Page 47 of Blazing Hot Nights
“My point exactly. You had so much to learn at eighteen, including being away from home for the first time. You had a business to run and animals to deal with that were unpredictable. What was your daddy thinking?”
I tipped her chin up with my finger to meet my gaze. “He thought it was time to make a man of me. I’d worked on a ranch my entire life. I knew how to run one. I didn’t know anything about the new state or the new animal, but the rest was second nature to me. The high school Beau and I attended gave us a fast track to a college degree in business as well as gave us hands-on experience in running a ranch. I spent every spare second I had for six months studying bison before I left Texas. I thought I was ready for the job. Then I got here and came face-to-face with a bison. Suddenly, I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.”
“But you stayed. You worked the land. You took care of the animals. You took care of the two people you depended on to help you get the work done in those early years. You can’t blame yourself for the things that happened, not when both of those people knew the risks before they got in that truck with you.”
Heaven lifted her left arm and let it fall to her lap again, the torsion of the limb obvious when she didn’t position it against herself purposefully. “It was the same for me with this arm,” she whispered. “I knew and accepted the dangers of barrel riding every time I got on the horse.” She poked me in the chest with her finger and left it there. “You can’t carry the weight of someone else’s decision forever. Eventually, you have to accept that they were aware of the risks and took them anyway.”
I took her tiny wrist in my hands and massaged the arm until it would lay flat against her belly again. “You don’t understand,” I sighed. “I think we need to get some rest and then head home.”
I tried to stand up, but she held tight to my arm and wouldn’t let me go. “If I don’t understand, then make me understand!”
I spun and rested my knee up on the bed, grabbing her arm. “I don’t carry the weight of Callie’s decision! I carry the weight of my decision not to be honest with her and tell her I was in love with someone else!”
Her head tipped in deep confusion when she asked the question that I knew would break me. “You were in love with someone else? Who?”
“You, Heaven. I was married to Callie, but I was in love with you.”
Thirteen
The knock on the door was gentle, and his voice when he called my name was soft and undemanding. “Are you okay in there? It’s been twenty minutes.”
I stood up off the toilet where I’d been sitting since he had dropped that bombshell on me. Blaze McAwley was in love with me? Orisin love with me? God, what do I do? I can’t tell him that he’s not alone and that I’ve loved him since the day we met. He’d think I was just saying it because he said it. Besides, he might not feel that way now. He used the wordwas, so that’s past tense, right?
I swung the door open, and he stood in front of it, his shaggy hair falling over his forehead and his eyes searching mine. I held his face in my hand and pressed my lips to his. The kiss went from surprise to smoking hot in the blink of an eye. Suddenly, I couldn’t be sure that his declaration was past tense. Not when his kiss was as hungry and needy as mine was. His tongue pushed my lips aside and dove in to taste me, and the heat of his body against mine burned through my clothes. I was on fire everywhere, and this man was to blame for striking the match. I moaned when his tongue stroked the roof of my mouth, and the sound made him quiver with need.
Blaze lifted me and carried me to the bed, his lips coming off mine when he laid me down. His hand stroked my cheek, our gazes fused with heat and need. “You’ve always been the most gorgeous tomboy to ever ride onto my ranch, Heaven Marie Lane.”
“Thank you, I think,” I whispered, going for levity, but neither of us laughed. “I’m confused by everything right now, Blaze. I’m confused by the words you say, the passionate kisses, and the deep need inside me to be part of your life, even when it hurts.”
His eyes closed, and he rolled over the top of me to rest next to my left side. I noticed he had closed the curtains, and the waning sunlight threw most of the room into shadowy darkness. “I don’t want to hurt you, Heaven. That’s the very reason I pushed you away. I had to keep you safe. It was the only way I knew how to do that.”
“I didn’t need you to keep me safe, Blaze. I needed you to hold me. I needed you to tell me it was going to be okay. I needed you, and you weren’t there.”
He lifted my left wrist and carefully slid his hand inside my clawed one, letting my fingers rest over his gently. “I can see that now. I thought I was doing the right thing.” He shook his head and sighed. “That’s not true. The truth is, I hated myself too much to love anyone.”
“Do you still feel that way?” I asked.
“Much of the time, yeah,” he agreed. “That’s why I stayed in Wisconsin after the accident. I was punishing myself. My family was punishing me. Everyone was reacting to the man they thought I was, not the man I am.”
I turned slightly on my side so I could see his face. My right hand came up to trail a finger down his cheek, my eyes searching his. “If it matters to you, I saw the man you were. I always have. We had our business disagreements, but I knew you were a good man. Callie knew it, too, Blaze. That’s why she stayed. It’s also the reason I left.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, rubbing his thumb across the fingers he held in his hand.
“You’re an honorable man, Blaze. When I stopped working at your ranch, Daddy wasn’t sick yet, but I was. I couldn’t ride onto your ranch every day and pretend that I didn’t want a repeat performance of that kiss we shared under the moonlight when we’d both had too much to drink. Your honor wouldn’t let you bury your marriage yet, even if your heart had never been in it. You were going to honor Callie that way, and I respected that. I respected it but I couldn’t watch it any longer.”
“You shut me out when I needed you most,” he said, his voice filled with pain.
“I could say the same to you, Blaze. I powered through the physical and emotional pain to help you after she died. I knew you would need it. It was almost a year later, and we hadn’t moved anywhere. I couldn’t do it anymore. I tried. You don’t know how hard I tried to keep coming to work every day like my whole life wasn’t a lie. Then Daddy got sick and died, and I was truly alone. I had no one, and the one person I needed couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be there for me. I tried to tell myself I understood you were still grieving for Callie, but when Daddy died and you didn’t show up at his funeral, it broke me.”
Blaze gathered me into his arms and held me to his warm chest, his lips kissing the top of my head in silence. “I’m sorry. I can’t even argue that I wasn’t a coward. Beau wouldn’t talk to me for weeks afterward. The guilt had consumed me and turned me into someone else. Someone I didn’t want to be. It took your daddy’s funeral, and your constant tongue lashings about the bison, to understand I had to change. I don’t want to be my father. I sure as hell feel like I am, though.”
“I don’t know your father, Blaze. I only know you. In fairness, I understand that people change. I’ve changed too. I’m not the same, young, innocent, fun-loving woman that I was at twenty. I’ve lost too much. I’ve seen too much. I’ve struggled too much,” I said, my voice breaking as he rubbed my fingers with his thumb again.
“I think it’s fair to say you’ve struggled more than anyone. I’ve seen you get knocked down over and over again, but you keep getting up. You aren’t afraid to reinvent yourself. The dude ranch idea makes my point. You could sell that place and live somewhere else, do something else, something easier.”
“I could go somewhere else, but I can’t be someone else, Blaze.”
His finger trailed down my cheek in a way that said what my words couldn’t. “I know, angel. For better or worse, you are part of that land, even when it knocks you down. I just wish it didn’t knock you down all the time.”
