by Maisey Yates
“Are you sure that’s not all of Mom’s baggage talking right now?”
“Who the hell knows? There’s too much of this to sort through. But, baggage or not, I think she deserves a choice. A choice that isn’t forced by me, by any declarations.”
Liam looked around them, at the still, quiet setting. “All right. But she’s not here. So you tell me... Do you love her?”
“I don’t want to,” Alex said, his voice sounding like gravel.
“But you do.”
“It’s impossible. And it’s only going to end in a hell of a lot of pain.”
“Yeah, well, life is painful all around. It hurts. It hurts to want something. But it hurts even more to want something and find out there’s nothing in it. That it wasn’t worth it. To pour yourself into something that brings no satisfaction in the end. And yeah, I’m speaking from experience.”
“What experience?”
Liam laughed. “Do you know how much money I made on investments? A lot. Like, I don’t need to be here. I could be on an island somewhere financing my life from my Swiss bank account. I spent years on that. And then I stood there in a big office that I hated, looking at a city I liked even less, asking what the hell my life was and what the hell I’d been doing with it. And then I got the call about this place.”
“You never... I didn’t know. How did I not know that about you?” Alex asked.
“Because we’re messed up.”
That did make Alex laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”
“I didn’t blame you, you know,” Liam said finally.
“For?” Alex asked, something tightening in his chest.
“Dad. And I never told you to smile so you’d be easier for other people to deal with. It was so life would feel easier to you.”
Alex studied his brother, and he felt that gulf between them, wider than usual. All of the stuff that happened when they were kids that they didn’t talk about. The years they hadn’t talked because Liam had left home and he hadn’t shared much about where he’d gone, and Alex had been in the military.
Alex had made himself a family there. A brotherhood.
He had brothers here and he’d been planning on leaving. Because he was afraid of what they’d have to deal with if they ever talked to each other, him and Liam. If they ever really talked. And he was afraid of what it would cost to bond with his brothers. To try again with family when with his parents, all the trying in the world hadn’t done any good.
Liam let out a long, slow breath. “This thing with Clara...yeah, if you lose her, it’s going to hurt like hell. And you and I both know, better than almost anybody, that hope of any kind isn’t cheap. But here you are, and you’ve got somebody who loves you. And if you just took that step. Well, if you just took that step, maybe somebody would love you back. And maybe it would work. And maybe it won’t. But if you don’t try, you’re never going to find out.” Liam cleared his throat. “If you run scared, Alex, then running scared is all you’ll ever have. Even when you’re standing in a fancy corner office. Trust me on that.”
Alex tried to breathe, but his chest felt like it was caved in. “I love her,” he said. The words felt strange, foreign on his lips. But they weren’t wrong.
He’d tried hard to reduce Clara. To think of her as too young, too vulnerable. But she wasn’t. She was strong. She’d weathered loss, and she still had so much hope in her. She was resilient in ways he could never hope to be. She looked at him and understood more about what he was feeling in a given moment than even he did. She saw through his BS. She called him on it.
She was the kind of woman that could make him a better man. Already had.
And he’d blown it all to hell.
“I do love her,” he repeated. “But I sent her away.”
“Good job,” Liam said drily. “You wrote the ending you’re afraid of for yourself. So that you didn’t have to live in fear of it. Didn’t you?”
And with clarity, Alex saw himself, down on bloodied, scraped knees in the middle of the road, crying after his father, who had ridden away on his motorcycle and who Alex knew wasn’t coming back. His teenage face hot with anger, shame and tears. Yeah, he had sent her away. And Liam was right. He had done it so he could confirm everything he already believed. So he could keep himself from getting hurt again. From having it happen when he least expected it.
But he didn’t quite know what to do about it either. Because as much as he wanted to go get her, as much as he wanted to call her back...what if she needed that time away?
He could never keep her there, he would never trap her. And that was the other thing. He would never use her to sap his wounds, the way his mother had used him. Absolutely not.
“Maybe someday...”
“That’s a lie. A lie you’re telling me and yourself,” Liam said. “You either take the chance now or you won’t take it.”
Alex just stood there, curling his fingers into fists. And it took him a while to realize he was holding on to a bundle of barbed wire, and it was digging into his palm. He swore and dropped it to the ground, blood seeping out of the wounds in his hand. But it didn’t have anything on the pain in his heart. He felt like he had barbed wire wrapped around that. Made it impossible to think. Impossible to breathe.
“I want her to have what’s best,” he said, looking down at his bloodstained hand. “That’s all.”
Liam’s mouth firmed into a grim line. “Suit yourself then.” He bent down, picking up the coil of barbed wire that Alex had just dropped.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to help you fix this fence, and then we’re going to go get a drink. Because you’re right. I did leave you alone back then. I was too caught up in my own pain to see that I had left you and yours. But I’m not going to do it again. You’re my younger brother, Alex, and I fucking love you. So we’re going to go get a beer and commiserate about your girl problems.”
“I don’t know if I want to do that.”
“Too bad. I didn’t ask. I told you.”
“Having an older brother is overrated.”
“It sure as hell is. But lucky for me, having a younger brother isn’t.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CLARA WAS MISERABLE, and the motel smelled like brine. Eternal dampness, possibly mold and some kind of hideous soup she did not want to eat from the restaurant next door. As it turned out, she didn’t want to eat anything in the entire place, and had ended up having a packet of oyster crackers because apparently it was too much to ask for a place to have a nonseafood option.
The bed was hard, and the covers were damp, and she hated her life in general right at this moment.
After a day’s drive down the coast, she had stopped in Crescent City, California, for the night and had grabbed one of the few places with a vacancy, which had turned out to be a mistake. There were a lot of adorable little places to stay, but this wasn’t one of them.
She stood up and walked across the purple carpet, opening the motel room door and walking out into the parking lot. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out across the street at the ocean. It was mostly dark, the low-hanging clouds feeling a whole lot like doom pressing around her.
She took a deep breath. At least, out here, the air was fresh.
She walked across the lot, and to the first crosswalk, dashing across the two-lane road and over to a rocky point that overlooked the ocean. The sun was a vague, yellow-gray spot, making its way down into the sea slowly.
She was in a different state. In a different place. But her heart was back home.
That realization hit her like a shock to the system. Her heart was in Copper Ridge. And it was her home.
There were so many things to sort through, it was a lot like trying to look through the mist and make the vague, murky
shape of the mountains clear. So many things. The way she felt about Alex, the pieces of resentment that she felt about her life. Her grief. And underneath all of that, that certainty about who she was.
Losing Jason had made her want to be somebody else. Because Clara Campbell clearly had a target on her back, so why would she want to be her? Clara Campbell had been shaped by all of these unfair, hideous events.
And so she had wondered... What her real life was supposed to look like. Who she might have been if she had been raised by two happy parents who were still alive. If her brother had lived.
That, in her mind, had been real.
But with a clarity that defied the fog around her, she realized that the Clara who was untouched by loss and tragedy was the fantasy.
This was her real life. These challenges, the struggles, had created her, the real flesh and blood woman that she was. She had been realizing this over the past couple of weeks, that her grief was part of her, not a separate entity that could be lifted away. Because the people she had loved were part of her. Even though they were gone. They had made her who she was, and losing them had shaped her, as it should. Because that was love. It was real, it was deep, it was affecting. And it changed the course of your life. Changed the choices you made.
Love had made Jason leave the military the first time so he could stay with her. And love had also sent him back out to fight for his country. Love had been the thing that made her give up her horse, that made her give up dance, so that she could be with her father and help him on the ranch. Even though he had been distant, even though he had been hurt, it had allowed her to spend that time they had left close to him.
She couldn’t resent those times, because the years she had with him had been far too abbreviated. She couldn’t resent the sacrifices she had made. And who they had made her into.
She had loved to dance back then. And maybe, if she had stayed with it, she would love it now.
But she had given her heart over to the ranch. To making it work. To keeping that legacy alive for her family.
She didn’t resent it. How could she? She wanted to stay there. She wanted to go back there. And yes, someday, maybe she would travel. Maybe she would see the world. But that house that was part of all the defining moments in her life would always be her home. It would always be her touchstone. As Copper Ridge always would be too.
This was who she was. Yes, she was only twenty-one years old, but at this point in her life she had already experienced the kind of loss most people didn’t experience until a whole lifetime had passed. She’d had to truly sit down and grapple with the fact that the number of years a person got wasn’t guaranteed. And given that, she had already thought about the kinds of things she might regret.
Standing there now, she thought about that again.
If she died tomorrow, she wouldn’t regret not spending time in a college classroom, not having a different job. She wouldn’t regret that she hadn’t seen the Eiffel Tower or the southernmost part of the California coastline.
But she would regret not spending another night in Alex’s arms. She would regret not being able to tell him that she loved him every day.
It wasn’t the things. It wasn’t the sights, the smells, the tastes. It was the people. That was what life came down to.
It all came back to love. No matter how painful it would be, no matter how much the loss might hurt, it was the biggest, most beautiful, most valuable thing the world had to offer. And it wasn’t worth trading for anything.
Clara took a deep breath of that California air. And she didn’t feel any different. Didn’t want anything different. Didn’t feel like she wanted anything other than what she’d wanted before.
Mostly because the air might be different, but she was the same. And her heart was still in Copper Ridge. Her heart was with Alex, and wherever he might go.
She thought about all the things he had told her. About the pain he had experienced when his father had left. When his father had abandoned him because Alex was just too much trouble.
About how he had watched his father leave, and how he had never returned.
Such a strange thing, watching Alex try to save her. Especially when she had a feeling that she needed to save him. That she needed to go back to him. Because nobody else ever had.
All the other times in her life when she had lost somebody, there had been nothing she could do. Because death was final. And she had thought that his breaking up with her felt a whole lot like that. Sudden, shocking, a blow she could never recover from. But with death, there was no recourse. There was no bargaining, there was no arguing.
And Alex wasn’t dead. She could argue with him. She could fight.
She could fight for him. And she was going to.
Because she didn’t need to see the world to know she had found her home. She didn’t need to see the world to know she had found her heart.
Alex Donnelly was her heart, Alex Donnelly was her home.
She was done being powerless. She was done letting life decide her fate. She sure as hell wasn’t going to let one stubborn-ass soldier decide it either.
She took one last look at the ocean and then turned and headed back toward her motel room. She wasn’t going to sleep here tonight. No, she was turning around and driving herself back home.
Because Alex wasn’t a bill she was going to leave unpaid, he wasn’t a chore that she was going to mindlessly keep doing. He was important. And she wasn’t going to shut down now.
Clara Campbell had spent her life feeling like it would be better if she could be somebody else. But for once, she was glad to be herself.
Because she loved Alex Donnelly, and while she had a lot of things in her past that she might wish weren’t hers, if she could be with Alex, she’d have a future she’d be more than happy to call her own.
* * *
THE PROBLEM WITH BISON was that they were low-maintenance. So when he wanted to go work out his frustration, wanted to find some hard labor to punish his body with, it was hard to find.
Clara was gone. He didn’t know where. Because she hadn’t told him. Which was why he found himself at that hipster coffee shop, about to interrogate Mr. Man Bun.
Alex walked in and he could tell the other man was surprised to see him.
“Hi,” Asher said, recovering quickly. “Can I help you?”
“Where’s Clara?”
Asher raised his eyebrows. “You think I know where she is?”
“I think you might.” Well, he hoped he might. He knew Clara wasn’t into Asher, but he could see her coming here in a fit of rage at Alex, that was for sure.
And if Asher didn’t know anything, he would drive further inland to Grassroots and interrogate everyone who knew her there.
Asher crossed his arms over his chest. “What would you do if I told you she was at my place?”
Oh good. Just what he needed. For toothpick hipster douchebag to want a fight.
“You don’t want to have a fight with me,” Alex said. “Your vegan diet puts you at a disadvantage. And if it somehow doesn’t, then you can sure as hell believe that my military training does.”
Asher laughed. “She’s not at my place. And I’m not a vegan.”
“Well, you get points for being unpredictable, I’ll give you that. Do you know where she is or not?”
“That depends. If she didn’t tell you, then I assume she doesn’t want you to know where she is. She told me that you broke her heart.”
“I did. Because I’m an asshole, and I would like to remedy that.”
“Well, you have that going for you at least. She went to California. That’s what she told me she was going to do.” Asher offered him a smug-looking smile. “I did offer to go with her. She declined.”
Alex frowned. “Good thing.”
Asher shrugged. “If you don’t want her then you can’t get mad because another man does.”
“I do want her, that’s the thing. I was just too much of a coward to accept it.”
Asher shrugged. “People make such a big deal out of this stuff.”
“The fact that it’s all casual to you proves that you don’t know anything about love yet. Trust me. Some woman is going to mess you up someday too.”
“I doubt it.”
“You just tempted fate, man,” Alex said. “And I’ll look forward to watching that bite your ass.”
Alex turned around and walked out of the coffeehouse, back into the parking lot. She was in California. She was already gone. He got back into his truck and started to drive toward her place. She wasn’t there. There was no reason for him to go there. And the bison really didn’t need him today. He still wanted to do something. Still wanted to feel...something. Closer to her, maybe. Even if he didn’t deserve that kind of assurance.
His entire chest felt like it was made of shattered glass, and every time he breathed, it hurt. Every time his heart beat, it hurt.
This was the cost of hope. Of hoping that someday he could have her. That someday, she could forgive him. That they could both be in a place where they could be together.
But he did hope. He hoped he could fix it. That it wasn’t too late.
He started to turn into her driveway at the same time as a little white car that looked an awful lot like Clara’s.
She whipped in front of him, and then stopped the car. Which was when he realized that it was Clara. He stopped his truck behind hers, and got out. And she got out at the same time, her face flushed, her eyes a little bit puffy, dark circles underneath them.
“What the hell are you doing here? That skinny-jeans hipster told me you were in California.”
“I was.” She sounded out of breath. “I drove eight hours to get back here. I drove all night. I haven’t slept.”
