Lone Wolf Cowboy Read online

  But there was apparently nothing he could do about that at this current point in his life. He was surrounded by them. Teenage ones. And he was going to have an infant one soon enough.

  “You have,” Aiden said. “And if you want to keep doing it...ice cream.”

  The stupid thing was, the kid was right. He needed to get Vanessa some of that ice cream.

  Because no, he wasn’t going to...Netflix and chill, or whatever he’d said. But he was trying to build a partnership with her. Build some trust. And bringing her ice cream wasn’t a bad place to start.

  Actually, he needed to talk to her about the house. About the fact that he was starting to think the best thing for them to do would be to live together.

  Yeah, okay, she didn’t want to get married. But, at least for the first few years of the kid’s life, while they were both single, it made sense for them to share a house. They were already down the road from each other. Why not share a space completely?

  Instead of having two cribs, diaper-changing stations, whatever the hell else babies had. Why not just combine and have one?

  Yeah. That was the kind of conversation you started with ice cream.

  And Jacob felt determined.

  “I’m going to make sure you get an A in this class,” he whispered to Aiden.

  “This is starting to feel creepy,” Aiden said.

  “You started it,” Jacob said.

  “Yeah, man, but I’m a troubled youth. I’m inappropriate.”

  “Something tells me that you’re a lot less trouble than you get credit for.”

  Aiden shrugged. “I’m smart. Doesn’t mean I’m not troubled.”

  “Good point.”

  “You know what she said about memories,” Aiden said.

  “Yeah.”

  “My memories of here won’t be so bad.”

  Something felt warm at the center of Jacob’s chest, but he didn’t say anything in response to the kid. Instead, they just walked back to the classroom together.

  And for the first time in a while, Jacob didn’t feel quite so lost.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME Vanessa got home, she was exhausted. She was sweaty, and she was exhausted. And hungry.

  She thought back to her memory of the creamery and her stomach growled. She should have stopped and gotten ice cream on the way home.

  And pie. Pie would be so good with the ice cream.

  Or if she could have found marionberry pie ice cream, just like her memory...

  She stopped for a moment, suddenly a little bit wistful.

  Good memories of her family, of her life at home, reminded her why she’d come back here originally. Reminded her that there was more than this stilted, painful relationship they had now.

  So often she remembered her mother wringing her hands and worrying. Her father being upset. Disapproving.

  And the worst part was...

  She’d proved them right, hadn’t she?

  They’d been afraid that she would get herself in trouble, and she had.

  They’d been afraid that the worst would happen and she would become a teenage mother, and she would have, if not for a malfunction in biology.

  They’d been afraid she would take drugs. She had.

  They had been afraid she would put her life in danger, end up in poverty, sleep with strangers.

  She had done all those things.

  She’d moved away and moved in with a bunch of friends, and that had been okay for a while. They’d all worked and paid portions of rent. But people left, and eventually it was Vanessa and one other friend, and two girls more interested in clubbing and getting high than working their part-time jobs and paying rent.

  Eventually they’d gotten evicted. And Vanessa had not liked living without a roof over her head at all.

  A boyfriend had solved that pretty quickly. But their relationship had ended very badly when she’d ended up selling his Xbox for a bump.

  She’d been back out on her ass. Bar hookups had gotten her a warm bed and sometimes drugs. A couple of times one guy lasted a few months, and she’d been pretty stable in terms of places to stay, but even guys who were into drugs didn’t enjoy being around a serious addict. She couldn’t keep a job.

  When she’d gotten arrested she’d been living in a pretty well-known drug spot, in another group housing situation. One of her roommates had overdosed, and Vanessa had called an ambulance.

  The other woman had survived the OD, thankfully. But Vanessa had wound up getting arrested for possession.

  She’d been a mess. And her arrest had been the best thing that had ever happened to her.

  Before that, she’d been her family’s worst nightmare. Everything they’d said she would be.

  Sometimes she even wondered if she was entitled to her anger.

  She hated complicated. She hated remembering that her parents were good as well as frustrating.

  That they’d bought her and Olivia ice cream and taken her to the ocean, that they’d bought her nice clothes and that her mother had taken her to lunch, just her, every year on her and Olivia’s birthday. And she had taken Olivia out too, but separately. That she had always made an effort to let the girls be individuals.

  But then, she always remembered her mother crying and saying maybe she shouldn’t have.

  Because maybe if she had dressed them alike, maybe if she had treated them as a unit, Vanessa would’ve been more like Olivia.

  Or maybe Olivia would have been more like me, she’d fired back.

  No. Because Olivia is stronger than that.

  Vanessa’s throat got tight. She blinked rapidly and then put her hand on her stomach.

  What would her family think about this?

  It doesn’t matter.

  It doesn’t matter.

  There was a firm knock on her door, and she jumped. Then she walked over and looked out the side window and saw Jacob standing there holding a paper bag. She frowned and pulled the door open. “What are you doing here?”

  “I brought you ice cream.”

  He held the bag up, and Vanessa’s stomach went hollow.

  He had brought her ice cream. Because she had been talking about ice cream today in the art class.

  She really didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know what to do. So she was standing there in the doorway completely frozen, probably staring at him like he had grown a second head.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said, stepping aside. “I...I just didn’t expect... Thank you.”

  He made his way inside and set the bag on the counter, pulling out a familiar pale ice cream tub.

  “Marionberry pie,” he said.

  “You really went and found Tillamook ice cream?”

  “I did. Though, to make sure no credit is given to me when it’s not due...it’s not hard to find here.”

  “I guess not. I’m the one that was away. Not the ice cream.”

  “Bowls?”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “I want to.” He made a move to open the cabinet and then stopped, his eyes resting on a painting she’d hung on a blank space in the kitchen wall.

  One of hers.

  It was one she’d done shortly after getting sober, of a girl standing next to a mountain, sun shining down on her face.

  “Is this yours?” he asked.

  She didn’t know why it made her feel uncomfortable. When the boys painted she always painted with them, so he’d seen her work before, even if it had been in a classroom setting.

  This was different from painting along with the boys. This was personal, and she knew that.

  “Yes.”

  “Is she you?” he asked.

  “Kind of.” She shifted in her seat. “I did it right after I finished rehab. At the point when the decision to be sober was mine, and not the court’s.”

  “Tell me about that,” he said, his voice getting rough. “We’ve talked about your addiction but what about...
What about what you’ve done since? What about making the choice to stop? And the art. I know it meant something to you but...”

  Her heart stilled, then thundered forward.

  No one had ever asked her about this. People were much more fascinated with addiction than with sobriety.

  “My first paintings were rough. Just colors and shapes,” she said.

  “Do you still have them?”

  She blinked. “Yes. They’re in the extra bedroom here.”

  “Can I see?”

  She stood slowly and nodded. “Sure. Come with me.”

  He followed her down the hall and she opened the door. The room where she kept her art supplies, her easel all set up, her pottery, her crafting implements, was a little bit of a mess. Her desk was cluttered, her case for her supplies overflowing. Canvases were stacked against the back wall. She had too many.

  She pulled out her first one. A big splotch of red. Angry brushstrokes. Angry, angry, angry. Then she pulled the second one out. Black. Then the next one. Blue.

  For all the sadness.

  “Once I felt sad...” She held up the picture. “Well, once I let myself feel sad it was the beginning of moving forward. Once I got through the anger. The emptiness. And then I realized it was all I would have if I didn’t change something. I had some hard things happen to me. My grief, my fear and my shame over the pregnancy and the miscarriage...no one could have stopped me from going through that. But I didn’t need to keep putting myself through more hell. And once I realized that, once I sat with the part I’d played in my own destruction... I realized I didn’t want to break myself anymore. I wanted to rebuild.”

  “What did you do after that?”

  “I thought about getting certified in counseling, specifically for addiction and recovery. Because the idea of immersing myself in sobriety seemed like a good one. But I kept painting, and the more I went back to painting for myself the more I realized it was such a great way to...to heal. All kinds of pain. To get to the emotional heart of that pain and figure out how to root it out. To put the feelings inside me that scared me so much, right out in front of me, for me and all the world to see. So I couldn’t ignore it. Not anymore.” A small smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Somehow putting it out there like that made it into something I could handle.”

  She took a breath. “Anyway, I took some classes. Lots of classes. On different mediums of art, on color theory and line theory and then I did get training in counseling because that was part of what I wanted to do. I started programs at different community centers in LA.”

  “When you decide to do something you go all in, don’t you?” he asked, the expression of awe on his face like a kick of adrenaline to her system.

  “It was...freedom. I wanted to do as much as I could. I’d been crushed for years. Opiates were my boss, not me. And I suddenly found...me again. Motivation. Conviction. I was in charge, and I wanted to run with it. It’s been five years, and I crave this, this control and clarity more than I ever craved any substance. And if I ever questioned myself, I looked at that picture in the kitchen.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “She’s looking ahead. She’s looking to the light. And she has her back turned on the darkness. And I remember, that’s what I did. I turned my back on all that ugliness so I could move on. And I have to keep moving.”

  He nodded slowly. “It’s a good way to look at life. We’ve got to move forward.”

  “Yeah. How about we move forward to ice cream?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  He went back into the kitchen and helped himself to bowls from the cupboard, and found her silverware drawer, taking out a big spoon and digging it into the ice cream.

  He was so big and broad, and he filled up the tiny kitchen in the little house.

  A baby would look so tiny in his arms.

  The realization made her stomach knot up.

  She watched him dish two generous bowlfuls, and then gratefully accepted the offered portion.

  She didn’t have a dining table because she lived here by herself, and tended to curl up on the couch while she ate, or just stand at the island in the kitchen.

  She took the bowl into the living room and sat on the end of the couch, drawing her knees up.

  Jacob sat in the chair across from the couch. There was something absurdly human about him just then, sitting there eating ice cream. And it was a funny thing because the rest of him just wasn’t...all that human. He was so muscular and broad, and quite frankly a savior in her memory half the time, and the act of eating ice cream on a small chair just seemed very mortal, all things considered.

  “That was very nice of you,” she said.

  “I would love to take credit,” he said. “But Aiden told me I needed to buy you ice cream.”

  “Aiden did?”

  “Yes. He thought it might help me hook up with you.”

  Vanessa sputtered, “And he thought you might want to do that why?”

  “I assume because I’m a man and you’re a woman.”

  “Teenagers,” she said. She took a bite of the ice cream to help cool the heat that was rising inside her.

  “I have to tell you, that while the ice cream is a genuine gift, I did have a purpose other than ice cream behind my visit.”

  She blinked. “We did agree—”

  “I know. And I’m not reneging on that. But I’ve been thinking a lot about my living situation, and yours.”

  “And?”

  “I want to build us a house.”

  She dropped her spoon, the handle clattering against the edge of the bowl. “What?”

  “I think it makes sense if we live together. At least for the first few years.”

  “I said that I didn’t want to get married.”

  “And I didn’t say anything about marriage. Or a relationship. But you have to admit, the idea of having two nurseries, two cribs, two of everything doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. We live so close to each other anyway. It doesn’t make any sense to have double the baby gear, does it? We could divide the labor so much easier if we shared a place.”

  “That feels...weird?”

  “Are you telling me this entire arrangement doesn’t feel a little bit weird?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t know how that would work.” In fact, the very idea made her feel panicky. Like she wanted to jump out the window. Or maybe jump out of her skin.

  She had her space. Her little house. Her life.

  Already, this pregnancy was completely outside her plan. But she could deal with it. The Jacob variable, though, that was something she was having difficulty wrapping her mind around.

  “I don’t like...sharing space,” she said. “I have routines. I have a life. I don’t like the idea of—”

  “But this house would be ours,” he said. “I mean, the design of it would be partly up to you. Decorating, I don’t even care about that. It would have an art room. Bigger than what you have here. Way bigger.”

  This was the problem with sharing herself with someone. Then he knew how to use those things against her.

  Was she so easy she was swayed by an offer of an art room?

  Well. Yes.

  But also it was an art room attached to a house made for her and the baby.

  And he would be there. Close.

  Which was both exhilarating and terrifying.

  “But what about when it doesn’t work anymore? What about when one of us ends up in a different relationship?”

  “Look, I’m not a relationship guy. The fact of the matter is, Vanessa, if I was going to get married, it would be to the mother of my baby. I don’t want to get married. I don’t want to be in love.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not going to have relationships.”

  “Hookups.”

  The very idea made her skin crawl. She did not want to be in a house where Jacob was having hookups. She didn’t want their child in a house where he was having hookups.
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br />   “Right, well, I don’t want to be exposed to that, and I don’t want our child exposed to it either. So it makes sense—”

  “You’re telling me that you’re going to stay celibate for the next eighteen years?”

  “I had been celibate for five. It went okay.”

  “Until it didn’t,” he pointed out.

  “I don’t know. But I just—”

  “You can’t actually predict the future, Vanessa. I guess neither of us can say for sure where things are going to be in five years. But I know for sure that the two of us are going to try to make this work for the baby, right?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I think that it makes perfect sense for the two of us to try it this way. I need a house that’s childproof anyway. We live close, we work at the same place...”

  “Are you suggesting that we... That we be roommates?”

  “I am,” he said.

  It was also weird and rational. As weird and rational as she had been attempting to be with him about the whole thing. And actually, this level of it threw the absurdity of the entire thing right in her face. They’d been very unsuccessful at being unsupervised together and not tearing each other’s clothes off.

  They were trying to act like the feelings between them were completely neutral, because it seemed safer for them to be, but once she imagined the two of them living in a space like that it was...

  But as absurd as it was, they almost had to adopt that mind-set.

  And he was right. It made more sense. It would provide more stability to the kid rather than migrating back and forth between places.

  He was also right—and she hated to admit it—that they couldn’t see enough years into the future to know for sure if it would work out. They would just have to try it.

  “But if it doesn’t work out, I’ll need to find a different place?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Well, if I pay for the house—”

  “I don’t want you to pay anything,” he said. “I have the money to build the house. It’s my property. I own it already.”

  “But how will that work? If something happens and I need to move out—”

  “You will never be out on your ass,” he said. “That I can promise you.” His blue eyes burned into hers, and she couldn’t breathe. “I’m not a perfect man,” he said. “I’m not even overly convinced that I’m that good of one. What I can tell you is this—if I give you my word you can bet I’ll keep it.”