A Tall, Dark Cowboy Christmas. Maisey Yates

aware he’s had a lot more... Experience at his age than I would like. But then, he’s also my walking, talking cautionary tale about what happens when you mess around at sixteen. So, hopefully he’ll just remember that.”

      Kaylee laughed. “Yeah. Because the threat of consequences keeps teenagers from having sex.”

      Grant didn’t know how to respond to that at all, so he just lifted his glass of whiskey to his lips while his brother groaned. The idea that his sixteen-year-old nephew was having sex while Grant...

      Life was not fair.

      Of course, he’d made his choices.

      He wanted to make some different ones. But that was the problem. He didn’t know how. And at thirty-four, the conversation that he would have to have with his partner was...

      It was just layers of complicated and hard and he honestly couldn’t figure out how to navigate it right now.

      But then he thought of McKenna. Her brown eyes, and that soft-looking skin. Her lips.

      She was managing to take over his bar time without actually being here.

      “I did tell him that I was not helping him out if any angry dads came onto our properties with shotguns. He’s on his own.”

      “That’s just mean,” Kaylee said. “I bet your dad defended you from a few shotgun-wielding parents.”

      “I didn’t get caught,” Bennett said.

      Grant took another drink. Their upbringing had been... Not so great. Bennett had been six when their mother had died. Grant had been ten. Their father was a good enough dad, but he had been fully emotionally unavailable after that had happened. Jamie had been a newborn, and their dad had been consumed with trying to parent her. Grant couldn’t blame him for that. They’d all reacted to it in different ways. Wyatt had taken his anger and channeled all of it toward their father. They had a big dustup involving their dad’s fiancée when Wyatt had been seventeen, and Wyatt had left home for years after that. Bennett had been the good one, but had been blowing off steam with sex obviously. He’d just been doing all his misbehaving under the radar.

      Grant?

      Grant had turned into a monster. He’d been so angry, and he hadn’t known what the hell to do with it. He hadn’t brought it home. Hadn’t brought it to his father. No. He bled it all over everyone else. By the time he’d gotten into high school he’d been the biggest asshole bully. Nothing made him angrier than happy kids with happy lives, and he’d gone out of his way to add a little misery to their existence.

      The only thing he’d hated more than them was what he’d turned into. But he hadn’t known how to be any different. He didn’t talk to his brothers. He didn’t have friends. When he walked by people in the halls they cowered. And for good reason. He’d been known to shove kids straight into the wall. A quick, satisfying outlet for the rage that burned just beneath his skin.

      He’d been failing every class. More than that, he’d been failing at being a person.

      He’d spent a lot of time in detention, but he didn’t much care. Home. School. It didn’t matter. He didn’t feel any different wherever he went.

      He could still remember, so clearly, being seventeen years old and walking into the school library and seeing her.

      Blonde and beautiful with blue eyes. She’d smiled at him, and he... He’d felt it. He hadn’t been able to remember a time when he’d felt anything other than anger.

      She talked to him. Like he wasn’t scary. And she’d offered to tutor him.

      And he didn’t know why in the hell, to this day, he’d taken her up on it.

      Except that his life had been so damned bleak he’d thought, Why the hell not?

      She’d been so nice to him. Unfailingly. And that hungry, desperate part of him had fallen for her hard and fast.

       You don’t have to be this way, you know. I know you’re a good guy, Grant. You’re just angry. I can understand that. I feel angry, too, sometimes.

      He swallowed hard, the memory washing over him, blotting out the scene around him.

       It was one of his favorite places in Gold Valley. A little out-of-the-way place just off a dirt road that wound up the mountains, right by a small creek. It was where he went when everything at school and home felt like too much.

       The sunlight filtered through the trees, making Lindsay’s hair look like it was spun from gold. Like there was a halo over her head.

       He’d never felt the way he did for her about anyone. Like he wanted to protect her. Keep her safe forever.

       Before Lindsay, he’d only ever wanted to destroy things.

       He hadn’t touched her. She was sweet. Too sweet for a guy like him.

       “You get angry?” He looked at beautiful Lindsay, with her bright eyes and hopeful expression. He couldn’t imagine her being angry.

       She nodded slowly. “Yes. Don’t you know I wasn’t in school last year?”

       He shook his head. “No. Weren’t you guys out of town or—”

       “I had cancer, Grant. I could get it again.” Her blue eyes locked with his. “That’s always a possibility. I need you to know that. I know it. It scares me. It makes me angry.”

       He didn’t know what possessed him, all he knew was that he wasn’t able to make another choice. He gripped her chin and closed the distance between them, kissing her on the lips.

      He blinked, finding himself back in the present. He’d been so careful with her. Because she was sweet and delicate. Because she thought he was good. Sometimes he regretted just how careful he’d been. When the cancer came back, her prognosis wasn’t good. They’d gotten married as quickly as possible. Always thinking it would go away. Always hoping. Even though, deep down, he’d known.

      They’d both known. Her life wasn’t going to be long; there was no way it could be, barring a miracle. But he’d imagined that they could have something. Maybe not the kind of marriage everyone else had, but something like it.

      They’d never had normal. But they’d had something pretty damned precious. In the end, being with Lindsay had changed him profoundly.

      Without her... The path he had been on only ended a couple of ways. Dead young or in jail. She had saved him. And whatever he had or didn’t have now, whatever he hadn’t done...

      He couldn’t regret the choices he’d made.

      So, if his sixteen-year-old nephew was getting play, he had to ask himself at what point he was going to start figuring out how to live some kind of normal life.

      He’d tried. Once.

      He’d driven to a neighboring town and gone to a bar. He hadn’t even gotten past saying hi. The damned woman had recognized him. He was that famous guy who’d married his terminally ill high school sweetheart even knowing their life together would be short. She’d given him the saddest eyes he’d ever seen, and he’d been sure he could have gotten pity sex.

      That was when he realized he didn’t want pity sex.

      That had been two years ago. Two years since he’d last tried to go out and get some and had stopped himself on some kind of principle. Right about now, he was starting to think that maybe he would take pity sex.

      A hot kick to his gut told him that wasn’t true. Not by a long shot.

      He didn’t just want any sex. That was the thing. If he did, there were a bunch of ways to get it.

      He was a man who didn’t want an emotional connection, at all, yet was unable