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west

I left Jackson in bed after he didn’t wake up with my alarm. As much as I wanted to stay next to him, I had shit I had to do. I stuck to a strict routine with my medication and even with him here, I refused to deviate from it. I was determined to make this work.

I felt good—really good—after last night. While my therapist and I had worked a lot in unraveling all the complicated feelings and triggers I had revolving around the topic of sex, I hadn’t actually had sex with anyone. Not only did I not want the complexities of a new person in my life, but I only wanted Jackson.

Taking Jackson out to dinner had never been about sleeping with him. It wasn’t even a thought I’d entertained. It was just where the night ended up. And having done so? I felt good about it all. There was no residual guilt or shame. There was no building panic inside. It was a tiny testament to my progress in therapy.

I was mid-bite of toast when Jackson came out of the room, leaning on his cane and wearing only a pair of boxer briefs—and looking ridiculously attractive. No one should look that fucking good rolling out of bed. In the early morning sunlight, I took a moment to study him, my gaze sweeping over him. While his boxer briefs covered the scars on his hip and upper thigh, I could still see the rest. They tangled their way over the rest of his thigh, wrapping around his knee, and trailing down his shin. I swallowed hard. Fuck, he’d gone through it with recovery. Just seeing them made me all that much more proud of him for kicking his own ass and walking again.

That sleepy smile he gave me as he joined me was enough to pull me from my thoughts.

“Sorry,” I apologized after I swallowed. “I’ll make a real breakfast, I swear. I just have to take my medicine at six, but if I don’t eat with them, they make me fucking sick.”

I was rambling a little and I knew that. I wasn’t used to having to explain my routine to anyone who wasn’t my therapist or my doctor.

“You’re fine, baby.” He yawned as he limped over toward the kitchen table. “I don’t think I’ve seen six in a long fucking time. Not without nurses coming in to poke and prod me.”

“Sorry.” The guilt of needing to get up early hit deep, and I drew in a steadying breath. Fuck, I was doing it again. I cleared my throat. “I’m not sorry that I had to get up, but I am sorry if I woke you.”

There. My therapist would be proud.

“You’re fine, West,” Jackson repeated. “You can make it up to me if you want by feeding me something that isn’t my mother’s scrambled eggs with ketchup and burnt bacon on the side.”

“That’s a fucking monstrosity,” I whispered. No one belonged eating any of those things let alone every fucking morning. I began digging through my cabinets and pulling out pans. “What do you want? I’ll make you anything.”

Thirty minutes later, we sat at the table with omelets, toast, and fresh coffee—the real stuff because apparently, my homemade cappuccinos weren’t real coffee. He was a fucking heathen, and I loved him all the more for it.

Jackson ate with a slew of happy expletives, but I just picked at everything. My brain was all over the place as I tried to organize my thoughts. For as much as my therapist and I had practiced the exact conversation I needed to have with him, I still wasn’t prepared to have it with him in person.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jackson asked softly, leaning back in his chair. Those blue eyes watched me closely—reading me. Once it would’ve made me uncomfortable but not anymore. He wasn’t observing to scrutinize me. He was watching because he cared. That distinction made a difference.

“I should’ve made us have this conversation last night,” I muttered. I pushed my plate away with a sigh and sat back. My heart pounded anxiously in my chest, and I crossed my arms to keep from fidgeting.

“Take your time, West. Whenever you’re ready.”

“My stables, my rules?”

“I think this time it’s your apartment, your rules,” he teased. “Unless you’re hiding horses in here.”

“I wish.” I missed my horses so fucking much. The ones at the Harveys just weren’t the same as mine. “There’s… something we need to talk about.”

“I figured.”

“I’m not…” The words got stuck in my throat. Damn it. The guilt was intense. I should’ve had this conversation with him last night before anything happened between us. That would’ve been the right thing to do. “I’m not coming back to Double Arrow, Jackson.”

There. I’d said it. Jackson’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he said nothing. I could do this.

“This thing is… I’m not cured—there’s no cure for this,” I told him. “It’s a lifetime thing I have to maintain.”

“I know,” he replied.

“I have a routine I stick to, and my medication helps make everything easier to manage. I can handle touch more than I could but not always,” I continued, trying to rush through everything before I lost my nerve to tell him. “Some days are good and some days aren’t. They’re not bad like they were before because I know how to take care of myself, but it’s never going away.”

“You know that don’t bother me, right?” he asked .

“My doctor and my therapist are here,” I said instead. “My AA group is here and the clinic is here if I need them. And I love… I love being with you, Jackson, but I can’t go back to Double Arrow. I can’t go back to all those memories. I can’t go back to a town where everyone fucking knew what Harrison was doing and didn’t do a damn thing about it. I don’t want to drown again. I don’t… I don’t want to leave here. I found a nice big plot of land that I put a bid in for. I should hear back in the next few days. I’m going to build a house and fence it all for the horses. And I just… I can’t go back to Double Arrow with you.”

I shut up because the expression on his face was unreadable. It fucking killed me. What the hell was he thinking? His jaw ticked as he nodded slowly and picked up his cane. Without a word, he got up and started toward the bedroom.

“What’re you doing?” I called after him, my heart pounding faster. Fuck. I’d screwed this up.

“Going to email Colter Lexington and find out if the offer to buy my ranch is still on the table,” he called over his shoulder.

He was… what?

“What?” I turned fast in my chair as he stopped in the doorway.

“I told you once, West, and I’ll tell you again,” he began, “you’re my priority.”

“I know but—”

“And if that means selling my family ranch to be with you, then I’m selling my goddamn ranch,” Jackson continued. He what?

“You can’t do that,” I told him stupidly. He couldn’t give it all up for me, especially not after all the work he’d put into rebuilding it over the last year.

“I aim to do just that,” he replied. “But we’ll have to figure out space for the horses.”

“Yeah.”

“And Daisy and Ferdinand.”

“Obviously.”

“And probably a few of Daisy’s friends so she don’t get lonely.”

“So, we’ll just move the ranch,” I said. My chest tightened as my eyes burned. This man. The simplicity in which he treated the situation was more than I could’ve expected—more than I truly deserved. “Are you sure you want this, Jackson? I wouldn’t be mad if you didn’t.”

“I told you that if you’d asked me years ago to leave with you, I would’ve,” he replied seriously. “You mean more to me than that ranch ever will, West. Always have, always will.”