“You don’t want to cuddle?”
Cuddle? The word totally threw her off balance. Sawyer was a cuddler? No matter how much she might regret it later, she couldn’t pass up an offer like that.
She toed off her boots. “Actually, I love to cuddle.”
Once they were back in bed, he pulled her close and covered them with the comforter. He released his breath in a long satisfied sigh, and Maisy listened as his heart slowed to a soft, steady thump beneath her ear. She thought he’d fallen asleep, but then he spoke.
“You’re a hit with my family. My brother loves you. My parents want you to come for Thanksgiving. And Uncle David spent a good fifteen minutes telling me what a wonderful girl you are and how I should hang on to you.”
She smiled. “I like your family too.” She hesitated. “They all seem to be worried about your bronc riding. They seem to think that you’re not meeting your potential.”
“What can I say?” His fingers caressed her arm. “I’m an underachiever.”
“Your uncle doesn’t think it’s underachieving. He thinks it has more to do with your brother. He thinks you strive to be the bad boy so Mattie can be the good one.” She realized she had overstepped her bounds when he stopped caressing her arm and tensed.
“Mattie is the good one.”
She lifted her head. “So are you, Sawyer. You can’t fool me anymore. I know you’re a good man. I get why you underachieved when you were younger. It was the only way you could figure out how to balance things for your brother. But I don’t think you have to balance things anymore. Mattie is an adult who has found his own happiness.” She paused. “Is that why you didn’t fight for Lauren? Mattie’s happiness is more important than yours?”
He shrugged. “What good would fighting have done? They love each other.”
“Fighting isn’t just about the winning. It’s about feeling like you have the right to be mad and the right to fight for what you want. But with Mattie, you don’t think you have a right to want anything, do you, Sawyer?”
He looked away, and in the light coming from the bathroom, she could see the tears glistening in his eyes. “I’ve already been given everything. I was born with it, while Mattie was born deaf.” He looked back at her. “He will never hear the beauty of music. Or the sounds of nature. Or his mother’s voice. Or his children’s laughter. How can I possibly take anything else from him?”
Maisy stared at him as the truth dawned. “You didn’t take his hearing, Sawyer. That wasn’t your fault. For whatever reason, God made that choice. Not you. And you need to stop paying for it. You don’t owe anything to Mattie, except your love.”
He closed his eyes and let his head drop back to the pillow. “I know that, but I can’t seem to stop feeling like I do.”
It broke her heart to see Sawyer suffering, but she knew sympathy was the last thing he needed or wanted. She sat up and straddled him. When his eyes opened in surprise, she leaned closer to his face and spoke in a no-nonsense voice.
“Now that’s about enough of your pity party, Sawyer Dawson. You were blessed with good hearing and you need to be thankful for that. And having hearing certainly hasn’t made your life any better than your brother’s. Or his any worse than yours. He’s a successful veterinarian while you’re a poor rodeo bum. He’s happily married while you’re sleeping with every buckle bunny you run into—all because you decided you needed to be the bad boy. Well, the jig is up, Saw. You’re not that bad. So stop letting guilt ruin your life and start enjoying what God gave you. If you don’t, I can’t be your friend anymore. I’m not friends with idiots.”
He stared at her for a long moment. She figured the cuddling was over and he was going to kick her out. But instead, his mouth tipped up into a huge smile.
“You never let me get away with anything, do you? I give you a sob story, and you pretty much tell me to get over myself.” He laughed. “That’s what I love about you, Maisy Sweeney.”
Love? Before she could fully absorb the word he’d chosen, he slid his hands through her hair and drew her down to his waiting lips. Then she forgot about everything as he made her feel like she belonged once again.
The following morning, she woke feeling like she’d been rode hard and put away wet. But her achy muscles didn’t compare to the feeling of contentment she felt waking up in Sawyer Dawson’s bed. She opened her eyes thinking she’d find him lying next to her, but he wasn’t there. She rolled onto her back and found him sitting in a chair by the window. Gone was the fun, teasing cowboy she’d made love with the night before and in his place was a pensive, serious man. He stared out the window as if searching for answers.
She knew what answers he was searching for. How did I end up in bed with Maisy Sweeney? How can I get rid of her without hurting her feelings? She could answer both. He’d ended up in bed with her because he was trying to mend a broken heart. He could get rid of her easily.
She got up and started searching for her clothes.
“You’re leaving?” he asked.
She glanced at him and tried not to notice how sexy he looked sitting there naked with his hair all tousled and his eyes all sex-drugged. “It was real fun, rodeo bum, but the party’s over.”
She put on her underwear and dress and waited for him to say something. Anything. When he didn’t, she had all the answers she needed. As she sat down to tug on her boots, she tried to come up with some sassy remark that would convince him her heart didn’t feel like it was being stomped. But she had nothing. She wished she could walk out the door and never have to see him again, but she couldn’t just leave him in Dallas without a ride back to Simple.
After pulling on her boots, she headed for the door. “Text me when you’re ready to leave.”
“Wait, Maisy,” he finally said. But the words came too late.
She didn’t know how she made it to her room. Her legs were shaking as badly as a newborn foal’s. As she walked, she tried to tell herself she had gotten exactly what she wanted. One night with Sawyer. But with each step she took, she realized that she had never just wanted one night.
She wanted a million nights.
Unfortunately, that fantasy wasn’t ever going to come true.
When she got inside her room, she called the one woman who would completely understand what she had done.
“Oh, Mama,” she said as she let her tears fall. “I didn’t learn a thing from you and Daddy. I fell in love with a cowboy who can never love me back.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I thought I was screwed up before.” Sawyer ran a hand over his face. “But now I’m way past screwed up. My emotions are all over the place. Okay, I take that back. My emotions aren’t all over the place. They’re pretty much in one place. Maisy.” Angel stopped eating his morning oats and looked at Sawyer as if he knew who he was talking about.
“Yeah, the cute little cowgirl who seems to have us both wrapped around her little finger.” Sawyer leaned his head back on the wall of the stall and closed his eyes. “Believe me, I feel the same way whenever I hear her name. And when I see her, my heart does this thing in my chest and I feel like my day has just gotten a whole lot better.” He lifted his head. “That sounds like love, right? But the thing is, I thought I was in love before and it turned out that wasn’t the case. And believe me, I don’t want to make the same mistake again. Yeah, this feels different. It feels way different from how I felt with Lauren. But what if it’s not love? What if all my emotions just have to do with Maisy possibly being pregnant with my baby? The last thing I want to do is hurt Maisy. And Lincoln would pretty much kill me if I did. So that’s why I’ve been keeping my distance from her the last few days. After our night together in Dallas, I needed time to think. But all the thinking has only made me more confused. And what if Maisy isn’t that into me? After our night together, she got up and left as if what had happened wasn’t a big deal. On the ride home, she turned up the radio and sang like she didn’t have a care in the world while I was one huge bundle of confused emotions.”