Page 69 of Ridin' Free

Stay or go?,taunted the devil within.

I didn’t yet have to make the choice—but I feared when the day came, my decision would break me, either way.

THREE WEEKS LATER

I was in the kitchen,eating cereal straight from the box, listening to a new audiobook in an effort to wind down after a Friday shift at the bar. It was nearly three in the morning, my bare feet were tired, but I wasn’t exactly looking forward to bed. Every night I slipped between the sheets, I felt a little lonelier than I did the night before.

One night with a real man.

One night with a Stallion.

How unrealistic a notion.

Like he did with increasing frequency, Twister wandered through my thoughts, distracting me from the narrator playing through my phone’s speaker.

Five nights with a real man.

Five nights with a Stallion.

Five nights under Twister’s roof, smushed between him and the cushions of his couch was all it took to change my mind about what it was I wanted.

And what I wanted washim.

My desire felt exacerbated in his absence. So much so, I couldn’t say whether or not I was losing my mind. It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t reasonable. It wasn’t smart, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to care. Every call, every text, it chipped away at me, unearthing a version of myself I hardly recognized.

It should have scared me, but it didn’t.

‘I got you, sparky. You’re safe.’

Thisthingbetween us made me feel unchained and unburdened.

Hemade me feel wanted andworthy.

A part of me knew it was stupid to indulge the fantasy, but I couldn’t help it. After everything I’d been through, it felt like a temporary reprieve. For the first time in my life, I knew what it felt like to be desired as the woman I was rather than manipulated into a caricature I wasn’t. Benson made me believe it in his own way. He was no sweetheart, but he was a savory treat for whom I yearned.

I hadn’t seen him since the Sunday he took off with Wrangler. He told me he thought he’d be gone for a couple of weeks. I never asked him where he was going or why, and he never said. There were no expectations set when he left. I didn’t know whether or not I would hear from him, and I didn’t trick myself into believing it was my right any more than it was his duty to be in touch—but he surprised the hell out of me, anyway.

He didn’t make contact every day, but the longest he’d gone silent was forty-eight hours. Sometimes, all we exchanged were a few random texts about nothing. Other times he called, like when he got the all clear from the clinic after the test he promised he’d get done. We talked about other things, too. If itwas in the morning, we’d chat for a while. If it was in the wee hours, it was usually only a minute or two.

When he ran into a delay partway through his trip, he let me know he was going to be gone longer than he anticipated. My disappointment at the news was almost as shocking as the regret I swear I heard in his voice when he told me.

Him and me.

It was an arrangement.

An agreement.

A promise.

Though, as the days passed, it felt like the line between exclusivity and an actual relationship was blurrier than when we started. Now, he had me counting days. Hours. Minutes. I knew it had been almost exactly thirty-nine hours since his last text; and while I wasn’t worried, I found myself hoping my phone would ring before I sought sleep.

When it did—interrupting the narrator I hadn’t been paying attention to—my heart began to gallop.

I was quick to slide my thumb across the screen, accepting the call as I brought the device to my ear. “Hello?” I answered.

“Hey,” he greeted, his deep voice wrapped in an obvious exhaustion. “Know it’s late. Wanted to hear your voice.”

I didn’t tell him how relieved I was to hear his. Instead, I asked, “When are you comin’ home, brown-eyes?”