But if she heard, she paid no attention. She deliberately passed him by, as if he weren’t even there.
And wasn’t that what he wanted?
Kara wanted to cry, but damn it, she wasn’t going to.
She’d done this to herself and she knew it. That knowledge though, didn’t make this any easier to take. She’d set herself up. Let herself dream idle fantasies about Cooper and how it could be for them.
But the simple truth was, Cooper didn’t want her. A couple of nights between the sheets—no matter how fabulous they’d been—didn’t make a relationship. And she wasn’t willing to settle for anything less.
Now, after talking to Maggie and spending the evening watching Cooper avoid being drawn into stories about the old days, she knew there was no more hope. He hadn’t only pulled away from her, he’d also shut himself away from his own family.
“What’re you doing?”
Cooper’s voice came from behind her and though it startled her, she didn’t turn around to look at him. Instead, she picked up her yellow blouse from the bed, folded it neatly and tucked it into the open suitcase in front of her.
“I’m leaving.”
“What?” He stepped into the room, walked to her side and stared from the suitcase to her. “Now?”
“Yes, now.” She swallowed hard, inhaled sharply and blinked furiously, to keep any tears at bay. She wouldn’t cry in front of him. Wouldn’t let him see that her heart was breaking.
“Were you even going to tell me?”
She glanced at him. His mouth was grim, lips pressed tightly together. “Of course I was, Cooper.” She reached past him for the denim skirt she’d brought with her and never wore. Folding it neatly, she laid it into the case. “Besides, I already gave you my two weeks’ notice, remember?”
“Yeah, but—” He stalked to the end of the bed, then came right back again. “I didn’t think you meant it.”
“Now you know.”
“Damn it, Kara…” He shoved both hands through his hair then pushed them into the back pockets of his jeans. “What’s this really about? I know you like your job, so—”
“Cooper,” she said on a sigh, “you know darn well what it’s about.”
“It’s about us, then.” He nodded stiffly, pulled one hand free of his pocket to scrape it across his face. “It’s about the other night and that dream and the damn ghost and—”
Kara shook her head, grabbed up the last of her blouses and tucked it away. “This has nothing to do with the ghost and everything to do with us. Well, me, really.”
“Kara,” he said softly, voice filled with regret, “I just can’t give you what you want.”
Oh, she knew that. Felt it. Deep in her bones. And she wanted to weep with the knowledge. But that wouldn’t do the slightest bit of good.
“Cooper,” she said softly, lifting her gaze to his. “Why didn’t you tell me about Mac?”
He backed up a step and stared at her for a long minute. “Where did you—oh. Maggie.”
“Yes, Maggie.”
“She shouldn’t have told you.”
“You’re right,” Kara said quietly. “You should have.”
He shook his head firmly, shutting out her statement and the remote chance that she might be right. “It was a long time ago.”
“No,” she argued. “For you, it was yesterday.”
He sucked in a gulp of air. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I know that, too,” she said and walked to him. Laying both hands on his arms, she felt the tension in his muscles. Felt the rigid self-control he was drawing on and her heart hurt for him. “It wasn’t your fault, Cooper. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
He blew out a breath. “You don’t know.”
“Maggie told me what happened.”
“She wasn’t there. Neither were you.”
“You were a kid, Cooper.”
He stepped out from under her touch and the shutters were back in his eyes, closing her out. “So was Mac.”
The tips of her fingers still hummed with warmth as if she could still feel his skin beneath hers. But there was no point in pretending any longer. There would be no future with a man who couldn’t see past his own pain to the promise of something beautiful.
Still, she had to try to help him. One last time. “There was nothing you could have done. Maggie told me that Mac broke his neck when he jumped in.”
Cooper actually flinched at her words as if they were a physical blow. He swallowed hard and jerked a nod. “He did. He was trying to beat Jake and his jump did it. But he had to stay underwater longer, too.”
Kara tried reaching out for him, but he shook his head firmly. “You wanted to know, well here’s what Maggie couldn’t tell you,” he said tightly. “Sam wanted to go in after Mac. He was worried. Jake was pissed off about losing, but I was glad.” He slapped one hand against his chest as a choked off, harsh laugh shot from his throat. “I was happy that Mac was staying under so long. Glad Jake was finally getting beaten. I talked Sam into waiting longer. If I hadn’t…” his voice trailed off. “We’ll never know now. We might have saved him. If I’d just gone along with Sam and jumped in after Mac, he might still be alive. So don’t tell me you understand. You couldn’t.”
“No,” Kara said softly, empathetic pain rippling through her in response to the torment she read in Cooper’s eyes—heard in his voice. “I can’t know what you feel. What your regrets are. But I do know that Mac wouldn’t want you torturing yourself forever over something that can’t be changed.”
His mouth worked as if he were grinding his teeth. “I loved him like a brother. And he died while we all stood there like morons.”
“You didn’t know.”
“We should have known,” Cooper countered quickly. “Should have felt it. And we didn’t. And the misery of that day is still with me. I won’t love somebody like that again, Kara. I won’t risk it.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said as one stray tear escaped the corner of her eye and trickled down her cheek. “For Mac. For all of you.” She inhaled sharply and added, “And I’m sorry for us.”
Then she turned, walked back to the bed and closed her suitcase. She zipped it shut, the sound overly loud in the strained silence. Picking it up, she slung her purse over her shoulder and turned for one last look at Cooper.
“I’m going to your grandfather’s. Maggie said I could stay in the guesthouse until my flight tomorrow night.”
“You don’t have to leave.”
“Yes,” she said, “I really do.”
She walked to the open doorway and paused on the threshold to look back at him again. His gaze was locked on her and she wished desperately she could know what he was thinking, feeling. But Cooper had become too adept at hiding those feelings from everyone—including himself—to give anything away now.
“Be happy, Cooper,” she said, then turned and walked away.
Eleven
Cooper was still standing where she’d left him, dumbfounded by the fact that Kara had actually gone, when he heard the front door open, then swing shut behind her. Silence pounded through the old house like hammer blows. He couldn’t believe it. Kara. Gone.
Her image still fresh in his mind, he saw the hurt in her eyes and closed his own in a futile attempt to make that vision disappear. Instead, it became more clear.
“Damn it,” he whispered into the empty room, feeling more alone than he ever had before. “I’d love you if I could, Kara. But it’s too late for us.”
Instantly, icy cold dropped onto the room as if an invisible blizzard was blowing through. Wind whistled around him, punching at him, driving him toward the doorway. His hair lifted in the swirling, chilly blast and he grabbed the doorjamb and hung on.
Throat tight, heart pounding, he looked around the bedroom in disbelief. A roar rose up with the wind and became a wild, frantic moan of pain. Framed pictures lifted off the walls and sailed in a wide, frigid circle. The overhead light flicker
ed on and off in a frenzied flash like a strobe light in a nightclub. The mirror over the dresser shattered and reflective shards snapped into the room, landing on the floor in a tumble of jagged pieces.
Cooper let go of the doorjamb and braced his feet, leaning into the overpowering wind, determined to stand his own against the fury of the ghost. He stared at the mess and shouted to be heard above the wind, his breath misting in front of his face. “Knock it off! I don’t owe you anything, you know!”
The wild keening became louder still and raised goose bumps on his flesh. His stomach dropped and he swallowed back a knot of pure adrenaline pumping through him. The painful, throbbing moan seemed to slice into his soul with an agony that was too deep for description.
And still the wind howled, pictures whirled in ever tightening circles and frost formed on the inside of the windows.
“She’s gone and I can’t stop her!”
More wailing, higher pitched, frantic.
The walls trembled and the wind screamed.
“I don’t take orders from ghosts,” he shouted, still trying to make himself heard. But even as those words sounded out in the room, a part of his brain argued with him.
Didn’t he take orders from ghosts?
Wasn’t everything he did because of Mac’s ghost? Or at least the memory of him and what had happened so long ago?
Confusion rattled him and he staggered against the force of the cold battering at him. Was he really so different from the ghost trapped in this house?
Like him, hadn’t she given up everything because of her own pain? Hadn’t she spent the rest of her life, locked away in grief? Even in death, she stayed determined to shut out even the spirit of the man who was still trying to reach her.
She was so caught up in her own misery, she wasn’t able to see a way out. Not then. Not now.
And suddenly, his own possible future stretched out in front of him and that, more than the ghostly cold, chilled Cooper to the bone.
“No,” he muttered, shoving both hands through his hair and feeling the ice on his own fingertips. He wasn’t like this trapped ghost. His situation was different.
But was it?
He’d cut himself off from love to protect himself from more pain. Kara had tried to get in, past the walls he’d put up around his heart and he’d shut her out. Hadn’t this ghost done the same damn thing?
Wasn’t she still doing it?
The wind abruptly died and the whirling pictures dropped to the floor with a clatter. The cold eased back and rivulets of water traced through the suddenly melting frost on the glass, as if the house were crying.
As the temperature in the room climbed back to normal Cooper stood stunned, like a survivor of a battle, and tried to make sense of his own thoughts.
Before it really was too late.
When a vehicle pulled into Jeremiah’s yard an hour after she’d gone to bed, Kara sensed that it was Cooper. She lay awake, staring at the ceiling. She refused to get up and go to the window. Refused to look at him one more time, knowing that if she did, her resolve to leave would only weaken.
And she couldn’t allow that.
Couldn’t spend the rest of her life, waiting for Cooper to wake up and see that he had a right to live. To love.
So she burrowed under the quilt and willed herself into a restless sleep.
Cooper pounded on the back door of his grandfather’s house. He glanced across the yard to the darkened guesthouse and fought the urge to go over there. To pound on the door and demand that Kara let him in.
Desperation ticked inside him like an over-wound clock. Turning back to the door in front of him, he pounded on it again, hard wood stinging his knuckles. He felt a tightly coiled spring inside him and wondered what would happen when it finally snapped.
When the door flew open, he staggered back a step and damn near fell off the back porch.
“Are you nuts?” Sam demanded, glaring at Cooper in the harsh glow of the porch light. “What the hell are you doing waking me up?”
“I need to talk to you.” Cooper ignored his cousin’s temper and pushed past Sam into the lamp lit kitchen. His sneakers squeaked on the linoleum as he paced a frantic route back and forth between the sink and the refrigerator. Stabbing his fingers through his hair repeatedly, he tried to shake loose the tumbling thoughts rolling through his brain, but he just couldn’t make sense of them.
Which was why he’d come to Sam.
Sam had been there that day.
Sam knew what Cooper was living with because he had to live with it, too. But somehow, Sam had made it past the ugliness of that one day fifteen years ago. He’d made peace with Mac and Cooper desperately needed to know how he’d done it.
The door closed and Cooper looked at his cousin. Wearing only a pair of drawstring pajama bottoms, Sam leaned back against the door, folded his arms across his bare chest and demanded, “What the hell is wrong with you, Cooper?”
“Nothing,” he muttered, then corrected himself. “Everything.”
“I’m gonna need more,” Sam demanded, then headed to the fridge. Pulling out a jug of orange juice, he walked to a cupboard, took out two glasses and poured each of them a drink. Taking a sip, he said, “And keep it down, will you? Maggie spent most of the night heaving her guts up and she needs the rest.”
“Sorry,” Cooper said automatically, holding the small juice glass cupped in both palms. “But I had to see you.”
“Okay,” Sam said, picking up on the desperation wafting off Cooper in thick waves. He sat down at the table, pointed to a chair and said, “So here I am. Talk.”
Cooper ignored the chair. He couldn’t have sat still at the moment if his life had depended on it. Instead, he took a gulp of the OJ and said, “How’d you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Get past what happened to Mac.” Cooper’s gaze fixed on Sam in a steady stare. “I know you, Sam. You’ve spent the last fifteen years just like I have—just like Jake has. Avoiding family. Avoiding each other. All because of what happened that day.”
Sam’s gaze dropped to the glass of juice. “Yeah. I did.”
“So what changed?”
He lifted his gaze again and shrugged. “I found Maggie.”
“And just like that you could open up? You could change who you were?”
“Hell, no,” Sam said, slumping back against the chair. “I didn’t want to change. Didn’t want to love her. Didn’t want to stay here,” he said, waving one hand to encompass the house, the ranch and all of Coleville. “But damn it, Cooper, I was tired of running from Mac.”
“Is that what we’re doing?” he asked thoughtfully. “Or are we running from what we didn’t do that day?”
“A little of both, I think,” Sam said. “Sit down, Cooper.”
Slowly, Cooper sank onto the chair but kept his gaze fixed on his cousin. Quietly, he said, “Kara’s leaving.”
“I know.”
“Of course you know,” Cooper said with a strained chuckle. “She’s here.”
“And are you letting her go?”
“I can’t stop her.” It tore at him. Everything in him wanted to leave this house, march across the yard and pound on the door of the guesthouse until she let him in. He wanted to bury himself inside her and let her warmth wrap around him.
But how could he do that?
“You’re an idiot.”
Cooper’s gaze snapped back to Sam’s. “Thanks. I feel better.”
Leaning forward, bracing both arms on the tabletop, Sam shook his head and said, “You shouldn’t feel better. Kara’s leaving and you’re not doing anything to prevent it. You should feel horrible.”
“I do,” Cooper admitted. “But damn it, how can I love her? How the hell can I do that after Mac?”
“What’s Mac got to do with it?”
“You’re a great one to say that.”
“Right. Okay. I get it. But I got past that,” Sam said. “I almost lost Maggie. Almost lost the child we m
ade together.” He shook his head slowly, in disbelief, as if even he could hardly understand the man who’d made so many bad choices. “Do you really think Mac would have wanted that? Do you believe Mac wants us all to suffer for the rest of our lives?”
“No, I don’t,” Cooper said grudgingly. God, he could still see Mac so clearly in his mind. Forever sixteen years old, his eyes shining with mischief, his wild laugh punching the air as he challenged his cousins to one daredevil stunt after another.
Mac had loved life so much. Had squeezed every drop of fun out of every damn day he’d had. He’d hate knowing his cousins had pretty much resigned from life because of him.
“But how do you get past the fear?” Cooper asked quietly, studying the surface of the orange juice as if it had the secrets of the world etched on top. “How do you let yourself love somebody that freely again without being terrified of losing it?”
“You don’t,” Sam said, just as quietly. “The fear’s always there. I can’t even imagine losing Maggie. The thought of it terrifies me.”
“Comforting.”
“But the love’s always there, too,” Sam told him. “And without that, all you’ve got is the fear. That’s an empty way to live, Cooper.”
“Yeah.”
“So, if you came here looking for advice…here it is.” Sam stood up and looked down at him. “Make peace with Mac. Lay the past to rest so you can have a future.”
“I don’t know that I can.”
“If you can’t…” Sam said, “If you’re willing to let Kara go out of your life because you’re too scared to let her in—”
“Yeah?”
“—Then you don’t deserve her anyway.” He picked up his orange juice, drained it, then set the glass on the kitchen counter. “Turn off the light and lock the door when you go.”
Cooper knew the way to the lake.
Could have found his way there blindfolded.
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