His words hit a little too close to home and she hated that he’d pegged her so easily. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
He tipped his head to the side and strode closer to her, leaving a few inches between them, but she knew it was his own self-control that kept him there and not in her face. God, she wanted to throw herself into his arms and kiss the hell out of him. There was no one quite like this man, she realized. But she also knew she wasn’t thinking clearly. Her emotions were out of control, roiling through her like a tornado, and while she was sorely tempted to give in to them, she didn’t want to destroy herself and Brian in the process.
“It is my business, Piper. I wanted everything with you and you are too stuck in the past to see it.”
“I’m not. We just aren’t as compatible as you want us to be,” she said to reinforce her point.
“Fine. Fuck it. I’m leaving,” he snapped, brushing past her and stalking to the door, but when he got there, he stopped.
He was leaving.
That was when it hit her—she loved him. She felt it all the way to her bones. It hurt so much to watch him turning his back on her and walking out. But that was okay. It was better this way.
But it didn’t feel better. It felt so bittersweet.
“You know what I think?” he demanded, turning to face her.
She really didn’t want to know. Because she was teetering on the edge, on the verge of losing it completely. So, out of sheer desperation, she gathered all the steely emotional armor she’d built over the years around her.
“Please enlighten me,” she said, trying not to wrap her arms around herself again.
“You can’t let yourself love any man. I don’t know if it’s a control thing or what, but I’m beginning to realize why you are still all alone.”
“You don’t know jack shit,” she said, losing her temper. “I’m not alone. I have my family and my art.”
“Your family is a mess. I’d think you’d want one of your own.”
“Don’t you dare say anything about my family when your uncle is the cause of what has made my sister ignore the business for so long. I won’t take the risk of losing myself in a man. That’s when mistakes happen, big mistakes. And I can’t have a family of my own. I’m barren. See yourself out,” she said, brushing past him and heading up the stairs to her room.
She hated that he’d driven her to lose her temper, but it was better for him to hear it all so he’d realize there was no hope of reconciliation for them.
He wanted to go after her but when a woman walked away in the home where she was staying, he knew better than to follow. He glanced to the end of the hallway, saw Ava standing there. She didn’t say a word, but he felt her censure.
“She doesn’t know me at all if she thinks that I give a damn about her reproductive abilities,” he said, then he turned and walked out of the house, getting into his car and driving faster than the speed limit down the road toward the front of the gated community.
He slammed on the brakes when he noticed people walking on the sidewalk with fishing poles. Damn. She was making him stupid and reckless.
Hell, she hadn’t made him anything. Love had. In his mind, the rant he wanted to have at her ran on an endless loop. When had he said that he wanted only biological children? When had he said that he wanted her to choose him over her family?
What kind of man did she think he was? Had she even tried to get to know him? He knew the answer had to be no. If she had, she wouldn’t have made such blind and wrong assumptions about him and what was important to him.
He pushed those thoughts aside and drove to the house he kept in Royal. His uncle had been texting him to get together since it was close to Thanksgiving, but given that Brian had been dating Piper, he had thought it best to stay away.
But now...hell, did it really matter if he had dinner with Uncle Keith? It didn’t matter that the Wingates all suspected Keith of somehow being responsible for their trouble. They had no proof, and as he’d just witnessed in Piper’s irrational diatribe against him, they weren’t above jumping to completely false conclusions.
In no mood to go home and be alone, he stopped at the Texas Cattleman’s Club. He knew he needed to get drunk. But getting sloshed alone was never a good idea. If he did, he’d probably give in to the temptation to drive back over to Ava’s rented house, lie to the guard again and stand outside in the yard doing something asinine like yelling her name or playing the song that had been playing the first time he held her in his arms.
He wasn’t going to let that happen.
He had pride.
Sober, at least, he had pride. The drunk version of him had always leaned more into his emotions than his rational side. And he knew better than to go back to Piper. She had made herself clear twice now. How many times did he need to hear a woman tell him she didn’t want him before it sank in?
He saw some friends who were about his age that he’d known while growing up and joined them. They were drinking whiskey and talking about the Cowboys, and it was just what Brian thought he needed until he remembered that Piper had agreed to come with him to Thanksgiving at his folks’ house and then the Dallas Cowboys game.
“Dude, you okay?”
“Yeah, why?” Brian asked.
“You’re staring at that whiskey like you are planning to throw it against the wall,” Leon said.
“Just had a bad breakup,” Brian admitted.
“Well, hell, boy, why didn’t you say? We should have ordered tequila,” Leon said.
“No one wants to admit he got kicked to the curb by a woman,” Brian grumbled, downing his whiskey in one long swallow and signaling the waiter for another one. “And tequila on a weeknight is never a good idea.”
“I know that. But my old lady is in College Station with her sorority sisters and I’ve got nothing to go home to,” Leon said.
“Me either. That’s what I’ve been trying to fix. How’d you and Viv get together?” Brian asked. “I always thought I had some kind of game, but recently it seems as if I have nothing.”
Leon played with the whiskey glass, rolling it between his palms before taking a sip. “We got together after graduation. I came back to take over the ranch and she took one look at me in the diner one day and said, ‘You want to ask me out.’”
Brian laughed. That sounded like Vivian. She’d always been ballsy and unafraid to go after what she wanted. “And you were smart enough to do it.”
“Damn straight. A woman like Viv doesn’t come along twice in a lifetime,” Leon said. “Tell me about your gal. I’m guessing you want her back?”