Montana Desire

He loved a good pro/con list. I let out a sigh. “Which side am I starting with?”

“Telling them no.”

I savored my wine for a second, resisting the urge to gulp it. “I don’t have to leave Garnet Bend or my friends.”

“True.”

“Or you.”

He grinned. “That is a con.”

If only he knew how true I was coming to think that to be.

“I get to keep a job I love and this rental place. Cons—it’s not as easy as I was hoping to keep the clinic afloat. I won’t be able to hire a full-time technician or a second vet.”

Joel sat back. “Another con, you won’t be able to buy a house.”

I shrugged. “That doesn’t concern me.”

“It should.”

Buying a house was low on my priority list. “Saying yes is the opposite side of all those things. There’s always the option of going to medical school, getting the money, and coming back here. But that’s four years away. Plus, I pretty much hate everything about the medical field.”

“Did they say that you had to be a surgeon?”

“No.” I shook my head. “But you know them. That’s the only path they’ll accept. If I try to do anything other than surgery, then it would be unacceptable for a Jackson. Hell, they’d probably change the terms again if I tried another specialty.”

“True. They really do want you to be Ms. Surgery.”

“Yeah…” I drained the last of the wine. At least he was on my side. That made a difference. He understood my wanting to stay here.

We finished our meal, and I got up and carried our plates over to the sink. I was ready to put all talk about my parents’ demands behind us and get on with our evening.

“I think you should do it.”

“Do what?” I rinsed one plate.

“I think you should go back to medical school. Do what your parents want and get your money.”

My head snapped around so fast I almost gave myself whiplash. “What?”

Joel shrugged, looking down at his phone. “Let’s be real. You need the money. You want funds to expand your practice, and, more importantly, you need to get out of this shitty rainbow house.”

“I like this place.” It wasn’t fancy, but it more than suited my needs. Joel and I had been over this before.

“You only think that because you’ve forgotten what it’s like to live someplace nice.”

I resisted the urge to slam a plate down in the sink. “If you hate my house that much, why do you even come here?”

“Cori.” He let out a long sigh. “Don’t be mad.”

“Why would I be mad? My boyfriend just told me he wants me to give up everything I love, including him, and go do something I hate, while simultaneously insulting my home.”

“I’m just being realistic. I know your family. They’re going to make your life hell until you do what they want.”

“So, I should just give in?” He sighed again, the look on his face telling me that he thought I was being particularly difficult. “It’s my life they’re messing with, Joel.”

He gestured with his wine. “Yeah, it is. But even if you tell your parents to fuck off and don’t take their money, do you really think that’s going to be the last of it? It won’t be. Your parents are some of the most intense, single-minded people I’ve ever seen, and they want you to do this. I’d be willing to bet they have about sixty backup plans in case this doesn’t work.”

“Like?”

“Like, finding someone in whatever vet organization you have to be licensed by and getting you reviewed. Like calling your landlord and informing him you’re emotionally unstable and really need to come home. Or any other number of things. They have great minds and great lawyers. If I thought of those things in fifteen seconds, they’ll have thought of fifty more.”

I hated that he was right. In their minds, the family legacy was at stake, and they sure as hell weren’t going to let me deviate from it without a fight, trust or no trust.

Joel was staring at me, and I didn’t speak. I didn’t speak for so long that he finally got up and went into the living room to turn on the TV. “Fine. Whenever you decide to stop living in your own little fantasy world, let me know.”

“I don’t want to ransom four years of my life to be able to do what I want. When I’m already doing what I want with my life.”

I heard the soft sounds of some kind of sitcom, the studio laughter a completely inappropriate background for this conversation. “I think you did it backward, actually. You should’ve gone to normal medical school first to get them off your back and then gone to vet school.”

I finished the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. Joel laughed at something on the TV, and I gritted my teeth.

“I fail to see how that’s better. That’s still four completely useless years. And a lot of debt.”

The garbage was full too. I grabbed it to take it outside.

“As if any school you wanted wouldn’t give a Jackson a full ride.” He barely looked at me as I passed by with the bag.

The screen door banged behind me as I went out. The sun was setting, the beauty of Montana all around me. I took a long breath after I tossed the garbage bag into the can, trying to force stress out of my body.

This wasn’t the evening I’d been hoping for. But I could still turn it around. I wanted some physical time with Joel. Getting frustrated with him for not understanding my point of view wasn’t going to get us there.

Across the small lawn that separated our houses, Grant’s house was dark. His truck was in the driveway, but I didn’t see any lights on. Maybe he’d gone to bed early? I hoped he was okay. When I’d run into him outside of Arrowhead, he’d had a heaviness to him I didn’t usually see.

Grant was kind and a good neighbor. He was my favorite of the Resting Warrior guys. I liked all of them, but he had a gentleness that I appreciated, especially with the animals.

When I saw him again, I would make sure to ask how he was doing. But for right now…Joel.

I slipped back into the house and went to the kitchen to retrieve my wineglass. “I don’t want to talk about my parents anymore,” I told him. “This was not what I had planned for you coming over.”

That got his attention. “What did you have planned?”

He looked me up and down and gave me a knowing smirk.

God, did he have any idea how boring I found our sex life? If he and I were going to continue—which, honestly, I was having more and more difficulty seeing—something was going to have to change.

And I wasn’t even talking about my secret fantasy stuff. The stuff I knew I really needed if I was going to truly let go. That was for a much later day. Right now, I was merely talking about something more than ten minutes of him on top of me every time we had sex. It was nice, but never much more than that.

Sitting down and curling up next to him, I snuggled close and took a sip of my wine. This was no big deal, right? Couples tried new things in bed all the time, and it was okay. It didn’t have to be that serious.

I took another sip. “I thought we could talk about our sex life.”

Joel shut off the TV. That was at least encouraging. “What about it?”

I swallowed. “I was wondering if you were interested in trying something new. Different.”

He stiffened. “Why?”

I smiled over at him, keeping my body language relaxed. “I feel like we’re in a little bit of a rut. There’s a lot of stuff we haven’t tried that we might like.”

We hadn’t been dating long enough to be in a rut, but that wasn’t the point.

“Like what?”

“You know.” I smiled, wishing it weren’t so stiff. “Sex in the shower. Or in a chair with me straddling you. The kitchen table or my desk. Just let the passion overtake us.”

“I see.” He wasn’t relaxing.

“Come on, Joel. These aren’t unreasonable requests. Don’t you want to do more than just vanilla missionary every single time?”

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew they were the wrong thing to say, but it was too late to take them back.

Besides, this talk was necessary.

Evidently, Joel didn’t think so. He slid over on the couch until we were no longer touching at all. “So you’re saying I’m inadequate in bed.”

“No.” Sort of. “I’m saying there’s so much more, and I’d like to explore it with you.”

If wanting to have sex in the shower was setting him on edge, mentioning what really turned me on probably wasn’t in the cards ever.

I reached for him. “Don’t overreact. Let’s talk this out.”

Definitely the wrong thing to say. He shot off the couch like he was on fire. I was just about to backpedal, tell him to forget the whole thing, when he spun back toward me and I saw his face.

He wasn’t embarrassed. Wasn’t irritated.

He was furious.

I scrambled off the couch and away from him. I’d never seen Joel look like this before, especially not at me.

But in the back of my mind, I remembered the rumors that had gone around about him in high school and college.

Temper. Unstable. Violent.

Things I’d written off as rumors spawned by people jealous of his family’s money. There wasn’t any way the stories could be true. I’d never seen behaviors from Joel suggesting he was any of those things.

Until now.

I held my hands out in front of me. “Whoa, why are you getting so upset? I’m just trying to have a discussion with you.”

“A discussion. Right. Yeah, I know all about discussions. Everybody wants to have discussions when they think I’m out of line.”

I had no idea what that meant. “I just want to explore new things with you. You’re being unreasonable.”

“You think you’re better than your family,” he spat out, face red. “Think you’re better than me in bed.”

“I don’t think either of those things! My family has nothing to do with this conversation, and I was just trying to ask you if we could change things up a little.”

The fury slid from his face as quickly as it had arrived. “You were criticizing me and my performance in bed.”

God, I felt like I was talking to Jekyll and Hyde. “No. I was just trying to point out that I’d like to be a little more adventurous. A lot more adventurous, if you want me to be honest.”

“Like what?”