Solid Gold Cowboy Read online

  Not that he was afraid of what might happen if he was alone with Jordan for too long.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE PROBLEM WITH cooking and cleaning was that it made her mind wander. Not just wander, but go down paths that she preferred not to walk on. Turning over possibilities and ideas, and different things that she had spent a long time rejecting.

  But it was what Laz had said about people helping her. About how she had other people in her life who cared.

  And when she thought about it, she knew that it was true. She and Lars—who she knew most of the customers referred to as Grumpy Chef—had a decent relationship at Sugar Cup. He was another of the part owners, and she knew that he would do anything for her if she told him that she needed it. Because the reality was, even though his demeanor was gruff, he was a very nice man. And then there were Katrina and Susie, who also worked there. And while Jordan might never have made best friends with them—they were young, in their early twenties—they were sweet. And they didn’t hate her or anything. But she’d somehow decided that it was...safe to lean on Dylan’s family. And not safe to really lean on anyone else. And that line of thinking led her back to her parents. Straight to trailer parks and addiction and the kind of sadness she just didn’t like to... Didn’t like to excavate. She had always wondered why they were like that. And why she hadn’t been enough to fix it. She hadn’t gotten kicked out because she was rebellious. She had gotten kicked out because she’d gotten rid of their heroin. She did think sometimes that she was lucky they hadn’t killed her. At least her dad. He’d lost it.

  She’d been thrown out, but she also had to run away. And she could still remember her dad’s last screaming rant at her. That she thought she was better than she was. That this was in her blood and she would never escape it. That she couldn’t just run away to the suburbs and be different.

  And maybe that was the problem. Dylan’s family had represented something so much more than just Dylan alone. They were normal. A deeply normal suburban family, and when she’d first started dating him she’d been terrified that he was going to...reject her when he knew just how messed up her family was. He hadn’t, though. And his parents had been kind enough to let her live with them. She had her own bedroom—because they were not about to have the two of them sleeping in the same room.

  She and Dylan had moved out when they were twenty, and gotten their little house off the main part of Gold Valley. And then for the past twelve years they’d...coasted. That was all. Neither of them had really made a solid move toward commitment. They’d taken forever at it. And then in the end she’d been the one to balk. But she’d waited too long. And she had to wonder if they were actually just both victims of their own apathy more than anything else.

  She hadn’t known what other life to live, so she hadn’t pursued it. And it had been largely motivated by fear. Yeah. She was just so afraid of what was on the other side of that life that she had actually found that was so comfortable. Because secretly... Secretly she was sort of convinced that it was Dylan that kept her away from that future that her father had promised she would find.

  She didn’t really believe that. Her parents had made their choices. They couldn’t simply blame genetics. No matter how convenient that might be for them. They had to take responsibility for their actions. The same as she had to own the fact that her life had turned out good in part because of herself. It wasn’t just because of Dylan. But there was a part of her that...

  She sighed. It was one thirty in the morning. That was normal for her. She had decided to go ahead and make Laz a hamburger when he came home. So she had everything prepared, but she didn’t want to start it too early.

  Not that he couldn’t have had a hamburger at the bar. Maybe you wouldn’t want the same kind of thing he could have had there at home.

  She stood there questioning herself until she saw headlights.

  They always met in this space. In these strange hours. When her mind started to fray and she was desperate to avoid sleep.

  She blinked.

  Was she desperate to avoid sleep? Had she just been avoiding it in Dylan’s bed?

  And dreams.

  The dreams that she found so disturbing.

  Of a different life. Completely different. She swallowed hard.

  She heard heavy footsteps outside, and then the front door opened. “You want a hamburger?” she asked.

  “Hello to you too,” he said.

  “Sorry. It’s just... It occurred to me that you could have had one at the bar.”

  “Sure. I eat at the bar sometimes, but generally don’t. But it’s not because I don’t like hamburgers.”

  “Why?”

  “I mean I did at first. But I get sick of... Even the way the oil tastes. Just a little bit too much work.”

  “I guess that makes sense. I’ll make the hamburgers then.”

  “Did you wait to eat?”

  “Yeah. I mean... My body clock is basically screwed for life. So there’s no point me being precious about mealtimes.”

  She walked over to the stove and put the premade patties on the cast-iron griddle that attached to the propane burners.

  “How was work?”

  “Good,” he said, having a seat at the table. “How was here?”

  “Great.”

  “The place looks amazing.”

  “You’re pretty neat. I just did some deep cleaning.”

  “I can tell. It feels lighter.”

  “Good.”

  She didn’t know why this should be awkward. Well, except that they had never done this. With her making things for him.

  But she had to wonder if anybody ever made things for Laz. His grandmother had. She knew that. She knew that she had been a firm woman, but that Laz had loved her more than anything.

  He didn’t really talk about his parents. Something they had in common.

  “Do you ever speak to your parents?”

  He looked up at her, his brow crinkled. “I talk to them once a week.”

  “Oh. I just... You never talk about them.”

  “Well. I... I don’t really like Portland. So I don’t ever have the desire to go back and visit. I do, a couple times a year. But it has to fit around their schedules. They’re busy. They’ve always been busy.”

  “Oh. I guess I didn’t... I didn’t realize that.”

  “My dad is a doctor. My mom is a lawyer. They’re very business-oriented. They’re very...invested in their careers. That’s fine. But there’s a reason that I came out here when I was seventeen. When Grandma Gladys said that she needed help... I jumped at the chance. To get out of the city, to get out of my house.”

  “I didn’t know that you left home at seventeen.”

  He nodded slowly. “I mean, I had my grandmother. So it’s not quite the same.”

  “Yeah. I was sixteen when my parents kicked me out.”

  “You never did tell me why.”

  “Throwing out their heroin.”

  Surprise flashed through his eyes and she couldn’t decide if she was sad that he now knew just how bad everything had been when she was growing up, or gratified that she had managed to shock him.

  It was all just so sordid and sad. And it had been one thing to tell him her parents had addiction issues, and another to connect it to what had happened. Because even now she wanted to...protect them in some ways.

  It was so toxic and messed up, and she knew it. But it was one thing to know you had some issues, another to just not have them.

  And on some level she just hadn’t wanted Laz to have too clear a picture of her life back then. She wanted him to see who she was now. To not have all that in his head.

  “Well, I didn’t figure that.”

  She laughed, trying to shift the sadness in her chest. “Did you think that I was rebellious? Especially with a guy l
ike Dylan.”

  “I don’t know. I figured they found condoms in your backpack or something.”

  “Ha. No. Actually, they would have probably found that to be very responsible of me.”

  “I see.”

  “We were just white trash. But with a lot of drugs. I don’t have any happy memories of my childhood. Well now, that’s not true. There was this one Christmas when my mom was trying not to use. And my dad had his use kind of under control. I mean, he was able to shoot up and then kind of be around. And I don’t know. We got these little TV dinners with slices of turkey and gravy and we had a tree made of tinsel. And it was nice.” She could still see the living room. Fake wood panels and that shiny little tree. They’d eaten their meal on TV trays on an old green couch that had a hole in the arm, with foam protruding through the end.

  She had presents under the tree that year. It had made her very happy. Her parents had been pretty happy.

  They had been sometimes. That was the thing. Because for years it was a back and forth between them and the drugs. Child services and all of that. They had tried. Intermittently they had tried. But once she had been a teenager they just stopped. Like they’d thrown up the white flag of surrender and just jumped right in headfirst to addiction rather than making it a dance where they put their feet in and then ran back to the shore.

  “My dad told me I was going to end up just like them.”

  “Jordan...”

  “Always kind of thought maybe I would. It terrifies me. That thought. And I thought... I don’t know. Dylan’s family was so normal. It was so wonderful to be a part of that. I remember the first Thanksgiving that I spent with them, right after my parents kicked me out. And they had...this huge turkey. And mashed potatoes and gravy, and nobody got in a fight. And nobody fell and cut themselves on a glass or screamed at me or locked themselves in the bathroom. And I didn’t know that people like that really existed. I mean, logically I knew they had to. But I’d only ever seen them on TV.”

  “You feel like they saved you.”

  She nodded. “They did. I mean, that’s the thing. Because what would’ve become of me?”

  “I wish I would’ve known you then,” he said.

  “Yeah. Well. You would have been too old for me then,” she said.

  And then she felt immediately silly, because he wasn’t offering her anything but friendship. And she hadn’t really meant it the way that it had come out. It was just...

  “You know what I mean. Because sixteen-year-old girl, twenty-six-year-old man, that doesn’t really work. But this works.”

  “Right,” he said.

  But he was appraising her a little bit too closely. She scampered back to flip the patties, and then just went ahead and hugged the stove top so that she could keep her distance between herself and him. And the crackle of heat in her stomach.

  Because she wasn’t in a relationship. Not anymore. And that... That felt just a little bit too revolutionary in the moment.

  But Laz was still her friend, and he was her only lifeline. She’d gone from having Dylan’s family to having Laz, and she needed to be careful.

  “You wanted to know,” he said. “Why I didn’t ask you to not marry Dylan.”

  “Oh,” she said, feeling jarred by the subject change. “Yes.”

  “Well, it took me a little bit to realize the answer,” he said.

  “Let me guess, it’s not because you thought we made such a great couple?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s because it would have been selfish.”

  “What?” Her heart slammed into her chest.

  “I thought that it would have been selfish of me to ask you to not marry him. Because I’m not disinterested, Jordan. No matter how much I might want to be. And then I went over there and I saw that flowered suitcase that you had...”

  “His mother got that for me for Christmas.”

  “You said that you were afraid that if you weren’t with him you might become like your family. I get that, but you spent the past... It’s been a hell of a long time in a family that never even really knew you. I knew you didn’t pick that suitcase. I knew it. And you know, I didn’t see any point in saying anything, all things considered. I didn’t see the point in disrupting anything further than it already has been, but you wanted to know. And it’s not because I didn’t care. And it’s not because I’m afraid to say the honest thing. But I was afraid of leading you somewhere that I wanted you to go. But that was when I at least thought... I thought they knew you. At least. But they never did, did they?”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “I want you,” he said. “That simple. I have. Since the first time I met you.”

  She could not believe that those words had just come out of his mouth. With the hamburger on a plate in front of him. Not that the hamburger was incredibly relevant to the situation, it just kind of added to the absurdity of it. They’d been friends for years. And he never said anything. He never even indicated...

  And all those feelings that she had the first moment she met him came flooding back.

  But she... She suddenly felt so small and unworthy. She had never given a lot of thought to how she looked. Because she had a boyfriend for half of her life. She had never wanted to attract another man. She had always been so grateful for Dylan. She did what she could with what she had, but that was basically it. Laz was beautiful. There was no doubt about that. No argument to be made. Classically masculine and handsome in a way that took her breath away. But even in that moment when she’d first seen him she hadn’t given any thought to whether or not she could attract him, because why would she?

  He had experience. Lots of different women, that much she knew. They didn’t talk about it, but it was implied in a lot of different conversations. She had Dylan. That was it. And an increasingly dull sex life that had waned entirely in the face of her increasingly bad insomnia.

  And he hadn’t been too upset about it. And she hadn’t really known what to make of that. The fact that he had let her reduce their sex life to zero had begun to bother her. And it had turned into a sort of game where she tried to see if anything else would happen.

  If she waited him out, if he would finally get fed up with it.

  It had actually made her start to question her desirability. Something that she really hadn’t thought much about before.

  But now she wondered. If she could actually be enough for a man like Laz. A man who had felt like fate from the moment she had first seen him. An impulse that she had denied because...

  Well, she was used to denying her impulses. Used to questioning her instincts.

  Because hadn’t she been told—by everything her parents had done, by everything they’d said—that she could not trust anything that she was inclined toward? Yes. She had been told that. And so when she had walked into the bar and seen Laz, known that he was the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes on, felt like she was peering into a future that she wanted more than anything... She had questioned it. Absolutely and completely.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have. Maybe that was the lesson. Above all else, maybe the lesson here was that she wasn’t always wrong. And there was a concern, of course, that if she closed the distance between them, their friendship might be ruined. But that moment when she had first laid eyes on him existed in a place inside of her that couldn’t be denied. It didn’t question anything. Because it knew exactly what it wanted. And had from the first moment she had ever seen him.

  He had been there for her... He had been there for her. And so many ways over all that time. And she knew that closing the space between them could never break what they were.

  She had built her foundation with Dylan on need. Not physical need, but an emotional need that had been very deep and very real. But her relationship with Laz wasn’t built on that. She had met him, and she had wanted
to know him. She had found him easy to talk to. And she found him beautiful.

  It was such a different thing. Such a different thing to want without feeling a sharp, fearful side to it. Without being worried that she might lose everything if she couldn’t give him what he wanted.

  “You really want me?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice rough. “But he’s always been there. He’s always been in the picture, and...”

  “You should have told me to get rid of him.”

  You didn’t tell me not to marry Dylan.

  Her earlier words echoed between them.

  “I wanted what was best for you. Whether you believe that or not. I did. And if it wasn’t... This, then...”

  “Why?”

  “You know how it is for me. I don’t share. My life is mine. In... Look, I give to people all day every day. It’s part of my job. And when I come home, I do what I want. I don’t rely on anybody, I don’t ask for anything... And that’s the way I like it. Somebody in my position can’t ask someone else to give up the future, to give up a marriage for...”

  “For what?”

  “There’s not a name for it, is there?”

  “Friends with benefits?”

  The words made her stomach feel hollow. Because they couldn’t just be that.

  “Yeah. Friends with benefits.”

  “You know, you actually could have asked me to do that,” she said, her throat getting tight. “The first time I saw you... I felt like my world turned over on its head. But I was a coward, and I couldn’t understand what my life might look like if I stepped off the path that I’d carved out for myself. And more than that, I was afraid of it. So I... I ignored it. I ignored that I felt that way. I ignored that I wanted something else. But I knew that something changed. Forever when I first met you. And it did. Because you gave me the confidence to do what I did the other day. You gave me the confidence to walk away from Dylan, not because I could have you instead, but because... I have our friendship. And you made me feel something about myself that he didn’t. You made me trust myself in a way that I never did before. But it’s taken me all this time to realize...that I could remove those supports and I would still stand.” She cleared her throat. This next bit felt important. “I’ve only been with one person.”