Page 8 of Wed By the Lumberjack

Before I can answer him he chuckles.

“I know what you’re thinking. How would I know? A bachelor like me.”

“You never wanted to get married or have children.”

Buckee snorts. “You believed that lie too huh?”

I lift a brow. “It’s what you’ve always said.”

“It’s what I’ve always convinced myself of.” He looks me straight in the eye. “I could always put myself out there in the way of bull riding, but never in love. I was too cowardly to ever go looking for it. I convinced myself that being as wild as those bulls was what I wanted.”

I frown. “Why would you do that if it’s not what you truly wanted?”

“Probably for the same reasons you and your cousins do. Fear. Complacency. Distraction.”

“Now wait just a minute. Fear? I haven’t been fearful of a relationship in my entire life.”

“Sorry, that’s Kai. It was Jaxon before he finally confessed his feelings for Ayla. For you, it’s just complacency and distraction.”

I gape at him and he nods.

“You’re just like I was. Burying yourself in your work. Making those damn cabins and dedicating yourself to them like they’re your babies.”

“You're making that up,” I say incredulously. “Or projecting.”

“Am I?” he leans forward from his pillows, but a second later he collapses back into them with a shaky breath. “So I was just imagining the longing in your eyes at Beau and Cali's wedding?”

I go to retort, but the answer dies in my throat because he’s right. My cousin Cali’s wedding felt like a kick in the gut. A reminder that I’m not happy with my nonexistent personal life.

“And I’m just projecting that Cole wants kids when he won’t damn let go of Beau and Cali’s new twin boys? Or the fact that he’s practically adopted the diner waitress’s kid?”

“You can admire and appreciate kids without wanting them.”

“And I just made up that conversation all of you boys had after Cali’s wedding about wanting the same thing one day, but it just wasn’t in the cards for you all for some bullshit reason or another?”

I swallow. So he did have actual proof straight from the horses' mouths. Damn, had he been hiding in the bathroom when we had that heart-to-heart?

“So that’s what sparked that clause in your will?” I ask.

“There was a girl you loved once who you often thought about.” Buckee counts off on his fingers, ignoring me.

“Puppy love. We were just kids,” I defend, as I think about Dixie just a few rooms over. But we weren’t kids anymore and my feelings for her haven’t ever gone away. In fact, seeing her now only intensifies them from pure innocence into something much deeper that I couldn’t identify yet.

“But she got away. Then there’s Cole, who’s falling in love with that waitress but for some reason or another, he hasn’t pursued her yet. Probably out of fear.”

“And Ash and Kai? Since you know everything?” I snark.

“You mean those two knuckleheads who are in love with the twin country singers they bodyguard for on the weekends?” Buckee waves his hand dismissively. “Just more bullshit excuses of wanting to remain professional.”

So he did know everything.

“That still doesn't give you the right to hang the Forester Ranch over our heads like a damn carrot,” I say begrudgingly. “Even if you’re legally allowed to.”

“I’m just doing what’s necessary to make you go after what you want. What I wished someone did for me before I was old and wrinkled and living vicariously through sitcoms and telenovelas. Just like you all will be doing in thirty years, all alone, unless you change your ways.”

“We’ll have each other.”

“That’s what I said,” Buckee says sadly. “Until it was just me.”

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