Rocky Mountain Home

by Vivian Arend

  It was quiet in the barns. Jesse moved through his tasks meticulously, falling into a routine that was familiar and comforting. He debated giving Blake a call to assure his brother of his full agreement, but he figured the point had been made, and if his brother wanted to see him, Blake knew where he was.

  By the time morning rolled around Jesse was back to a mostly Zen-like state. Today was when they’d find out if it was safe for Dare to leave the hospital, and at that point they could make some decisions.

  He used the bunkhouse showers so he wouldn’t disturb Joel and Vicki. He’d put spare clothes in the truck so it meant he was at the hospital right smack on time to join Dare for breakfast.

  He pulled out a second Egg McMuffin from the bag and made a second attempt at bribery. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to trade?”

  Dare paused in the middle of another one of those damn sex noises she insisted on making while eating. “Nothing doing, buster. You keep your grubby paws off my oatmeal.”

  Then she upended the small side serving of raisins over the surface and stirred them in quickly.

  Jesse groaned. “Well, forget it now. You’ve gone and contaminated it.”

  She licked her spoon, and his entire body tightened in response.

  Tamara poked her head in the door. “I have news.”

  Dare stiffened, and Jesse dropped his breakfast back on the tray so he could grab her fingers.

  “Relax,” Tamara said, walking into the room. “This isn’t any big shiny news yet. That’s got to come from the doctor, and he should be here by about ten o’clock. By that time the lab in Calgary will have reported in, and I ran this morning’s tests down to the lab myself. So if everything is good, you could be breaking out of here sometime after lunch.”

  Which was great, awesome and a complete relief…if everything was good.

  Strangely Dare didn’t look as excited as he thought she would. “Thanks for that, Tamara.”

  His cousin gave a quick wave and left the room at her usual rapid pace.

  He let out a long slow breath. “Okay. Ten o’clock it is.”

  “No one’s planning on stopping in this morning, are they?” Dare asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s Monday, and since I worked all night I told Blake I was going to sit with you. I figured the doctor would be in. Depending on what happens, we’ll take it from there.”

  She swooped her spoon through her oatmeal in distracted circles. “If I do have to stay in the hospital for longer, I don’t need nonstop visitors. I don’t mean that in a negative way, because your family has been awesome.”

  “I get it, and I agree. But let’s wait to see what the doctor says.”

  “Agreed.”

  She finished her breakfast quietly. Jesse tried to distract her with descriptions of the time he’d spent the previous night taking care of the family’s horses. Like old friends, the character of each animal was tied up in his mind with different adventures, and they finished the meal peacefully.

  But when the dishes were cleaned up, she patted the mattress beside her hip. “Come here. We need to talk about something.”

  He pushed aside the tray and hopped up. “You’re not upset about last night, are you? Honest, things are better than I expected with Blake. Mom was out of line.”

  “I wasn’t upset at the time,” she insisted. “I understand why she said something, but you’re right, you screwed up. I would think less of Blake if he didn’t make you toe the line for a while.”

  A soft snort escaped before he could stop it. “Oh yeah, I screwed up royally. It’s what I do.”

  His comment didn’t go over well. She leaned in so she could glare into his face. “Don’t be a jackass and put yourself down like that. I think you’ve done a lot of good things just during the time I’ve known you.”

  Somehow she always managed to make him feel better about himself. “Okay, I can sort of agree with you. You’re a good thing, and I’ve done you.”

  Dare didn’t roll her eyes, but he could tell she was tempted. Then she took a deep breath and shoved him off the cliff.

  “I’m going to go on the premise that everything is fine and I’ll be set loose today. Which means we pretty much get to go forward and do the next thing. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I wanted to know what you think of us moving to Rocky Mountain House.”

  Everything inside him froze. “When? Next year? Or after Buckaroo arrives?”

  For some strange reason that made her laugh.

  “Maybe sooner than that.” He sat back a little and she hurried on. “I’m not even saying for sure this is what I want to do, but I’m putting it forward as an idea. I don’t need to be in Heart Falls, and there might be good reasons for me to not be there.”

  Okay, this was a conversation he had not expected to have right now. He fought to keep his emotions from showing, but it was probably a lost cause considering the hell yes and the oh my God, no battling inside him. He wasn’t sure what his face looked like.

  Then his confident, always-together woman began rambling.

  “Dr. Martins is leaving. So it’s not as if I even get to have her around to deliver Buckaroo. There’s no hospital in Heart Falls, just the clinic, which means I have to go to Black Diamond when it’s time. I like Dr. Kincaid, and obviously Jaxi and Blake like him, and your multitude of cousins. You said you could walk to the maternity ward with your eyes closed—I hope you don’t have to, but that’s kind of reassuring, all things considered.”

  Now her reasoning made more sense, even though he was still confused. “So…you want to live here until Buckaroo is born?”

  She was fidgeting with the edge of the blanket now. “I know Caleb offered you a job, and you would do awesome working at Silver Stone, and if that’s what you want then that’s what we should do, but…” Dare met his gaze again. “If you can work here with your family again, it seems like that’s what you should be doing. Not starting all over somewhere else. Not unless it’s what you absolutely need.”

  “I don’t know that either job is better than the other. If we move here that means you’d be leaving your family. What about Ginny? What about the girls?”

  Dare wrinkled her nose. “Okay, this is Ginny’s secret not mine, but she’s not planning on being around after September. Yes, I’ll miss the girls, but I also don’t want to be their mom. I’m afraid right now Caleb might take advantage of the fact that I would be home with the baby.”

  “Oh, like hell would he take advantage of you. It’s one thing to help with the rug rats at times, it’s another for him to expect it of you.” There. Something he actually had a solid opinion on. Maybe he hadn’t lost his mind completely.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think Caleb does it to take advantage of us. He’s a really good daddy, actually, but he is kind of oblivious to how much we do to help him out. You’re right, if we go back, I’ll have a talk with him. It’s another thing that makes coming here work, though. But if the idea is too hard to consider right now, I understand completely, and I’m just as happy to go back to Heart Falls. We’ll figure out the stuff with Buckaroo.”

  Confusion returned. “You’re not making any sense. Which is it, Dare? Do you want to move to Rocky, or do you want to go back to Heart Falls?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly before looking him in the eye again. “I think I would like to move to Rocky, but if that is too difficult for you, I have no objections to making Heart Falls work.”

  Better, but it was still not quite there. “Why in the hell do you think it would be so hard for me to move to Rocky? I told you everything was looking great with Blake and the family.”

  She broke eye contact. “I know why you left.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jesse’s stomach slid from somewhere in his belly all the way to the main floor. “What did you say?”

  She folded her arms in front of her body, fingers rubbing softly on her upper arms. “Are you still in love with Vi
cki? Because if it’s a problem, then that’s our answer right there—”

  Jesus fuck. “I’m not in love with Vicki. Who the hell told you that?”

  It was Dare’s turn to look as confused as he felt. “No one told me, but every time you’re around her it’s as if…” Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, do you not know you’re in love with her? I mean, I hear that’s possible, to not know—”

  “Stop it,” Jesse ordered. “I’m not in love with Vicki, and I never have been.”

  Dare tilted her head. “So…she has nothing to do with why you left?”

  There was the kicker.

  He knew his mouth was opening and closing, but no sound was coming out, and sure enough, Dare’s jaw dropped open in shock as well.

  Okay, this was the last conversation he’d wanted to have today, tomorrow or any fucking day. “She’s part of the reason why I left, but it has nothing to do with me being in love with her, and goddamn, never say that again. Joel would jerk my intestines out through my nose.”

  Which was probably a fair description of reality, and something he should’ve thought of years ago before he’d acted like a stupid jackass.

  Dare shook her head. “Okay, I’m not smart enough to make heads or tails of this unless you just pony up and tell me.”

  Jesse shot to his feet and paced to the window, staring into the beautiful blue sky as he wondered at the irony. It was a perfect day and his world had to fall apart. “You know that moment when you want to kill me? It’s here.”

  “You’re not telling me anything,” she pointed out.

  He really didn’t want to do this, but he had to say something. “Because it’s history, and it’s stupid.”

  “Try starting at the beginning,” she suggested.

  The beginning. Fine. That he could do.

  “I didn’t like it much when Joel started seeing Vicki. She had a bad reputation back then, although to be honest, Joel and I weren’t much better. It had only been a few months earlier that we stopped sharing girls. Joel didn’t want to anymore, but—” He broke off and dragged his gaze to meet hers. “God, I don’t want to tell you this.”

  “Why?”

  The honest truth spilled from his lips. “I don’t want you to hate me. I can’t stand to think of you kicking me out of your life.” The truth seared into his belly. When had Dare become this important? Although, it made sense. Buckaroo meant they had a connection that would tie them together for a long time. “I don’t want to tell you that I did something terrible.”

  Her face had gone white, and she looked scared to death. “How long ago?”

  “A couple of years.”

  “Would you do it again? Right now?”

  “My God, of course not.”

  The tension in her shoulders relaxed and she sucked in a breath of air. “Okay. Is it terrible, or just moderately awful?”

  What kind of question was that? “How the hell do I know? Bad enough I was willing to leave my family.”

  The expression in her eyes softened again, and she spoke in a soothing voice that stroked him even across the distance of the room. “I can’t guarantee that I won’t be shocked, but I can say that I won’t hate you, or want to kill you. Jesse, we all make mistakes and I can tell from how you’ve been acting you honestly wish you’d never done whatever it is you did.”

  Her face—she was as nervous as he was, and that gave him the courage to go on.

  “I’ll start at the end. Nothing happened. Nothing bad.”

  Her lips twisted. “I will come over there and put you in a sleeper hold if you don’t start talking.”

  Jesse paced to the side of the bed, dropping into the chair hard enough that he groaned. “Turned out, Vicki’s nothing like her family, but at the time, none of us knew that. Or maybe Joel did, but when they started hanging out together, I just about flipped. I was sure she was using him to get herself out of a bad situation.”

  “So you were worried about Joel. Did you warn him off?”

  “Yeah.” Jesse had thought over those days so often it was if he was watching reruns of his most haunting dreams. “He told me she was fine, and to trust him. But I didn’t. I was so sure she was faking being good that I thought I would just hand her a chance to be bad on a silver platter.”

  Dare had curled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, and now her fingers tightened until they turned white. “Oh, Jesse.”

  “It was stupid, and too far, but I was sure she was playing Joel. I picked a night I knew he’d be late, and I went to the place they were sharing.”

  “And she turned you down.”

  If he could walk out of the room right that moment, he would have. Hell, he’d run, but that would mean giving up on everything that he’d started to care about deeply.

  “This is killing me, Dare,” he admitted.

  “Me too. Can you just tell me? Because my imagination is working overtime, and I’m far too creative. I know you, Jesse. I know you didn’t do anything wrong to Vicki that night, but you’re scaring me.”

  She was right. He had to get the words out quick, like pulling off a Band-Aid.

  “She didn’t get a chance to turn down my proposal because she was in bed already, sound sleep. I had the brilliant idea to crawl in with her.”

  “Oh, damn.”

  He ignored Dare’s whisper and rushed on. “I thought the good-girl bullshit Vicki was pulling would fall away, and when Joel got home he could decide what to do about her lying ass. He wouldn’t have been happy, but I figured after he beat the crap out of me, we’d eventually get over it.”

  “I think Joel would have killed you, but go on.”

  She was probably right.

  “Instead, I crawled in, and hell on earth happened.” He took a deep breath then rushed forward. “I didn’t touch her, I swear I didn’t, but then she rolled over and pressed her face to my chest. She even fucking said my name. Jesse. Straight up said it, and I thought she was picking door number one.”

  He couldn’t meet Dare’s eyes. He stared at the clock on the wall beside the door to the hospital hallway and forced the words to come. “But then she started crying. Soft at first and then these body-shaking sobs. The whole time she’s apologizing to Joel for coming between us. Saying how she’ll go away, and things can go back to how they were before. How she hates that Jesse is miserable. That she loves Joel so much, but she wasn’t worth tearing his family apart.”

  A soft rush of air escaped Dare from the bed, but she didn’t speak.

  Jesse looked at her face, searching for a clue of what she was feeling, but it was unreadable. “It broke me, Dare. All thoughts of… Hell, I don’t know. Whatever childish ideas I arrived with vanished. I’d been so fucking jealous, and without even trying, that girl smacked me hard enough to beat some sense into my stupid brain.”

  Dare sat in silence for long enough Jesse’s heart had time to crawl up into his throat. Her face went through a multitude of expressions until she nodded slowly then spoke quietly. “Vicki and Joel don’t know, do they?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. After she went off like that all I wanted to do was escape. I patted her on the back and whispered some nonsense to calm her down. The whole time it felt like boiling oil was dripping on my soul. She finally fell asleep, her fingers clutching my shirt.” A shirt that was soaking wet from her tears. The memory of that night refused to fade. “I got the hell out of there before Joel came home, and I swore I’d change things.”

  “But things still aren’t right, are they?”

  “No. Because every time I planned to make a move to fix things, I’d take one look at Vicki and guilt would gut me. She was so ready to give up her own happiness for Joel, for me, and I was so fucking selfish—”

  “You’ve spent two years going out of your mind every time you saw her.”

  Jesse shrugged. “I suppose. Last February I decided I couldn’t take it anymore, and there was no use in even trying. That’s when I left.”

/>   For the next sixty seconds Dare examined him, her gaze drifting over his face. It didn’t feel as if she was judging him though, but as if she was truly trying to find the next step to take.

  That’s what came out when she spoke. “I’ll ask the question again, since this whole conversation started when I brought up the idea of moving to Rocky. What do you want to do? Do you not want to come back? Because we don’t have to. Not if it’s going to hurt you to be around your family.”

  This was too incredulous to believe. They were calmly discussing what he’d done. She was talking to him. She hadn’t thrown him out, she wasn’t looking at him with disgust.

  He couldn’t speak above a whisper, too raw inside. “How can you do this? How can you take in what I told you and look at me without being sick?”

  Dare actually rolled her eyes. “Jesse Coleman, put the drama queen away. I’m not an idiot, and I’m pretty sure you’re not one either. Or at least not most of the time. You did a shitty thing, and you shouldn’t have done it, but it’s in the past. Years in the past, and you’re still kicking yourself daily. It’s time to be done and move on.”

  “But—”

  She smacked a hand onto the mattress angrily before ordering him onto the bed next to her. Then she caught his fingers in hers and squeezed them tightly. “You’re wrong about one thing. You said nothing happened, but something did. You got changed by what happened. You learned something about Vicki and Joel that should have made you happy for them. What happened was you chose to focus on what you did wrong, instead of what they had that’s right. Move on, Jesse. It’s time to move on.”

  Rafe had made some comment to that same effect, but it seemed impossible to believe. “Maybe I need to go talk to Joel.”

  She sat up straight and fire came into her eyes. She dropped his fingers and grabbed hold of his chin so she could shake his head firmly. “No. That’s the one thing you can’t do.”

  “But shouldn’t I?”

  “Why? Will it make him feel better? Or will it hurt him even more? A confession that hurts other people isn’t you asking for forgiveness, it’s you being more interested in yourself and what you need. That’s not a confession, that’s masturbation.” She slapped his cheek lightly then let her hands fall back in her lap.