His lip curled, a growl rumbling through his chest. “How do you know? How do you know it’s real? Because let me tell you, Jamie, I think my dad thought it was real. But he never kept it in his pants once. My mom thought it was real, but she’s let herself stay in this...toxic, ridiculous relationship. She’s had fifteen good years with him. These past fifteen. In thirty-five of pain. So you tell me, how do you think you know it’s real?”

“Because I’m choosing. Believe me, when you’re as protected as I am, when your heart is as hard as mine...you have to choose to fall in love. And I did. Because I could see what was over there. I could feel myself... I could feel myself. Me. And not this person that I forced myself to be who was brave and strong, and didn’t need anybody. I want to need someone. I want to need you. Because...needing you has made me feel more things, deeper things, than I even thought were possible. And I don’t care if it hurts. I mean, I would rather it didn’t. But it’s better than feeling nothing. It’s better than feeling alone.”

The terrain inside her seemed to shift, and as it did, her rage seemed to shift, as well. A sense of heaviness, of sadness, joining it now. “You make choices, Gabe,” she said, the words softer. “And if you can’t make choices, life will make a few for you, but then you can’t bitch when you wake up one day all by yourself, realizing that your glory days are behind you in every sense of the word. All because you didn’t reach out and grab better when you had the chance.”

She waited. She waited for him to say something. She waited for him to step forward and kiss her. She waited for him to tell her to stay with him. She waited, as her anger drained away and a sense of futility filled her body, her limbs getting weak.

She waited, and he didn’t speak. His blue eyes had gone glacial, and then something shifted in them. A dawning realization, and she knew, in her gut, that it wasn’t one she was going to enjoy.

“I went into the rodeo to hurt my father,” he said. “But do you know what I actually found out?”

“What?” she asked, the word whispered.

“I am my father. I wanted to be different. I thought I would choose something different. Ranching. It’s inevitable, though. I ran from the frying pan to the fire. From the potentially knocked-up girlfriend to the rodeo. Once I got a taste of glory, that’s all I wanted. Do you think I said no to any women who threw themselves at me? Because I didn’t. On the night you found me in the bar, I would’ve slept with that woman, Jamie. Even though I wanted you. It didn’t matter. Sex has been cheap for me for as long as I can remember. And that’s... I’m not different. I’m never going to put myself or any woman in the position that my mother is in. I’m standing here hurting you right now, and you would be signing up for a lifetime more of that. And I just don’t want to do it. You shouldn’t want to do it, but you don’t know better, because you didn’t see it. So I’m going to be the one to tell you. To tell you that you don’t want it. To tell you what you do want. And that might make you mad, but you have to understand. I watched it. And I will never be part of putting someone through that.”