I sighed and threw myself onto my back, blinking up at the sky through my sunglasses. “Hasn’t been much to laugh about lately, Goldilocks. Your Uncle Lane wants something he can’t have, and that’s no fun.”
The little girl crawled on top of me dragging sand and sea with her. She ended up sitting in the center of my chest, her hands clasping my cheeks as she stared intently down at me. “Did you ask for it again?” I tried not to wince as her knees dug into the still healing bullet wound on my side. It hurt almost as much as my broken heart.
I pushed my sunglasses up to the top of my head and tickled her sides making her squeal and roll off of me. “What are you talking about, little bit?”
She held her sides as she laughed and shook her mop of crazy hair out. “When Daddy tells me I can’t have something, I hate it. Especially if it’s something I really, really want.” She lifted her tiny blonde eyebrows up and batted her long, golden lashes at me with exaggerated sweetness. “But sometimes if I wait long enough and plan for just the right time, if I ask him again he says yes, and I get it anyway. And sometimes if I ask Em instead of Daddy, she says yes even though he already said no. So, if you really, really want something you shouldn’t stop asking for it.”
I sighed and climbed to my feet so we could start to shake the sand off everything and get cleaned up. It would have been smart to bring a pair of trunks to change into, but the only shoes I had were my boots, and that wasn’t a look I was brave enough to sport, even a million miles away from home. I was going to take Daye out to dinner and then for ice cream to ensure we didn’t interrupt whatever Sutton and Em were up to in that big empty house. “I don’t think that works when what you want belongs to someone else. I think you just have to let them have it and realize it was never meant to be yours. We can’t always get what we want, little bit, even when you flash those big puppy dog eyes and flutter your pretty lashes.”
She huffed a little sound of aggravation and let me rub her down and put her dry shoes back on. She held my hand tightly in hers as we made our way back to the truck. She chattered on about a girl in her class who wanted a new horse and how she had gotten Sutton to offer to teach her new friend how to ride in case her dream came true. She told me that I was the best and that I should always get whatever it was that I wanted because she loved me and wanted me to be happy. It was so sweet and innocent, the way she loved. It made my chest tighten. I refused to tell her that when your happiness was irrevocably tied to another person, you weren’t always in the driver’s seat on the road to your happy ever after. She had a lifetime to learn about all the ways love could hurt, and many years before she had to find that out the hard way.
I was invested in her bubbly chatter, so relieved that everything that had happened back at the ranch wasn’t playing over and over like a horror movie I couldn’t turn off, that I didn’t notice the woman leaning against the front of my truck watching us. I didn’t see the way her dark eyes tracked us or the single tear that slid down her cheek.
Daye had no such problem recognizing we were being watched and were under intense scrutiny. She halted mid-sentence, pulled to a stop, and then let out a scream of delight so loud it sent a flock of gulls angrily into flight. She tugged at the hand I was holding too tightly, keeping her from pulling free and running.
“Daye, what in the heck? What are you doing?” My brother would skin me alive if I let her loose. She’d been through enough; there was no way she was getting hurt or worse on my watch. It burned deep in my chest, the ache where the bullet had shattered my ribs. My ribs throbbed as memories of what happened to her the last time I took care of her darkened our peaceful afternoon. I wouldn’t let my mind wander back there and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let her get hurt as she tried to bolt from my grip.
She pulled frantically on my hand, her pink, glittery canvas shoes digging into the sand deep enough to gouge out holes. “It’s Brynn! Let go! I want to say hi and hug her. Brynn! Did you bring me a present? I missed you!” Every single word was shouted across the sand louder than the one that came before it.
I let her little hand drop from mine only because my body went numb. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, so I pressed my fingers to my eyes and blinked rapidly against the sting.
Sure enough, there was a familiar figure bending down to meet Daye’s unchecked and enthusiastic greeting. I knew that hair colored with fire and flames anywhere. I dreamed about those midnight eyes and jerked off to the thought of those endless legs wrapped around me when I was alone in the dark. I would know her anywhere, even here, where she shouldn’t be.
Her long hair was caught up in a messy bun on the top of her head, but the light breeze was doing a good job picking it apart. Her hair looked like a halo of fire flickering around her head, and she had a determined slant to her lush mouth as I approached much slower than Daye had.
I shoved my hands into the pockets of the wet and sandy jeans I was wearing, wishing I had my Stetson on so I could hide under the brim. It had been weeks since I last saw her and somehow, she looked completely different. One thing hadn’t changed though; her all-important ring finger was still naked and unadorned. I couldn’t stop my heart from jumping in excitement at the sight, relief and something so much bigger than that filled my throat and made breathing difficult.
“Brynn. What are you doing here?” The question came out sounding far harsher than I had meant. I wanted to ask her about the proposal, about Jack, but I didn’t think I could stand to hear her answers. I was regretting not letting Emrys break the news to me when she’d tried. I had nowhere left to run.
The stunning woman squeezed the little girl who was trapped in her arms and looked at me unwaveringly over the top of her head. The corner of her mouth kicked up into a familiar grin, but I could see the way her fingers shook, and how her lower lip trembled as she answered, “I came to bring you home, Lane. The ranch needs you. Your brother needs you. Webb needs someone to keep him in line and show him what he needs to know. Leo misses you. Things aren’t the same with you gone. Nothing has felt right since the moment you left.”
That was all nice to hear. It assuaged some of the fears I’d had when there had been nothing but endless road and doubt while I was driving, but none of it was enough to have me packing a bag and hightailing back to Wyoming.
“What about you, Brynn? Why are you the one who came to get me? Why not Cy if he needs me so badly?” I was a dick, pushing for something when I didn’t even know if she still belonged to someone else. I was putting my return entirely on her slender shoulders when I was intimately acquainted with the heavy load that slim frame already carried. Getting me home was the rock, and I was the hard place, so fucking hard, and she was stuck directly between the two of us.
“Oh, Lane,” her voiced dipped, and I heard her suck in a shaky breath. “I don’t need you to come home.”
I fell back a step like her words were a bullet that pierced through all my toughest armor. I was getting ready to grab my niece and toss her in the truck so I could get as far away from this woman as I could, when one of her hands reached out and touched the side of my face. I felt the tremor in her fingers and the truth in her pulse as it raced in the wrist lying against my jaw.
“But I want you to come back with me more than I’ve ever wanted anything ever. I want to see you at the breakfast table and hear your stories about the tourists that can’t ride. I want to pass you in the hall and share that same smile we’ve shared since we were kids. I want to bitch at you to separate your damn laundry, so I don’t have to, and I want to yell at you to put the toilet seat down. I want to patch you up when you get thrown from a horse and agree with you that Cy is an overbearing ass most of the time. I want you in my life, Lane. I don’t know how to live without you there.” She looked down at the tips of her boots which were as worn as the ones I had dangling loosely in my hand, and just as out of place on this beach. “I feel like I’m missing half of myself when you aren’t around. It hurts.”
I pulled my eyes away from the hope in hers and looked to where Daye was examining the shells she’d collected on the beach earlier. She seemed oblivious to the heaviness of the conversation going on around her, but I knew better. The little sprite was sharp as a tack. If I didn’t answer the right way she was going to have something to say about it and no doubt she would give Em and her father an earful when we got back to their house.
I let Brynn’s words sink in.
We’d always been friends until I couldn’t handle it because I was so confused about the way she made me feel and terrified if I admitted to wanting more, then everything would fall apart. Maybe she was right and having part of her was better than having nothing. I’d cut her out of my day to day to save myself the heartache of seeing her knowing I couldn’t ever let myself have her, but I missed the little stuff she was talking about. The familiar camaraderie that I’d shut down because it made sharing the same life but moving in opposite directions so hard.
I tunneled my fingers through my damp, dark hair and looked down at my feet. They looked naked without my cowboy, and I suddenly realized everything about me was exposed and vulnerable out here in the world so far away from the one that was meant for me. A sigh so heavy, so thick, that the waves wouldn’t be able to carry it out to sea, escaped. I had no idea what the right thing to do was anymore, but constantly running away from her hadn’t gotten me anywhere. I couldn’t deny that her finally chasing after me was doing something to my insides. I was so confused, but one thing was clear. If she cared enough to come after me, I could show her that I cared just as much by going back with her.
“I want you in my life too, Brynn. Even if that means that you come with someone else. I’ve been stubborn and selfish. I’ve been acting like my mother, wanting things to be different than they are but not doing anything to make the situation better. When things got hard she left, I did the same damn thing—not once, but twice.” And wasn’t that enough to make me feel lower than low? The one person I never wanted anyone to compare me to was the woman who ruined what love meant for all the Warners. I wanted to be the man my father raised me to be, but I’d been acting like the son my mother left behind instead. It was shameful, and for a second I wallowed in that until I remembered the woman in front of me saw someone worth fighting for.
A heartbreaking smile split her beautiful face and her entire body sagged with relief. “Does that mean you’ll come home with me?”
I hesitated because I still wasn’t sure it was the right call. After a few moments, I nodded and moved forward to wrap both Brynn and my niece up in a rib-crushing hug which made them both squeal. That embrace felt so much like home it made my knees weak.
There was no escaping the way Brynn made me feel. Those feelings didn’t stay in Wyoming, they followed me to California. There was no screwing it out of my system or shoving it down into the pit of my soul. All I could do was face those emotions head on and hope I didn’t get crushed under the enormity of how vast and heavy they were.
Chapter 2
In or Out
Brynn
For the first time in days, it felt like my world was set back to rights.
Everything was crooked and off center the minute Lane walked out of the house in Wyoming and disappeared. I couldn’t think straight. Every step I took was wobbly and unsteady. From the moment I opened my eyes, to the second I fell into a fitful sleep at night, it was like I saw things through a grainy black and white filter. There was no color in any of my days when Lane was gone. There was no joy or light. There was only a massive void where I knew I should be able to feel my heart hurting and my soul suffering, the way they always did when it came to the youngest Warner, but when he left there was nothing.
I thought I knew what it felt like to have everything inside of me freeze and shatter. When word came that Lane had been shot while trying to protect his niece from a madman hell-bent on destroying everything that was important to Sutton, I was sure I would never be able to breathe or feel again. That icy pain, that frigid fear had nothing on the numbness that followed when Lane walked out the door seconds after Jack dropped to his knee. At that moment, I knew I was supposed to focus on the man asking me to share his life with him, the one who wanted me for me, and not because he was driven by some chivalrous need to save me from my messed up family and tumultuous home life.
But I hadn’t been focused on Jack. All I could see was the resignation and regret flashing through Lane’s pale blue eyes. We were both reliving the moment another man had asked me to marry him. Only that time, Lane hadn’t been able to escape the outcome. He’d been reminded of it for years, every waking moment when I’d technically held the title of his stepmom. I was something neither one of us could get away from no matter how hard we tried. It was amazing how much one little yes could change everything.
Now that he was standing in front of me, looking much thinner and more haggard than he had even when he came home from the hospital, I finally felt like I could inhale again. Everything that was fuzzy and blurred around the edges pulled back into sharp focus. I could look at the sky behind his tousled head and see that it was the same stormy blue as his eyes. I could also focus on the lines of tension and stress radiating out of the corners of those eyes and the bruised, dark hollows underneath them. Without him, nothing felt like it mattered. There was no home. There was no peace of mind. There was no safety and security.
When he was close, the littlest things felt hugely important and essential. The twitch of his lips into a wry grin spread warmth that chased away the emptiness for the first time in what felt like forever. The heat radiating off of his long, lean body made my heart kick back to life. When his arms wrapped around me for a seriously overdue hug, I finally felt alive. Finally felt something other than the echoing loneliness and hollowness that consumed me the minute he turned his back on me. Even with Daye trapped between us, I still felt a tingle at every single spot where his body touched mine.
“It’s so good to see you.” I meant it with every fiber of my being. Looking at him, even as worn and as drawn as he appeared, settled something deep inside of me.
Lane gave me another hard squeeze that made Daye squeal from where she was caught between us. She wrapped her thin arms tightly around my waist. The little girl looked like she had grown a couple of inches in the months that had passed since I last laid eyes on her, but I was happy to see that her green eyes were clear and bright. Missing was the cloudy fear and anxiety that had engulfed her after the ordeal with her father’s tormentor and the death of her mother.
“It’s good to see you too, Brynn.” He stepped back, and I could feel the reluctance in his touch when he dropped his arms. He put a hand on Daye’s head and gave her curls a little pat. “Why don’t you let Brynn go, and we’ll find something to eat. I’m sure your dad and Emrys have worked up an appetite while we were gone.” Lane gave me a conspiratorial wink and smiled at me. “Did they tell you where to find us?”
I took a step back so I could lean against my rental car and pushed my hands through my hair. It was a tangled mess from the flight and endless tossing and turning as I tried to sleep the night before. I’d never been more than a few hundred miles outside of the Wyoming border. I didn’t hesitate one second when I made the decision to jump on a plane to chase down Lane and bring him home, just like he never hesitated to stand between me and whoever was trying to hurt me.
His protectiveness may have started when he pushed Danny Turner down for pulling on my pigtails, but it never seemed to end after that. If anyone dared to tease me about my torn, ugly hand-me-downs, Lane was there to set them straight. He was quick with his fists and faster with his sharp tongue. No one wanted to be on the other side of his wrath. If anyone dared to touch me, they ended up with matching bruises. When the girls picked on me for not being pretty enough, popular enough, nice enough to fit in with them, Lane was the one who made them regret it. He was all the things I wasn’t so when he decided that someone hadn’t treat
ed me right he wasted no time using his good looks and legion of admirers to show them what being on the outside looking in really felt like. I existed in a protected bubble at school because he couldn’t protect me at home. He was the cushion between me and the harsh reality of most teenage experiences, at least he was until that bubble popped.
Going after Lane meant my first time flying, my first time seeing the ocean. It was also the first time I’d seen Sutton and Emrys since they announced they were expecting a baby. When Em answered the door to their cute little house on the coast, her rumpled appearance, inside out shirt, and bright red flush didn’t register because I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the softly rounded curve of her belly. Honestly, I was a tad bit jealous of that baby bump. She was beautiful, and the way she had healed Sutton and pulled him back into the fold of his family was nothing short of a miracle. All I wanted was to do the same thing for the youngest Warner brother. I wanted to bring him home and make him see that no matter what happened between us or to us, we would always be family. He would always be the most important person in my world. He was the person at the center of it, even when I didn’t want him to be.
“Em told me where you were. I didn’t get a chance to see Sutton. I…uh…think I interrupted them. I was anxious to see you, so I didn’t hang around for too long.” It was easy to feel the sexual tension and heat circling Emrys as she hastily gave me directions to the beach. I smiled down at Daye who was still watching me with wide, expectant eyes. “I did have time to grab you something at the airport before I flew out. I would never forget about my girl.” I dropped into a crouch and took the little girl into my arms. It felt so good to hold her close while knowing she was happy and healthy. She was practically vibrating with energy and excitement, so much like the Daye that existed before the events in her parents’ lives had twisted her day to day into tight, painful knots. This little girl found her safe place and settled into her new home. It hurt that it was so very far away from where those places were from me, but anything that made her look young and innocent again was a good thing.