Page 40 of Forbidden Cowboy

“I heard what you were saying to Beau,” Wyatt said suddenly, and I dragged my eyes from the road and over to him.

He clicked on his indicator and pulled over to the side of the road.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“We should talk, and there’s no space to do that at home right now.”

I should have seen this coming. Wyatt’s face was grim, and I wondered just how badly he was about to shatter my heart.

“What did you hear?”

“The part about how Beau would have killed me if I’d returned your feelings.”

I breathed a little easier. Maybe he’d missed the part about how I’d loved him since high school, how I was still in love with him.

“Oh, I—”

“Beau wasn’t the reason I rejected you back then,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Do you—do you remember when Eliana transferred schools?”

“Yeah, and right before my graduation she came back to town.”

“She didn’t transfer. She went to a special clinic where women can give birth and give up their babies for adoption, except… she didn’t give her kid up for adoption.”

“Anna,” I stated simply.

“Yes. I slept with Eliana at the beginning of our senior year, because I was drunk and stupid and thinking with my dick. When she apparently transferred, I thought I’d never have to think about her again. Then she showed up, two days before your graduation, with this almost one-year-old, and the news that I was a father.”

I hadn’t known. I looked into Wyatt’s eyes as he spoke, and I saw all the confusion and angst he’d gone through then resurfacing.

“At that party, all I could think about was that it was my last chance to really be a teenager before I had to be an adult. I was taking the night to just enjoy everything before I uprooted everything so I could focus on my new, sole responsibility. I didn’t have any custody of Anna at that point, so having a night off was a lot easier. All I wanted was to have a couple of beers and dance with the girl I had been in love with for most of my life.”

I tried to recall any other girls he had danced with that night, but none came to mind. Then I realized what he was saying.

“Me?”

“You,” he confirmed.

I felt my heart pick up its pace.

“Then why did you— ”

“You confessed to me, and there was so much happiness and potential in your eyes. You were everything I wanted my future to be, but I realized I could never have it. I was a father. I couldn’t ask you to be involved in the mess I had foolishly created. I also felt some sort of responsibility to provide for Eliana, who I believed to be a victim of my mistakes. So, I rejected you, in the hopes you would go to Stanford, meet some nice, unburdened boy, and have a very normal life. Sure, I hoped you’d come back to Gunnison so I could see you, but I knew that I was going to have to give you up romantically.

And then you disappeared, and Beau showed up almost in tears, telling me you had left in the middle of the night. He didn’t know where you were, and the two of us stayed awake for almost two days before you contacted him. He was ready to call the police, but I had more faith in you. I also knewwhyyou’d left.

I watched the years go by, and I never saw you. Even when your mother and father passed away, at their funerals, you were like some sort of ghost, and you left right after the services, from what Beau told me. I raised my daughter and fought legal battles for full custody. Everything happened with Eliana, and I just… forgot about my feelings for you, I guess.”

I couldn’t imagine being that selfless, but I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t tell him that I had given up my scholarship to Stanford in a fit of teenage angst and heartbreak, although I suspected he already knew that. I also didn’t want to ask what had become of those feelings since my return to Gunnison. I didn’t want to know that while we’d shared an amazing night, those emotions were gone for him. I wasn’t sure my heart could take it.

He was staring at me like he expected something from me. The silence was deafening around us, cloaking everything settling like expectations on our shoulders. I couldn’t tell him. I wanted to, and I would, someday soon, but I couldn’t tell him how deeply I still loved him, so instead I did something destructive and impulsive.

I leaned over the console, and I kissed him. This wasn’t like our first time, where it was a mildly drunken, passionate exploration of each other. No, this was something hurried and necessary. We gasped like we were drowning, and those hands of his reached up to hold me by my waist. With some maneuvering, he lifted me over the console so I was in his lap, and oh—he was already hard. I ground down on the bulge below me, and he groaned.

“Fuck.”