Page 22 of Rogue Cowboy (Montana’s Rodeo Cowboys #3)

“I got you.” She laid her face against his heart and just held on while he fell apart and put himself together again. She turned into him, and he thought she pressed a kiss against his chest.

“What happened?” she asked after what felt like a long time.

Her eyes were dark and wide with worry, and she looked up at him with sweet empathy he didn’t deserve because he had done his best to forget his sister.

His mother. His brother. His father. His paw-paw and maw-maw had lost as much as he had, and he, a shut-down, selfish, shit of a kid, and then a man, hadn’t once thought of their loss. His uncles’ losses.

Only his.

He’d been pushing Riley to be honest. Share her pain, but she’d been trying to protect her family. He sure as hell hadn’t tried to help his family with theirs. Self-disgust settled over him like a cold night in a mountain peak far from Texas Hill Country.

“Cole, I’m so very sorry.” Her gaze captured him, and he felt like he was drowning all over again. She reached out and played with the silly cowlick he had that showed when he let his hair grow beyond his usual military buzz. She smiled.

“I wanted to do something fun and try to meet you halfway. See if I could, and I’m so sorry I hurt you somehow.”

Damn she was sweet, and he couldn’t clear his throat enough to tell her. Explain how deeply flawed he was. He’d never once even told her about his family.

She brushed her fingers across his cheeks, and they were wet. He looked up. Had it started raining? Riley ran her fingers through his hair.

“You’re safe with me. Safe. No more games.”

“The game was good.” He tried to control his breathing. “I like that you thought of it.”

“What happened?”

His own snark came back around as karma did and bit him in the ass. He’d pushed her to share her fears and feelings, and that created intimacy, but it had to go both ways. But twenty-seven years of suppressing memories didn’t just evaporate in an instant. Or could it?

“I don’t know,” he said, still trying to sort through. “I had a flash of something. An image. I don’t even know if it was real. I was small. Really small.”

Her look of worry deepened, and he hated that. He couldn’t be a head case. And he’d ruined the mood. Tossed her playful game of intimacy into dangerous territory.

She slipped her hand in his. Raised her knuckles to her lips like he’d done to her more than once. “Was it scary?” She didn’t look away from him, and Cole felt grounded. Damn she was brave to take him on.

“No. It was at a restaurant. I was eating something sweet.”

She waited for more. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I…I can’t. I don’t know how to explain. It was a flash. There and gone.”

Riley looked around at the field, filled with rigs now, many dark but a few campers still sitting around, talking quietly.

“Do you want to come back inside? No more blindfolds or chocolate.”

“I liked the game,” he said, his heart settling. “But I’ll stay out here a little while.” He still felt like he couldn’t breathe.

She took his hand and pulled him to the step of her trailer. She reached in, turned off the light, and sat, tugging him down next to her.

Riley was quiet. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and he breathed her in along with the night.

“You don’t have to tell me anything, Cole. It doesn’t mean much if you’re forced, but you were there for me, and I can be there for you.”

Her words seeped into him and felt like a mirror. He wanted her to share her worries, her problems her fears, but he’d intended to keep his crap buttoned up.

Not much of a partnership.

How to begin?

He wasn’t much of a sharer.

“When I was five my mom and dad, brother and sister died in a car accident.”

He could feel Riley’s sudden tension. He’d clearly shocked her.

“Cole,” she breathed out and turned in to him, her arms wrapping around him and her face warm against his neck. “I can’t imagine anything worse, anything harder. I’m so very, very sorry.”

She took one of his hands and pressed it against her sternum. “So sorry,” she whispered. “I had no idea.”

“I don’t talk about it. I don’t think about them—much,” he qualified.

“I think I tried to forget. Suppressed it. So, it didn’t hurt anymore, but when you placed that piece of chocolate in my mouth, I saw me as a little kid—maybe three in one of those booster seats at a dessert type of restaurant, and Carli—she was the oldest, she was dangling a spoon of vanilla ice cream and chocolate and caramel above my mouth.

“I don’t remember them much. Habit of shoving it all back into the dark. My grandparents raised me. They must have been hurting just as much as I was, but they didn’t let me see it, and I didn’t let them see my loss. I pretended I was whole when I wasn’t.”

She pressed sweet kisses along his jawline. “I know what that’s like,” she affirmed.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

“The main house at the Jameson Ranch has family pictures in the great room and the hallway and lining the stairway and halls leading to the bedrooms. I trained myself to never look at them. I felt like they’d abandoned me. I was mad. So angry.”

For so long.

He hadn’t really analyzed his little-boy response.

“I’d wanted to go on the stock-buying trip with them. But they said I was too young. My brother, Carson, was four years older, and he lorded it over me. My parents said another year, but…”

Riley still clung to him, and he felt like something in his body started to meld back together.

“I could have lost you,” she breathed out. “I could have lost you before I was even born.”

He didn’t know how long they sat there, holding each other. Finally Riley loosened her hold and stood up, pulling him with her.

“Come inside,” she invited. “I don’t want either of us to be alone tonight.”

When I’m too restless to sleep, I’ve started reading poetry by Mary Oliver.

Cole couldn’t remember reading a poem in his life, but he must have in high school at some point.

He was happy Riley had reached out. He didn’t feel as stalkerish now that she’d started texting him more since.

Previously she’d seemed on the brink of ghosting him—when she’d told him not to come to Montana to meet her family.

Do you have a favorite poem?

I love so many of them. They have me looking at Copper Mountain and trees and the Yellowstone River more intently. I thought if I read poetry I’d start thinking in song lyrics again.