Solid Gold Cowboy by Maisey Yates (books to read for teens TXT) 📕

“Right,” he said.

But he was appraising her a little bit too closely. She scampered back to flip the patties, and then just went ahead and hugged the stove top so that she could keep her distance between herself and him. And the crackle of heat in her stomach.

Because she wasn’t in a relationship. Not anymore. And that... That felt just a little bit too revolutionary in the moment.

But Laz was still her friend, and he was her only lifeline. She’d gone from having Dylan’s family to having Laz, and she needed to be careful.

“You wanted to know,” he said. “Why I didn’t ask you to not marry Dylan.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling jarred by the subject change. “Yes.”

“Well, it took me a little bit to realize the answer,” he said.

“Let me guess, it’s not because you thought we made such a great couple?”

“No,” he said. “It’s because it would have been selfish.”

“What?” Her heart slammed into her chest.

“I thought that it would have been selfish of me to ask you to not marry him. Because I’m not disinterested, Jordan. No matter how much I might want to be. And then I went over there and I saw that flowered suitcase that you had...”

“His mother got that for me for Christmas.”

“You said that you were afraid that if you weren’t with him you might become like your family. I get that, but you spent the past... It’s been a hell of a long time in a family that never even really knew you. I knew you didn’t pick that suitcase. I knew it. And you know, I didn’t see any point in saying anything, all things considered. I didn’t see the point in disrupting anything further than it already has been, but you wanted to know. And it’s not because I didn’t care. And it’s not because I’m afraid to say the honest thing. But I was afraid of leading you somewhere that I wanted you to go. But that was when I at least thought... I thought they knew you. At least. But they never did, did they?”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I want you,” he said. “That simple. I have. Since the first time I met you.”

She could not believe that those words had just come out of his mouth. With the hamburger on a plate in front of him. Not that the hamburger was incredibly relevant to the situation, it just kind of added to the absurdity of it. They’d been friends for years. And he never said anything. He never even indicated...

And all those feelings that she had the first moment she met him came flooding back.

But she... She suddenly felt so small and unworthy. She had never given a lot of thought to how she looked. Because she had a boyfriend for half of her life. She had never wanted to attract another man. She had always been so grateful for Dylan. She did what she could with what she had, but that was basically it. Laz was beautiful. There was no doubt about that. No argument to be made. Classically masculine and handsome in a way that took her breath away. But even in that moment when she’d first seen him she hadn’t given any thought to whether or not she could attract him, because why would she?

He had experience. Lots of different women, that much she knew. They didn’t talk about it, but it was implied in a lot of different conversations. She had Dylan. That was it. And an increasingly dull sex life that had waned entirely in the face of her increasingly bad insomnia.

And he hadn’t been too upset about it. And she hadn’t really known what to make of that. The fact that he had let her reduce their sex life to zero had begun to bother her. And it had turned into a sort of game where she tried to see if anything else would happen.

If she waited him out, if he would finally get fed up with it.

It had actually made her start to question her desirability. Something that she really hadn’t thought much about before.

But now she wondered. If she could actually be enough for a man like Laz. A man who had felt like fate from the moment she had first seen him. An impulse that she had denied because...

Well, she was used to denying her impulses. Used to questioning her instincts.

Because hadn’t she been told—by everything her parents had done, by everything they’d said—that she could not trust anything that she was inclined toward? Yes. She had been told that. And so when she had walked into the bar and seen Laz, known that he was the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes on, felt like she was peering into a future that she wanted more than anything... She had questioned it. Absolutely and completely.

Maybe she shouldn’t have. Maybe that was the lesson. Above all else, maybe the lesson here was that she wasn’t always wrong. And there was a concern, of course, that if she closed the distance between them, their friendship might be ruined. But that moment when she had first laid eyes on him existed in a place inside of her that couldn’t be denied. It didn’t question anything. Because it knew exactly what it wanted. And had from the first moment she had ever seen him.

He had been there for her... He had been there for her. And so many ways over all that time. And she knew that closing the space between them could never break what they were.

She had built her foundation with Dylan on need. Not physical need, but an emotional need that had been very deep and very real. But her relationship with Laz wasn’t built on that. She had met him, and she had wanted to know him. She had found him easy to talk to. And she found him beautiful.

It was such a different thing. Such a different thing to want without