“Look, Maggie, I didn’t mean for you to see that. I don’t want you to think I need to be taken care of because of what happened once.”
With how unresponsive he was last night, I doubted that it was the first time he’d had a panic attack. Pain struck my chest at the idea of him suffering in silence. “We both need to take care of each other. We can’t just stand around pretending everything is fine when it’s not.”
“It’s worked this far.” He shrugged. “I’ll be here to take care of you, Mags, but what happened last night is never happening again.”
He grimaced, and I turned my cheek away, trying to look at anything but his sad eyes. “That’s not fair. You don’t get to be the one picking up the pieces every issue leaves while I’m here questioning whether or not you’re okay.”
“It doesn’t matter what I am.” A sliver of fear hid behind his words. It was the first time I’d heard him say something without the certainty he always carried himself with. He inhaled a breath and tilted his head back. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to this. I’ve never taken care of anyone this way, and I don’t need anyone asking if I’m okay.”
“Then why don’t you let me help you?” I asked genuinely.
“Because I don’t need it. I don’t want you to build up this heroic version of me in your head just for me to let you down. I won’t impress you, trust me.”
I looked at him just long enough to know that he was serious.
He just told me that, no doubt, he was going to fuck this up. I couldn’t stand there and listen to Jack lie through his teeth about how he couldn’t be a good man to me when he had been nothing but that for the past week. But could I change his mind?If he didn’t let me in, I couldn’t help him. Couldn’t convince him that he was agoodfucking man.
My gaze dropped his, and I slipped between him and the refrigerator, heading for the back door.
“Maggie.” A firm voice made me pause before turning the door knob. I wouldn’t dare turn back to face him. Maybe he would change his mind. Maybe he would ask me to come back and talk it out.
But instead, he said, “Mike wants us at his place for dinner at seven.”
The hope in my chest crumbled. If we could talk everything out, be open about what we were feeling, it could work. We could share our concerns, our struggles, our questions.
But Jack wasn’t up to it. He was shutting me out like we weren’t about to become a family for the rest of our lives.
And with that, I slammed the door.
Chapter thirteen
Jack
“Brandy, cut it out!” I jerked on my horse’s lead rope for the fourth time in a minute. My horses might have been content eating and sleeping in a new place, but behaving on their set was a different story. It was only about a ten-minute walk from my new barn to the exercise track where the horses were worked, and the five trotting beasts below me were eager to get home to their dinner—even more so than the first fivesome I took before them. I was already in a bad mood from my encounter with Maggie, and the horses misbehaving made me all the more pissed off. Giving Barcado—the horse I currently rode—another kick to the sides, I huffed in anticipation of getting home.
Not that anything good was waiting for me there. I fucked up with Maggie today. I knew I did. But she saw something she never should have witnessed last night. Something I knew was going to keep her worrying about me. I didn’t need it. I was a man who could take care of himself, not a pitied case of anxiety. She was taking on enough as it was, I wasn’t about to add on to the load she was carrying on her back—and in her body. Thepoor girl had gone through hell, and she was cracking as much as I was from the pressure that had barely even begun. There was no way I could finish that conversation in the kitchen, but I needed to make it up to her somehow.
I grunted as I dismounted Barcado and led the horses into the barn, carefully distributing each into their newly-labeled stalls.
Huh.Those weren’t there when I left with my set.
The stalls were prepped for dinner too—hay in the corner, grain in the buckets, and waters full. Maggie must have done the night feeding while I was gone, a clever way of avoiding me in the barn since she wouldn’t find privacy there any other time. Running a hand through my hair and checking to make sure everything was perfect, guilt and frustration punched me in the gut.
You pissed her off and she still did all of this for you.
I tried to excuse it by telling myself it was her job, but I knew that wasn’t why.
The horses happily munched on their hay as I mentally berated myself for being such an asshole to my new wife and baby mama. They looked so fucking happy. I needed to take a hint from those guys.
After turning out the horses and finishing the stalls, I flipped the lights and took in the view around me. Wyoming was breathtaking. The lush pastures were thick with grass. The sky was bigger than anywhere else I’d seen. The air was lighter and cooler than it was in Pennsylvania. This place was my fresh start. My rebrand. Except this new version of myself carried the same baggage. The same heavy, inconvenient shit I had dealt with all my life.
I needed to grab a shower before we went to dinner with Michael Luna, my new sponsor. A hint of nervousness poked at me as I made my way up to the house. This would be Maggie’sand my first night pretending to be married, and I felt about as prepared as a green horse on the open field.
I took a detour to the front door instead of the back to retrieve a package that was supposed to arrive today. A sigh of relief came over me when I saw the small, brown box sitting proudly on the faded welcome mat.
Thank God for Amazon Prime.
Our two wedding bands, the tickets to our brand new lives, sat inside this box. Now, all we had to do was prove that our marriage was real.
