Page 73 of Burned & Bound

I made a small sound of agreement as I dropped my cigarette and stepped on it. I didn’t know a whole lot about him other than he was persistent as fuck and drove a car that very well might’ve been older than me—in a classic car kind of way.

“I work with horses,” I managed to tell him, my throat constricting as another wave of emotions hit me. The horses were the whole damn reason I wasn’t halfway down a bottle. I knew there was no way in hell Jackson would let me work with them if I relapsed.

Had I told him this already?Maybe I had. I couldn’t remember. My head was all sorts of fucked up.

“I know very little about horses.” He opened the door to the diner, holding it for me to go through. “But when I was five, a horse ripped out a chunk of hair on my head. I swear that’s why my hair is thinning back there.”

Fucking Bobby.I didn’t have it in me to respond to that. I let him do the talking with the woman who greeted us and let him figure out a table for us. Thankfully, he picked something in the back—somewhere I could easily put my back in a corner and keep track of everything in the restaurant. No one could sneak up on me that way.

He ordered a slice of pie and a Diet Coke while I couldn’t fathom the idea of even drinking water. I just shook my head at his offer to buy me something.

“Would you like to talk about it?” Bobby asked, his tone gentle. The request still hit me hard.How the hell did I explain any of this to him?

Myleg bounced erratically under the table as I tried my best to come up with something to say—something that would make sense to a guy like him. How the fuck did I explain that I was spiraling after giving my something-other-or-what a fucking blowjob because of… of…

My eyes watered, and my nose burned. I stared hard out the window, trying to hold back tears.Fuck, I couldn’t even think about it.I pinched the bridge of my nose as I tried to get ahold of myself.

To his credit, Bobby was silent while I struggled. When the waitress brought over his order, he waved her off quickly. Maybe to give me peace, maybe because she was fucking annoying. I couldn’t tell.

And so we sat there in the quiet with him eating pie and me doing my damnedest to find my voice—to say something, to do something other than fall apart.

“Can you…” I whispered finally, my voice breaking. It was such a pathetic thing to ask. I didn’t know what I needed. I didn’t know how anyone could help me.Fuck, I didn’t know how to help myself.“Can you just… sit with me?”

“You know what always caught my attention about this place?” Bobby said casually around a bite of pie. “They have seventeen flavors of pie. I keep telling myself I’m going to try them all, but I never do it. I always get the coconut cream. I think I’m going to try them all.”

What the fuck was he talking about?

“You know what?” he continued. “I’m going to do just that. We’ll be here a while. That’s a lot of pie.”

Oh.

“Hold on. I’ll be right back,” Bobby told me. I just nodded as he left, confused as to why he was doing this.

I’d never understand why people did things like this for me. I wasn’t worth the hassle.Why couldn’t he see that?

CHAPTER 51

west

Avoiding Jackson was easy.I buried myself in my work. Figuring out Betty and all her little behaviors took up a lot of time. She had no social skills with other horses and didn’t know what to do with them. It turned her snippy, and while she wasn’t outright aggressive, I knew better than to put her around the other horses until she was completely relaxed.

I relied on Bailey all over again to be the comfort point. Bailey was just fine being a social buddy. Granted, Bailey liked anything that involved following me around, and she was damn good with the other horses.

It was easy to lose myself in my work. The consistency and constant flow of tasks kept my brain from spiraling—at least more than it already was as it teetered on the edge of fucking chaos. The horses made me feel better, and anytime anyone else showed up, I made myself scarce. I didn’t want to deal with people.

Which was all well and good until Jackson tracked my ass down two days later while I hid out in the stables.He’d traded the cowboy hat for a backwards baseball hat and his work shirt for blue flannel. It struck me that the man looked good no matter what he was fucking wearing, whichbothered me more than it probably should’ve. It’d be easy to be mad at him and keep my distance if I wasn’t so wrapped up in him.

So I focused hard on sweeping stalls and fucking ignored him.

“You know,” Jackson began as he strode down the center aisle, “you can only avoid me for so long, considering I’m your boss.”

“I’m not fucking avoiding you,” I snapped. Why? Who the hell knew? It wasn’t like we both didn’t know I was lying my ass off.

“Right.” He nodded slowly. “Look, I think you and I need to talk about a few things.”

“Fuck,” I muttered.The last thing I wanted to do was fucking talk.I tried to leave but he stepped in my path. “I don’t want to fucking fight you right now.”

“I don’t want to fight either,” he promised. “But I do want to go for a ride.”

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