by Maisey Yates
She wasn’t the kind of woman who inspired those sorts of feelings.
She didn’t even inspire unfailing loyalty from her family.
But you got it from him.
She cleared her throat. “It doesn’t matter. I’m marrying him. Whatever the feelings end up being. We are... We’re doing this.”
And she ignored the little bubble of hope that appeared in her heart as she confirmed her decision.
Right now, her life wasn’t anything like the plan she had formed before she had moved to Gold Valley.
And right now, she was actually feeling pretty happy about it.
* * *
“SO I HEARD that you started a fight at the saloon last night.” Gabe leaned against a fence post and stared Jacob down.
Jacob looked up from his work on the fence line. “I did,” he said. “Though, in fairness, it wasn’t a fight. Because I hit the gutless bastard once, he went down and not another punch was thrown.”
“Well, that’s how it’s done,” Gabe said, sounding approving. “Can I get some backstory on the punch?”
“It’s a long story. He was hassling Vanessa.” He frowned. “I guess it’s not a long story.”
“No,” Gabe said. “Makes perfect sense to me. If some bastard walked up to Jamie and tried to give her a problem, he’d go down and not get back up too.”
But Vanessa and Jamie weren’t the same. Not really. Oh, Jacob believed that Jamie had changed his brother. He’d seen it in action. Had watched her take all his scattered pieces and turn them into laser focus. She was like his muse, if Jacob believed in that stuff. Mostly, he believed in good sex. And he had a feeling that his brother and Jamie had plenty of that.
But Gabe had it all wrapped up in a pretty package and tied with a bow that he called love.
This wasn’t love. It was primal, possessive rage wrapped in something kind of terrifying.
And there was no bow.
“Anyway, Laz is on my side,” he said. “He said the bastard’s not allowed back in the bar.”
“Well, good for you. You gotta protect your woman, there’s no question about that.”
Well, there was no point denying that Vanessa was his woman. In fact, he might as well deliver the good news to Gabe. “I’m getting married.”
“You what?”
Caleb chose that exact moment to walk into Gabe’s office.
“I’m getting married,” Jacob returned.
Caleb looked somewhat thunderstruck. “You. You’re getting married.”
“I am. It seemed like the thing to do.”
“Yeah,” Caleb said slowly. “Suddenly? Because you were pretty fixed on not marrying her.”
“And things change.”
“Well, congratulations,” Gabe said. “It’s for the best anyway,” he said, his tone confident.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because that’s what makes a family.”
“A marriage license?” Jacob asked.
“No. But being in the same household as your own child is probably a pretty good idea, don’t you think?”
“Well, clearly I do,” Jacob said. And he was going to pretend that it was all about that, and had nothing to do with the fact that mostly, he couldn’t keep his hands off Vanessa and didn’t want to. Not now, not for the foreseeable future.
“Obviously, Dad didn’t,” Gabe said.
“Hey,” Caleb said. “Dad didn’t know about the kids.”
“No, I know. It’s just...the deeper I get into all of this... I don’t know. I don’t know how two parents who, I think, honestly do love their children as much as anything can cause so much trouble,” Gabe said.
“It always suited me,” Jacob said. “I was able to more or less sit back and not be hassled.”
“You were always doing crazy stuff,” Gabe said. “Like you were begging them to notice you.”
Jacob frowned. “Maybe begging them to notice something. But not me.”
That was about as authentic as anything he’d ever said to his brothers. And it was the truth. He wanted everyone to see a happy, wild, undamaged guy when really, there was a traumatized kid beneath all of that. And he hadn’t wanted anyone to know that. Hadn’t wanted anyone to see it.
His brother Caleb looked at him, and Jacob felt his heart twist up with guilt. He and Caleb had always been as thick as thieves, and even Caleb didn’t really know the truth. Now that he’d told Vanessa, part of him thought maybe it would be better to tell his brothers. But he didn’t quite want to. Not yet.
“Well, I meant it. Congratulations. Both on the punch and on the engagement.” Gabe clapped his brother on the back. “But I have to go check on some things. See you both later.”
He walked out past Caleb and Jacob, and Jacob had a feeling that Gabe—however insensitive he was—knew that the two of them probably needed to have a few words.
“Engaged?”
“Yep.”
“I have to say,” Caleb said slowly, “I did not think you’d get married before me.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I figured we’d do it maybe when we were in our sixties.”
Caleb was smiling, but Jacob sensed that there wasn’t any real happiness underneath that.
“Really?”
“No,” Caleb said. “I’m not the marrying kind.”
“Yeah? Since when?”
He shrugged. “I always figured I wouldn’t. Mom and Dad. You know. Around the time I was twenty or so I gave up on it altogether.”
And without putting too much thought into it, Jacob realized that it was around the time Caleb had met Ellie. Around the time Ellie had come to town already engaged to Clint.
“That could change,” Jacob said.
“Now,” he said, “I don’t really want it to.”
“Neither did I. And look where that got me.”
“Well, you were doing things that I have not been doing.”
His brother’s admission of celibacy wasn’t all that surprising. Because frankly, Jacob couldn’t imagine him taking care of Ellie the way that he was and carrying on with other women.
It wasn’t Caleb’s way.
“Well, sometimes things happen that surprise you,” Jacob said. “Vanessa was a pretty big surprise to me.”
“You don’t have to feel responsible for Clint,” Caleb said. “Ellie doesn’t hold you responsible, you know that.”
“Yeah,” Jacob said, his voice rusty. “I know that. Or she wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t talk to me.”
“In our line of work, I don’t really think you can overthink the concept of faith to quite that degree.”
“Maybe not.”
“But you are.”
“I don’t know. I just... I feel responsible.”
And for some reason, the idea of letting go of it felt terrifying, and Jacob couldn’t even quite figure out why. Like holding on to it was protecting him from something, somehow.
“He wouldn’t have wanted you to.”
“Bullshit,” Jacob said. “You don’t know that. If we were on a ship and it was going down, he would’ve been the one that you’d sacrifice your life for. He had Ellie. And Amelia. He would have wanted to live.”
Caleb’s face went carefully blank.
“That is true. He did have them. But now you have Vanessa. And you’re going to have a baby. Though I’m not sure that you should need those things to give your life more value.”
“The irony is not lost on me,” he said. “That I have all those things now. And that he’s gone.”
“You can’t change it,” Caleb said. “No amount of wishing changes it. Things just are, sometimes. Because life is a cruel and fickle bitch. Sometimes people who should be here are gone, and sometimes people who should never have survived the dumbass stuff they did do. And sometimes... Your heart is just made to beat for a certain thing, and there’s nothing you can do about it, not in all the world. No matter how much you wish you could.”
Ja
cob had the sudden feeling they weren’t talking about him anymore.
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Jacob said. “No amount of regret is going to change the way things are now. I’ve got what I’ve got.”
It was strange, because he hadn’t known how he felt about the baby when Vanessa had first told him. And now it felt like something real. Like purpose.
Something that connected him to the earth when he’d felt disconnected from it for a long damn time.
“Hold on to what you got,” Caleb said. “Because if there’s one thing both of us know, it’s that there aren’t any guarantees.”
Yeah, well, that Jacob was well acquainted with and certain of. He didn’t need a hell of a lot of reminders to know that. And that made his heart feel cold.
Because whatever he had now, it was no guarantee he would keep it.
“Well,” Jacob said. “You think you might want to be my best man?”
“Do I have to wear a tux?”
“No. Ellie can be a bridesmaid. You can walk down the aisle with her.”
His brother’s face went granite. “You don’t have time to have an aisle anyway,” he said. “You gotta get hitched too quickly.”
“Fair enough.”
And he considered it some kind of truce that Caleb wasn’t going to get in his face for that crack shot he’d made about Ellie.
He didn’t know why he’d done it. Except that Caleb’s words, that he’d meant to be comforting in some way, had only gotten beneath his skin.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
VANESSA DIDN’T REALLY think she needed Jacob to come to every art class, not anymore. She’d developed a rapport with the boys, even though Aiden was still being stubborn. She wasn’t afraid of them. Not remotely. They weren’t all good kids, not really. They were complicated. A little bit messed up. Sometimes they painted dark and disturbing things. But none of them were beyond redemption. They might not be good, but they weren’t bad either.
That was the trouble with people. They were often complicated. Prickly and difficult like her sister could be. Self-destructive and inaccessible like she had been.
Unbending like her father. Too interested in the opinions of others, like her mother.
And Jacob...
She didn’t even know.
But it was easier to pretend that someone was wholly good. Easier to pretend that another person might be worthy of nothing because so many of the pieces of them were difficult. There was no comfort in complicated.
None at all.
But there was a richness to it, depth that made life more interesting.
Complicated was the fact that she really didn’t need Jacob in this classroom anymore, but she loved him being there.
Complicated was the fact that the man didn’t seem to think he was a hero, while he was utterly and completely heroic in the eyes of every boy who stepped into the class.
He was patient with them. He didn’t take any crap. He gave as good as he got when the kids mouthed off. And he forgave them day after day when they said terrible things. When they tried to get everyone around them to hate them, to hurry up and fast-forward to the part where they had destroyed the goodwill of others and could never earn it back, because that was the world as they knew it.
But they were given complicated. And that was something new. The complication of humanity, forgiveness. Mistakes. Imperfection, not met with wholesale anger or acceptance.
Complicated was the fact that her feelings toward Jacob were shifting, evolving, and she couldn’t stop them.
Even watching him now...
He was talking to Calvin, looking at the boy’s most recent painting. And she knew that Jacob didn’t actually understand art specifically, she knew he didn’t care about it in a deep way, but he cared about the kid holding the paintbrush.
So he talked to him. Asked him what things meant.
“You’re all improving a lot,” Jacob said. “Today’s fuck this is really coming along nicely,” he said to Aiden, who shot him a side-eye.
“I’ve never been good at anything before,” Calvin said, staring at the canvas.
“What do you mean?” Vanessa asked.
“I mean...I’m not very good at school. I don’t have any friends. I’m not good at being a son. I don’t have any siblings. I’ve never been good at anything. Except maybe this.”
Vanessa’s heart twisted, and she thought it might break altogether.
“You’re very good at it,” she said truthfully.
“It makes me feel better,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s the painting or feeling like I’m good at something.”
“Might be both,” Jacob said. “Things can be both.”
Oh, Jacob. Her heart broke for him. Because he was absolutely a hero. The way he was talking to Calvin now... He would be such a wonderful father.
And he was going to be her husband.
The very idea made her heart feel full; it made her feel like she might float up off the ground.
She felt happy. To have him in her future. The possibility of having him in her life. He was... He was everything. And she was pretty sure she might be falling in love with him. She hadn’t wanted that. Because she just couldn’t... She couldn’t imagine ever deserving it. Ever deserving him. And that was the strange and funny, yeah, complicated thing. He didn’t think he was a hero, and she thought he was the best man she’d ever known. And that made him too good for her, while he...probably thought he wasn’t enough.
Life was absurd.
But he said that he wouldn’t love her. Another thing he seemed determined to not let himself have, but that was okay.
She had him. And the feelings in her heart that were starting to grow. She didn’t need to have everything. That was one of life’s complications, after all. But she could have him. As her husband, as the father of her child. And there was little to her that was more important than that.
“You know,” she said to the class. “Even if art isn’t what you love,” she said, primarily addressing Marco and Aiden. “I hope that you see that when you try different things, sometimes you find an unexpected thing you like. Sometimes you find out that you have talent you didn’t know you had, or you’re interested in things you didn’t even know were out there. Art doesn’t have to be your thing for you to learn a lesson from this class.”
“You don’t think my art is great?” Aiden asked.
“It might be,” Vanessa said. “But you haven’t really shown me anything deeper. You haven’t shown me anything more than your anger. And that’s fine. It’s something. But I just haven’t seen anything more.”
“Maybe there’s nothing else there,” he said.
Jacob looked at Vanessa, and his eyes held hers. There was something deep and determined there. Something raw and real, and Vanessa’s stomach clenched in anticipation of what he was going to say.
It was so strange, to look at his face and feel what was happening inside him.
“There’s only nothing else there if you choose that,” Jacob said. “A man gets to choose who he wants to be,” Jacob said. “You hear me? You’re all men. Life didn’t let you be boys. That sucks. But it’s how it is. Let me tell you something, if you’re men, you get to make choices about what your life is going to be. You like art? Do art. Don’t tell yourself you can’t. I’ve been irresponsible in my life. And now I’m choosing to make different choices. At a certain point—” his eyes met Vanessa’s “—life can’t be about what happened to you. It might’ve been a bad thing. A lot of bad things. Really terrible stuff. I get that. But you can’t let it make you who you are, not forever.”
“What do you know about terrible stuff?” Marco asked. “Didn’t you grow up on this ranch? Where they send kids like us to see that there are better things in life? You grew up in the better thing. Don’t talk to me about letting go.”
Jacob turned, his jaw granite, and he looked at all three boys square in the face. “When I was ten years old I saw my best friend fall
off a cliff.”
Vanessa’s heart squeezed tight. He was sharing it now, this thing he’d been hoarding inside like a dragon hoards a cursed object. He’d been trying to protect people, but it had poisoned him instead. The bravery she knew it took for him to share it now humbled her. Made her want to go to him and put her arms around him.
But instead, she just listened.
“I saw what it looked like when someone died,” he said, his voice rough. “And I learned really quick that life is fragile. You ever walk around feeling bulletproof? I always knew I wasn’t. Because I saw what life can do to your body. Throw you around, mess you up. Steal the soul right outta you. I’ve seen it. Don’t tell me what I haven’t seen. And I let it decide who I was,” he said. “For a long time. With consequences. So trust me. I know plenty. I’m telling you this because I’m a hell of a lot of years older than you. And you can get yourself straightened out now, instead of waiting until you’re my age.”
When the boys cleared out later, Vanessa was still reeling from Jacob telling the kids about himself when she knew that until the other night he had never told anyone.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said. “You didn’t have to—”
“I could never figure out what purpose it served,” Jacob said. “But you know what? It’s never going to serve any purpose at all if it’s just sitting inside me. It won’t make a bit of difference in anyone’s life. And maybe it won’t now. But it’s not doing anything—not getting better, not helping at all—just being there inside me. If it will help the kids...”
She reached across the space between them and cupped his face, kissed his lips slowly. “I’m gonna marry you,” she said.
“You say that now,” he said. “But you haven’t actually tried being married to me yet.”
“No one has,” she said. “Unless there’s something I don’t know about you.”
“No,” he said. “You’re right on that score.”
“So there you have it.”
“But that means not even I know what kind of husband I’m going to be.”
“Choose what kind,” she said, echoing his words back to him, a small smile curving her lips. “You’re a man, after all. Choose what you want to be.”
