CHAPTER 65

jackson

I took his horses away, which I knew made me an asshole. While I understood his need to drink—especially on a day like that—I had to stick to my guns about the fucking consequences. He needed to be sober when dealing with the horses. It was the safe thing to do.

But all of that didn’t make me feel any less like a complete dick for taking away the one thing that brought him peace of mind.

“Don’t you get huffy with me,” I grumped as Thunder Jack stomped in the dirt. I stood outside the stable with Zeus and Thunder Jack both saddled and ready to leave whenever West came back from his meeting. The fact that he was an hour late and wasn’t answering his phone put me on edge. I didn’t want to think the worst, but I also didn’t know what to think.

I heard the crunch of West’s truck over the gravel and dirt long before he ever came into view. Hands in my pockets, I slowly wandered in his direction as his truck rolled along the back of the one stable where he always parked. Even with him living in my house, he still kept his truck here. I tried not to dwell on it too much, hoping that one day he’d feel comfortable enough to move all his shit over to my house.

“Is there a reason you have my horse saddled?” he asked.

“Thought you and I could go for a ride before dinner,” I told him.

“Oh.” West blew out a slow breath of air, looking uncomfortable as all hell.

“It’s fine. We don’t have—”

“I ate dinner already with Bobby,” he said over me. Who the fuck was Bobby? And why the hell was West having dinner with someone else? I didn’t like the spike of jealousy. “My sponsor. I had dinner after my meeting with my sponsor.”

Leave it to me to be jealous of his sponsor.

“Oh. Your sponsor.” I nodded like I already knew that shit. Truth be told, West hadn’t told me a damn thing about his meetings let alone anything about his sponsor. And I wasn’t entirely sure if it was my place to ask or not. “That’s good. That’s good. I’m glad to hear that.”

“Yeah. I could probably be fucking convinced to go for a ride with you though,” he replied. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“When the hell would you ever say no to going for a ride?”

“See?” His lips quirked ever so slightly. “I could be convinced.”

There were moments when he was on the back of a horse that West looked free. Free of his demons. Free of his insecurities. Free of his pain. With his head tipped back, with the wind in his hair, with his body completely at ease.

Those moments were ones I clung to even as they wrapped around my heart like barbed wire. I knew they were fleeting. I would’ve given anything to bottle that feeling up and keep it for him.

“I’m sorry,” West said softly, pulling me from my thoughts. We wandered around the ranch on our horses, lazy and pointless.

“You ain’t got a damn thing to be sorry for, West,” I replied. “You—”

“No, I do,” he cut me off. “And I need you to stop letting me off the fucking hook just because you feel sorry for me. ”

“I’m pretty fucking sure I’m the asshole who took your job away until you went to a goddamn meeting,” I shot back. “I wouldn’t qualify that as letting you off the fucking hook. Your actions have consequences, even if they come from a crappy place. I’ll hold your ass accountable—especially where the horses are concerned—but I ain’t about to be pissed at you and fight with you over a bad moment.”

“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”

“Well, lucky you,” I drawled, “because I don’t. I don’t feel sorry for you, West. I’m pissed about what happened to you, I’m pissed about what people didn’t do to protect you when we were kids, and honestly, I’m a little fucking pissed I didn’t know about all of what was happening to you until now. And before you get upset about those things, if roles were reversed, you’d be pissed too.”

“I would,” West admitted. I glanced at him as he fell silent. His lips were pressed together in a tight line and his brows furrowed as he focused pointedly on the horizon. “Do you remember growing up and thinking we’d live and die by this ranch?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Ain’t that the Myles and McNamara way?”

“I never wanted it,” he told me. That wasn’t a surprise. West never did like the ranch. The horses, yes. But the rest of it? It never interested him. “Did you?”

“I was raised to run this place.”

“I know that. We both fucking were. But did you want it?” West repeated. “Or are you just doing it because we’re supposed to?”

Well, that was a fucking question, wasn’t it? Our entire lives were woven into the ranch—our ancestry and our legacy. But when I let myself entertain the thought of an ideal future, it never involved this ranch. Duty outweighed desire every time. In the end, I’d die on this ranch, and I knew that.

But for the sake of honesty, I didn’t tell him that.

“Bull riding,” I said. “It was always bull riding that I wanted to do. If I had my way, that’d be all I do, even after I retire.”

“What’s that like?” West asked. I made a questioning sound, not following his line of thinking. Honestly, the whole conversation felt completely off-topic compared to where it started. But sometimes, talking to West was like that. He’d get that far-off look in his eyes and come back with some question that made no sense compared to everything else going on. I just kind of rolled with it to see where we ended up. “Knowing what you want from life I mean. What’s that like?”

“Oh.” Well, fuck. That I didn’t know how to answer. Not easily anyway. “It’s… comforting and devastating. When I’m able to do it, it feels right. It’s… where I belong, you know? But when I can’t? I don’t know. I don’t feel like me.”

“I don’t know what that’s like.” His voice was so damn quiet I could barely hear him over the breeze around us. I nudged Zeus a little closer. “I’ve never wanted anything for my life.”

“Not even when you were a kid?”

“I just wanted to feel safe as a kid.” The barbed wire he kept weaving around my heart dug in a little deeper with those words.

“And now?” I dared to ask, mostly because I wanted to know—for both him and me. “Do you feel safe now, West?”

He gave half a shrug.

“Most days I don’t feel a whole lot of anything,” West said. He fell silent, which was probably a good thing because I didn’t know how to talk to him like this. How did I comfort him? How did I make him feel better?

How the hell did I help him?