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Her head started to pound, and she felt sick. She went to signal the bartender for another one, but he was down the bar with another customer. Dylan took ahold of her outstretched hand and held it. “He ain’t worth it.”
His thumb caressed her knuckles. She deliberately moved her leg closer to his. LeAnn hadn’t realized how much she craved physical contact that wasn’t expected to turn sexual. And yet, something inside her buzzed at his nearness. LeAnn was pretty sure this wasn’t the tequila talking.
“I know that now,” she said. “But I just spent the last few years of my life trying to be everything he wanted. Well, almost everything.” She gave a half-laugh.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to have sex. She did. She just hadn’t been sure if she wanted to have sex with Mick. And after all these months, LeAnn should have known the answer to that question. So she really couldn’t blame him for fooling around. At least, that’s what Debbi Peterson told anyone who would listen.
“You kept him waiting for all that time. What did you expect?” Debbi had said when she saw her crying tonight.
That had stung. There had been other girlfriends in between Debbi and LeAnn, though, so for some dumb reason, she had thought that Debbi would have been on her side.
“I had expected him to let me know if he wanted to see—sleep with other people,” LeAnn had said when she’d recovered from the verbal blow.
“You got too focused on riding,” Debbi had said.
That part was true. LeAnn was trying to get back on top after a disastrous couple of years brought on by her partying too hard and the last few months trying to be the girlfriend that Mick wanted, to make up for not sleeping with him. LeAnn had dressed the way he said to, had followed him around to wherever he wanted to go, and had listened quietly to all the toxic male bullshit that he and his friends like to spew after they’d had a few beers.
The last part had been the worst. She hated herself for becoming “that girl,” just to please him.
“I need to win,” LeAnn had said to Debbi.
“You need to grow up,” Debbi had told her. “You can’t blame a man like Mick for not wanting to babysit you. Maybe if you had kept him satisfied, he wouldn’t have had to sleep around.”
Fortunately, LeAnn knew bullshit when she heard it. “Or he could have broken up with me and slept around all he wanted. He cheated because that’s who he is.” And part of her wondered who Debbi was, if she could defend him.
LeAnn and Mick had done other things, of course, aside from sex. She wasn’t a nun. And it had been nice. Just not fireworks nice. She had been waiting for fireworks to happen, and she had said that to Debbi.
“That only happens in books and movies,” Debbi had snorted.
They were barrel racers. They had both been wronged by the same man. Debbi should have had her back. That was the girl code, right? She should have grabbed a pitchfork and threatened to geld him or something. But instead, she’d taken Mick’s side. And it had hurt like a bitch—a double betrayal that had left LeAnn reeling, and second-guessing herself.
“I’m an idiot too,” LeAnn said to Dylan, who was still holding her hand.
“Not from where I’m sitting,” he said.
“Mick told me what I wanted to hear. He said he respected my decision to wait until we got married to have sex. Did you know that he was sleeping with any sidepiece he could get his hands on, when I went back home after our dates?”
Mick had hit her with that awful fact when he had given up trying to talk his way out of the situation.
“I don’t make it a point to follow what Mick does. But I’m not surprised.”
“I was. That’s why I’m an idiot. He said that he didn’t mind waiting. That I was worth it. That he respected my decision. Of course, he didn’t mind waiting—he was getting sex anytime he waved his dick around.”
Dylan shook his head. “He’s a liar and a fool. He talks a lot of shit and he’s gotten his ass kicked more than once for it. He and I went toe-to-toe on a few things. He’s got a face made for punching.”
Her lips curved up in a reluctant smile. “If I wasn’t giving him what he wanted, why did he stick around as long as he did?” Mick had said it was because he loved her. Love would have kept his dick in his pants, though.
“Because he knew a good thing when he saw it,” Dylan said, sipping a beer.
“Me?”
“You,” Dylan said.
LeAnn wished she believed that. “I can’t even win a barrel race anymore,” she said miserably.
“Is that what you want to do?”
“I want to win.”
