Cowboy SEAL Redemption

by Nicole Helm

  That wasn’t going to change. No matter how hard he tried or worked or gave her space or didn’t. He’d changed himself, but that was all he could do. He couldn’t change any other damn thing.

  “Jack?”

  He glanced up at Alex.

  “One mission at a time.”

  Jack nodded. Alex was right. Make sure Rose was safe first.

  Then he could figure out the rest.

  * * *

  Rose paced the yard of her house. She hated being here without Jack. Hated it. This had once been her sanctuary, but now it was theirs.

  Only there wasn’t a theirs, because she was getting her tainted self out of here.

  When the rumble of a truck reached her, she stood up. She knew immediately this was not going to be what she had hoped it would be.

  Because it wasn’t just one truck. Two eventually crested the hill. It did not take a genius to figure out who they might belong to.

  Dan and Summer and two of her sisters stepped out of the first, Caleb, Delia, and Steph the second. They must have left the kids with Mel and Thack and were here to corner her.

  “I can’t believe you did this to me,” she threw at Dan, feeling far too close to tears. She’d known he might tell, but she’d never expected him to gang up on her, to leave her with no choice and no out. He’d promised to give her a head start.

  “I apologize. I do. But—”

  “Rose Kimberly Rogers, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Delia yelled as she advanced.

  “Thanks for getting my pregnant sister worked up, you asshole,” Rose muttered.

  “I am sorry,” Dan repeated.

  “You don’t sound sorry.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Summer said, right on Delia’s heels.

  “I can’t believe you would try to skip town without telling us. Without coming to us,” Billie continued. “Is he hurting you?”

  “Is he hurting…” Rose could barely make sense of the words, and only their meeting with Dad earlier made it possible to connect. “God no. Jack is perfect.”

  “Then why are you skipping town while you’re pregnant with his kid?” Steph demanded. “Why would you hide the baby from him?”

  “I wasn’t going to hide the baby.” At the disapproving, disbelieving looks she got, defensiveness got the better of her. Because she was doing the right thing. They might try to gang up on her and change her mind, but she knew she was doing the right thing. They couldn’t stop her from finally making things right. “I’m going to give him the kid.”

  “What?” the entire female legion screeched at her.

  And if she’d been anticipating this or had time to think, maybe she could have worked through it all. Maybe she could have planned and strategized, but all she could do with them surrounding her was yell right back.

  “I was going to leave, send the kid to him once it’s here, and…” Why was her voice cracking? She wasn’t cut out to be a mother—she knew that. Why would she get emotional over giving her kid the best shot it could possibly have in life? “I am getting out of the way of everyone else’s happy ending, okay? There’s no need for dramatics. I’m doing the right thing.” She knew that. She did. Down to her soul.

  “You owe all of us an explanation before you go anywhere or sell anything,” Summer said sternly. “Why didn’t you talk this over with us?”

  Rose didn’t know what to say to that or the hurt on all her sisters’ faces. Why should they be hurt? She was doing them all a favor. “I—”

  “She wanted to sneak out of town, because she knew we’d stop her,” Delia said firmly as if she just knew everything.

  “Don’t stop me. Don’t,” Rose pleaded, losing the battle to be strong. She needed to get away. So very far away. “What good could possibly come out of you stopping me, Delia?”

  “My sister in my life,” Delia replied as if Rose weren’t a stain…because Delia didn’t know the truth. “You know how hard I worked to make that happen, and now you’re throwing it all away?”

  Rose didn’t know how to absorb that sharp pain of truth or the sound of another truck coming up the road.

  “Who on earth is that?” Rose demanded, frowning.

  “Well,” Summer said, twisting her fingers together. “I may have made a call.”

  “To who?” Rose saw the answer then, recognizing Alex and Becca’s truck. She somehow doubted they were behind the wheel.

  Jack hopped out of the truck, slamming the door behind him. “What the hell is going on here?” Jack demanded in that military commanding voice that seemed to make everyone stand a little straighter.

  “Is that the guy?” Steph whispered.

  Rose managed a nod, and Jack shoved his hands into his pockets as he surveyed the crowd.

  “Jack, meet my family. Who have overstepped every boundary pretty much ever. I have no idea what they told you—”

  “I haven’t been told much of anything,” he said, his voice so cold, she shivered. “So if you could fill me in, that’d be great.”

  “She’s selling the bar and leaving town,” Delia said, no compunction about throwing it all out there.

  Rose watched each word land on Jack’s face like a blow, and those blue eyes went a degree colder than just cold.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking, Jack,” she managed weakly. He couldn’t think she’d take the baby away from him. She couldn’t let him think that, no matter how well that would work to burn his faith in her down to the ground.

  “I don’t know what to think,” he said. It was that horrible blank tone he’d used all those months ago when he’d been just a stranger in her bar. At the first dinner with his family, when he’d been so clearly numb to every horrible thing. Even then it had made her heart hurt a little—now it felt like she was cracking.

  Why was she always bringing pain down on people? Why wouldn’t they let her go?

  “I wasn’t going to keep the baby from you. Yes, I was selling the bar, and yes, I was planning on disappearing, but you were always going to have the baby, okay? You’ll be a great dad. I’d be a shitty mom. I wasn’t cutting you out or anything. I was cutting our losses. Making everything right.”

  “You were cutting you out. What about you?” He asked it so incredulously, like it didn’t make all the sense in the world.

  “Why can’t you get it through your thick skull? There is nothing about me worth keeping,” she said, panic throwing all the words out. “I am cutting me out for your own damn good. All of you!”

  There were outraged protests from her sisters, and Summer stared at her in frozen horror.

  Then Rose finally understood what she had to do to make this work. She had to show the people she loved all the horrible, ugly pieces of herself that she’d kept hidden for so long. Because the reason they loved her was simple: they didn’t know.

  They didn’t know all the things she’d done to them, all the ways she’d failed them. She’d never wanted them to know, but it was the only way. The only way to save them.

  She was made up of all the horrible pieces of her parents, but she wouldn’t inflict them on the people she loved. That’s how she’d be different from them. If she had to show everyone that horror inside her in order to make them understand, well, here went nothing.

  “All right,” Rose said, trying to pull herself together. “I need you all to listen really closely and think with your brains instead of your hearts.”

  “Hard pass,” Delia said coldly.

  “Ditto,” Summer echoed.

  “Whatever. Just listen. Please listen.” She looked at Jack, and her lips trembled, but she couldn’t let her weakness for him win. “Please listen. I know you all think I’m the good sister who swept in and got Dad thrown in jail, but I only did that because of all the things I did before that. I hurt all of you. Immeasurably.” />
  “Rose, we were all there. We all survived the same thing,” Billie said.

  There were a hundred little stories she could tell, but she figured going with big guns would be the better route to take. Quicker. Deadlier.

  “Delia. Do you remember the night when we were teenagers and you tried to escape, and Dad found you? Then he held a gun to your head?” She turned to Caleb, who was standing with Dan in the back of the little group. “Do you remember, Caleb?”

  It was dark, but she could see the way shock slackened their features.

  “How did you know about that?” Delia whispered.

  “I’m the reason Dad was even going after you that night. I’m the reason the ambulance came and he lived.”

  Her sisters started chattering questions, one over the other, because no one had ever heard this story. No one knew anything about that night except Caleb and Delia.

  And her.

  Rose stood in the middle of her sanctuary, the place where Jack had somehow wormed his way into her heart. She was standing on this ground that had called to her, telling her deepest, darkest secret. Blowing up her life in the process. While a baby grew inside her, too tiny to feel.

  Maybe it was poetic justice.

  “How old were you, Delia. Eighteen? Nineteen?”

  The sister she resembled the most closely nodded wordlessly.

  “Delia was nineteen, and she was planning on getting us all out, always trying to get us out without hurting anyone. Always big sister protecting us. Saving us. Dad had lost quite a few poker games in a row and things were getting scarier. I just wanted out. So bad. I knew all I had to do was win one game, steal the winnings, create a diversion, and I’d be gone.”

  She was shaking so hard, she could barely stand, but when Delia reached out, Rose stepped away. “That’s what I did. We won a game. I told Dad Delia was trying to escape. She was going to the old Paulle house to run away. I had the cash in my pocket, and I sent him after Delia so I could leave without him finding me.”

  The tears started to fall, too hard to fight. Why was she was crying? She wanted to be strong as she retold it, so they understood how callous she’d been, how horrible and selfish.

  “You were home that night, the night Dad was found at the Paulle place. You didn’t go. I remember because we were all so worried about Delia not being there, and you comforted us,” Steph said with such certainty.

  “You couldn’t have gotten out of town if you were there. At the Paulle house,” Delia added so rationally, so calmly. Why couldn’t Rose find that kind of calm?

  “I was halfway to Bozeman, and I started worrying. I started worrying he’d do more than just hit Delia. So I came back. I came back to check and make sure, and he was holding a gun to your head.”

  Rose saw it over and over again in her nightmares. Because if her conscience had kicked in even two minutes later, what might’ve happened?

  “Jesus, you were the one who called me,” Caleb said.

  Rose glanced at him, now standing next to Delia, his hand on her back. “I didn’t know anyone who would help, but I-I knew you two ran in the same circles, and you’d been nice. I thought maybe even if you couldn’t help, you’d distract him.”

  “What is he talking about?” Elsie demanded.

  Caleb stepped forward, but Delia stopped him from whatever he was about to say.

  “You came back to make sure Dad didn’t kill me, and you called Caleb to step in, and you somehow think Dad’s actions were your fault?” Delia asked.

  “You could’ve died because of me! And Dad lived because of me. He would’ve died there, and we would’ve been free all that much sooner. He was bleeding so badly, and I just couldn’t leave him. So I called the ambulance before I went home, and you guys suffered for how many more years?”

  “If Dad had died, my husband would have been a murderer, Rose. It’s not… It wasn’t such a terrible thing that you called the ambulance.”

  “He wasn’t your husband then,” Rose returned. “He was just some guy who hadn’t been a dick. Even so, even so, I saved Dad because I couldn’t let him die. I thought if I saved him, he’d owe me something. He very clearly didn’t feel that way, and I caused so much more pain. You all went through it for nothing. Nothing.” She’d saved him and gotten nothing for it—not leverage and certainly not his love.

  “No, you didn’t cause it. He did,” Steph insisted as though she hadn’t heard the story. She clearly didn’t understand.

  “I was willing to sacrifice Delia to escape. Don’t overlook that.”

  “We all sacrificed each other over the years,” Elsie said quietly. “I can’t count the times I would hide in the closet and block anyone from getting in with me so he’d beat one of you next instead of me.”

  “The amount of times I blamed something Dad was mad about on someone else,” Billie added with a little sob. “I couldn’t even begin to remember.”

  “We were little girls being beaten and starved, and no one would help us. We all made awful choices because we had to survive. Because we were babies. How can you blame yourself? They did that to us. Them,” Delia said, the same vehemence from earlier in her tone.

  Rose could only stare at her sisters. How could they not see? But they were standing there saying they’d all made the same choices. It wasn’t the same.

  Was it?

  “Why do you think you have to leave us?” Delia implored, tears pooling in her eyes. “We don’t want to lose you. We love you. No matter what, Sissy. No matter what.”

  Rose glanced at Jack. She didn’t know how to say that she had to leave because he loved her. Because he wanted to make this thing between them real. Because he believed she’d be a good mother. And that was her greatest wish, but the idea that it could never come true was her deepest fear.

  There was nothing good inside her, no matter how much she wanted there to be.

  Jack cleared his throat and stepped forward. “I might have an answer for that.”

  Everyone looked at him, and Rose could only look away. He was always so brave. So strong. His fingers brushed her wet cheeks, and he tilted her chin up, so she had to look at him. If the light wasn’t totally tricking her, there were tears in his own eyes, and that made her cry harder.

  “She thinks she has to leave because she doesn’t think she’s worth it,” Jack said quietly.

  “Worth what?” Summer demanded.

  “Love,” Jack said, brushing his fingers across her cheek again.

  “Stability,” Billie said.

  “Hope,” Steph added.

  Rose didn’t hear the rest of it, because she was sobbing. It hurt—all of it. Too much. Because it was all the truth, and she didn’t know how to make it the lie she needed it to be.

  Chapter 26

  Jack could pinpoint exactly the last time he’d felt the stabbing hopelessness he felt listening to Rose describe her horrible past.

  He’d been in the rehab center, alone. There had been a horrible space of a few weeks where he’d had to deal with the true extent of his injuries, his brother’s betrayal, and the loss of every hope and dream he’d had for his future.

  Until Alex had visited and told him about his move-to-Montana plan.

  This was so much more than that. Any other time in his life, Jack might have felt somewhat ashamed or weak for losing a little bit of his emotional control, but Rose’s sisters naming off all the things Rose didn’t think she deserved—it broke something in him.

  Luckily, everyone else was crying too.

  Rose was sobbing. He stepped closer, and she leaned into his chest. She kept saying she was sorry, over and over again, and he couldn’t seem to get through that chant of hers.

  Her sisters gathered around her, and Jack slowly stepped out of the way to give them the moment they obviously needed.

  “Thank you for
coming,” a brunette said, sniffling. The voice was faintly familiar, and he assumed it was the woman who’d called him.

  “Thank you for calling me, considering I don’t have the first clue who you are.”

  She laughed a watery laugh. “Summer Lane. Rose was my very first friend when I moved here. My brother is married to her sister.” The woman hugged herself against the cool evening. “We didn’t have much to go on, but the sisters told me about you and… She’s always… She’s always been so strong. I never would’ve guessed she didn’t see that in herself.” The woman started crying in earnest.

  Jack used the back of his sleeve to wipe away the remnants of his own tears. He’d known. Known and not been able to get through that armor of strength.

  She’d broken down now though, and he could only hope, pray with everything he had, that this was her turning point. Her chance to heal.

  The man next to him cleared his throat. Jack had met him maybe once before, since Monica lived on the Shaw property, but he hadn’t quite put together the knowledge that Caleb Shaw was Rose’s sister’s husband. Maybe he should have, but Rose had kept him very separate from all this. She had very purposefully kept him far away from her family and her life.

  He wished he could work up anger right now, but all he felt was a horrible sadness at all the pain Rose had endured.

  “Rose told Delia about you,” Caleb said.

  “And yet I don’t even know who Delia is.”

  “My wife. The oldest Rogers sister. They’ve been through hell,” Caleb said, his voice raw.

  “That I did know.”

  “Delia told me Rose had mentioned a guy, and Delia thought it would be permanent maybe. Possibly.”

  “Well, she is carrying my baby,” Jack muttered.

  “I think the question of whether you love her or not is more important at the moment.”

  “She doesn’t want me to say that.” Didn’t want love. Was it because she didn’t think she deserved love, or because she didn’t want it from him?

  “Yeah, it’s not always easy to hear. When you don’t think very much of yourself, you don’t really want the people you love to love you back,” Caleb said gruffly.