Page 43 of Knot Her Cowboys
“You’re home early,” Dakota pointed out, as if my arrival was the problem and not what I had discovered.
Riley latched on to me, both arms wrapped around my head, pressing my ear to her chest where her broken, crackly purr tried to break through the chaos in my brain.
“Cooper, breathe,” Levi demanded.
I couldn’t. Every inhalation smelled like her.
Levi smacked a hand against my back, forcing out a cough, the air I drew in filling me with Riley. It was as soothing as it was agonizing, fate proving to me once and for all that she had always been meant for me, a scent match I had recognized from the start, like Kit had suggested. Except she had been here long enough to get into bed with my best friend,ourbest friend, assuming she even considered him that anymore.
“Cooper.” Riley’s voice was loud against my ear. “You have to breathe for us, okay?”
I locked my arms around her, desperation outweighing everything else.
Was she actually real?
Shefeltreal, solid and warm, just like I remembered her.
“Breathe,” she crooned.
I pulled in one ragged breath at her command, fighting against the metaphorical ice encasing me, letting the scent of lupines melt me from the inside out. Her essence charged through my panic with a sledgehammer, busting down the walls of anxiety, cracking through all of that ice until I was shaking, clinging to her like she was the one anchor that would keep me from disappearing entirely.
“When?” Forming the word felt like a monumental task.
“She got here on Friday,” Cash confessed, sitting far enough away I couldn’t reach him for another swing.
Friday.
She’d been here for two days and they didn’t tell me…
“We were going to call you today when she woke up,” Dakota told me. “We weren’t expecting you home until tonight.”
She smelled like Cash, and not just because she was wearing his clothes. Out of the corner of my eye I caught the edge of a fresh bond bite and snared my fingers in the collar of the shirt, tugging down to reveal it. I tried to pull away, but Riley was on me like a barnacle.
“Cooper, give them a chance to explain.”
“Go ahead, then,” I growled. “Tell mewhy you hid her, fucked her, and bonded her before you ever thought about telling me.”
Cash looked like I had managed to punch him in the gut, pain marring his usual cheerful face. “She was engaged when she got here.”
“What?”
“I was going to move to Germany.” Riley continued clinging to me.
“I was trying to protect you,” Cash said, pleading. “We both know what it was like the first time she left. I knew you would be devastated to see her and have her leave again.”
The words tumbled around in my head, fighting against the weight of my anguish, fighting tounderstand.
“So you were going to take myonechance? The only fucking chance I’d ever have to see her again?”
“I thought I was helping,” Cash insisted. “If I’d known she was going to stay, I would’ve told you immediately.”
I tensed. “Liar.” My instincts wanted me to pounce on him, to pour out all of my pain onto Cash. Riley pushed back against me, Dakota and Levi both bracing their hands on my shoulders. Maybe I had been a little closer to pouncing than I realized.
“Cooper, I didn’t want you to know I was here.”
That stole my breath all over again. “Why?”
Why didn’t she want me?
