine without you. Don’t think I can’t do it again.”

I wanted to say something. I wanted to ask questions, wanted to know why he’d never told me this. How it had happened that we’d grown up in the same house and I was always so shielded. I wanted to say that I was sorry.

Instead I turned and walked out the door, because running was what I knew best. How did you say sorry to the brother who would probably never forgive you anyway? It was easier just to leave. It had been back then, and it would be now.

Chapter 11 - Jada

A few weeks. That was how long it took me before it all hit me so hard I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Until then I’d been going on like I always did, doing what needed to be done, plastering on the smile for everyone that walked through my door. And then suddenly it felt like I was torn apart and dying inside.