Braving The Storm: An Age Gap, Cowboy Romance (Crimson Ridge Book 2)

Eight seconds.

For so many years of my life, that was the measure by which everything was counted. The adrenaline of busting out of that chute, gripping tight to the heaving, snorting beast beneath me.

The entirety of my world would narrow down, zeroing in on an infinitely small circle of focus. Posture. Core. Arm. Grip. Chin. Ultimately, a trivial assortment of shit that is entirely irrelevant in regular life.

No one willingly gets on the back of an angry bull. You’ve gotta have a certain type of fucked up motivation, be it for the money or the glory or the infamy, or purely having an unhealthy relationship with the meaning of life.

But then again, I’ve never been one to do what others expect, or want.

So I’m intimately familiar with the way eight seconds can feel like an eternity when, to most people, it’s hardly the blink of an eye. A meaningless pause between breaths.

Right now, I’m back in that arena, heart pounding, brain zeroed in on a sight that makes my blood turn cold. My legs carry me the short distance between the truck and the hopelessly small, terrifyingly still body lying flat on the ground, and each second turns to molasses.

Each tick of the clock seems to pass in a thick and sticky and terrifyingly slow pattern. It feels like an eternity from the moment I fling myself out of the driver’s side, to when I reach her fragile figure.

“Briar. Fuck. Can you hear me?” I hit my knees beside her and nearly slide off balance myself on the black ice. Her face is so goddamn pale; there’s wood everywhere, tumbled on the ground in a haphazard arc.

“Briar?” Repeating her name louder, more panicked, I’m desperately searching her face for a flicker of recognition. There’s no blood on the ice that I can see, but I’m reluctant to shift her head in case something happened to her spine as she fell. Straight onto concrete. Fucking fuck.

It’s like every nightmare I used to have about not making it to safety and ending up trampled. Not that those dreams were frequent occurrences, but if they ever happened, I’d wake up with soaked sheets and a throat raw from hollering with no one to hear me.

Which is how I feel now.

No cell coverage.

Miles away from medical care.

My radio unit is inside the cabin. I can contact mountain rescue and Sheriff Hayes, fuck, I could easily radio Colt to get his ass down here. But I don’t want to leave her side, and I’m terrified of hurting her more, of making an injury worse if I try to move her myself.

Could I live with the guilt of doing more harm if there was spinal damage? A busted disc or vertebrae? Nerves that could so easily be severed if I shift her even an inch.

“Fuck. Briar. Please wake up for me.” I gently brush her hair back off her forehead, and just as I’m steeling myself to check for a pulse, her eyelashes twitch.

Thank fuck.

My heart is in my mouth as I brush one thumb over her soft cheek. Seeing her so ghostly, with all the life drained from her features, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this nauseous before.

“Can you hear me?” God, every instinct I have is to scoop her up, and it’s killing me not to. But the pure terror of causing more harm is what holds me back. Barely.

She lets out a croaky sound, groggy, followed by a slow groan. Her eyes flutter open with a struggle.

“Take it easy.” I’m still stroking her cheek, but at least she’s conscious and breathing, and there’s a torrent of relief flooding my veins at those two little details.

“I’m sorry. The wood.” She winces, as if talking out loud is an effort.

“Fuck the wood. I’m going to move you inside, out of the cold, ok?”

“I wanted to help.”

“Well, let me help you right now.”

“Everyone hates me.” Her nose scrunches while those brown eyes of hers shift around a little unfocused.

Hearing that, how forlorn she sounds, makes me stiffen. But I’m guessing since she must have cracked her head pretty hard, things might not make a whole lot of sense right now.

“Can you sit up for me, darlin’?” Sliding a hand beneath her head to cradle it, I’m half expecting to come into contact with wetness, or sticky evidence of blood, but as I help get her into a sitting position very carefully, I can’t feel anything.

“It hurts.”

“I know. Let’s get you inside so I can take a proper look at you. I think you still have a brain, but we’ll need to make sure.”

“Not funny.”

“I’m very funny. Ask around.”

She closes her eyes and grips the sleeve of my jacket. “I want to say something witty but my head is too sore, so you’ll have to imagine it instead.”

“If it’s anything like your glittering sense of humor in the middle of the night, I can only imagine.” I watch her breathe a little harder through her nose as she adjusts to sitting upright. “Ready to try standing up for me?”

She makes a little noise of agreement. “Sorry for ruining your day. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than deal with this.”

“Briar. You don’t have to apologize for needing help.”

She digs her fingers into my arm a little tighter.

“Well, thank you, anyway. You don’t have to.”

Jesus. I knew Erik had a fucked up relationship with his daughters, hardly being around as a parent, but the fact this girl feels guilty for getting hurt and needing help has got me wanting to go dig him up from his grave just so I can punch the motherfucker in the jaw all over again.

I help Briar to her feet, and we slowly make our way inside as I’m careful to steer our path to avoid any other patches of ice. I’ve got half a mind to just say fuck it and carry this girl, but even while shaken up, she seems determined to walk, even if it does require using me as a crutch to steady herself a little.

“I might shower to warm up, if that’s ok?” she says as we get inside.

“Door open.”

Turning on her heel to look at me, her brows are drawn together.

“Can’t have you passing out on me in there.”

Briar tucks some hair behind one ear. “I think I’m good. It just took me a moment to get my feet back under me.”

I know exactly what she’s doing, and trying to brush this off as unimportant ain’t gonna work with me.

“Door. Open. You answer me if I call out, so I know you’re alright.” I cross my arms and look down at her. “Don’t think I won’t hesitate to come in there either if I think something is wrong.”

“Ok.” She gives me an odd look, then takes herself off. The water starts running and I hear the slide of the shower curtain over the rail after a few moments.

The painkillers from last night are still sitting on the bench, glaring back at me reproachfully, because as much as I meant that in a protective I’m here to take care of you kind of way, there is also a very large part of me that wants to ignore our circumstances, and the difference in age between us, and go in there anyway.

I brace both hands on the kitchen bench and drop my head.

Is there a hell reserved for men like me who have spent a lifetime not wanting anything meaningful with anyone, only to find the person I’m drawn to in ways I cannot fucking fathom or explain is someone who I’m sure there are laws in certain states prohibiting me from going anywhere near.

“Hiiii. Still alive.” Briar’s voice calls out. Interrupting my sudden compulsion to start trawling through online search results and the legal quagmire of relations between adopted family members.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“Don’t use all the fucking hot water,” I shout back with my eyes squeezed shut.

After a couple more minutes, the shower turns off, and I can hear her moving around. With a mug in hand, I stand and stare at the three different types of fruity teas lined up on the shelf Briar bought herself the other day in town.

How the hell am I supposed to know which one she’ll want? Coffee has been my go-to for years; I’ve never voluntarily drank hot fruit-flavored water. The concept is fucking weird. After sniffing each of them, I settle on lemon and ginger. I’m sure that’s supposed to be good with nausea, and there’s every chance she might feel pretty rough later on.

Christ, I didn’t fall off a bull during my pro years, but I certainly hit my head enough times doing dumb shit when I was young and too much of an idiot for my own good. Personal experience, and being around enough rodeo injuries taught me how damaging that lingering impact can be on your brain.

Briar emerges, smelling like soap and flushed with steam, and there’s a now familiar tug of a hook in my gut that makes me feel like I want to hold her.

Wanting to hug my niece isn’t the weird part; the messed up bit is that after I hug her, I want to be able to duck my head and wrap my palm around her jaw as I brush our lips together, and within those illicit acts lies my giant goddamn problem.

“Sit down. Chill. Put a movie on or something.” Jerking my head in the direction of the sectional couch. “Don’t touch that phone of yours.” I place the tea on the coffee table beside her, before handing over a couple of painkillers and a glass of water. This is the world’s weirdest uno reverse from the events of last night.

She downs the pills, but I see the tightness in her face at the mention of her phone. “No need to worry about that.”

My mind is still chewing over what she said outside. Turning over how secretive this girl has been about the entire reason she’s landed here in Crimson Ridge in the very first place.

Everyone hates me.

“I’ll be right here while I get some paperwork done. Just let me know if your head starts to feel worse, or like you’re gonna hurl.” I rub a hand over the back of my neck, hovering as she settles herself with feet tucked under her. “Have you eaten? Are you hungry?” Realizing I left pretty abruptly earlier, I don’t actually know if she ate after I took off to town to sort out the shit I’m going to need for Beau’s ranch job.

After I ran out that door, because last night was… well… too close.

Not to mention, I actually slept for the first time since she arrived, and getting such a good stretch of uninterrupted sleep reminded me of all the issues around our complicated goddamn set of current living arrangements.

Briar hits me with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’m fine. Thanks all the same… and I promise to say if I need anything.”

“You don’t have to treat me like I’m made of porcelain.” The girl with the potentially bruised brain follows me into the kitchenette, huffing at my back as if doing the basics like feeding her dinner and then collecting her dishes is some sort of above and beyond feat I’m performing.

Christ. I hate anyone and everyone who has been in her life before she came here.

“Sit your ass back down, you nearly cracked your skull open today,” I grumble.

“But I didn’t. So, at least let me do the washing up.” This space is too cramped for both of us to be in front of the sink at the same time, but she tries to squeeze past me all the same.

It puts us in very, very close quarters.

Her soft little body is pressed up against my hip and my thigh, making it all too easy, when I look down and see the tangle of dark hair bundled on top of her head, for my mind to begin wandering into territory I should steer well clear of. Picturing exactly how we would fit together in other ways.

“Fine. Have at it.” At this point, I’m surviving on sheer willpower alone to not start getting hard every time she’s within breathing distance. So I flick the soap bubbles and hot water off my hands and grab the dishcloth. Propping my ass against the kitchen bench, I stand there and wait for the clean dishes to emerge from the suds.

We work in tandem to clean up, and it’s a comfortable sort of silence. That’s one of the things I’ve noticed about having her in this cabin. Briar seems happy with the long stretches of quiet. It’s not something intentional on my part, but after living on my own for so long, the prospect of having someone chatty in my space would have been a living nightmare. No matter how hot they are.

I crave my peace. I enjoy the quiet. I don’t exactly feel like talking much before about ten in the morning, and after a long fucking day of shoeing horses, my brain and my body are exhausted.

Somehow, Briar molds neatly around all of that, and I don’t entirely know what to do with that golden nugget of information incessantly, triumphantly presenting itself inside my mind.

When we chat, it’s easy. She’s got this dry sense of humor hidden away, and I love seeing it rise to the surface every now and then when she doesn’t notice she’s let her guard down. Like it did last night when she played nurse and helped my stiff muscles and wrecked back more than she knows.

Thanks to her impromptu massage, I’ve been able to move around freely today, coupled with sleeping properly, so I’m back to almost feeling brand new again.

Which is possibly why I’m drying each item coming out of that sink with extremely thorough precision. There’s a conversation I need to have with Briar, and I’m not entirely sure how it’ll go.

It’s been kicking around my brain all afternoon, while I should have been focusing on accounts and invoices and paying bills and shit. Instead, I was yet again distracted as fuck by the gorgeous girl curled up on my couch, directly in my line of sight from where I sat over at the table.

The final piece of cutlery emerges, sparklingly clean and covered in a sheen of water, and I damn near bend the thing in half as I wrap it in the towel and dry a spoon with far more force than is necessary.

Briar lets the plug out of the sink, and the only sounds filling the space are the draining of used water and crackling of logs burning low in the fire.

“I’ll need to take a proper look at your head.” My throat is thick, voice gritty. “You know, see if your brain has leaked out.”

What the hell is wrong with me? Evidently, I’m trying to make jokes, while the situation we’re gonna have to discuss is anything but a laughing matter.

In fact, this entire prospect might go up in flames.

Dark eyes bounce to mine, her hand flying up to the back of her skull. “I’m pretty sure it’s fine.” She says the words slowly, her features tightening as her fingers make contact, which immediately makes me narrow my focus on that spot she just touched.

“Up there. Let me look.” I drop the towel like a hot coal and advance. I don’t even pause, or ask for permission, just hoist Briar by the waist and deposit her ass on the benchtop.

She makes a squeak of protest, tiny fists pressing into the front of my shirt.

Reminding me all over again, with that small act of connection, just how fucking good it felt to have her hands on me.

But, no. Goddamn it. This is me being a caring and responsible person, for once in my life. I can’t in good conscience let this girl go to sleep tonight without knowing… without being certain.

Pushing against me with fists clenched, Briar’s body is stiff as I stand my ground. We’re back in that place again where we’re both much closer than we need to be, but I’m feeling all kinds of protective over this girl, and she won’t tell me the truth about shit from her past or how she’s feeling after her fall earlier.

So she’s just going to have to suck it up and deal with the way I do things.

“Turn your head for me, darlin’.” My thighs are wedged between her knees so I can remain close. There’s a moment when I weigh the consequences, when I hesitate for all of the length of time it takes her to suck in a sharp inhale. I’m caught up in a place where should becomes a weighted word.

Should I be touching this girl?

Should I be so worryingly attracted to her?

If anything, I should be thinking about stepping back or putting an appropriate distance between us, but then concerns about whether or not she has a bleeding brain take precedence.

“I’m going to check the place where you cracked your head, ok?”

Briar huffs out another soft noise, but obliges and turns her neck to the side, keeping her eyes low, focus dipped toward the floor.

“Tell me if there’s pain.” I swallow heavily and slide my fingertips gingerly up from the base of her hair. The soft strands are slightly curled around her nape from the steam of the shower earlier, and loose tendrils framing her face shift beneath my breath as I lean forward. Just like the day in the barn when I helped her off that damn horse, my mouth is so close to the shell of her ear it wouldn’t take anything to close those frighteningly small series of inches and make contact with her bare skin.

Oh, how simple it would be to eat up that whisper of distance and feel the shudder run through her beneath my lips.

What I really want to do is thread my fingers into her hair. To see the way her dark curls look wrapped in my fist, intertwined with the ink of my name across my knuckles. Holy shit, the image of that sends something streaking like a comet straight through my bloodstream.

Purely possessive, maddening thoughts about the fact this girl should be mine burst through my veins like the first explosive fraction of a second being released from a bucking chute into the arena.

Drawing in a steadying breath through my nose, I try to calm my racing pulse. This is something I gotta focus on and not lose my shit, or my mind, down a gutter of filthy goddamn fantasies.

If I’m ever going to earn this girl’s trust, this is one step in that direction.

“No pain, yet.” Briar’s voice is quiet. A whisper.

“How about now?” I murmur as my fingers glide up higher, tracing the slope of her nape up towards the base of her skull.

She shivers when the heel of my palm grazes her jaw. Tilting her head further to the side, Briar gives me greater access.

Goddamn. It’s the smallest gesture, but there’s so much submission in it, and a look of ease softens her face. It’s as if she’s soaking up every moment and actually enjoying this. Seeing that wash of relief is what makes me linger, to draw this moment out. Rather than being brisk or functional, when I should be entirely focused on the task at hand—the one where I’m checking her head for a sign of swelling or excessive bruising—instead, I’m allowing her the sensation of touch that it’s obvious she’s gone without for far too long.

This is all it takes to have her melting in the palm of my hand? Christ. The shit that stirs up behind my ribs, squeezing hard inside my chest… there’s a feral beast wanting to leap out and devour the pretty little thing seated before me.

Her eyelashes rest over her cheeks, pouty little lips parted on a shaky exhale, and her pink tongue swipes over her bottom lip, leaving a glossy, wet line.

Studying her up close like this, my mind has descended to the most depraved of places. There’s surely a hell reserved for uncles who can’t keep their hands to themselves. Right now, I am tumbling head-first down the rabbit hole with no hope of emerging unscathed from this misadventure.

I’m essentially cupping my niece’s face, standing between her legs, and if this was any other circumstance with a woman in my kitchen positioned at my mercy like this long after dark, we’d be about twenty seconds away from fucking.

But this moment, right here, sucks the air from the tiny distance between us. Time gets hung on a hook, calling a truce, while allowing us to explore an intimate moment that we both realize shouldn’t be indulged.

My fingers walk their way higher. Tracing the spot where the top of her spine meets her skull. Then higher still. Coming to tentatively rest on the back of her head.

“There’s a bump there,” I state the goddamn obvious. My tongue feels heavy and awkward in my mouth as I gingerly draw the pad of my fingertip over the raised welt at the back of her head.

“It’s a little sore.” She admits.

“Worse than earlier?” I gently brush over it, not pressing hard, but wanting to check there’s not something more concerning going on.

Briar makes a humming noise. “No. About the same.”

In no universe do I need to be touching her still, to be lingering in such an intimate way, but Briar leans ever so subtly against my palm, so I choose to leave my hand there.

Christ, she’s so beautiful, and I don’t know how the fuck I’m going to get through this next part.

“You have to promise me something,” I say.

“Not to rage chop a mountain of wood?” Her eyes stay closed, but her lips tug into a wry smile.

I swallow down the avalanche of inappropriate sensations, vying to occupy my chest. Batting back all thoughts of how this girl is funny, and sweet, and sinfully gorgeous. As much as I’m supposed to, I can’t deny the reality to myself anymore, even though I can’t and shouldn’t acknowledge the truth.

She’s every inch my dream fucking girl.

“What I’m about to suggest. You have to promise you’ll be reasonable.”

“You’re the stubborn bull around here. I’m the most reasonable person you’ll ever meet.”

“I’m serious, Briar.”

That makes her lashes flutter. Dark eyes tilting toward me at the heaviness in my tone.

“You aren’t allowed to fight me on this.”

“Okay…” She wets her lips once more and gives me a highly suspicious glance.

“I can’t leave you on your own tonight.” Swallowing that rock determined to occupy my throat, I let my hand drop away. “Not while we need to be sure you’re in the clear after taking such a heavy knock to the head.”

Briar’s chest rises and falls a little faster.

My pulse races loudly in my ears.

“You’re saying…”

“I’m saying that you need someone to be there for you—in case something happens during the night, you know—and both of us ain’t gonna fit on that couch.”

Her throat bobs. “Sure.”

The air damn near vibrates with the words I haven’t yet said, but that we both know are coming.

“It’s fine.” She adds quickly. Removing the need for me to actually say it out loud and risk confessing to every depraved second I’ve imagined saying fuck it and following her in there at night.

Briar shifts her weight and slides off the counter. “We’re both adults. We can share a bed. Besides, you’ll sleep better than torturing yourself on that couch.”

And that’s precisely the problem.

As I step back and watch her walk away, I know it.

As I build up the fire for the night, I know it.

As I hear her rustling around in the bedroom, I know it.

And when I make my way down the half a dozen, short, familiar paces in the dark, drawn like a moth to the soft spill of light coming through the open bedroom doorway, my pulse jackhammers in my throat.

While that couch might have been physical torture to endure, as I ease myself into the other side of the bed, with every dip of the mattress beneath my bulk, I’m certain of one thing.

This… this is going to be a brutal punishment of an entirely different kind.