by Hanna Hart
“Are you kidding me right now?” she laughed.
Four months ago, Skylar had started taking on jobs with her ex, a vet tech.
She convinced him that it was nothing. She said that they had dated briefly at the beginning of college. Nothing more than a couple of months.
Jaxon wasn’t a jealous person—until then. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to be jealous or controlling.
And it came back to bite him.
“Tell me you’re not with him then,” he dared her.
“I’m not with him,” she said with a careless laugh.
“Have you kissed him?”
Skylar’s brave smile faded then. She held his eyes for what felt like forever, and he felt his heart resume its shattering.
“Yes,” she said.
Jaxon closed his mouth, staring at the beautiful creature before him. He watched her breath come out in cold plumes and studied every inch of her.
“Jax, talk to me,” she said, but he couldn’t.
He just stared at her, slowly realizing that everything he had built
That girl—that special girl he’d met who finally changed everything for him—suddenly had no interest in him anymore.
He had no delusions of grandeur. He knew this was it. It was over. If she didn’t love him now, she would never love him again. They were not the off-and-on couple. If she was saying it was over, then she meant it.
It was only in the days that followed that Jaxon finally registered a reaction to the breakup.
He’d begged and bargained for her to stay. He’d used guilt. “We built a family,” he reasoned, trying to appeal to the love he knew she felt for Sutton.
Nothing worked.
He explained the ins and outs of his relationship to Madelyn.
He had always thought that he and Skylar were a unit who made decisions together.
They based their relationship around their incredible friendship. They communicated. They never went to bed angry.
They did all of the stupid things you were supposed to do to keep a relationship alive, and somehow, it all came crashing down anyway.
“Sounds horrible,” Madelyn said, wide-eyed as she rested her hand against Sutton’s back.
“Breakups are notoriously horrible. So yeah.” He gave a bitter chuckle. “I don’t have any desire to do it all over again.”
The brunette reached over and brushed her hand through the side of his hair and offered a smile as she said, “Who knows. Maybe you won’t have to.”
Madelyn was a mystery, but so sweet. She was this girl who came out of nowhere and had somehow managed to get into his life at a time when he thought his heart had been completely walled off.
There was something perfect about her.
Still, the thought of jumping back into a relationship made him feel sick to his stomach.
“I don’t know...” he began. “My faith in relationships isn’t at an all-time high right now.”
“Hey, you’re preaching to the choir,” she smirked.
“But faith can be restored,” he said.
Madelyn looked down at Sutton, then back up at Jaxon as she said, “I think you’re right.”
10
Madelyn
Sutton was the most beautiful boy Madelyn had ever seen in her entire life.
He was just under three-foot-tall with bright blue eyes and pouty little lips. His expression was fixed with an almost permanent smile, and he was just as friendly and talkative as she hoped he would be.
She ran her hands through his dark little fauxhawk and couldn’t help but laugh at the styling. This was what happened when you left a young, single guy in charge of styling a toddler.
Sutton wore a dark blue polo shirt with tiny white polka dots, khaki shorts, and adorable baby loafers.
Her heart was so full whenever she was around him—which was a lot these days.
Not only was her relationship with Jaxon progressing nicely, allowing her more family time with Sutton, but she offered to babysit whenever she could. She preferred time alone with Sutton to time with him and Jaxon.
When Jaxon was at work, she could pick Sutton up and hold him close like a mother would hold a son. When he was gone, she didn’t have to silence her tears.
It was a warm Sunday evening, and the sun was just starting to go down.
Jaxon had been called into the ranch for a Sunday wedding.
Madelyn offered her services with Sutton and had taken him out into the back yard to play.
“I have a story,” Sutton said as he walked up to the swing-set hand in hand with Madelyn.
“Oh yeah?”
“There was a cow named Murray, and he was friends with a hippo and a turtle, and he wished he could swim,” he explained absent-mindedly. “Oh! And there was also a bear.”
“Brown bear, grizzly bear, or a polar bear?” she said with fascination.
“All of them.”
“All of them?” she repeated with a bemused giggle. “There were three bears?”
“Yeah!”
“Okay, go on,” she said as she lifted him into the safety of the child’s swing.
“And they were all looking for honey.”
“Even the turtle?”
“Yeah,” Sutton said with a breath.
And that was it.
That was the end of the story.
Jaxon would playfully roll his eyes when this happened. “Finish the story, buddy!” he would say.
But Madelyn loved Sutton’s half-finished thoughts.
“One day, he’ll come up with the end of a story and it’ll blow your socks off,” she once teased Jaxon.
“Well, it’d better,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve been waiting over a year for some of these stories to end. I guess I will forever be on the edge of my seat about how the hippo gets his bowtie back.”
When she was with Sutton, she felt whole again. That was the only way she could describe it.
Her heart filled and leaped with a feeling she’d only ever experienced after she’d first had Sutton. It was completeness she didn’t know she needed.
It was as though there had been a hole that had been in her life without her ever knowing until it was filled.
She held his tiny hand in hers, and he seemed to feel something, too.
Madelyn knew she wasn’t imagining it.
Jaxon was a good dad to Sutton. There was no doubt that he provided well for him financially, but it was so much more than that. When she saw the way Jaxon looked at the little boy, she could see a loyal love and fierce protection there. She felt safe and happy that Sutton had been raised in such a loving home, mother or not.
This was much more than Madelyn could say for Sutton’s biological father. He wanted nothing to do with Sutton or Madelyn. He didn’t even stick around for his own son’s birth.
She remembered coming home from a doctor’s appointment to see Travis loading luggage and garbage bags full of clothes into the back of his van.
“What’s all this?” she asked cheerfully as she walked up next to him.
“It’s uh...it’s my stuff,” he said.
“Why is your stuff packed up?” she asked with a curious laugh.
“I got that job in San Diego,” he said quickly.
She followed him up the stairs and watched him pick up another garbage bag full of stuff, curious why he wasn’t asking what happened at her appointment.
“That’s amazing!” she said, stopping him on his way back to the car and throwing her arms around him. “Congratulations, baby.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he said stiffly. She hadn’t yet noticed that he didn’t return her embrace, instead turning awkwardly from her and throwing the bag into the back seat and closing the side door. “They said they want me there by the end of next week, so...”
“Wow, that’s fast,” she said, crossing her arms, mind elsewhere. “Really fast. I’m not going to be of much help to you, but maybe we can hire movers or something?” she said, scattered, wo
ndering how they were going to get to California so quickly, especially with all of her doctor’s appointments. “Oh, and I’ll have to tell the landlord we’re moving—have you done it yet?” she asked, and Travis shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell my dad,” she suddenly realized.
“You don’t have to tell him anything. I’d rather he not know, to be honest,” Travis said sharply. It was only then that she realized he hadn’t met her eyes since she got out of her car.
“Well, yeah, me neither, but when the baby gets here, he’ll want to—” she began to explain, but he put a hand up and said, “He doesn’t have to know because I’m going by myself.”
He finally met her eyes, and she could see darkness there. It was a cold, hollow look that she’d never seen from him before.
“I just can’t,” he said with a helpless shrug. “I can’t anymore, Maddie.”
Her body went cold. “Can’t...what?”
She could see the emotion overtaking his features as he said, “Please don’t make me say it.”
“Travis, are you leaving me?” she asked.
“I just can’t,” he repeated.
“Can’t what? Stop saying that! You can’t what?”
“I can’t stay here and watch you die!” Travis shouted, his hand thrown into the air.
The outburst quickly turned into tears, and Madelyn exhaled sharply, as though some other force has stolen the breath from her lungs. She felt her already weakened body go numb. She crouched down to try to stable herself but ended up flat on her backside in the middle of the walkway.
“Please, don’t make me do it,” Travis continued to cry, wildly shaking his head. “I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough. Please.”
She looked up at him, eyes wide, and repeated, “You’re leaving?”
“I’m not happy, Maddie. I haven’t been for a while,” he said as he crouched down next to her.
“You said you loved me,” she said, staring up into the sky. She narrowed her brows thoughtfully and continued, “You said it yesterday. What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I do love you,” he said, then repeated, “I love you. But I can’t stick around and watch you wither away. I can’t watch our kid die.”
“What are you talking about? Why are you being so fatalist about this?” she said. “What happened to yesterday—what happened to staying positive?”
Madelyn had been in shock. She felt breathless and numb, but she couldn’t register any other emotion until she suddenly burst out into violent sobs.
“What’s going on, Travis? Is there someone else?” she said, half crying, half threatening as she continued, “You may as well just tell me now because I’ll find out one way or the other.”
“You’ll find out?” Travis repeated indignantly. “Oh, you’ll find out? You gonna get your co-workers to spy on me, Madelyn? Don’t be that girl. Don’t be the girl who begs the guy to stay or starts following him around like some psychopath.”
Madelyn met Travis when she was twenty years old. By twenty-one, she was pregnant, and her health was in a downward spiral. He had been her rock all of this time, but now he sounded like someone else.
His words were full of hate. His tone was frustrated and tired. It was begging her to let him go.
As Travis watched her cry, he sighed and softened, if only slightly. “There is nobody else,” he enunciated.
“You just don’t want me,” she cried.
Travis pressed his lips thin but said nothing.
“So you think I’m going to die and you’re going to...what?” she asked, trying to reason out his logic. “Let me die alone?”
Travis swallowed, but he’d stopped looking at her.
“What about your son?” she cried.
Travis shrugged. “I don’t even know if he’s mine.”
And just like that, Madelyn’s eyes widened, and her tears immediately stopped.
“You were spending all that time with Chris, and we were pretty rocky,” he snapped. “How do I know?”
There were only two reasons why Travis would say something so horrible.
Either he was trying to make himself believe it was true so that he could distance himself from her without guilt, or he was trying to hurt her.
“You’re right, Travis,” she seethed. “He isn’t yours, and it doesn’t matter because I’m going to die before we can ever find out, right? Get out.”
“Maddie,” he said, but she was done.
“Get out!” she shouted.
Travis left that night, and Madelyn was so furious—so filled with indignant rage—that it took days for her to finally break down and cry.
Couples break up.
Couples with kids break up.
Madelyn knew this. She knew pregnancy didn’t make her immune to heartbreak, but it didn’t erase her shock.
Travis had done such a good job of pretending like she was still important to him.
He had carried on for months, acting like he was more in love with her than ever—that they were going to fight her illness and raise their family.
But all the while, he had been planning his escape.
What hurt the most was how Travis saw her. She was a ghost.
Barely alive.
To Travis—her love, her first, and the father of her child—she was nothing more than the walking dead.
He had already emotionally distanced himself from her, believing that she would die. Maybe he thought it would be easier to deal with the devastation if he broke up with her. Maybe he had stopped loving her. Maybe her illness had become a chore to him.
Whatever broke the camel’s back, this much was certain: to Travis, Madelyn was already dead.
She wondered what that first night gone must have been like for him.
Did he feel guilty?
Did he feel relieved?
Did he realize that he had lost the right to call himself a man after walking out on the sick mother of his child?
His mother called her the next couple of months. She’d even come to see Madelyn on a few occasions and asked about the baby, but she defended Travis each time. She said she hoped Travis and Madelyn would get back together, but that he needed “time to think” because he’d never “been through something like this before.”
“Which part, Debbie?” Madelyn snapped viciously. “Having a child or going through a deadly illness?”
Debbie sat up straight, caught off guard by Madelyn’s sudden outburst.
“Because, guess what? I’ve never gone through them before either, but I don’t have the option just to run away from it.”
Debbie didn’t come back after that.
Madelyn heard through a friend that Travis eventually won Debbie over, convincing her that the baby wasn’t his and that he’d known all along but they had decided as a couple not to tell anybody.
It was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
And looking at him now…her son.
He was the spitting image of Travis, and the boy’s real father would never know.
But Madelyn knew.
She felt complete, but also so afraid. On top of having Sutton back in her life, she also had the affection of Jaxon Brooks—their relationship bursting with new love.
But as she knew all too well, once you have something to love, you have something to lose.
11
Jaxon
Jaxon had been seeing Madelyn for the past three weeks. He was more endeared to her than ever. When he was at work or by himself, he wished she were there and found himself daydreaming about her on more than one occasion. It seemed that, without him meaning to, he had begun dating the girl.
He didn’t know if he was ready to embark on another romantic adventure. He wasn’t even sure he would classify relationships as an adventure anymore. Once upon a time, he would have. Relationships were just there to have fun with. A girlfriend was just someone to take to a movie, to kiss, to bring along to events with friends so that you didn’t feel a
lone.
Then he met Skylar, fell in love, and realized how traumatizing heartbreak really was.
He wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing with Madelyn. He liked her, and he could see them together for the long term, especially because she seemed to adore Sutton so much. But he didn’t know if he was ready to jump back into a relationship.
Regardless of his emotional hesitations, he had been planning an outing for him and Madelyn for the last couple of days.
“Are you working today?” he asked as Maddie opened her front door.
She greeted him with a broad, toothy smile and said, “No, why?”
“Because I think it’s about time that you see the ranch, don’t you?” he said.
“Sounds tempting,” she said, stepping out onto her porch. She jutted her hip out to the side and asked, “And what will we do once we’re there?”
“I’m thinking we’ll start the day with you, me, and Sutton on horseback,” he said.
“I’ve never ridden a horse before!”
“What?” he exclaimed. “That’s crazy! Well, we need to remedy this right away. Then afterward, we’ll grab some food and head to the bonfire.”
“You have bonfires at your ranch?” she asked, seeming more intrigued by his offer.
“It’s summer,” he said as though that should answer any questions she had. “Well, basically, anyway,” he shrugged. “I want everyone to have the authentic summer experience, and in Texas, that meant bonfires and beaches.”
“And are you going to bring the beach to your ranch, too?” she teased.
“Nah. But we’ve got one he—” he began, then caught himself. He looked down at Sutton, who was standing by his legs and corrected, “one heck of a pool.”
“Sounds like my kind of afternoon,” she smiled. “Let me grab my swimsuit.”
And just like that, Madelyn was in.
For the first time in a long while, Jaxon was nervous about bringing someone new to the ranch. It was silly, he knew. The ranch was a smashing success, but part of him was still anxious over whether Madelyn would like it or not. He wanted to show her a perfect experience at Brookside.
After riding out to the immense luxury ranch, the three of them were escorted by wagon down to the stables.
