The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch - Maisey Yates Page 0,39
kissed him,” Iris said.
Pansy hunched her shoulders up by her years. “Yeah.”
“I think that’s pretty brave of you. Even if Sammy can’t understand why.”
But Iris did. Because she knew what it was like to be a forced member of their fierce, isolated little clan.
Sammy was like a butterfly that flitted through their garden, and had decided to land on a flower. She fluttered off sometimes in her caravan, traveling for a bit selling jewelry before coming back. She came from a different place. From a different background.
It wasn’t the same for her because she’d chosen Hope Springs.
Hope Springs had chosen the rest of them.
“She means well,” Pansy said. “But she...she’s not the same as we are.”
“No,” Iris said. “She’s not. But I don’t think it’s...quite as easy as she pretends it is.”
“She always seems...like whatever she’s doing is easy.”
Pansy had watched Sammy flirt effortlessly with men in bars over the years. Not that she had a clear idea of who Sammy did or didn’t go home with, but she seemed at ease and able to laugh off just about anything.
“I think it’s just casual for her,” Pansy said.
Iris shook her head, stubborn. “I don’t think so. It’s not...it’s not a handshake or a dance around a bonfire or whatever it is Sammy pretends. But she’s hurt, Pansy. A lot more than she ever lets on. I don’t know what went on in her home before she came to us but I don’t think it was good. I think she likes to get physically close to men without having relationships because for her it’s the emotional closeness that’s scary.”
That idea made Pansy feel hollow. “I don’t understand why she does it if it hurts her.”
Iris shrugged. “Well, the alternative is being alone.”
Pansy had been alone all this time, so she didn’t really see why that was a problem. But then... Sammy hugged all the time. Touched all the time.
Sammy alone would be like putting a butterfly in a jar and cutting off its air supply. Making it so it couldn’t fly. Couldn’t breathe.
And if Sammy was a butterfly then Pansy was a lone polecat.
One who’d kissed her ex-convict landlord...
“I don’t think I can be casual with him,” Pansy said. “I don’t think I even know what that means.”
“You have to do what’s right for you, Pansy. No one can tell you what that is. No one else is you.”
“I know,” she said. “But...” She thought again of the way it had felt to have his mouth pressed to hers. “I never understood what it was like to be tempted.”
But a memory pushed into the front of her mind.
When she’d been young. Before her parents had died. She’d been tempted all the time. To steal the cookies out of the cookie jar that she’d been told were for after dinner.
To run when she was supposed to walk.
To try to ride the big horse even though she was supposed to wait until she was older.
To go out riding by herself even though she was supposed to wait for her father.
And she could remember his quiet disappointment every time she had given in.
“Pansy,” he said, his voice measured. “You can’t just go around doing whatever you want. You can’t just follow your heart. You have to follow what’s right.”
But she’d found it so hard, because her heart burned for things that she wasn’t supposed to want.
Her innate nature was selfish. And yes, she’d been a child when she’d behaved like she had, but her dad had worried she’d stay that way, and she really thought she probably would have.
Been the kind of kid she spent a lot of her job dealing with.
Reckless driving, drunk driving, disorderly conduct. Breaking them up having sex in cars by the river.
There were big and great divides in life. People who cared about right, about rules, and people who didn’t.
She’d been born as one type. She’d worked to become another.
After her dad had died she’d tried to change. She had forgotten temptation. What it was and what it could be, but somewhere in there she’d forgotten passion too.
She had duty, and a sense of purpose, but until her lips had touched West Caldwell’s, she had forgotten what it was to burn.
“I’ll see you around,” Iris said.
“Yeah,” Pansy said, and she wanted to hug her sister.
But then her eye caught a shaft of light coming from across the field, uneven and shaky, before disappearing behind the barn.