years when that shit ain’t fun anymore? You gonna up and go, try to take my baby? I’m tellin’ you right now, I can’t have that—won’t have it.”
“You’ve sabotaged us before we’ve begun, Ford,” I whisper.
He shrugs a shoulder, the rest of his body staying stock still. “Maybe. Maybe I’m just thinking realistically, same way you were until recently.”
Licking my trembling lips, I press them together so that I don’t show him the absolute agony I feel inside from his words. I haven’t even told him about the Russians, about anything. He’s ready to run and I’m not going to try and stop him.
“Maybe you are. Maybe I’m just the dreamer and the fool. Always have been anyway,” I state, shifting my gaze from his to my lap.
He makes a noise in the back of his throat and I look up to meet his gaze with my own. “I don’t know what to do here, Stephanie,” he admits.
“Be with me. Love me.”
“Never said I didn’t.”
Tears fill my eyes. I’ve completely destroyed this man over the years, I can see it deep down inside of him. He’s showing me just how badly he hurts, and I know without a doubt that it was me who did all of this to him.
I panic.
“Sebastian fucked up, big time, I only came back because he was threatening to leak a sex tape that I didn’t know he had of us and another of you and me from a PI that he hired to follow me in Gallup,” I quickly ramble.
Ford closes his eyes with a heavy sigh. “It ain’t just him,” he breathes. “It’s the other shit, too. Can you honestly say you can give this up, give up your career for life on my family ranch? I gotta tell you, I can’t give you even a quarter of any of this shit.”
“I have my own money, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ve invested well, Ford.”
It’s the absolute wrong thing to say. I know it as soon as the words escape my lips. Ford stands, he marches away from me and toward the back of the property, toward the glass wall. I watch his broad back as he goes and a pit forms in my stomach.
Ford is all man, as true as it gets and as alpha as it gets. He’s tough as nails just like his daddy and granddaddy were, but he’s prideful and stubborn just like they were too. Me mentioning the fact that I have more than him, that I can provide, that just burned him up, instantly.
Shit.
FORD
It’s not the fact that she has more than me. I know that she does, have known it for years. It’s the fact she doesn’t need me, never did. I can’t help it, no matter how it sounds, how you want to paint it, I am a man that wants to be needed by his woman.
I feel her cool fingers touch the center of my back, my muscles tighten at the sensation and my cock twitches. Letting out a heavy sigh, I turn my head, tipping it slightly to look back and down at her.
“It ain’t all about money. You don’t need me, you never did,” I admit. “You’ll get tired when it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, when it’s backbreaking work and you’ll come back to the life you had, the life you fought tooth and nail for. I won’t be able to stop you, wouldn’t anyway.”
“You’re assuming a lot, Ford.”
“Yeah,” I agree.
The look in her eyes, it tells me that my assumptions are not all wrong, either. She’s searching and, honest to fuck, I don’t think she knows what she’s looking for.
Everything about this is so fucked up. I let myself hope. I promised myself that I wouldn’t, but I did anyway and now here we fucking are.
“Promise me, Stephanie. Look me in the eyes and tell me that you want a life with me like the one I described.”
She hesitates. Her eyes shift across to the ocean and she watches as the waves roll in and out, the tide coming in as the sun sets down. She doesn’t speak, she’s completely silent and there is more said in that silence than I think she’s said to me since she came back to Gallup.
“I can’t make a promise like that, Ford. I haven’t lived that life. I don’t know if I’ll love it or hate it, but I do know that I want to try. I want to be