I walk down the aisle, eyeing the horses, like I’m here to work. Who am I fooling? My eyes drop to the tack trunk, body throbbing and tightening. I can still hear the hollow thud of his knees hitting straw before he disappeared between my legs.
Maybe I wasn’t good enough. Maybe he was too polite to stop, though he wanted to. Maybe he does this all the time, and I’m just the latest city-girl tourist to fall for it.
He finally looks at me. His expression gives me nothing. “You didn’t show earlier. Guess you’re done with me then. Done with Buddy and the other horses, too.”
The words come out like cold iron. Not stated as questions I can answer but as parts of the narrative he’s building about me.
I fold my arms loosely, not for comfort. To hold myself together.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say.
A line appears between his brows. “Do what?”
“Fight with me to make going easier.”
His jaw tightens.
“That’s not my intention.”
“No?” I ask quietly.
He looks past me toward the open barn doors, where sunset burns shades of gold, pink, indigo, and purple.
“City girl. Cowboy,” he says. “Never was nothing but a fantasy.”
There it is.
A neat sentence. Trimmed down. Controlled. Built to keep a person out.
I take a breath and let it settle before I answer. “Somethingcouldchange. For me, it already has.” I feel more naked in front of him now than I did last night.
Levi’s hand closes around the bridle strap until the leather creaks. “That’s because you don’t know me better. You’d go eventually. Believe me, you would.”
It’s not you. It’s me.
My chest tightens. “Right,” I manage.
I move to step around him, but his hand catches lightly around my wrist. My pulse stumbles.
When I look up, his face is harder than his grip. “Don’t,” he says.
“Don’t what?”
“Make this into something it can’t be.”
The words land flat in the center of my chest.
For a second, I can’t speak. Then I look down at his hand around my wrist. He lets go immediately.
Too late.
I lift my gaze back to his. “You kissed me like it already was,” I say softly.
He goes still. Something in his expression cracks, just for a breath, before he seals it back up. “That was a mistake.”
I almost laugh. Not because it’s funny. Because if I don’t, I might let him see too much.
“No,” I say. “It wasn’t a mistake. But you were a coward afterward.”
