CHAPTER 61

jackson

T hat sleepy smile of his was dangerous when he woke up. So was the way the stray beams of morning sunlight washed over his face. Half-asleep and completely relaxed like this, West was so goddamn beautiful that he took my breath away. Staring might’ve been creepy but I just couldn’t look away.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“I don’t fucking know,” I admitted. “I forgot to set my alarm last night.”

“You keep taking mornings off and people are going to start thinking you’d rather be here in bed with me, cowboy,” he teased. And I knew it was just teasing but damn if I didn’t love the idea of doing just that.

“Or that I’m just a crappy fucking boss,” I deflected.

“That’s my grumpy cowboy.” His cowboy. I liked the fucking sound of that. A lot. More than I wanted to admit out loud.

He shifted and inched closer, his hand crossing the space between us. Instead of taking mine, however, two fingers brushed over the inside of my wrist.

“Are you feeling my pulse?” I asked, frowning slightly .

“Yeah…” He let out a small sigh. “It was a thing my mom used to do when she couldn’t hold my hand because she had things to do and when she wasn’t allowed to cuddle me anymore in case my dad saw.”

My chest tightened painfully. Jesus Christ. He wasn’t even allowed to cuddle his mom because of Harrison.

“I can stop,” he said. “It’s fucking weird, isn’t it?”

“No,” I interjected quickly as he started to pull away. “No. I like it.”

I liked him finding comfort in me, no matter what that looked like. As if to prove my point, I moved my arm closer to make it easier for him. I rolled onto my side, facing him.

“Do you remember her?” I asked quietly. He never talked about his mom, even when we were kids after she died. It was as if she just suddenly didn’t exist anymore in his life.

“She liked music—old music,” West told me. His eyes slid shut as he spoke, and his fingers tightened slightly on my wrist. “ Hall & Oates was her favorite. She liked action movies and hated cooking, but she taught me how to cook—said it was important for me to learn.”

And that would be why he knew how to cook.

“She taught me how to take a hit,” he continued. The sadness in his voice broke my heart. “Harrison… when he drank, he got mean. He was always an asshole, you know? But it got bad when he was drunk. He’d take it out on her. ‘Just a hit or two and he’ll cool off’ . That’s what she always said… how she got us through it. Stay quiet, don’t fight back, I can take it.”

“West…” Jesus fucking Christ.

“After she died, I followed her advice. It worked most of the time. He usually cooled the fuck off after a few hits. It sucked but fighting back always made it worse.”

I didn’t know what to say. What the hell did you say to that? Good job, you learned how to survive your abusive dick of a dad? There was no good thing to say.

While I felt bad for his mother and everything she’d been put through, she failed him too. West never should’ve been taught how to take a hit. He should’ve been taken away from Harrison. Protected and loved.

“He blamed me for her death,” West said, his voice barely audible.

“Why?” I asked .

“Because I was in the bathroom the night she killed herself,” he told me so softly I wasn’t sure I heard him right at first.

My heart damn near fell out of my chest. What?

“I thought she died in a car accident.”

“Harrison didn’t want anyone knowing what she did… how she died. I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. He blamed me… said if I loved her, I would’ve saved her.”

“Jesus fuck, West.” My temper soared, burning hot in the pit of my stomach. “You were seven. What the hell could you have done?”

“I don’t know.” His voice broke. “I did love her… I just… I didn’t know how to save her.”

It took everything I had not to drag him to my chest and hold him until the pain went away. No one deserved to be told shit like that—to live through something like that—let alone a child. And growing up, I never had a clue. We spent every moment we could together and I didn’t know a damn thing about the dark shit going on in West’s life. That single fact killed me.

“It wasn’t your job to save her, West,” I settled on saying instead. “And it doesn’t mean you didn’t love her.”

“I know. He still hated me for it,” he replied. “Made sure I knew just how worthless I was… how he wished I had died with her. I don’t know… sometimes, I wonder if I was supposed to.”

“Baby, no…” The admission was a punch to the gut. But honestly? Could I blame him? He’d spent his whole life fighting and hearing horrible things about himself. His entire worldview was shaped by the way Harrison talked to him and treated him.

“I’m fine. I promise,” West said. He wasn’t. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out. “I won’t fucking do anything.”

I wasn’t even thinking about that until he said something.

“Have you?” I dared to ask. “Tried… that?”

I couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud. I didn’t even want to think about him like that. But I also realized just how little I knew about West’s life. My life was pretty standard. My career was publicized while the rest of my life was at the ranch. But what about West? What the hell had he done over the last seventeen years?

That question burned a fucking hole in my mind .

“Once,” he admitted. Pulling away from me, he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. That spot on my inner wrist felt obscenely naked without the pressure of his fingers. “Almost anyway. I couldn’t go through with it.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.” What a ridiculously pathetic thing to say. There had to be a better way to phrase that, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of one.

“Yeah.” He sat up, getting out of bed before I could say anything else. “We should get up. The ranch ain’t going to take care of itself.”

And there he went shutting down on me again. I fucking hated when he did that. But how the hell did I fix that? How did I get him to open up to me more?

“I know,” I whispered. But I didn’t follow him right away. Instead, I propped myself up on one elbow and watched him leave with a million little thoughts running through my head. All I wanted to do was drag him right back into bed with me and stay there all day—like it’d help him feel better.