Page 18 of Possessive Cowboy

Will Mav appreciate it? Or will he take it for granted?

Will he hurt me?

He said he was ready to think long-term about us. Of course, maybe he was just saying that get into my pants. At the time I didn’t consider that possibility. I was really caught up in the moment.

And Mav seemed so sincere…

“I wish I hadn’t said anything,” Abby says softly. “Look! I’ve gone and burst your bubble.”

“You haven’t,” I say with a shake of my head. Telling a lie of my own to my best friend now. Truthfully, my “bubble” definitely feels at least slightly deflated…maybe not popped altogether, but certainly less full than before.

I glance at the clock. It’s five o’clock. If I’m going to clean Mav’s kitchen and cook him a meal, I need to leave now.

“Forget I said anything,” Abby says. “Seriously. Forget what I said. I’m probably just feeling wounded today. Yesterday I thought I was really getting somewhere with Levi. But then he brushed me off at the end of the night. Every time I think I’m breaking through with him, he pushes me away. Now I’m projecting my bad mood onto the good thing you and Mav are building together.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “You’re looking out for me. That’s what friends do.”

“Are we okay?” Abby says with a nervous smile.

“Of course,” I say.

“And areyouokay?”

“Definitely,” I say.

To mask this fib, I turn back to the pantry and pretend to look for another item.

10

Maverick

I open the door,half dressed. I’m expecting to see Levi, so before the door is all the way open I’m already growling expletives at the person whose knock summoned me.

“For fuck’s sake Levi, I told you I’ve got a girl coming over,” I’m saying as I swing the door open.

It takes me a moment to realize it’s not Levi on the porch, but Raina.

“Oh,” I say. “Hey.”

“You’ve got a girl coming over?” she asks, raising a brow with a small smile. “You said that as though you’ve got a rotation of them coming over regularly.”

She says this in jest, but her feelings are all over her face. In case she needs any more assurance, I step outside and shut the door behind me. Then I grab her by the shoulders, turning her around and pushing her roughly back against the door.

“You’re the only woman for me,” I say. “I thought I made that clear yesterday.”

“You might have,” she breathes. “But we’ve slept since then. Maybe you had time to think about it. And maybe you changed your mind.”

She’s speaking pure nonsense. She has no idea, truly no idea, how insane she makes me.

In fact, Ididhave time to think last night. And the more I thought about it, the more sure I felt that Raina is the only woman for me.The One.She’s The One.

I’m not a believer in soul mates…or at least, I wasn’t until I met her. But now that we’ve met, how could I not? How the fuck can I not believe in soul mates now, what else could explain this magnetic pull that she has on me?

It’s not the kind of thing that you can make sense of. It’s not logical. This isn’t something I decided, not something my brain guided. Instead it’s my heart making all of the decisions, driving this thing forward at a speed that scares me a little.

Scares me because I don’t want to scareher.

If Raina is The One then I can’t afford to fuck things up. And when it comes to women, fucking things up is all I do. I don’t know any other way.

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