Page 16 of Rogue Cowboy
Now they were in a stare-off.He took another bite and waited.
He’d mastered waiting and watching since he’d been a little boy, not able to comprehend death, waiting to hear his sister Carli bossing him about something, or his brother Carson’s voice shouting at him to grab his baseball glove, or feel his mom’s soft hand brushing his unruly cowlick away before she’d sing him a song or read him a story before bed, or to hear the low mooing of the cows and their calves as he rode his daddy’s shoulders out to the barn to saddle up and ride out to check on the cattle.
“You only married me because I might have been…you know.”
“Pregnant,” he finished.
“Oh my God,” she breathed and pressed her face against her thighs.Her voice held no heat.“Don’t talk.Don’t say anything.”
Cole had spent most of his life shutting up.It had worked well for him.But not now.Not with his wife.Dammit she was his wife, and it was his job to take care of her even when she preferred to hide in whatever hole she’d dug.
I let her dig.Hide.
Guilt and anger collided.
“You weren’t.You would have told me.We’re still married.”Facts.
But something about her stillness, her tension, blared the alarm of his instincts.
“Riley.”
She looked up at him.Ravaged.“I was.For a few weeks.And I lost the baby, and I was relieved and sick and sorry and…and…my parents don’t know about any of it.”Fat tears rolled down her face.
He stayed still.For one of the first times not sure what to do.Rage at his incompetence rose fast and he breathed it away.He pushed his food aside.
“It being…?”
“Fine,” she practically spit.“You want me to say it.I’ll say it.”She was flushed and breathing quickly, and she looked around and lowered her voice.“My drinking in LA.The industry parties.The…the drugging, the…rape…the…bbbbaby and miscarriage.”
He could barely comprehend her words.“I thought you were close to your family.”
“I am.That’s why I didn’t tell them.I can’t hurt them that way.And you can’t tell them either.”
Cole had received a lot of BS orders during his career and life, but this topped most if not all.
“They don’t know about us?”Yeah, he went with the present situation.
“There’s no us,” she hissed.
“We’re married.That’s a hell of an us.”And he wasn’t skulking away, especially when Riley was holding on to her pain like it was a damn security blankie.
“We’re not really married,” she insisted, paling.“You only married me because I wouldn’t take the Plan B, and because of where I was in my cycle.”
She sounded so sure.And Cole had been in protector mode, but after, when he’d had some time and distance, he didn’t regret his decision.Not once.Would that help to tell her?Unlikely.He felt like he was picking his way to a mine field to find a safe position to set up for a mission.
“You didn’t want to marry me.”She nodded her head, dashing away her tears and pulling her feet out of the river and crossing her legs.
“I asked.Don’t regret it.”
She looked at him like he was crazy.Yeah.Should have kept his mouth shut, but better to pull off all the Band-Aids.Heal and rebuild from there.
“I don’t even have a ring,” she said like that meant something.Maybe it did to her.
“You want a ring?”He had one.His mother’s.He’d not known if that would have creeped her out considering, so he’d never picked it up on one of his visits home.
“No,” she said, her voice leaked frustration.“Because we’re not really married.”
“That’s why I’m here.Told you.Courting.”
