by Maisey Yates
* * *
JACOB HAD NEVER in all his life had sex like that. Not the actions. Because he’d done all kinds of things before.
He’d been wild, and a life full of hookups, drunk nights and good times had helped him keep his demons at bay.
And handily, the thing that bonded all the careers he’d had in the past was that women tended to find them sexy. As little trouble as he had in his life with hooking up, it had only gotten easier as he’d gotten older, and he’d been able to lead with things like, I’m a bull rider.
So yeah, when it came to sex, he’d done most everything.
But it hadn’t felt like this.
She took a breath and nuzzled against his chest, her cheek pressed against that place where his heart was raging hard.
And this all felt... It felt like something a man could build a life on.
Sometime, probably about the time he was ten years old, he decided that he didn’t get to have a life the same as other people did. Because of what he buried down deep.
But now, that life, that normal, everyday life that most people aspired to, had come to him. He hadn’t planned it, he hadn’t chosen it. Really, he’d spent most of his life determined not to have it.
But here it was. Like a gift, and he could just reach out and take it.
“I have something I want to ask you,” he said.
“What?”
He shifted, so that he could see her, so that he could look down and see her pretty face. “I have to tell you something first.”
“Okay,” she said. “Tell away.”
“It’s just...it’s not something that anyone knows,” he said. “But I need to tell you, because you’re not like anyone else in my life. You’re not going to be. You’re the mother of my baby. And that’s real. That’s forever. Permanent stuff. But I’ve got to tell you why I—I’m not put together like other people.”
“Are you a tin man?” she asked. She slid her hand up to the center of his chest and felt his heart beating there. “Because I hate to tell you, but you’ve got a heart.”
“Yeah, and about the only thing it does reliably is pump blood. I can decide things. For real, and I can stick to it. And that’s something else you need to know about me. If I make a promise, it’s for keeps.”
“I believe it,” she said.
“If you asked my parents about an October afternoon twenty-five years ago, they wouldn’t know why you’re asking. They might remember something happening, a local tragedy. Maybe. But they wouldn’t have any idea what it had to do with me. You could ask my brothers, and they wouldn’t either. Ask the police. No one would know.”
“Okay, now you’re scaring me a little bit.”
“Good,” he said. “I might need to scare you. So in October, twenty-five years ago, me and a friend of mine, Gavin Taylor, went on a hike. We were ten. We weren’t really supposed to be out in the woods by ourselves, but the property that my parents owned was big, and it was easy enough to end up wandering off of it and get to God knows where. And that was the plan. Neither of our parents knew where we were going. They both thought... I don’t know. They didn’t know we were together, though. So we ended up going into a part of the woods that I wasn’t familiar with. There was a trail, and it was narrow. But we were small, and I think we figured we could make it across.”
It was like being sick, telling this story. Like an illness you couldn’t hold back anymore. His guts heaving it up, making his stomach cramp. This was different from having flashbacks. Dreams. Snatches of memory and thoughts of people falling. All sorts of people, not just Gavin.
His brothers. Ellie. Her daughter, Amelia.
But to actually remember what had happened.
“Gavin scrambled up ahead of me, and the trail was slick with mud. He lost his footing, and before I could react at all he went over the side.” His chest went tight, the words now hard to force out of his throat. “It’s the strangest damn thing,” he said. “Something like that. I’ve responded to a lot of emergencies, but I can’t tell you how awful it is when you have those kinds where it’s all over in half a second. There is no calling for help. There’s no stopping anything. You can’t even buy time with CPR.
“Of course, I was a kid, and I couldn’t believe that my friend would be dead. I looked over the edge and...I ran. I ran all the way until I was across the field at our neighbors’ farmhouse. They weren’t home, but the back door was unlocked, so I ran in and used the phone. I called 911 and called for help. And then I went back and hid and waited. Help came, but... They called for me. For someone. And I hid. I hid until they went down in the ravine, and then I ran. Because I didn’t want to see them bring him back up. I didn’t want to see anything. I ran home and went back into my bedroom and got into bed. And I covered up my head with the pillow, and I pretended that I had never gotten up that morning. And when my parents came to tell me... When they came to tell me that Gavin was dead...I didn’t say anything.”
He cleared his throat. “I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t bring him back by telling that I was there. I just kept it a secret. And I’ve never told another soul. I’ve never told the story to anyone. I don’t talk about him. I don’t talk about that day. I pretended that it happened to someone else,” he said. “Like that could protect me. And it worked. For a long time. If no one knows about a bad thing, they can’t feel sorry for you. They can’t bring it up, you can’t be connected to it for the rest of your life. And I just... I forgot. I jumped headlong into being the guy who didn’t care about anything. The guy who just wandered through life having a good time.”
“But you didn’t,” she said. “You didn’t. You became a paramedic. And when I needed you, you were there for me.”
The words hit him strangely at the center of his chest.
“I reckon,” he said. “But it didn’t protect me. It didn’t stop what happened with Clint. In fact, the way that I treated life is what caused it.”
“The two aren’t connected,” Vanessa said. “You’re building a case against yourself like there’s a crime and you’re law enforcement, but you didn’t... You didn’t do any of those things. They happened. Clint died twenty something years after your friend. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you saw that. That it...stays with you like it does. No little boy should have to see that. No one should have to. You were ten years old. If you weren’t... If you weren’t completely messed up by it, you wouldn’t be a good person.”
He laughed. Hollow and bitter. “It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t lesson enough to teach me so that I could...keep a bad thing from happening later. And it doesn’t change that... You can’t see something like that and not be changed, you’re right. And I’ve never much felt like I was put together like other people. Not after that.”
“That must be lonely,” she said. “Feeling that way, and never being able to tell anyone why.”
“It’s not fun to talk about,” he said. “I don’t feel sad that I never told anyone before. It’s too hard. It’s too hard to tell that story, to have someone else carry it too. But like I said...you and me. This is something. It has to be. For a long time. And if I don’t always give you what you need, I need you to understand where I’m coming from.”
“It’s not a burden to understand you,” she said. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, but this isn’t a burden for me. Not any more than you knowing about the miscarriage. About what happened before that, about what happened after. It’s just part of knowing each other.”
“I want to get married.”
“What?”
He could see how for her maybe there was no direct line between the conversation they were having and marriage, but for him, it made total sense.
“I want to get married,” he reiterated. “Because we can’t be with each other and just be friends. God knows I can’t. All I thought about for weeks is being with you again, and I know—I damn well know—that I cannot be in the same house as you and not want you. I spent my li
fe avoiding domesticity, and here it is. Well, I’m avoiding it, and contorting myself into weird shapes to just not do the obvious thing. You didn’t want to get married because you don’t just want to do something you think might please your parents. I don’t want to get married because...well, I never wanted to. I don’t feel like I’m a man that’s built for love in a traditional sense. But I can do commitment. And no, I can’t promise you there won’t be times when we’re miserable, and there won’t be times we want to leave each other. But I can promise you that I’m not Hank Dalton. I won’t sleep with other women. I won’t hurt you that way. You’ll be the only woman in my life, and I’ll be the man in yours. We can be a team. If you can accept what I can give. If you can accept me like this.”
“What does that mean? ‘Like this.’ You mean someone who isn’t going to fall in love with me?”
“I don’t know that I really believe in love in that way that a lot of people do. People fall in love, I expect, partly because they want to. Or expect to. My brother gave... He’s in love. And he means it. I know he does. I do know that I believe in that. But I might believe in fate. Because I looked at you...and it was the damnedest thing, Vanessa Logan. I swear I saw the future when I looked into your eyes, and I think we can make that future something good. As long as we make that choice.”
“Yes,” she said breathlessly. “Yes.”
And he’d done it. A naked-in-bed proposal that had ended in a yes. Committed to spending his life with someone else, rather than alone.
And he told her about Gavin.
She’d still said yes.
In just a few moments, Jacob Dalton’s whole life had changed.
But unlike a free fall, it hadn’t ended in destruction.
For the first time, an instantaneous change felt good.
And he was just going to sit with that for a little while.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING, Vanessa was buzzing, and still trying to process everything that she and Jacob had talked about the night before. The story about his friend. The proposal.
She felt like she hadn’t even fully gotten to take on the heartbreak of the story he’d told her before the proposal had come, and that made it all a little bit muddy.
She’d said yes.
And she really hoped that it had been the right thing to say.
But tangled up in bed with him, completely naked, she couldn’t imagine a scenario wherein she would want to live with that man and go to a separate bed at night.
She didn’t even think it was possible.
And anything less permanent than marriage...
It really had to be friendship or husband and wife. There could be no middle ground. Not when it came to trying to give their child a stable home life.
And yeah, she knew it was coming down to admitting that she just didn’t have the self-control required to not sleep with him.
Sex.
Sex was the dividing factor between marriage, and not.
It was a strange thing. And some people would say, sex could be a small thing. A casual thing.
She would have said that in the past.
But that was because she’d never had sex the way she did with Jacob.
Sex with him went down beneath her skin. It touched places inside her that she hadn’t known existed.
She would never be able to share him, not when he was hers. Not when he had been in her bed at night, naked and pressed up against her, skin to skin. She would never be able to keep her feelings neutral.
And it made her wonder how much ground was between not neutral and...love. And what that even meant, considering Jacob felt able to offer commitment but not love.
She didn’t know how she felt about it. Or why it mattered.
It was forcing her to be philosophical about things that she tried not to be philosophical about.
But one thing she did know, was that often commitment was much more important than feelings.
As someone who had—in the beginning—had to be committed to sobriety, rather than in love with the entire experience, she felt uniquely qualified to look at it from that angle.
And she had never really imagined that a big head-over-heels kind of love existed in her future anyway.
Truly, she had more than she’d ever imagined, and Jacob was right.
Not getting married just because she was trying to prove that she didn’t need to get married to please her parents was...stupid.
For a moment, she imagined a real wedding, with her in a white dress and Jacob in a tux.
No, it wouldn’t be that.
They were going to have to get married at the courthouse, and quickly.
But theirs wasn’t a marriage like Luke and Olivia’s, so she wouldn’t be having the big elaborate wedding her sister had had.
But she was a pregnant bride too. She wasn’t better than you.
No, but her groom had been wildly in love with her.
She thought back to attending her sister’s wedding. The first time she’d seen her family in years. It had been like a painting she’d seen once in church, of people meeting each other in heaven. Hugging. Laughing. An ecstatic reunion where everything bad had been beautiful and brilliant. In her memories it was wreathed in gold. It had been simpler. Because it had just been a relief to be together again. And none of the darker feelings had had a chance to creep in yet.
It had been pure emotion.
Pure. In a way so few things in life ever were.
“You look very serious,” Ellie said, walking into the classroom carrying a small basket. “A bundle of sandwiches was left for me today, and I assumed that some of them were for you,” she said.
Vanessa smiled. “Why do you think that?”
“Because Jacob brought the basket today.”
In spite of herself, Vanessa blushed.
“Oh,” Ellie said, sitting at Vanessa’s desk across from her. “That doesn’t look like a we-are-friends-and-only-friends-raising-a-baby-together face.”
“He asked me to marry him,” she said.
“Now, that’s what I expect from a Dalton,” she said. Then she pulled a face. “Well, I guess Hank maybe not so much. But Caleb, Gabe and Jacob, I would expect a marriage proposal if they got a woman pregnant.”
“I didn’t want one,” Vanessa said.
“Indeed.”
“I said yes obviously.”
“Obviously,” Ellie said, smirking slightly.
“Oh, there’s ice cream in here.” She pulled out a tiny tub of marionberry pie ice cream and Vanessa’s heart practically glowed.
“Is that a craving of yours?” Ellie asked.
“I guess so,” Vanessa said. She sighed heavily. “I wasn’t going to marry him,” she said. “I wasn’t going to marry him just because we were having a baby because that’s just... It’s old-fashioned and it’s silly.”
“It’s kind of logistically sound, though,” Ellie said.
“But we might be miserable.”
“Every marriage might be miserable,” Ellie said. “You take a risk when you get married. You vow to stay together forever, but things happen. Sometimes death happens sooner than you think. Not that I’m trying to put that in your head. I just mean... We don’t have guarantees in life, Vanessa, and you can’t plan and expect that nothing bad will happen. Maybe you guys will be miserable. But maybe you won’t be. You have just as much chance as anyone.”
“Why? We’re not...in love or anything.”
“Mmm,” she agreed. “Right. So that’s something. Believe me. I think there’s all kinds of different relationships. I had that...childhood-sweethearts thing. I mean, not childhood, I guess. But I met him when I was eighteen. Going to college, and I came to Gold Valley to visit with friends on a break. And I met him. I just... He was the sweetest thing. We had a sweet relationship. He was lovely. It wasn’t like wildfire or anything. But it was...” Her smile went dreamy. “Wonderful. I can still imagine growing old with him, even though h
e’s not here.” Ellie blinked, her eyes full of tears. “I loved him with my whole heart. And I still don’t know what would have happened if he would’ve lived. If we would have had to figure out what it was like to be in a relationship while raising a kid. People change. The years change them. We would have been different just because of years, and I’m different now because of what it’s been like to go through losing him. My point is...you can’t project. And yeah, you have just as much a chance as anyone.”
“I’m so sorry that you lost him,” Vanessa said, her heart feeling fragile.
The world was so big and scary, and full of so much loss. Clint’s death had profoundly affected Ellie, and it had wounded Jacob too. Jacob, who was already so badly damaged from the death of his friend.
Jacob, who had seen things that would destroy a grown man, let alone a little boy.
“Me too,” Ellie said. “But I’m trying to get to the point where I’m just happy that I had him.”
Vanessa could only wonder what it would be like to be in love like that. Because wildfire was the right word for her and Jacob. But it wasn’t that soft kind of sweetness that Ellie spoke of when it came to Clint.
There was nothing soft or sweet about them.
They had chemistry. Chemistry she hadn’t ever imagined could be real.
“Marry him,” Ellie said. “I think you’ll be happy.”
“I want to marry him,” Vanessa said. “That’s the part that scares me, though. When I first thought about it, I thought of it as a grim march that I would be doing just to fulfill an obligation. But that’s not how I see it now. I want to...be with him. And that scares me.”
“Are you falling in love with him?”
The word made Vanessa’s stomach feel hollowed out.
“I really hope not.”
“There are worse things than being in love with your husband,” Ellie pointed out.
“Not if your husband doesn’t love you back.”
“Jacob is a good guy. He probably will—”
“He won’t.”
It was the easiest thing for her to believe.
