“There were sleepovers.” The tears threaten to crowd again, but I don’t want to undo Jamison’s cleanup efforts. “We made meals together.”
She meets my gaze before returning to her task. “It’d make sense if he developed feelings too.”
“What’s four weeks with me compared to four years with her?”
“You could say the same about you and Can’t Stanford, yet here you are. In love and worried Durban doesn’t feel the same. What if he does?”
“He doesn’t, or she wouldn’t be telling him that she was offered a job in Bozeman.” Familiar humiliationburns much deeper this time. “Do you think he’s been talking to her the whole time?”
“Do you think that he has?”
“Sounded pretty friendly,” I mutter.
She sighs and rises to cross to my vanity. Rooting through the scattered vials and tubes, she shakes her head. Tavis stretches, blinks, and drifts back to sleep.
“I don’t know Durban that well.” She turns around and taps the mascara against her fingers. She’s in full big-sister mode with her mouth set, ready to talk sense into me. “What I do know about the brothers is that they’re close, and they’re a lot alike. They aren’t players, and I always thought that was surprising. Iverson limited things to just hookups, and the other two were the same, until Durban met his ex, and it was like the long-distance thing saved him from having to endure hookups. But even before that, all of them were very careful about not having accidental babies or about leading women on. You know why?”
I look at my hands twisting in my lap. “Because of their mom.”
“Yes. And that caution spreads to love. There’s a reason Iverson was thirty-eight before I fucked his brains out and changed his mind.”
“TMI.” I fake a gag.
She only laughs at me. “But you know, I sometimes wonder if our connection would’ve lasted if there hadn’t been a perfect storm. He got the offer on the land, and he and Durban and Haven were starting to look ahead, and they didn’t like what they saw. No retirement, living in the bunkhouse, and only a lot more hard work. Then I came home, and Iverson couldn’t get away from me.”
“You made sure he couldn’t.”
“I was doing my job. It’s not my fault I had to have meetings with him,” she says innocently, then comes to sit beside me. She bumps her shoulder against mine. “What I’m trying to say is that Durban is probably in his head, wondering if what he feels is too soon, or if it’s even real. Four years is a long time to just get dropped.” I nod since my experience was five years. “He doesn’t want to do the wrong thing and risk it all, but he’s probably at the point where he wants more. He wants what you two have. Compare that to what he had with Natalie, and it’s got to pale in comparison.”
Sadness swamps me, and I blink back tears. Maybe mascara is a lost cause today. “I have no idea, but I do know one thing. I’m not going to be that unsuspecting girl again while a guy fools around behind my back.”
“But do you know he is?”
“I didn’t know Stanford was until he told me. I don’t need that bullshit again, so I sent Durban a text that said thanks for everything, our arrangement’s done,” I say glumly.
She gawks at me. “You really can be your own worst enemy sometimes. Durban is not Stanford. That giant douche of an ex broke your trust, and it’s ruining what might be a good thing.”
I fail at holding the tears back. She throws an arm around my shoulders. “I’m making this worse,” I wail.
She releases me and slaps her hands on her knees. Tavis throws his hands in the air, eyes still closed, and goes back to sleep. I smile and she chuckles.
“How about this?” she says. “We quit talking about it, we get you through this wedding, and we see how Durban acts at the reception. Then we’ll plan our attack.”
I don’t want to wait and see. I don’t want to monitor Durban’s behavior like I’m trying to read tea leaves. I don’t want to manage January and Stanford’s nonsense just to get them down the aisle. I don’t want to be responsible for booting my uncle off our family’s land and out of our business. I just want to lie in bed and cry. I want to be taken care of. I want this wedding to crash and burn and for it not to be my fault.
But today is about what everyone else wants. What they need. And I’m going to go and do my job and get through it all so I can lie in bed and be miserable for the next week.
Durban
I dump the wire stretcher into Haven’s truck bed. We dragged the steer out of the ravine. The damn thing fought us until it saw the chance for freedom instead of more rocks and brush. It was easy after that, and then we repaired the portion of the fence that sagged and got trampled over by the cattle.
“Damn.” Haven takes his cowboy hat off and wipes his hand across the back of his forehead. We both smell like horse sweat and our own perspiration. “Natalie have you that messed up you gotta take it out on the tools?”
I tilt the brim of my cowboy hat down to hide my scowl. I told him about Natalie’s missed call and the text, and then I forgot about her. It’s Campbell’s message streaming through my head on repeat. I didn’t tell him about that. I’m too raw.
Did she mean it? She’s done with me? Without even stopping to ask me about what she saw? She might be on a strict schedule today, but I want to mean more to her than that. I should be more than a quick note to end things when she’s stressed.
I know she read the message. The timing was either lucky or the crappiest in the world. I got to see how little Campbell’s invested in me. Again, I was building up what I had with a woman until she walked away after the first inconvenience.
