Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 64880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
“Not fuck someone else!” Pike said, his voice loud enough to draw the attention of the older men at the other end of the bar and earn a glare from Clint.
“Keep your voice down,” she hissed, narrowing her eyes. “I thought it was over, okay? People who are in love don’t run off and ignore the person they say they’re in love with for three weeks. If I hadn’t been able to read your stats from your games, I would have been scared to death that you were dead. I have never felt more alone or miserable than I did those three weeks. Not in my entire life.”
“I needed some time to pull my shit together, for God’s sake,” Pike said, scowling, obviously still unable to see her side of things. “I was twenty-two years old and my father had disowned me right when I was starting my career. It messed me up pretty bad.”
“Yeah, well, I was eighteen and—” Tulsi trapped her bottom lip between her teeth, biting off the end of her sentence before she wrecked everything. “Forget it.” She slid off her chair, grabbed her purse, and made a beeline for the door, ignoring Pike’s call for her to wait.
She couldn’t tell him that she’d been eighteen, pregnant, and terrified. Terrified of raising a baby alone, but even more terrified of her child ending up with a father like hers. A father who cared more about his job than he did his kids, a man who would always be bitter about the things he’d been denied instead of happy with what he had.
“Tulsi, wait!” Pike called again as she started down the saloon’s front steps, but she only sped her pace toward her truck parked outside the drugstore.
Growing up, Tulsi and her sister, Reece, had worshiped their father—a retired pro rodeo rider who broke horses no other man could tame—but their love had never been good enough. Dale Hearst had wanted sons, and daughters could never measure up to the boys he’d been denied—no matter how much Tulsi loved horses or how fearless Reece was in the saddle. Tulsi grew up watching her sister fight to be loved and fail and knew it was only a matter of time before she, too, fell from grace. She would never be perfect enough to make up for not being the boy her father wanted, no matter how hard she tried.
Back when she was eighteen and Pike was suddenly gone, that was all she could think about. She couldn’t stand the thought of living the rest of her life tied to a man who craved his father’s approval so much he would shut her out of his heart while he licked his wounds. The fact that he’d cut her off the same day she’d planned to tell him the birth control pills had failed and that she was pregnant with his child had made it all that much worse.
Those three weeks without Pike had taught her that her love wasn’t enough for him, the same way it hadn’t been enough for her dad. That hard truth had shattered her, but she hadn’t been able to afford the luxury of falling apart. She’d had a baby on the way, a child she was determined would never know what it felt like to have a hole inside her heart where a parent’s love was supposed to be. So she’d made a choice, and she had never regretted it, not until now.
God, why did Pike have to come back? Why did she have to run into him today and remember what it felt like to be so close and only want to get closer?
She reached for her keys, but her hand was trembling so hard she dropped them on the sidewalk. By the time she snatched them off the concrete, Pike had closed the distance between them.
“Please wait. I’m sorry, okay?” His hand closed around her elbow, but she shook him off, unable to stand the confusion his touch inspired.
“Don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I don’t believe you.” Pike’s hand fell to her hip, his fingers curling into the fabric of her jeans, sending a tremor of awareness shivering through her. “You want to do more than talk to me. You want the same thing I do. You want to remember what it was like between us.”
“Don’t,” Tulsi whispered, but her voice was breathy and unconvincing, even to her own ears.
Pike moved in closer, pinning her between his strong body and the driver’s side of the truck, making her breath speed as he leaned down to whisper in her ear. “You want me, Tulsi. I see it in your eyes every time you look at me. And I want you.”
Tulsi’s teeth bit into her bottom lip hard enough to send pain flashing through her jaw as she fought the urge to lean into Pike. She couldn’t touch him again, or she was going to lose the last of her self-control and put everything that mattered at risk.