Page 39 of The Rancher’s One and Only

“That’s the kind of thing that predators say, Ernestine,” he said. “That’s not your guilt to carry.”

His voice was tight, and terse, and yet his words were more impacting than almost anything else ever had been. It wasn’t her guilt to carry. “Do men like that ever feel guilty?”

“Rarely. Even though my father is more crudely violent in some ways, he’s the same kind of man. He doesn’t traffic in guilt. He’ll go to his grave blaming my mom for forcing him to kill her. Because she was faithless, because she was leaving him, breaking up the family—as if killing my mother, getting himself sent to prison didn’t do even more than that. Some people are beyond redemption. And they are impervious to the shame they ought to feel, so it splashes off of them and gets onto people who actually do care. Who shouldn’t carry even a little bit of that.”

It was a strong visual. She could see it. Guilt, recrimination and shame being deflected off of Gavin’s body, and on to her. It never touched him because he wasn’t the kind of person who would ever have the insight or the humanity to take it on for himself.

“Oh. I… How did you learn all this?” Because for her, all human behavior was learning.

“You don’t go through what I did and not get forced into therapy. I was mad about it at the time, but later, I was grateful for it. And what I didn’t get from therapy came from martial arts. Meditation. Looking inward. Finding discipline. Finding my center.” His stare became too focused. “You can’t have feelings disconnected from your thoughts, or thoughts disconnected from your body. You have to find a way to bring all of it together.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That actually helps me with some things.”

“I’m really glad to hear that. But I’m not glad that you were put in a situation where that happened to you.”

“You know, of all the things that could’ve happened, it’s not that bad. I was very young and traveling all over the world. For the most part, the people that were put in charge of taking care of me did a great job.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” His voice was rough.

She wondered if anyone had ever taken care of him. She wanted to ask, but she also…didn’t. Her body still burned with the touch of his hands, and her face still burned from her unfortunate admission. She was, in fact, burned out on deep conversation for the day, and she couldn’t say that had actually ever happened to her before. But she felt a bit raw, a bit wounded, and also small and silly next to him. What must he think about her? She talked about fantasy novels, and a man tried to pressure her into sex once. His father had killed his mother. Everything about her must seem… Well. Small and insignificant. Gopher-like. He was being kind, because he was extraordinarily kind. But she had to wonder if she deserved even a little bit of that. She had a feeling that she didn’t.

“Thanks for bringing me here,” she said.

“Of course,” he responded.

She tried to take in a full breath, but it was difficult.

She really hoped he didn’t think she was…absolutely the weirdest person ever.

She knew… Well, she was a scientist and she was interested in a host of things. She liked information for the sake of it, but truth be told she wasn’t that interested in herself. Still, after everything that had happened on that dig, how badly she’d read the situation, she’d done a lot of research looking for a why. She’d found it. She’d never gone and gotten a formal autism diagnosis but she ticked so many boxes she hadn’t been able to ignore the fact that the possibility of her being neurodivergent was high.

She’d decided it didn’t matter that much, because so much of it made her life into a life she loved. Her obsessions brought her joy. Her research, her deep interests, the overanalysis of things. She liked those things about herself.

Yes, she struggled with people sometimes, but she was less interested in pleasing them than she was in fossils. It hadn’t seemed like it mattered, because her life worked. It was a good thing, she’d thought at the time, for her to understand that she could read situations wrong, to guard herself from further harm in the future. But it had never been about changing herself, making herself different.

Now, though, she almost wished she could.

She couldn’t remember ever caring so much about what someone thought before.

But she cared a lot about what he thought.

Chapter Eight

Her words echoed inside of him through the entire horse ride back. She was a virgin.

That should make him less interested. It didn’t. If anything, it made him want to show her…

No. You are not the one.

But it made his teeth ache. Thinking of the way that man had made her feel about her own body. About everything.

Thinking about how she’d been made to feel about herself. It wasn’t fair. And he wanted to fix it. But he wasn’t the kind of guy that fixed things. At least not for other people. Wasn’t the kind of guy that could be trusted with something like that. He didn’t have the experience with it, and he had nothing but poison in his veins. They were from two completely different worlds. They thought about things differently. And that was all fine and good and all that, but it was… This wasn’t his place.

She had seemed so uncomfortable after she’d said it too. And he’d rarely seen Ernestine uncomfortable. “You know what you need,” he said when they were halfway back to the ranch, because he was desperately searching for something to say, partly because she’d told him that she didn’t like an awkward silence, and theirs was one for the ages.

“No?” came her voice behind him.

“You need some self-defense training.”