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She scoffed. “Are you ever going to answer one of these questions without turning it around to me first?”

“No.”

He decided to be honest about it. Why should he go baring his soul unless Bix did the same? Hell, she was the reason he was here. Stripped bare and feeling raw.

“Yeah. I’m lonely all the time. But I suppose I don’t really know any different. It’s being here, being with your family, being with you, that actually showed me how lonely I was. You know when you’re cold, so cold that your hands are frozen all stiff, and then they start to warm up. There were numb before, and then they start to hurt. That’s what this has been like. I couldn’tworry about how bad it hurt, living the way that I did. But I get it now. I feel it now.”

His heart felt raw in that moment. He felt more for her right then than he had for anyone or anything in a long damned time.

Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have this conversation naked.

“I’m not lonely. I have my siblings.”

“But you and Denver have some issues,” she said.

“Show me brothers who don’t have issues.”

“Well. I guess. I wouldn’t know anything about having issues but still being somewhat functional. Because you know... everything to do with my brother is a total mess.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said.

“You said your dad was charming,” she said. “And that you thought you loved him.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough. “That’s a hard thing about narcissists. They know how to make you feel special. How to make you feel important. They hold it above your head. This desire to be good in their eyes. To be approved of. My dad was so great in his own estimation, and because of that, I thought he was great too. The way that he saw himself... It was larger-than-life, and because of that, I saw him that way too.”

It was hard for him to go down this path. Hard for him to revisit it. And he had done it so many times over the last couple of months with Bix. Maybe because it seemed like she understood. And he could tell himself it was because she needed it, the sameas he told himself that he couldn’t touch her because he was protecting her. But the truth was, something in him wanted assurance from her. Understanding. Because she also had loved a father who had led her down a bad path. Who hadn’t taken care of her. He wanted somebody from outside of his family to understand. He didn’t know why it was so important.

Only that he burned with it.

And maybe it was like what she’d said. That numb hand. Getting warmed up. Being with her, being around somebody like her, who in many ways was like him, did something to his soul.

He didn’t want it. He couldn’t turn away from it either.

“I wanted to please him. More than I wanted anything. He knew that. He took advantage of it. I wanted to be like him. I thought he was smarter than everybody else, just the best. And a great dad. I thought my mom was an idiot for leaving him. It’s an amazing thing, to carry around that kind of conviction in your spirit, and to realize that every single point of it was wrong. It makes you never want to be that big of a zealot again. Because I knew I was right. Deeply. To the same degree that I know now I was wrong. And that is a special kind of hell. It binds you up. That’s another reason I never want to get married. Have a family.” He stared at the ceiling. “I don’t trust myself to ever have anyone depend on me like that.”

Bix said nothing. And then, suddenly, snorted. And laughed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You find my turmoil funny?”

“What I find funny, Sheriff, is your certainty that a woman would hand all of her agency and decision-making over to you quite that easy. Maybe if you got married, she wouldn’t need you to tell her what to think. Maybe she would come with her own opinions.”

“That would be enough for you?” They were dangerously close to a subject they had no business talking about.

“I have no idea what would be enough for me. I’m still figuring out... everything.”

And that was the bottom line of it. Bix was new. In so many ways. This beautiful, sharp, sexy woman who had never even been kissed until tonight was tying him in knots. She was smart and experienced in so many things. And green in so many others. She needed room to grow without any fences around her. And this was not a free-range ranch. Fences were what they did.

And fences were how he kept himself in line.

What he wanted for her, most of all, was to see her run free, and see everything that she could do. Of course, there would be a time when she would run so far, so free, that he would never see her again. She would be nothing but a memory. She snuggled up against him, and he went still. He didn’t sleep with women. Not all night. But he couldn’t throw Bix out. There was no way.

“I know I have my own room,” she said sleepily. “But you’re really hot. And I’d rather stay in bed with you. That’s my freedom.” She cracked one eye open, a wicked little grin on her face.

“Then I guess you should stay,” he said.

“Do you know what I want from you, Sheriff?”

“What?” he asked, his chest going unbearably tight.