‘Anytime. You know that, right?’ When she didn’t reply, he didn’t let her get away with it. ‘Sierra,’ he said, demanding her attention, and when she forced those dark eyes to his, he repeated, ‘You know that – right?’
‘I do.’ She gave him a wobbly smile, managed, ‘But I don’t want to need you, Benji. It’s too hard.’
‘I don’t want to need you either,’ he admitted. But he always would, and there was no point trying to deny it.
She laughed without humour. ‘We’re a mess.’
‘We are,’ he ceded. ‘But we’re allowed to be.’
‘Yeah,’ she rasped.
She removed her hands from her pockets to yank her blazer closed.
Benji gently lowered the saddle he was holding to the ground so that he could shrug out of his jacket.
Seeing what he intended, Sierra hurried to say, ‘You don’t have to do that. I’m good.’
Benji closed the distance between them and wordlessly held his jacket open in front of her. He didn’t move. ‘Don’t be stubborn.’
‘What about you?’ she asked, but she slipped one arm through the right sleeve of the jacket.
Benji helped her with the other arm, using it as an excuse to be close to her, and once the jacket was draped over her, he tugged it closed, zipped it up himself just so that he could take a few seconds to inhale her perfume. ‘Seeing you here again, Si … It lights a fire in me.’
She raised one eyebrow mockingly. ‘Feelings can’t keep you warm, Benji.’
His blood still stirred. And it wasn’t just hot. It was an inferno. Testing her, testing them both, he leaned close, bringing his lips to her ear. ‘Wanna bet?’
She huffed out an amused breath. ‘No dice.’
He stepped back, picked the saddle up off the ground. ‘I have a sunset trail ride starting at four; otherwise I’d stick around and help.’
Sierra cast a distracted glance towards the arena where Skye had already set up the barrels. ‘I think I’ll be okay.’
Benji nodded slowly, unsure of the new ground they walked. The overnight change in her made him wary. He wanted to welcome it, wanted to take advantage of it, but that part of him that she’d hurt over the past year was too well tested. He had never been so desperate and so afraid at the same time, but it was the desperation that had him asking, ‘Do you think we can take a night sometime? Talk?’
It was a risk, one he was fully aware of. One terrible day followed by one good night together didn’t mean that everything could just go back to the way it was Before.
Perhaps reading his mind, Sierra said, ‘I don’t think that would be wise.’ She hunched into his jacket, and when she spoke again her voice was so quiet, so sad. ‘I don’t want to keep hurting you. And I know that those feelings don’t just go away … But there’s too much history between us.’ And then she tore him down again, this time with, ‘I think you should try to move on, you know. Find someone who can give you more.’ She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I want you to be happy again, Benji, and that’s not going to happen if you’re waiting for me.’ Sierra blinked rapidly and turned her face away from him. ‘I’m gonna be stuck here a while.’
She was the only person who could crush him with nothing but her words. ‘Okay,’ he managed. And it was a lie. Nothing was okay. Not when she was standing there, so sad and alone, needing everything he wanted to give but still refusing to accept it. ‘Friends?’
‘No.’ She took a pointed step back. ‘We could never be friends,’ she stated, and Benji couldn’t even argue. It was true. ‘You know that. We’d try, and it might work for a little bit, but eventually we’d sleep together, and it would complicate everything again.’
‘So, I leave as soon as Mav’s back on his feet,’ he said, and try as he might, he couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his tone. Not now. Not after last night. ‘That work for you?’ He started walking away without waiting for a reply.
‘Benji—’
‘No.’ At the end of his patience, he spun on her when she followed, walked her back two steps, keeping the saddle between them again to stop him from reaching for her, or perhaps shaking some sense into her. ‘Don’t placate me, Sierra. I asked, you said no. Let’s leave it at that.’
‘I don’t know what you want from me.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Benji, you can’t—’
‘Everything,’ he talked over her. ‘I want everything from you, Sierra. I want my ring on your finger and yours on mine. I want the wedding and the honeymoon. I want babies. A bunch of them.’
‘Don’t,’ Sierra rasped.
