Maisey Yates - Untamed Cowboy

“Hell, no,” Dallas said, taking another bite of doughnut. “I mean, I drink. Not all the time. But I have. I’ve had some weed. But I’m not messing with meth and shit. I get why it’s tempting. Because it makes you forget. But then you forget everything. Including where the hell you left your kid. I just don’t want that. I don’t want to forget who I am. I mean, who I am isn’t anything all that impressive. And it’s not like I have much of anything. But I’m not going to be a meth zombie.”

Bennett swallowed hard. “She wasn’t always like that.”

“Yeah. She wasn’t like that until me, I guess.”

“I don’t know,” Bennett said. “I figured that I screwed up her life.”

“Yeah, she thought you did too. I mean, you definitely got your share of the blame. But I was part of it. When she would get mad and scream and stuff, she blamed both of us.”

“I’m sorry,” Bennett said. “I’m sorry she treated you like that. And I have to believe that in the beginning that isn’t what she wanted. For some reason, she didn’t want to be here with me. Probably because I wanted to marry her. And if she really did hate it here, if she really did want to get out, she probably figured she was going to have to do it without me. She probably thought that her only hope of escaping this life, and being a rancher’s wife, or at least having to share custody with me, was to leave without telling me. Making me think that she lost the baby. I have to believe that she did it for what she thought was a better life. It’s just that she probably got into the other things that come with finding freedom. And she was too young to have that kind of responsibility.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Dallas shifted in his seat, looking a little uncomfortable. “Either way, I’ve seen too much of it to want it,” Dallas said. “There’s not much mystery in drug use. She would have given it to me if I wanted it. I didn’t want to let her poison me. Didn’t want to let her make me as bad she was.”

Those words burned. They hurt, all the way down. The stuff that kid had been through wasn’t fair. It was all new to Bennett, and he was having trouble processing it. But it was Dallas’s life. And he spoke about it in a matter-of-fact way. Way too matter-of-fact for someone his age. The effects of meth shouldn’t be something a fifteen-year-old was so familiar with.

“I’m glad I don’t have to worry about you and drugs anyway,” Bennett said, his voice sounding like gravel.

“Would you really worry?”

The question was presented as something of a challenge.

“Yes,” Bennett said. “I’m not taking responsibility for you because I don’t care. I do care. If I didn’t, why the hell would it matter to me where you were?”

“I can’t answer that question. I don’t know what it’s like to have a parent care what I do.”

“You will,” Bennett said, the words a promise that came from deep inside of him. He wouldn’t be perfect. He was going to make so many mistakes he felt stupid in advance. But he could be there. “You will.”

* * *

WHEN BENNETT SHOWED up with Dallas in tow, the kid went straight into the break room and shut the door.

“Thank you,” Bennett said.

Kaylee cast a worried look at Bennett. “Does he have a phone or anything?”

“Yes,” Bennett said.

At least he’d have something to stay entertained on.

“I don’t know what to do with a teenager all day.”

She sounded petulant, but it was true. She had agreed to let him hang out, but now that he was here she felt a sense of responsibility she wasn’t sure she could live up to. And if she did something stupid with Bennett’s son and he...ran off or something she’d never forgive herself.

Bennett shrugged. “Put him to work. Give him cages to clean out or something.”

“I only have two animals in kennels right now.”

“Maybe Beatrix will bring you a box of orphaned weasels.”

Kaylee snorted. “There are no weasels around here.”

“I feel like that wouldn’t stop Beatrix from finding some.”

“He’s going to be bored,” Kaylee said, ignoring the weasel absurdity.

Bennett shrugged. “He might be. But he’s the one who said he wanted to hang out here. You don’t have to do anything with him. I’m going to come by lunchtime with something for him to eat. Don’t worry about that. I’ll check in.”

He looked stressed, and she wanted to reach up and smooth the lines by his eyes. Wanted to do something to erase the concern on his handsome face. It made her palms feel sweaty. Made her stomach feel like it was tied up in knots.

Her date could not come soon enough.

She was at that critical point in her Bennett cycle. And yes, sadly, she had a very definitive cycle.

Things would begin to build up. Her attraction would begin to become unmanageable. Her feelings so sharp and intense she couldn’t handle them. And she already knew why she couldn’t act on those feelings. She’d made her decisions. So when she reached that point, she knew it was time to find a guy to date. And so she would.

Depending on how long they dated, it could lead to a real relationship. Which meant that there was someone else to focus some of those feelings on. A man that she could go to bed with at night and be physically close to.

But as she had made the silly mistake of admitting to Bennett last night, they were not men who necessarily lit her body on fire. Still, putting effort into a physical relationship with another man did something to help take the edge off the Bennett situation. It gave her a relief from that hyperfocus she began to feel. From that intense edginess she experienced whenever he was around.

But then, invariably, the newness of the relationship would begin to wear off. The general disappointment of the sex would begin to overshadow the fact that there was sex at all, and the buildup to her Bennett feelings would start again.

Then something would happen. Bennett would brush his fingers against hers, lean in especially close to brush a piece of dirt from her cheek, and her body would nearly combust.

That’s when it would all tumble down on her. That feeling of how pointless and ridiculous it was to sleep with a man who made her feel less with his entire body than Bennett Dodge made her feel with the smallest brush of a fingertip against her face.

She’d have to end the relationship at that point. And the cycle would begin anew.

She had been...somewhat frozen in the terrible part of the cycle for the last year and a half. Because there hadn’t been anyone the whole time that Bennett was with Olivia. And at the same time work at the clinic had gotten more intense, which meant they were together more, and her social life—never all that booming outside the Dodge family—had shrunk down.

Rather than going out on fifty-mile endurance rides with Jamie like she often enjoyed doing on weekends, she’d been melting into her couch, keeping her rides on Flicka short and in general reducing her activities to work and an occasional night out drinking with Bennett and his family or Bennett by himself.

And all during that time she had done nothing but fixate. Nothing but marinate. Trying to force herself to accept that he was going to marry this other woman. Trying to figure out how her life would reshape when that happened.

And then the breakup happened, and it had hit her that she needed to do something to get herself out of the loop.

So here she was, trying to deal. Trying to get that separation that she so desperately needed. To get another man in her life so she could focus on him.

She really needed it to work. She needed Michael to be more than a nice guy. Maybe he would finally be a guy who managed to give her an actual orgasm during sex.