Page 7 of Forbidden Cowboy

“How would you know?” I replied defiantly.

“I’m just the first guy to show you attention outside of your family. That’s not love.”

“Yeah, obviously no one else has ever shown any sort of interest in me,” I spat bitterly. We both knew it was a lie. “I mean, why would they?”

I didn’t want my blood to turn to venom in my veins, but it was happening without my consent.

“Whatever you’re feeling, it’s not love,” Wyatt reiterated, and I flinched.

“Then tell me you don’t feel anything for me,” I hissed.

There had been times I had been so sure, when I had been tucked under his arm at bonfires, when he had sought me out over his friends, even over Beau. When he brought me soup and watched movies with me when I was sick. I had, perhaps foolishly, thought that he might return my feelings.

“I don’t feel anything for you. You’re just Beau’s little sister—I’ve only ever humored this friendship because he likes having you around.”

My face felt like it was on fire, but I refused to let the prickling in my eyes be free.

“Thank you.” I said simply, turning away.

“For what?” He asked, seemingly genuinely curious.

“The clarification,” I responded, and set off to get away from him with as much of my dignity intact as possible.

I felt his eyes on me even as I walked across the spiky gravel he had carried me over before, trying to pretend every nerve in my body wasn’t alight with the agonizing pain of my first heartbreak.

* * *

It was late at night, and Wyatt and the little girl had finally left.

I hadn’t been in any sort of headspace to try and catch up with him, to find out the girl’s relation to him, so I had stayed quiet for the last few hours. It had been some sort of a relief when they left.

Beau had been moved to the ICU after having been sufficiently stabilized. Apparently, he’d need some surgery on one of his legs, but they wanted him a little stronger before that happened.

“Oh, Beau,” I muttered, holding his hand next to my face where I’d laid my head on his blanket, “if you wanted me back this bad, we could have organized something.”

It was a weak joke, and Beau would have told me as much. His attempts to get me back to Gunnison had never worked, and I found a little irony in the fact that I was finally back, and he wasn’t even conscious to see it.

A motorcycle accident, they called it. Beau had been riding on the highway, and a car had tried to pass on the right while he was stuck behind a truck. It had clipped him and sent him flying.

Sitting in an uncomfortable vinyl chair, with my head resting on my brother’s hospital bed, I began to cry for the first time since re-entering my hometown. It wasn’t loud or dramatic, but just tears falling onto our clasped hands.

I cried until I felt empty, and then, without any say in the matter, I fell asleep.

Chapter Four

Wyatt

Sierra had been back in town for a week, and every glance at her was a reminder of the greatest mistake I’d ever made.

She was curled up in her usual chair by Beau’s side, napping with an open book resting on her knees. I gently removed the book and covered her with one of the thin hospital blankets before taking a seat on the other side of the bed. I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was by the woman in front of me, because that’s what she was, a woman. I had thought, at the grand old age of nineteen, that she was a woman, but the memories I compared her to paled. She was just a girl then. A girl whose heart I broke, and a girl that left me equally broken-hearted.

Every time I looked at her, even if it was just in passing, even while she was asleep, I felt my heart give a sharp jolt that I was beginning to think couldn’t be healthy for me. I couldn’t remember feeling that way in my adult life, and slowly, so slowly, every glance and conversation, every quirk of that sharp mouth and ounce of intense eye contact she afforded me began to fill the emptiness I had believed chronic. Even being in a room with her while she was unconscious had me telling my beating heart to calm down, those ridiculous, prepubescent butterflies in my stomach performing Olympic-level gymnastics, and my ears straining for anything she might say, anything she might need that my other senses hadn’t been able to pick up on.

Sierra had been cute as a child, with round, red cheeks and wild curls the color of the Gunnison sunset. As a teenager, she’d been pretty, her delicate features refining themselves and her curls loosening slightly as she grew her hair out. Now, though, there was no other word for her except ‘beautiful’. Not only had her body filled out in ways that would make models weep in jealousy, but she was confident in herself. She wore her positive self-esteem like a cloak, and it shone beyond her flaming hair and bright hazel eyes. It touched the people around her, like a blessing she chose to bestow.

When she looked at me now, though, I wished she wouldn’t carry that undercurrent of sadness. I knew what I had done, as a teenager, as a young idiot. I had thrown away everything I could have had, for a future I hadn’t planned for. I should have apologized as soon as I saw her, but there was something in her face that told me an apology would feel like defeat. I wondered what sort of defeat that would be for her. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to force it out of her.

I turned my attention from the way her lashes fanned out on lightly freckled cheeks, and how her breath was making a strand of hair in front of her face flutter, and looked to my friend in his bed. Beau looked better than he had a week ago. Some of his scrapes and bruises had almost disappeared, and others had started yellowing or scabbed over fully. His eyes were still taped shut, and he was still connected to too many machines for me to be fully comfortable with the situation, but I knew they were all vital. I glanced between my best friend and his sister. They looked so alike, and yet, they were so different. They had both inherited bright red hair from their mother, and if you caught Sierra during golden hour, you could almost convince yourself her head had caught flame. Beau was tanner, from long hours helping me on the ranch, but Sierra had more freckles—I suspected from all her track and hurdle meets during our teenage years. I hoped she’d been able to keep up the sports she loved when she moved away.