“Sammy...”

“You’re not the only one who can see through a friend’s bullshit.”

Then she turned on her heel and walked away, leaving him standing there facing down the inevitable truth that he had jumped into this with both feet to keep things from changing, and now he was the one that had forced them to change irrevocably.

And she’d stabbed him clean through with those words, though they weren’t as true as she believed because being with her—in her bed—oh no, that had nothing to do with him suffering at all.

But as he stood there with regret in his chest and the taste of Sammy on his tongue... He wasn’t even sure he would change it.

Because one was stronger than the other.

A taste of sunshine was brighter than just about anything else.

CHAPTER NINE

SAMMY WAS INCANDESCENT by the time she walked into the Gold Valley Saloon. She was ready to approach the first man she found and ask him to put a baby in her.

Just to spite her best friend in the whole world for daring to put his mouth on hers. For daring to question her like he had been for days.

That was reasonable.

But he wasn’t reasonable. He was calling out all of her secret fears and laying them bare in the light, and it wasn’t fair. Not when she didn’t push him. Not when she didn’t make him feel bad about his life or himself or who he was.

And not because she didn’t see him. Not because she didn’t know that he was a man who’d turned away from the future he could have had if his parents had lived. He’d done it so deliberately that it was clearly a punishment and a shield all in one.

Her whole body was on fire, crackling like an inferno, and she wanted desperately to believe it was all rage, and not because the feeling of Ryder’s rough, commanding lips on hers had been anything other than a gross overstep of their friendship.

And through all that she kept asking herself if he was right. If what he had said was true. If the reality was she was just mad at him because he was asking her to face...well, reality.

If the issue was that she had a nice idea of what it meant to have a baby. It was true, she had a beautiful vision of herself round with child standing in a field in a flowing dress, and then later holding a beautiful newborn, having it there in a bassinet while she made jewelry. Some kind of earth mother, bohemian existence that was a completely unrealistic vision of how that would actually be.

But she knew there was more to it than that. That vision was just a concrete picture of the longing inside her.

But underneath that longing was some fear. That she still needed help. That she needed some real security. Safety.

It was why she’d asked Ryder.