by Erin Wright
It only took Stetson one damn year to put it at risk of ending up on the auction block.
Wyatt began coughing up a storm and realized that he’d begun swinging the broom recklessly, throwing more dirt into the air than into the dirt pile.
Being upset about everything that Stetson gets handed to him doesn’t help you or hurt him. He doesn’t know you feel that way, so it really doesn’t matter to him. All it does is hurt you and keep you from focusing on what you can change.
The discussion he and Rhonda had had at his last appointment rang in his ears. He hated to admit that she was right, because it all just sounded so mumbo-jumbo to him – forgive Stetson and move on. Shouldn’t Stetson have to pay for being a little shithead his entire life?
But as he coughed and sneezed, leaning on the broom handle to keep himself upright, he knew the counselor was right. Stetson didn’t know and probably didn’t care that Wyatt was angry that he got everything in life that he wanted, including a little baby to call his own. He didn’t have everything taken away from him in an instant like Wyatt had.
And sure, maybe it’d be better for all involved if Wyatt just let it go. But as he began sweeping, a little less emphatically this time, he couldn’t help thinking that that was easier said than done.
Chapter 28
Abby
Abby pulled up in front of Wyatt’s home. Her family’s home, before the bank took it all away.
It was still weird to see it a sage green, so different from the white her mom had liked. She knew that time went on, and Shelly, Wyatt’s wife, had had every right to paint her house whatever color she wanted.
It still seemed a little sacrilegious to Abby, but then again, her and Dad had basically turned everything her mom ever touched into a shrine. And maybe that wasn’t healthy either.
She looked over at the tire swing hanging from the oak tree’s branches, swaying slightly in the cold winter winds. Abby had spent so many summer days on that tire swing, stretching her legs up to the sky, just sure that if she pumped her legs hard enough, she’d be able to flip all the way over the top of the branch and down the other side.
Okay. Enough stalling.
It was time to get out and talk to Wyatt. With a deep breath, she got out into the cold air, bracing herself against the wind, and hurried up to the front porch. She knocked lightly and then huddled against the door, her eyes automatically picking out the changes to her childhood home. They’d replaced the street numbers with fancier, more expensive metal numbers and the mailbox was—
The door opened. “Oh, hey,” Wyatt said, the surprise evident on his face. “Come in.”
He mumbled something about two visitors in one day, but when she said, “What?” he waved the question away.
“What’s going on? Is everything okay?” he asked, a panicked note in his voice.
It took her a moment but she finally put the pieces together of why he sounded panicked. Of course. The last time a county police officer showed up at his door, his wife and child were dead on the side of the road. Even though she was off-duty, he had no way of knowing that. She was still in her deputy uniform.
“No, everything is fine,” she said. “I came over straight from work – I’m not even on the clock right now.”
“Oh. Good.” His face relaxed into a full smile. “You want something to drink? I have water, lemonade, coffee, probably a soda or two…”
“No, no. Listen, I need to tell you something.” She drew in a breath, one that she could feel all the way to her toes. “I need to tell you…I can’t have kids.” The words were the barest of a whisper, barely audible above the sound of the central heating system pumping out warm air, but they might as well have been shouted in the middle of town square. They landed like a bomb between them, separating them forever. A chasm that could never be crossed.
“What?” he breathed, staring at her.
“When I was a kid…I fell off the merry-go-round, right onto someone’s bike. The pedals…” She made a gesture towards her stomach. “They had to do emergency surgery on me to patch everything back up, but the doctors said that the damage to my uterus was too great. I would never be able to have kids. I went to an OB-GYN about a year ago just to make sure, and they ran all sorts of tests on me. There’s just not enough room for a baby, after they took out the damaged tissue.”
She held her breath and just stared at him. It was damn awkward, bringing this up with him. It wasn’t like they were really even dating, right? They’d just kissed that one time.
But if what he was feeling on his end was anywhere close to what she was feeling on her end…she had to tell him. He had to know before this went any further. Because if her gut was right, he wouldn’t want it to go any further.
Yup, he’d shut down. His face, open and happy and welcoming, had become a brick wall of…nothingness. He shoved his hands out towards her, fists facing her. “See any blood on my knuckles?” he rasped.
Startled, she look down and stared at his knuckles. “Nooo…”
“Then you can report back to your father that I haven’t been beating anyone up lately. Now get the hell out of my house.”
She jerked her head back, her eyes spiking with hot, painful tears. She didn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything. She spun around and felt blindly for the doorknob, yanking the door open and stumbling out into the cold winter air, burning in her lungs and she was running, stumbling, towards her cruiser, crawling inside, shoving the key into the ignition and pulling away, the tears running unchecked down her cheeks.
Chapter 29
Wyatt
He was a class-A asshole.
He knew it, Stetson knew it, hell, Declan probably knew it and was just too nice to say so.
And now Abby knew it.
Oh, she probably had her inklings, considering the fact that he’d once punched her father and laid him out flat on the ground, and because he’d spent seven weeks in her close company because of charges of assault and battery.
But somehow, she’d overlooked all of that. Somehow, she hadn’t seemed to notice, or at least hold it against him.
But not now. There was no way that she missed this fact now.
It’d been three days since her announcement. Three days of hell. Only one day of working with the kids out at Adam’s place, and all anyone seemed to want to know was where was Abby? The little brown-haired girl who always clung to Abby like her shadow had been especially insistent.
“She promised she was going to come again!” she’d said, her mouth full of metal making it hard for her to speak clearly. But what she wanted to say wasn’t lost on Wyatt. She was a force of nature, and her wishes were crystal clear.
“I’m not sure where she’s at,” Wyatt had said lamely. Abby’d actually never planned on coming that day; it interfered with her work schedule. But he couldn’t tell the little girl that and lead her on, making her believe that Abby would for sure be there the next time. He rather doubted it, actually…
“Did you make her sad?” the little girl had demanded, crossing her arms and glaring at Wyatt.
Dammit. Even small children seemed to know that he’d screwed this up.
But on the other hand, he’d told Abby how much he wanted kids, way back during Christmas. She’d known all this time what children meant to him. She’d had a whole month to tell him, and hadn’t. The people around him were always betraying him; he couldn’t rely on anyone to tell him the truth when it didn’t suit their needs.
Shit. That wasn’t true, and he knew it. At least not when it came to Abby.
His head thunked forward against the tractor seat. He was out in the shop, ostensibly doing a tuneup on this old workhorse, but he’d spent the last…he didn’t know how long, actually, just staring off into space.
With a grunt, he left the shop and headed over to the barn. He was going to spend time with Elvis. At least he still liked Wyatt. Maggie Mae pushed herself up onto her feet and trotted alongside him as he went.
; “When was she supposed to tell me?” he asked Maggie, who gave him a mournful yip in return.
That’s what was getting stuck in his craw. He wanted to just hate her because she hadn’t told him the truth from the beginning, but what beginning, exactly, was that? When he was first thrown in jail? Was she just supposed to tell every inmate who came through, on the off-chance that they fell in love during their stay?
He entered the warmish barn, the heater on low to keep the cold at bay. Flakes were swirling again; another winter storm was going to hit. Even for Long Valley, this had been a hell of a winter.
Elvis nickered when he saw Wyatt, his ears pricking up. Maggie Mae headed straight to her blanket in the corner so she could get back to her interrupted nap. She flopped down with a disgruntled sigh.
Wyatt ignored the pain Maggie obviously felt she’d just been put through, and instead grabbed a metal scoop and opened up the mice-proof bin of oats to dish some out. He dumped it into the feeding bucket and carried it over to Elvis, who began hoovering it down like he hadn’t seen food in the last ten years. Which was always how he ate oats; that and carrots. Wyatt long ago stopped worrying that he was mistakenly starving his horse. The big glutton just loved to eat.
“I treated her like shit,” he said, stroking his hand down Elvis’ neck as he continued to lip around the bottom of the bucket, attempting to suck up the last bits of grain. “I couldn’t figure out why she’d run away that day when we’d kissed, and now I know.
“You could say that she should’ve told me then, but…” He paused, staring at the far wall of the barn, seeing nothing. “That’s the kind of private information that you just don’t go around telling every soul in sight, and it probably took her time to build up her courage to talk to me.”
Just like it’d taken him time – three days, to be exact – to be able to see the situation clearly. She’d gathered up her courage, told him the truth, and he’d promptly acted like the bastard he was. He was never going to win a personality contest, but even for him, his behavior that day had been inexcusable.
Elvis, the oats officially gone, began nibbling on Wyatt’s jacket instead. Wyatt pushed him away with a small laugh. “I better go ride you before you start eating your stall door.” Elvis just nickered again, obviously trying to prove his innocence of such charges.
Wyatt didn’t believe him, not one bit.
He saddled him up and they headed outside into the cold, blowing snow, Maggie Mae fast on their heels. This would be good for all of them; Maggie needed to get outside and stretch her legs too. He looked down and saw her loping alongside him, tongue lolling out, happy as a clam.
He steered Elvis towards the trees that ran along his fence line that separated him from Mr. Krein, his nearest neighbor. He’d follow the frozen creek along. It was beautiful, winter or summer, and the view always soothed him.
As they trotted along, Wyatt turned the thought over and over in his mind. It was pretty clear to all involved, even him, that he needed to beg Abby’s forgiveness for his behavior the other day. She’d never been anything but thoughtful and sweet to him, and didn’t deserve what he said, not one bit.
But that didn’t solve the other, looming question: Could he fall in love with someone who couldn’t give him what he wanted most in the world? He wanted kids. He wanted someone to have his smile and his wife’s temperament (because God only knows, this world couldn’t handle two Wyatts in it). He wanted someone to teach how to catch a baseball, and dance with on her wedding day, and show just how to make the perfect weld, and how to curry a horse just right.
He wanted to make a difference in a kid’s life, girl or boy, he didn’t care. He wanted someone to call him Dad.
His throat felt tight with unshed tears. He hadn’t cried since the night Shelly and Sierra died. Not at the funeral, not a day since.
But the idea of losing the ability to have kids…that was a hell of a price to pay to love someone. Could he love Abby enough to forgive her? Not her, but the situation? It wasn’t fair to her to be in love with someone who would always resent her for keeping the one thing he wanted away from him.
Love…
Had he meant to use that word? He thought back to the last couple of months. Even in the depths of inmate hell, the one shining moment had been Abby. When she’d walk by and they’d trade joking insults or just brief comments. It was what had kept him sane while being locked in a 6 x 9 jail cell. Unlike so many others in the community, she hadn’t judged him and found him wanting.
And then, they’d kissed. And his whole world shifted on its axis and he wasn’t sure what he wanted or who he was anymore.
His eyes stung from the cold winter air; nothing more than that. He dashed at them with the back of his hand.
He had a choice to make, and in deference to Abby and her feelings, he needed to make it soon. Before he’d screwed everything up, they’d made plans for him to pick her up tomorrow and take her out to Adam’s. He had no idea if she still wanted him to, or if he wanted to.
He better start making decisions.
He wiped at his eyes again.
Damn winter air.
Chapter 30
Abby
Abby stared at her bowl of breakfast cereal in front of her, pushing the soggy Corn Flakes around the bowl mindlessly. She was supposed to go out to Adam’s place today. She was supposed to hang out with Genny and the horses and of course, see Wyatt.
Wyatt, who hated her guts, all because of something she had no control over. Did he think she enjoyed falling onto the bike and wrecking her stomach, and any chance of a normal adulthood? She’d known since elementary school that she didn’t get to fall in love. She didn’t get to get married. No one would love someone like her, who couldn’t have children.
She kinda wondered if that wasn’t why she became a police officer. Sure, her dad needed the help at the county; when he was elected, it was a contentious election and the county police officers at the time had all backed the incumbent. The day her father had been sworn into office, 90% of the police force quit en masse in protest. She’d basically been pressed into service, went through the Idaho Police Academy training as quickly as possible, and had been at the Long Valley County Jail ever since.
Things had settled down, and her dad probably could’ve stood for her to quit and move onto something else. It’d been years since that first election, and the county had finally coalesced around him. So why hadn’t she quit?
Because a police officer was scary. No one expected a police officer – a female one, no less – to find love and get married. It was okay if she was single; no one expected otherwise.
When it came to dating, it was bad enough that her father was the sheriff; that probably would’ve scared off most of the men all by itself. But a female police officer just didn’t get many offers for dates, unless she started counting drunken propositions, which she most certainly was not.
So yeah, she’d been using the police badge as a shield for her heart all this time. Better to keep men at bay than to allow them in, and risk getting hurt because of her…inadequacies.
She closed her eyes with a groan. Maybe what she was thinking was true, but that didn’t make it any more wonderful. It was a fine thing to figure out something like this about herself after all this time. She wasn’t sure what to do with the knowledge; truth was, even if being a police officer had been a subconscious shield against the world, it had obviously failed with a certain Wyatt Miller. When she hadn’t been looking, he’d snuck in and stole her heart.
She heard lapping noises and opened up her eyes to see Jasmine drinking the milk in her cereal bowl.
“You little beggar,” she said, laughing. Jasmine flicked her tail but kept drinking it up. Nothing short of taking the bowl away from her would scare Jasmine into leaving a prize as fine as this. Not when there was milk on the line.
Ten minutes. Wyatt was supposed to be at her house in ten minutes, but there was no chance he was actually going to show up, r
ight? She was probably going to see him at the courthouse when he turned in his paperwork, and occasionally around town after that, but he wasn’t coming to her house today to pick her up. He hated her, for something she didn’t control, want, or desire.
Which brought her right back to where she’d started.
Finally satiated, Jasmine sat back on her haunches and began cleaning her face, giving herself a studious bath. Right on the dining room table.
“You are so spoiled,” Abby said, picking Jasmine up and carrying her to the couch. “Please stay off the dining room table. I need to have some standards, you know.” Jasmine gave her a haughty look, dissatisfied at being moved, and then stalked to the end of the couch where she settled down and began giving herself a proper bath.
Rolling her eyes at her spoiled rotten cat – because of course it was someone else’s fault for spoiling her, not Abby’s – she began cleaning off the dining room table. She’d need to scrub it down after Jasmine sat her ass on—
Ding-dong.
Abby straightened up and looked at the door.
Surely not. Wyatt wouldn’t come, right? He pretty much hated her guts. He wasn’t going to come pick her up so she could go spend time not talking to him. Because there was no way he wanted to talk to her. Not after…
Ding-dong.
She hurried to the front door, shoving her hair out of her face as she went. She was in an old faded flannel shirt and oversized sweat pants. She hadn’t exactly wanted Wyatt to see her like this.
Why does it matter? He doesn’t like you anyway.
Still wasn’t useful for her self-esteem.
