A True Cowboy Christmas

by Caitlin Crews

“She was a whore.”

  Becca words slammed into his chest, bitter little bullets. And he knew without asking that someone had said that to her. Someone had put that in her head.

  It only took a breath more for him to understand that it had been Amos.

  Of course, it had been Amos, night after drunken night while Gray had been busy trying to hold on to the ranch and keep his dysfunctional family together, one way or the other.

  “I don’t ever want you to use that word about your mother again,” he gritted out now, because he couldn’t go back in time and keep this from happening. He couldn’t retroactively deal with his father the way he should have before all this damage had been done. “What happened between her and me is nobody else’s business. Nobody gets to judge her. It seems to me she paid a pretty high price for the choices she made. The truth of the matter is that we weren’t any good for each other.”

  He’d never said that out loud before. He wasn’t sure he’d known those words were in him.

  Becca shuddered in his arms, and he pushed on. “And I was too stubborn to let her go when I knew that was what she wanted. So she found a way to leave anyway.”

  Because you couldn’t force someone to be anything but who they were. God knows Gray had tried. Wasn’t that why he’d married Abby? He’d known who she was. He’d known what he was getting. He’d been so sure he’d figured out a way to make certain there was no leaving this time. They’d both committed to riding this thing out, no matter what, no emotions to cloud the vows.

  I love you. I’ve always loved you.

  But it turned out Abby had lied to him too.

  Becca made a snuffling sound against him that reminded him of her toddler years, but when she pulled her head back, she looked much older and sadder than her fifteen years.

  “Yeah,” she said hollowly. “She was good at leaving. With anyone and everyone she could find.”

  Gray rubbed his hands over his face, wondering why no one had ever bothered to tell him that being a father would be like this. The terrible need to fix her tears, whatever had brought them on. The urge to wrap her up in armor to keep her from getting hurt. And worse than both, the unpleasant realization that he had to find a way to be okay with Cristina and what she’d done to the both of them because Becca needed that from him.

  His fury would only warp her the way Amos’s bitterness had bruised all of them. What Becca needed from Gray was forgiveness.

  Not because he wanted to forgive Cristina, particularly. But because the only thing the two of them had done well was Becca. And if he wanted to protect her, well, hell, he needed to give her the tools.

  He had to make it all right for her to forgive her mother for abandoning them.

  “That sounds like your grandfather talking.” Gray shook his head. “You can feel whatever you need to feel, Becca, but don’t take your cues from a bitter, lonely, old drunk whose only joy in life was making other people miserable.”

  “But he said—”

  “It doesn’t matter what he said. He was wrong. I don’t even have to hear what it was to know that.” Gray would do anything for his daughter, anything at all. So he proved it. “I forgave your mother a long time ago. She deserves better than the way this town talks about her. And so do you.”

  Becca didn’t say anything, but she swayed on her feet, like Gray wasn’t the only one taking body blows.

  “What I want to know is why this stuff about your mom is bubbling up now. Is it Abby? Are you having a harder time with her than you want to admit? I’m not going to get mad at you if you are. You can tell me.”

  “I love Abby.”

  “You don’t have to say that because you think I need to hear it.” Gray shook his head, trying to wish away the constriction in his throat. “It’s my job to worry about your feelings, not the other way around.”

  “I love her,” Becca said again, her voice thick. “I love her with you. And it will be even better in a few years, probably. You’ll have kids, and I won’t be here, and things will be the way they should be.”

  He tipped his head to one side. Scratched his chin. “Where are you going?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know. I’ll be eighteen.”

  “Is somebody throwing you out of the house at eighteen? Because I know I’m not. You might have noticed your uncles are still wandering around the place. Why would I kick you out and keep them?”

  “Dad. Come on. Everyone knows it will be easier for you and your new family if your old family isn’t hanging around like a bad memory.”

  It wasn’t the first time he had stared at this child he’d helped create and marveled that they could be related at all. It wasn’t even the first time she’d made his head whirl around like he’d had far too much to drink.

  But it was the first time he would have cracked her open with one hand, right here in his barn, and dug all this ugliness out with the other if he could have.

  “You need to get your head on straight, Becca,” he said, very seriously. In the tone that always made her stand taller, eyes a bit wider. “You are my daughter. You will always be my daughter. There is nothing on this earth that you could do that would make me love you any less or wish you were gone. There’s nothing your mother did years ago that could change that. And there’s no way anything that happens between me and Abby that could change it. Are you hearing me? Nothing can change that. Nothing ever will.”

  He let that sink in for a moment. He watched the way Becca’s chest rose and fell rapidly, telling him everything he needed to know about the mess inside of her that he should have seen sooner.

  I also don’t know any fifteen-year-old motherless girl who’s fine, Abby had said.

  Gray was going to have to carry that too.

  “If there comes a time that you want to go somewhere because you want to go somewhere,” he continued in the same grave and steady way, “then you’ll go. But you will always have a home here. You will always have a home with me. Do you understand me?”

  “I only wanted…” she whispered, but her words trailed off.

  “Listen to me. It doesn’t matter what happens between Abby and me. It doesn’t matter if we have babies or don’t. That will never change the fact that you’re my first. There’s only one you, Becca. And I can’t do without you. Ever.”

  He watched her face crumple again, but she fought it off this time.

  “Okay?” he asked her. He needed to hear her say it.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay, Dad.”

  Gray slung an arm over her shoulders, steering her around so he could walk her out of the barn and back toward the house. For a few moments all they did was walk together, side-by-side. He could hear her sniffing back tears. He could feel the unconscious way she swayed into him and then away, with that sturdy body he’d once held in his hands. The lights from the house beamed into the night, bright and cheery like the woman inside who’d made the place smell like cookies.

  He was glad they were still outside for a moment, so he could get a hold of his own expression and keep himself from showing exactly how much he hated the idea that his little girl had imagined for a moment he might wish she was somewhere—anywhere—but here.

  But he was a grown man. He couldn’t howl out his feelings at the December sky. Not where anyone could hear him. No matter that he could taste the howling on his tongue.

  When they got to the door, Becca turned and threw herself against him in a hard hug. Gray hugged her back, aware the way he was sometimes of how fragile this was. This family thing he hardly understood himself and clearly wasn’t doing all that well.

  But God help him, he wanted better for his kid. He wanted her to feel all those things he’d stopped believing in too long ago to count. He wanted to give her the big Colorado sky that arched over them, dark and lit up bright with stars, prayer and love and home.

  He wanted things for her he couldn’t fit into words.

  “I love you, Daddy,” Becca whispered. She pulled back and
grinned up at him. “And I really am so glad you fell in love with Abby. It’s made everything so much better.”

  She whirled around on that, dancing into the house and leaving Gray frozen there at the bottom of the steps.

  Frozen solid—except for all the places that terrible, treacherous word burned through him, brighter and more painful with every breath.

  Love.

  Gray couldn’t be around love. He couldn’t be in love.

  It was impossible. He didn’t believe in it.

  No matter how it glowed too hot and seared its way around inside him, like it was cauterizing him where he stood.

  20

  “I told Gray I loved him.”

  Abby could probably have timed that announcement better.

  She and Rae and Hope were gathered around one of the self-consciously rustic tables at the Sensitive Spoon, having their traditional December twenty-third Almost Christmas Party. Every year they dressed in festive attire, brought each other silly presents, and basked in each other’s company. With wine. And cake. They’d been doing it for so many years now that it wouldn’t feel like Christmas if they missed it.

  Not that she planned to test that theory, given all the things that didn’t feel like Christmas this year.

  She told herself the clutching, hollow, scraping sensation in the pit of her belly was an excess of massaged kale and vegan cheese, not emotion.

  “Oh no,” Hope breathed, as if Abby had announced the onset of the stomach flu. But she leaned in closer, clearly not fearing contagion.

  “Did you really?” Rae whispered in much the same tone, looking stricken.

  Abby actually laughed. “You guys could have at least tried to sound less dire.”

  Hope shrugged. “It’s not as if you came dancing in here singing love songs at the top of your lungs. I feel like we know where this is going.”

  “For all you know I’m singing love songs internally, Hope. Nothing but happiness and married bliss cartwheeling around and around in my soul like a Disney montage scene.”

  Hope reached over and patted Abby’s hand where it lay on the reclaimed wood table. She didn’t actually say “there, there.” That part was implied.

  “What did he say?” Rae asked, her tone neutral.

  Very carefully neutral.

  Abby smiled at her friends, sitting back in her chair in the clingy velvet dress she never would have worn a year ago. Or even a few months ago. Because that was the other thing regular sex had done for her, she had realized while getting dressed at home this evening. She hadn’t transformed into any kind of goddess overnight, but there was a different kind of confidence in her lately.

  Because how could it matter what she looked like if Gray enjoyed her body so much?

  “Well, that’s the thing,” she admitted, holding onto her smile. “He didn’t actually say anything.”

  Rae’s expression was as carefully neutral as her tone. “Nothing at all?”

  Hope frowned. “You mean when you said it. In that particular moment he didn’t say anything.”

  “No, I mean he didn’t say anything then, and he hasn’t said anything since.” It was getting harder to keep smiling. Abby tried to force it and was pretty sure the concerned expressions on her friends’ faces were a clue to how badly she was pulling it off. She let it go. “It’s kind of like it never happened at all. Except he’s a lot more grumpy than he was before.”

  “More grumpy?” Rae sniffed. “That’s hard to imagine.”

  “What would that even look like?” Hope chimed in. “Did he finally turn into an actual stone, like a hunk of forbidding granite?”

  “But, Abby, seriously.” Rae’s gaze was direct. Then something worse than direct. “Did you really expect him to say something?”

  Her tone wasn’t exactly pitying, so Abby knew she shouldn’t have taken it that way. Still, she felt the scrape of it down into the center of her. Because it turned out that one thing regular sex with the man of her dreams couldn’t do was make her feel any better about being the object of people’s pity. No matter how well meant it was.

  “I expected him to say something, yes,” Abby said, hoping she didn’t sound like a petulant kid because that was pretty much exactly how she felt inside.

  “But you didn’t expect him to say he loved you back.” Rae shook her head. “You can’t have expected that, right?”

  “And why not?” Hope demanded, frowning at Rae. “Why shouldn’t the man be head over heels in love with Abby?”

  “Of course he should be,” Rae threw right back. “Of course, he’s an idiot. I’m just saying it’s not the biggest surprise ever that Gray Everett wasn’t suddenly spouting love poetry.”

  Rae was right. It wasn’t a surprise at all. Abby had been almost 100 percent certain that there was no possibility Gray would return her feelings or respond to them positively. Or respond at all, for that matter.

  But it was that almost that had sunk its teeth into her. It was that almost that had made her imagine a world of maybe … Just maybe …

  Instead, this brand new marriage of hers had gone quiet.

  On the surface, everything was the same. They both seemed to like their routines and how easy it was to sink deeper into them. They both seemed to enjoy their division of labor. Becca had seemed lighter in the aftermath of her run-in with Lily, walking in from the barn one night with a spring in her step and a silliness about her that hadn’t been there before. Abby assumed that was because Gray had actually talked to her about her mother.

  Which meant Abby had done her job.

  More than that, it meant that Gray did in fact remember that night. Just in case Abby was tempted to tell herself that he didn’t.

  Everything was great, really. On the surface. And yet below it, everything had changed.

  Where there had been an ease in her interactions with Gray, now there was tension. He had opened up to her that night—in the way she had always imagined he might—but he didn’t do it again.

  At night he stayed late in his office, gruffly telling Abby to go on up to bed before him. Which she did, because what else was there to do? Fight with him about bedtime like a child? Every night she would get into bed, read until her eyes were heavy and she sometimes dropped her book on her own face, until she was forced to give up and turn out the lights.

  She never heard him come to bed. But at some point or other in those long, dark, late December nights, they would turn to each other. And it was like they … combusted.

  Gray was like a fury, dark and intense as he moved over her, under her.

  There was no laughter in those dark, wild moments, lost somewhere between dreams and waking. There was only the way he pounded inside her and the way she came apart in his hands. No words, no unwanted I love yous, nothing at all but need and passion until they were both limp.

  On the long, frigid drive into town in the mornings, Abby would blink out at the snow and tell herself that what happened in the middle of the night was Gray’s response. It was the way a man who didn’t or couldn’t talk communicated.

  In the dark, deep inside her with his mouth against her skin, he was eloquent.

  Abby didn’t know how exactly to share that with her friends.

  She didn’t know how to explain what it felt like to love someone so much that she was tempted to tell herself—and them—that it didn’t matter that he clearly didn’t feel the same. That she almost wanted to pretend she didn’t like Christmas herself so he wouldn’t feel so alone and angry.

  There was a part of her, threaded through the hurt feelings she was trying so hard not to nurse, that didn’t mind if he didn’t love her as long as he let her love him in peace.

  How could she say that to either one of her friends? They would hate that for her. They would see it as a loss. A terrible surrender. They would lecture her about reciprocity and losing herself in a man, and they would mean well. If she wanted them to, they would leap up from this odd, yet surprisingly tasty experimental hip
ster dinner, and charge out into the nearest vehicle. They would mount their own small army in her defense and get directly into Gray’s face if that was what Abby wanted.

  But she didn’t want it.

  Because love wasn’t as simple as Abby had always imagined it. It wasn’t as simple as a sweet kiss in a fairy tale that charged the air with magic and changed everything, complete with singing mice and animated household articles.

  It was what happened after the kiss. It was what happened in the dark as well as the sharp winter light. It was protecting as much as it was possessing, and she understood both.

  Just as she understood that if she tried to stumble through an explanation of this, both of her friends would argue that Gray ought to have been the one protecting her.

  But Abby was the one who had spent her whole life sifting through her confusing responses to the things her mother had done to her. Abby was the one who had known that no matter what happened with Lily, or what gross feelings she might carry around about it, she had her grandparents. Her friends.

  What had Gray ever had? He and his brothers didn’t get along, all of them too angry at each other and their father to realize they were more alike than not. Then he’d had Cristina, who had taught him to trust even less than he might have already.

  Abby knew he had friends, though the ranch kept him too busy to see much of them. She knew he enjoyed his foreman, his hands. But she also knew he didn’t depend on them the way she depended on Hope and Rae.

  Does he depend on anyone? she asked herself. Does he know how?

  Abby didn’t know if Gray would ever love her. But she found she couldn’t blame him for that. She wasn’t entirely sure the man knew what love was.

  It was lucky she was around. She could show him. Over time, she told herself, she would show him. She would love by example.

  Something she knew her friends would think was a cop-out.

  Or worse, deeply sad.

  “Are you okay?” Hope asked, bringing Abby back to the Sensitive Spoon with a jolt.

  Abby knew that if she wanted, she could turn this whole night into a forensic examination of every word that Gray had ever said to her. And every response she’d ever had to him in return.