Untamed Cowboy

“Don’t do it,” she repeated. “Don’t take her back.”

“What?”

She blinked.

Right. He hadn’t actually said anything about Olivia. He hadn’t said anything about anything. It was just that all of those scenarios had seemed so possible, and she had latched on to that one so tightly, and turned it over about fifty different times on the drive over.

“Never mind. What’s happening?”

He stepped outside, closing the door softly behind him. “I don’t know how to explain this to you,” he said, his words rough.

“What?” He looked... He didn’t look good at all. His eyes looked like they’d been punched, dark shadows spreading beneath them. “Bennett, you are freaking me out.”

He shook his head and walked down the front steps past her, his boots making a hollow sound on the wood, then crunching on the gravel.

He sighed slowly, heavily, looking upward. She followed his gaze, staring at the inky sky, with the stars bursting through like a candle in punched tin.

“You’re the first person I called,” he said, sounding as if the realization of that was dawning over him slowly. “I’m going to have to talk to Wyatt. And Grant. Jamie. My dad. I’m going to have to explain some things to a lot of people.”

“What? Do you have some kind of terrible disease? Do you have gambling debt? Have you lost the ranch?” She frowned. “Did you lose our business?”

He shook his head. “No. Kaylee... You remember Marnie Claire?”

“Yes,” Kaylee said, and an instant spike of loathing burst hot and insistent through her chest. Yes, she knew Marnie Claire. Bennett’s first girlfriend. Kaylee hadn’t liked her, not at all. Not because there was anything wrong with her specifically, but because Bennett had been so obsessed with her. She’d seen less of him over the months he’d dated Marnie than she ever had since they’d become friends.

He’d told Kaylee before they’d had sex for the first time, a shy grin on his face as he’d confessed it was going to happen that night. And Kaylee had wanted to die. It was the moment that had forced her to realize that she was...jealous. That she wished it were her.

She’d decided very quickly after, sometime during his very messy breakup with Marnie, in fact, that she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be his girlfriend for a little while. She wanted to be his friend forever. To become veterinarians like they’d promised each other, and work together.

To be something more, better, than a husband and wife. Her parents’ marriage hadn’t made the institution seem all that aspirational.

“There’s something you don’t know,” he said.

“What?” He sounded so very, very grave. Grave enough she was starting to wonder if she was going to have to prove that she was a friend who’d help hide the body.

He lowered his head. “When we were sixteen Marnie got pregnant.”

Kaylee felt like the ground tilted underneath her feet. “What?”

“Marnie was pregnant in high school.”

“Whose baby was it?” The words felt numb and ridiculous. But they fell out of her mouth naturally. Because if it were Bennett’s... It couldn’t have been.

“Mine.”

She was...stunned. She couldn’t even process it. Because there had never been a baby. So how could Marnie have been pregnant?

“Marnie left. She moved away,” Kaylee said.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “After she lost the baby.”

Kaylee’s breath rushed from her body, like it was trying to flee the scene of this very difficult conversation. “Bennett, how did you never tell me any of this?”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” he said. He closed his eyes. “I told one person. I told Cole Logan.”

“Olivia’s dad. He’s the one that knew.” There were implications to that, and she knew it. But she couldn’t sort them out, not right then.

“I was scared,” Bennett said. “I was stupid and I didn’t want my dad to know that I made such a big mistake. I didn’t want him to be disappointed in me. At that point Wyatt was gone, off riding in the rodeo. Grant was getting married, and Dad really wished he wouldn’t. He was still coping with Jamie being a little kid, being a single dad. I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted to be something easy for him. Not something hard. So I talked to Cole.”

“And not me?” she asked.

How weird that a secret kept from that many years ago could hurt. But they’d talked about everything back then. He’d told her when he’d gotten a note from a girl in math class asking him if he liked her, and to check Yes or No. She’d told him about the time she’d taken a cigarette some older kids had offered her, and she’d hated it.

She hadn’t talked about her family, but that was different. The day-to-day things. School, friends, growing up. Hopes, dreams, fears. First kisses and first times. They’d shared that stuff. The parts of her life she cared about, she’d shared with him.

She’d thought he’d shared it all with her.

“I was scared, Kay. Scared of what you’d think of me. I went to Cole because he was the closest thing to an uncle I had. And I was terrified of telling my dad.”

“But wait, why...” It was like the other shoe had dropped straight out of that starry sky and crash-landed between them. “What’s happening now?”

“She didn’t lose the baby,” Bennett said, his voice raw. “She didn’t lose the baby. She lied to me.”

“Why?” She blinked. “How do you know that?”

“Because the baby is a damned fifteen-year-old boy and he is in my guest room.”

Kaylee exhaled. “Dammit to hell.”

“That’s what I said. Well, that’s what I thought.”

“How do you know he’s yours?”

“He looks just like me. He’s the right age. She would have had to go and get pregnant again pretty damn quick for all to match up like this. And with someone who resembled me.”

“Possible,” Kaylee said, “I mean, if she had a type.”

“She lied to me,” Bennett said. “She lied to me, and she lost custody of our son at some point because of drug addiction.”

“Bennett... I don’t even know...”

“Me either. You were the first person that I called. Kaylee, I need you.”

And there he was, standing out under a romantic, expansive Oregon sky, professing to need her, his dark eyes illuminated by the moon, the sincerity in them deep enough to steal her breath. He needed her. But not for what she had always hoped he might. He needed her because his life was falling apart. He needed her because everything was falling apart and he knew that she would help pick up the pieces, no matter how big or heavy they were. Because it was what she did. It was what they did.

He had called her. He needed her.

And yes, she’d just been in the process of trying to fix her narrowed, Bennett-focused world, but she didn’t know how she could turn away from him now. How she could possibly spend less time with him when this was happening.