EVEN WITH THE cold air hitting my cheeks, my entire body feels heated with rage. With each minute that’s ticked by tonight, I’ve had to watch Brendan touch all of the places on Mare that I’ve only dreamed about for years—and it has my blood boiling.
I’ve got no fucking right to chase her out of the bar like this, to have any say on who she does something with. But it doesn’t stop me from crossing the parking lot with rage until I’m standing right behind her.
Her body stills. She doesn’t turn around, but I know without a doubt that she knows exactly who is standing behind her. There’s not a single movement from her body except for the blowing strands of her hair in the wind.
“I wasn’t done talking to you.” There’s not a hint of softness to my voice. I know exactly how my tone comes off—like an asshole. I swallow, trying to figure out how to get her to turn around and look at me without forcing her to.
I’ve already dug myself a deep enough hole tonight. I don’t know if I should make it worse or not. The problem is, I’m not sure I really care. She can hate me all she wants. I need the answer to my question. Desperately.
Finally, she moves. Her shoulders rise as she sucks air into her lungs. Her exhale is loud, even over the sound of the thumping bass that radiates from the building behind us. Slowly, Mare turns around to face me.
Her face is filled with so many contradicting emotions. The look in her eyes confirms how upset she is. There’s a defiant set to her jaw as she stares back at me. All of that is a stark comparison to the tears running down her pink cheeks.
“I can’t do this with you, Cade,” she whispers. It feels like someone has reached inside my chest and ripped my heart out after hearing her voice breaking saying my name.
“I can’t not do this with you, Goldie,” I answer, ashamed of myself for putting us through this. I wish I was a better man. If I was, I’d turn around and give her the space from me she deserves. I’d go back to the bar or wait in the truck so she can enjoy the rest of her night with Brendan without me jealously watching on.
But I’m not a better man. My feet don’t take me farther away from her. Instead, I take a step closer to her, crowding her space.
She shakes her head as she attempts to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “Why do you care if I’m lying or telling the truth? It shouldn’t matter. I shouldn’t matter to you.”
“Some days I’m fucking terrified because it feels like you’re the only thing that really matters.”
Her eyes go wide. She watches me with apprehension. Like she has no idea who I am, or if she can believe a thing that comes from my mouth.
It’s not like I blame her. I’ve done enough in the past that I can’t fault her for second-guessing every single one of my words.
Her tears fall even more freely now. They coat her lips, collecting for a moment in her prominent cupid’s bow before they continue their path down her face.
“You act like you hate me.”
“Maybe I do hate you.”
She sniffles. “Maybe I hate you, too.”
“Maybe we hate that we feel so many things other than hate.”
“I’m not lying.” She changes the subject, and I let her. I know she’s lying straight to my face by the way her voice shakes with every single syllable that comes from her mouth.
My jaw clenches in frustration. “Bullshit.”
“Don’t talk to me like that. You don’t know me anymore, Cade. Don’t pretend to know me well enough to know if I’m lying or telling the truth.” She throws my words right back in my face.
“There you are lying straight through your teeth all over again.”
She pushes her shoulders back in a defensive position. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means neither one of us can hide the fact that we know every single fucking thing there is to know about the other person. Time, miles, nothing will change that I know you, Goldie. I know you almost better than I know myself. And I know for a fucking fact that you’re lying.”
“How?”
“Because I know how much it fucking hurts my soul to see another man look at you the way I look at you. To see him touch you the way I want to touch you. And I know that after every fucking thing between us, even after you leaving me, that you feel the same.”
“You told me to leave!” she shouts, her hands angrily thrashing through the air. “You told me to leave and that you wanted nothing to do with me once I did. So that’s what I did, Cade. I left. Even though it broke my heart to leave things how we did.” She gasps for air as she tries to keep a grip on her emotions. “You can’t pretend like we know anything about each other now. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you.”
“I do know you,” I bite. So many things race through my head, but I don’t know what to say and what to keep to myself. This conversation is pointless anyway because it won’t matter once she inevitably leaves again.
I might’ve broken her heart when I told her to chase her dreams and leave. But she fucking obliterated mine past the point of no return when she actually left and never came back.
“And you know me,” I continue, braving reaching up and wiping at the tears coating her cheeks.
She shakes her head but makes no indication of trying to get away from my touch. “That’s not true. I know nothing about you.” Her voice trembles as she gets out each word. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing in the years since I’ve left. I don’t know your favorite movie anymore. Your favorite food or which one of Pippa’s cupcakes is your favorite for the month.” She pushes blonde strands from her face, some of them sticking to the wetness of her cheeks, in an attempt to keep herself busy. “I don’t know what you like to do in your free time or how many times you’ve fallen in love since I left,” she finishes, her voice resigned. “I don’t know anything about you.”
I close the distance between us, bringing her body flush against mine. “Working,” I answer, my fingertips brushing over her forehead.
Her eyebrows narrow as she stares up at me in confusion. “What?”
“In the years since you’ve left, I’ve been working, drowning myself in it, really. I lost you partly because I wanted to keep the legacy of the ranch my great-grandfather created. I had to make damn sure I attempted to make my choice worth it.”
Her lips part in shock. The pad of my thumb runs over her bottom lip. Before she can say anything else, I continue addressing the rest of her statements.
“My favorite movie is still Good Will Hunting, but you knew that already.”
She laughs, probably remembering all the times I made her watch the movie with me. She cried every single time. I’d laughed at her, even though it made me choke up as well.
“I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but my favorite food is definitely my mom’s famous fried chicken and cheesy potatoes that half the town has begged her for the recipe of.”
I let out a sigh of relief when she nudges deeper into the palm of my hand. For the moment, I have her. She isn’t running. She isn’t fighting me. She’s looking at me the way she used to. The way I’ve missed every single day since she left.
“And right now my favorite cupcake flavor of Pip’s is blueberry lemon.”
“I had one of those this morning.”
“They’re fucking phenomenal.” I pause for a moment. “And working some more.”
“What?”
“That’s what I do on the weekends. Sometimes I make it out, but most of the time I’m too tired so I end up playing card games with the ranch hands.”
“Do you still suck at Poker?”
I laugh, wondering how I ever thought my feelings for her would dull. “They take all my fucking money. Just like you always did.”
“You really need to get better at Poker.”
It doesn’t feel like I’m close enough to her, so I grab either side of her face and tilt her head to look up at me. “And zero.”
A line creases on her forehead. “Zero?”
“I haven’t fallen in love with anyone since you left. I’m not able to. You can’t fall in love with someone if your heart still belongs to someone else.”
“Cade,” she mutters, her breath hitching.
I press my fingers against her lips to stop whatever she’s about to say. I don’t need her to ask me more questions, or for her to say something else that’ll try and convince herself that I’m making things up. “If I ask you one more thing, do you swear to not lie to me again?”
She nods.
“Do you want to kiss me as bad as I want to kiss you?”
“No,” she whispers, the one word feeling like a punch to the fucking gut. “I probably want to kiss you more.”
