by Maisey Yates
“I’d rather live the way I’m living now,” he said. “At least I can breathe.”
“I ask myself sometimes,” his father said, his voice rough, “if there’s any point in breathing just to breathe. But then I remember I was given a next breath. And I figure I have to enjoy it. Even when I don’t want to. Even when everything is hard, I can be thankful for that breath. Don’t you think if Lindsay were here instead of you that you would want her to love? That you would want her to go on with her life with Grant and be happy? Bet you wouldn’t want her to lose everything because you did.”
“Maybe,” he acknowledged. “But I’m not sure it’s that easy.”
“Of course it’s not that easy. It’s why I have to remind myself to do more than breathe. It’s why I failed at it many times over the course of the past eight years. It’s why your mother and I haven’t been able to fully reconnect with you, even though we want to. It’s why sometimes your mother can’t go up and leave the flowers, and why I’ve never been able to. I’m not saying we do it perfect. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m just saying that it’s the hope I have.”
“Hope. Hope is bullshit.”
“Hope is what makes things possible,” his father said. “Otherwise you’re just breathing until you die.”
The older man got up then, leaving Cooper sitting at the kitchen table with nothing but his impending headache to keep him company.
Was that true? Was he just living until he died because there was nothing else to do?
If so, that was a bigger pile of bullshit than hope itself. Because his dad was right. At least he had the luxury of breath.
But loving Annabelle...
That really would mean coming back here. Because she had a business here. She had a life. It would mean buying himself a plot of land, settling down. Where the grief could touch him again. Where he would have to contend with the person he was.
Where he might have to work to become the person he was supposed to be. The person who was touched by grief. Touched by loss.
And who lived anyway.
A stronger version of himself. A better one.
But it was going to take bravery and strength he didn’t know if he possessed to become that man.
Annabelle deserved nothing less. So he supposed he had to figure it out.
Because that, he realized, sitting there drunk as hell on Christmas Eve at his parents’ kitchen table, would be the real tragedy.
To have love, right there, and to decide not to take it.
To have lost love not because life was unfair, not because sometimes the world was cruel and hard, but because he was a coward.
To not have Annabelle. The woman who skipped down streets decorated for Christmas with a smile on her face. Who loved him, even when he was grim. Who made him feel like he could be that man she saw. That man she’d seen as worthy of adoration when she’d been a kid, and worthy of her love now.
She had shone a light in his darkness, had brought peace to all that noise in him. And he had run from it, because that was terrifying. Wanting another person like this. Needing another person.
It was opening himself up to the possibility of pain again. But...the alternative was life without his light. And now that he’d had it...he knew how dark it all was without her.
He couldn’t go back to that.
So he was going to have to figure out how to grab hold of what she was offering.
All that movement that he had been pretending to make for the past eight years was actually an exercise in running in place emotionally. So now he had to figure out how to move forward. And he had a feeling it was going to start with staying put.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ANNABELLE HADN’T BEEN heartbroken when Parker had ended their relationship. Mostly because she hadn’t been in love with him. It had been a relief in many ways—though her prevailing emotion had been anger, because it wasn’t fair that he had gotten to be the one to detonate that tired five-year relationship of theirs that had certainly not fashioned either of them into the best version of themselves.
No, she hadn’t been heartbroken then. But she was heartbroken now. On Christmas morning, attempting to ready the early-afternoon dinner that her father would be coming over for, she was heartbroken.
She had known that it was going to end. She had. Cooper had warned her. But she had thought it would end because they both mutually decided it would have to.
She hadn’t expected to fall in love. Not this quickly. Not this intensely.
Five years and she hadn’t fallen in love with Parker, not truly. A week was all it had taken to become completely enmeshed in all that Cooper was.
But then, she supposed she had been in love with him when she was a girl, and all it had taken was a slight shove to make her fall completely.
She had known the boy that he was, smiling and handsome and always kind to a little girl who had felt like her place in the world was tenuous.
And he had grown into something else. A man who was hardened by the pain that he had experienced, but who was still good, all the way down.
Plus, he had abs for days.
Not that his abs were the reason that she loved him, but they were certainly fun to touch.
The memory almost made her smile. Except then she had to contend with the fact that she wouldn’t be touching those abs ever again. That was just sad.
They were strange, though, these feelings inside her. Because they were painful, and they sliced deep, but they didn’t undermine who she was.
This didn’t undermine who she was.
It was a strange thing, to go through this kind of heartbreak and feel stronger for it even the next day.
Maybe it wasn’t the heartbreak so much as the fact she had stood up for what she felt she deserved.
She would feel more triumphant later, she was sure.
Later, when Cooper was a trial that she looked back on, when this was a defining moment in her past, when it didn’t hurt like there was ground-up glass in her heart every time she breathed.
It was her thorn.
But unlike Cooper she would be determined to have more than just the thorn.
She would find a way to have a rose, too, dammit.
Whatever it took.
Idly, she carried on mashing potatoes, glazing a ham and getting everything ready for dinner.
It was extravagant, far too much for two people, but they were always able to have leftovers for a week afterward, so it made all the effort and expense worth it. Really, it was worth it simply because she got to spend time with her father. Her father, who had always acted as though she mattered. For a moment, she mourned the fact that his sacrifice, the way that he had treated her, hadn’t been sufficient in the end to make her feel like she was enough.
It should have been. Her dad deserved more than that.
And when he came over, when they were sitting down to dinner, she said just that.
“I’m not sure that I’ve ever adequately thanked you,” she told him. “For everything that you did for me. I imagine a single man could have been doing things that he enjoyed a lot more than taking care of a child all those years.”
Her dad put down his fork and knife, abandoning the ham that he’d been focused on a moment before. “Are you thanking me for raising you?”
“Well, yes. We both know that you didn’t have to. Mom didn’t. No one was forcing your hand.”
He let out a long, slow sigh. “I didn’t give anything up to raise you that I didn’t get back ten times over, Annabelle. The world is a hard, strange place, and when you’re young you have an idea of what the perfect life looks like. Success, house, spouse and children. That normal life. But what I learned quickly having you was that normal paled in comparison to what I got.”
“It’s not really the dream, though,” she said, “is it? Having to work a physically demanding job and raise a child on your own.”
“That’s the thing about dreams, Annabelle. They’re just dreams. They’re not real. They might be nice to think about, but they can’t put their arms around your neck and hug you. You can’t have Christmas dinner with dreams. Reality is harder. But it gives more back.”
They lapsed into silence, and Annabelle started to eat again.
“So,” her father said, his tone light, conversational. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you and Cooper Mason?”
She looked up, blinking rapidly. “What?”
“His mother said something about him not being home the last few nights, and that you were with him yesterday.”
“I...”
“He’s a good boy,” her father said, reiterating what he had said earlier that week. “And I know how you feel about him.”
“How I feel about him?”
“You always lit up when he walked in, little girl. Always. You loved him then—I bet you love him now.”
“But he doesn’t love me.”
“He’s scared. That’s different.”
“It might not matter in the end if it’s different or not. If he can’t see a way through it.”
“That’s the real trouble with dreams,” her father said. “Nobody fantasizes about what it takes to get there. Just about having what they want. But there’s always a cost to something great. Always. To raising a beautiful, wonderful daughter, so that you can sit around a Christmas dinner table with her. Finding a woman that you can love forever. Those things come at a price. Happy photographs on the wall don’t tell you that, but it’s true. There’s no such thing as perfect. There’s just life.”
She thought back to the thorn again. “The roses always come with thorns.”
“Isn’t there a song about that?” her dad asked.
“I think so.” They smiled at each other, and both of them stilled when there was a knock on the door.
“I’ll get it,” Annabelle said, getting up from the table.
She hurried to the front of the house and flung the door open, her eyes going wide when she saw Cooper standing there. He looked awful. There were dark circles under his eyes, the grooves on either side of his mouth deeper, or at least they seemed to be. And still, he was gorgeous in his navy blue Henley that showed off his broad chest and lean body. Still he was handsome, even unshaven and tired looking.
He made her heart twist, made hope bubble up inside her. That hope that was as much an enemy as a friend right now.
She was beginning to see his point on the subject.
“What are you doing here? Because if you came here to pick up a T-shirt or a CD or something...”
“A CD?” He lifted a brow. “Did we break up in 2005?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sniffing. “I was just making a point.”
“I’m not here for a CD. Or a T-shirt.”
“Good. Because you didn’t leave either of those things here. You never even brought a CD over in the first place.”
“I know,” he reiterated, his tone patient. “I’m here to talk.”
“It’s Christmas,” she said.
“Yes, it is. And I’m sorry that it’s Christmas. I mean, I’m sorry that I’m interrupting.”
“I was eating ham.”
“Then I’m even sorrier. But I still have to interrupt.”
She twisted her hands and stepped out onto the porch, ignoring the cold bite of air that greeted her. She jerked the door shut behind them, her wreath making a jingling noise that was severely at odds with the portentous feeling in her soul.
“What are you doing here?” she repeated.
“I had to see you,” he said. “I went out drinking last night. And I love drinking, Annabelle. Drinking is one of the only things that has gotten me through the long nights in the past eight years. Drinking and moving. One foot in front of the other, always grinding through the miles, measuring my life in them. No attachments. Nothing. But that’s not living,” he said. “That’s just breathing. Breathing and drinking. It’s refusing to be changed by what happened. That’s not fair. It makes me angry, that people only think of Lindsay when she was sick. When she died. That people don’t just remember her being alive, but they look at us and they remember that she’s dead.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking down. Her eyes followed his, to the toes of his scuffed-up cowboy boots. The evidence of all the hard living he’d done to try and push the pain inside him away.
He looked back up, those vivid blue eyes meeting hers. “But my tribute to her isn’t any better. I don’t live like she was ever here. I don’t live like that loss mattered. Because I’m too afraid to sit in one place and let it change me. I wanted to change everything around me, so I wouldn’t have to have the lights turned on inside me. Wouldn’t have to see who I was or what I’d let her loss turn me into.”
He shook his head as she continued to stare at him in silence. “I talked to my dad last night. We really talked. For the first time since she died. And he’s not much better off than me, but the one thing he said was we have to do more than breathe. He’s right. We do.
“I want to do more than breathe. I want to live. I want to live with you, Annabelle. Because you’re the first thing I wanted enough to make me realize that if I didn’t change I was going to be miserable forever. Numb was fine until you. But you... I want to feel it. And you’re right. I might not be able to get the thorn out, but there has to be more to me than just that. Otherwise why am I here?”
Annabelle let out a long, slow breath. “I was just talking to my dad,” she said. “He’s inside. He’s still eating ham.”
“Okay,” Cooper said, clearly not exactly sure where she was going with this.
“He said... He said that dreams are just pictures. Not the whole journey. Everybody has an idea of what’s perfect, but they don’t like to think about how you get there. And it seems to me like if we...if we do this, if we’re brave enough to do this...everybody might look and see the picture, but you’ll know that you had to walk a hard road to get there. That you had to do the brave thing. Scale a mountain to get to that perfect picture that we can hang on a wall. You’re brave, Cooper.”
“I feel like a coward,” he said. “Honey, my knees are shaking.”
“Mine, too,” she said, taking a step forward and closing the space between them. She pressed her fingertips against his cheek.
“You were brave enough to be the one to say we should do this in the first place. It’s your bravery that made me want to be even half that strong.” He cupped her chin. “I love you, Annabelle. I haven’t said that to anyone in a long time. I love you. And even if I can’t guarantee what will happen in this world, I can guarantee that I’ll love you through it. I think that’s a choice I’ll never regret.”
“I love you, too.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “You made me feel like I was worth it.”
“You always were,” he whispered. “Always.”
The front door opened, and her father appeared.
“This looks promising,” he remarked, crossing his arms and leaning back against the doorjamb. “I was hoping you would come to your senses, Cooper,” he added. “I keep telling Annabelle you’re a good boy. And I would hate to have that proved wrong.”
“Me, too,” Cooper said, not taking his eyes off Annabelle. “Me, too.”
“Well,” Annabelle said. “We have enough dinner for...everyone. I know that your parents don’t do Christmas in the same way they used to. But, do you think they would want to join us? For once we won’t have any leftovers.”
He smiled, then brushed his thumb over her cheek. “I’ll give them a call.”
EPILOGUE
GOLD VALLEY AT Christmastime had changed completely in the years since Cooper Mason had come back to town.
Oh, not in a way that anyone passing through the main street of town would notice. There were the same white lights. The same bustling choir dressed in Victorian dresses walking down the street every weekend in December.
The street stayed the same. But what had changed was everything that mattered.
Annabelle set the ham in the center of the table and smiled. “Time to eat.”
It wasn’t like everything was happy all the time, but when they felt sad, they talked about it. They didn’t shove it under a rug. They dealt with it. His dad had been right...you couldn’t sit around and wait for time to heal. Sometimes you had to work at it. But it had been worth it.
For the past three years they’d all shared Christmas together. His parents, Annabelle’s father, and he and Annabelle. They were family now after all.
He’d married Annabelle at Christmastime two years ago.
It was funny how he’d dreaded Christmas for years, but now it was the holiday his whole life centered around. It was when he’d met Annabelle. When he’d married her. It was the time of year that healed them all, bit by bit.
That made them all aware of what they had, more than what they were missing.
Annabelle straightened and gave him a small smile, tucking her hair behind her ear. She had flour on her cheek. He wanted to lick it off. Which was insane because flour didn’t taste good. But she did. He just always wanted to lick his wife. “Can you come help me with the mashed potatoes?”
“I didn’t know mashed potatoes could be troublesome,” he said, getting up and following her into the kitchen.
“They aren’t,” she said, smiling up at him. “That was a ruse.”
“I’m shocked,” he said, feigning horror.
“You are not.” She moved in closer to him. “I have a secret to share with you.”
“Are you going to tell me what my present is?”
She shook her head. “No. Though this is a little hint about a gift you’re getting next year.”
