by Maisey Yates
“It’s so strange that you put it that way,” she said, “because that is exactly how it feels. I live at home. I never left. And I... I ache for something I can never have again. Even if it’s just to see my parents in the way that I used to.”
“You saw how it was with all of us sitting here,” Gage said. “It’s something that I never thought I would have. The fact that you’ve all been willing to forgive me, to let me back into your lives after I was gone for so long, changes the shape of things. We are the ones that can make it different. We can fix what happened with Jack—or move forward into fixing it. There’s no reason you and I can’t be fixed too, Maddy.”
She nodded, her throat so tight she couldn’t speak. She stood, holding her coffee cup against her chest. “I am looking forward to seeing you at the Christmas party.” Then she forced a smile and walked out of The Grind.
She took a deep breath of the freezing air, hoping that it might wash some of the stale feelings of sadness and grief right out of her body. Then she looked down Main Street, at all of the Christmas lights gilding the edges of the brick buildings like glimmering precious metal.
Christmas wreaths hung from every surface that would take them, velvet bows a crimson beacon against the intense green.
Copper Ridge at Christmas was beautiful, but walking around, she still felt a bit like a stranger, separate and somehow not a part of it all. Everyone here was so good. People like her and Gage had to leave when they got too bad. Except she hadn’t left. She just hovered around the edges like a ghost, making inappropriate and sarcastic comments on demand so that no one would ever look at her too closely and see just what a mess she was.
She lowered her head, the wind whipping through her hair, over her cheeks, as she made her way down the street—the opposite direction of her car. She wasn’t really sure what she was doing, only that she couldn’t face heading back to the ranch right now. Not when she felt nostalgic for something that didn’t exist anymore. When she felt raw from the conversation with Gage.
She kept going down Main, pausing at the front door of the Mercantile when she saw a display of Christmas candy sitting in the window. It made her smile to see it there, a sugary reminder of some old memory that wasn’t tainted by reality.
She closed her eyes tight, and she remembered what it was. Walking down the street with her father, who was always treated like he was a king then. She had been small, and it had been before Gage had left. Before she had ever disappointed anyone.
It was Christmastime, and carolers were milling around, and she had looked up and seen sugarplums and candy canes, little peppermint chocolates and other sweets in the window. He had taken her inside and allowed her to choose whatever she wanted.
A simple memory. A reminder of a time when things hadn’t been quite so hard, or quite so real, between herself and Nathan West.
She found herself heading inside, in spite of the fact that the entire point of this walk had been to avoid memories. But then, she really wanted to avoid the memories that were at the ranch. This was different.
She opened the door, taking a deep breath of gingerbread and cloves upon entry. The narrow little store with exposed brick walls was packed with goodies. Cakes, cheeses and breads, imported and made locally.
Lane Jensen, the owner of the Mercantile, was standing toward the back of the store talking to somebody. Maddy didn’t see another person right away, and then, when the broad figure came into view, her heart slammed against her breastbone.
When she realized it was Sam, she had to ask herself if she had been drawn down this way because of a sense of nostalgia or because something in her head sensed that he was around. That was silly. Of course she didn’t sense his presence.
Though, given pheromones and all of that, maybe it wasn’t too ridiculous. It certainly wasn’t some kind of emotional crap. Not her heart recognizing where his was beating or some such nonsense.
For a split second she considered running the other direction. Before he saw her, before it got weird. But she hesitated, just for the space of a breath, and that was long enough for Sam to look past Lane, his eyes locking with hers.
She stood, frozen to the spot. “Hi,” she said, knowing that she sounded awkward, knowing that she looked awkward.
She was unaccustomed to that. At least, these days. She had grown a tough outer shell, trained herself to never feel ashamed, to never feel embarrassed—not in a way that people would be able to see.
Because after her little scandal, she had always imagined that it was the only thing people thought about when they looked at her. Walking around, feeling like that, feeling like you had a scarlet A burned into your skin, it forced you to figure out a way to exist.
In her case it had meant cultivating a kind of brash persona. So, being caught like this, looking like a deer in the headlights—which was what she imagined she looked like right now, wide-eyed and trembling—it all felt a bit disorienting.
“Maddy,” Sam said, “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“That’s because we didn’t make any plans to meet here,” she said. “I promise I didn’t follow you.” She looked over at Lane, who was studying them with great interest. “Not that I would. Because there’s no reason for me to do that. Because you’re the farrier for my horses. And that’s it.” She felt distinctly detached and light-headed, as though she might drift away on a cloud of embarrassment at a moment’s notice.
“Right,” he said. “Thank you, Lane,” he said, turning his attention back to the other woman. “I can bring the installation down tomorrow.” He tipped his hat, then moved away from Lane, making his way toward her.
“Hi, Lane,” she said. Sam grabbed hold of her elbow and began to propel her out of the store. “Bye, Lane.”
As soon as they were back out on the street, she rounded on him. “What was that? I thought we were trying to be discreet.”
“Lane Jensen isn’t a gossip. Anyway, you standing there turning the color of a beet wasn’t exactly subtle.”
“I am not a beet,” she protested, stamping.
“A tiny tomato.”
“Stop comparing me to vegetables.”
“A tomato isn’t a vegetable.”
She let out a growl and began to walk away from him, heading back up Main Street and toward her car. “Wait,” he said, his voice possessing some kind of unknowable power to actually make her obey.
She stopped, rooted to the cement. “What?”
“We live in the same town. We’re going to have to figure out how to interact with each other.”
“Or,” she said, “we continue on with this very special brand of awkwardness.”
“Would it be the worst thing in the world if people knew?”
“You know my past, and you can ask me that?” She looked around the street, trying to see if anybody was watching their little play. “I’m not going to talk to you about this on the town stage.”
He closed the distance between them. “Fine. We don’t have to have the discussion. And it doesn’t matter to me either way. But you really think you should spend the rest of your life punishing yourself for a mistake that happened when you were seventeen? He took advantage of you—it isn’t your fault. And apart from any of that, you don’t deserve to be labeled by a bunch of people that don’t even know you.”
That wasn’t even it. And as she stood there, staring him down, she realized that fully. It had nothing to do with what the town thought. Nothing to do with whether or not the town thought she was a scarlet woman, or if people still thought about her indiscretion, or if people blamed her or David. None of that mattered.
She realized that in a flash of blinding brilliance that shone brighter than the Christmas lights all around her. And that realization made her knees buckle, because it made her remember the conversation that had happened in her father’s office. The conversation that
had occurred right after one of David’s students had discovered the affair between the two of them and begun spreading rumors.
Rumors that were true, regrettably.
Rumors that had made their way all the way back to Nathan West’s home office.
“I can’t talk about this right now,” she said, brushing past him and striding down the sidewalk.
“You don’t have to talk about it with me, not ever. But what’s going to happen when this is over? You’re going to go another ten years between lovers? Just break down and hold your breath and do it again when you can’t take the celibacy anymore?”
“Stop it,” she said, walking faster.
“Like I said, it doesn’t matter to me...”
She whirled around. “You keep saying it doesn’t matter to you, and then you keep pushing the issue. So I would say that it does matter to you. Whatever complex you have about not being good enough, this is digging at that. But it isn’t my problem. Because it isn’t about you. Nobody would care if they knew that we were sleeping together. I mean, they would talk about it, but they wouldn’t care. But it makes it something more. And I just... I can’t have more. Not more than this.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Well, neither can I. That was hardly an invitation for something deeper.”
“Good. Because I don’t have anything deeper to give.”
The very idea made her feel like she was going into a free fall. The idea of trusting somebody again...
The betrayals she had dealt with back when she was seventeen had made it so that trusting another human being was almost unfathomable. When she had told Sam that the sex was the least of it, she had been telling the truth.
It had very little to do with her body, and everything to do with the battering her soul had taken.
“Neither do I.”
“Then why are you... Why are you pushing me like this?”
He looked stunned by the question, his face frozen. “I just... I don’t want to leave you broken.”
Something inside her softened, cracked a little bit. “I’m not sure that you have a choice. It kind of is what it is, you know?”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be.”
“Did you think you were going to fix me, Sam?”
“No,” he said, his voice rough.
But she knew he was lying. “Don’t put that on yourself. Two broken people can’t fix each other.”
She was certain in that moment that he was broken too, even though she wasn’t quite sure how.
“We only have twelve days. Any kind of fixing was a bit ambitious anyway,” he said.
“Eleven days,” she reminded him. “I’ll see you tonight?”
“Yeah. See you then.”
And then she turned and walked away from Sam McCormack for all the town to see, as if he were just a casual acquaintance and nothing more. And she tried to ignore the ache in the center of her chest that didn’t seem to go away, even after she got in the car and drove home.
Eight
Seven days after beginning the affair with Maddy, she called and asked him if he could come down and check the shoes on one of the horses. It was the middle of the afternoon, so if it was her version of a booty call, he thought it was kind of an odd time. And since their entire relationship was a series of those, he didn’t exactly see why she wouldn’t be up front about it.
But when he showed up, she was waiting for him outside the stall.
“What are you up to?”
She lifted her shoulder. “I just wanted you to come and check on the horse.”
“Something you couldn’t check yourself?”
She looked slightly rueful. “Okay, maybe I could have checked it myself. But she really is walking a little bit funny, and I’m wondering if something is off.”
She opened the stall door, clipped a lead rope to the horse’s harness and brought her out into the main part of the barn.
He looked at her, then pushed up the sleeves on his thermal shirt and knelt down in front of the large animal, drawing his hand slowly down her leg and lifting it gently. Then he did the same to the next before moving to her hindquarters and repeating the motion again.
He stole a glance up at Maddy, who was staring at him with rapt attention.
“What?”
“I like watching you work,” she said. “I’ve always liked watching you work. That’s why I used to come down here and give orders. Okay, honestly? I wanted to give myself permission to watch you and enjoy it.” She swallowed hard. “You’re right. I’ve been punishing myself. So, I thought I might indulge myself.”
“I’m going to have to charge your dad for this visit,” he said.
“He won’t notice,” she said. “Trust me.”
“I don’t believe that. Your father is a pretty well-known businessman.” He straightened, petting the horse on its haunches. “Everything looks fine.”
Maddy looked sheepish. “Great.”
“Why don’t you think your dad would notice?”
“A lot of stuff has come out over the past few months. You know he had a stroke three months ago or so, and while he’s recovered pretty well since then, it changed things. I mean, it didn’t change him. It’s not like he miraculously became some soft, easy man. Though, I think he’s maybe a little bit more in touch with his mortality. Not happily, mind you. I think he always saw himself as something of a god.”
“Well,” Sam said, “what man doesn’t?” At least, until he was set firmly back down to earth and reminded of just how badly he could mess things up. How badly things could hurt.
“Yet another difference between men and women,” Maddy said drily. “But after he had his stroke, the control of the finances went to my brother Gage. That was why he came back to town initially. He discovered that there was a lot of debt. I mean, I know you’ve heard about how many properties we’ve had to sell downtown.”
Sam stuffed his hands in his pockets, lifting his shoulders. “Not really. But then, I don’t exactly keep up on that kind of stuff. That’s Chase’s arena. Businesses and the real estate market. That’s not me. I just screw around with metal.”
“You downplay what you do,” she returned. “From the art to the physical labor. I’ve watched you do it. I don’t know why you do it, only that you do. You’re always acting like your brother is smarter than you, but he can’t do what you do either.”
“Art was never particularly useful as far as my father was concerned,” Sam said. “I imagine he would be pretty damned upset to see that it’s the art that keeps the ranch afloat so nicely. He would have wanted us to do it the way our ancestors did. Making leatherwork and pounding nails. Of course, it was always hard for him to understand that mass production was inevitably going to win out against more expensive handmade things. Unless we targeted our products and people who could afford what we did. Which is what we did. What we’ve been successful with far beyond what we even imagined.”
“Dads,” she said, her voice soft. “They do get in your head, don’t they?”
“I mean, my father didn’t have gambling debts and a secret child, but he was kind of a difficult bastard. I still wish he wasn’t dead.” He laughed. “It would kind of be nice to have him wandering around the place shaking his head disapprovingly as I loaded up that art installation to take down to the Mercantile.”
“I don’t know, having your dad hanging around disapproving is kind of overrated.” Suddenly, her face contorted with horror. “I’m sorry—I had no business saying something like that. It isn’t fair. I shouldn’t make light of your loss.”
“It was a long time ago. And anyway, I do it all the time. I think it’s the way the emotionally crippled deal with things.” Anger. Laughter. It was all better than hurt.
“Yeah,” she said, laughing uneasily. “That sounds about right.”
“What
exactly does your dad disapprove of, Madison?” he asked, reverting back to her full name. He kind of liked it, because nobody else called her that. And she had gone from looking like she wanted to claw his eyes out when he used it to responding. There was something that felt deep about that. Connected. He shouldn’t care. If anything, it should entice him not to do it. But it didn’t.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No,” he returned. “I’ve done a lot of work on this ranch over the years. You’re always busy. You have students scheduled all day every day—except today, apparently—and it is a major part of both the reputation and the income of this facility. You’ve poured everything you have into reinforcing his legacy while letting your own take a backseat.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” she said, the smile on her lips obviously forced, “I am kind of amazing.”
“What exactly does he disapprove of?”
“What do you think?”
“Does it all come back to that? Something you did when you were seventeen?” The hypocrisy of the outrage in his tone wasn’t lost on him.
“I’m not sure,” she said, the words biting. “I’m really not.” She grabbed hold of the horse’s lead rope, taking her back into the stall before clipping the rope and coming back out, shutting the door firmly.
“What do you mean by that?”
She growled, making her way out of the barn and walking down the paved path that led toward one of the covered arenas. “I don’t know. Feel free to choose your own adventure with that one.”
“Come on, Maddy,” he said, closing the distance between them and lowering his voice. “I’ve tasted parts of you that most other people have never seen. A little bit of honesty isn’t going to hurt you.”
She whipped around, her eyes bright. “Maybe it isn’t him. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the one that can’t look at him the same way.”
* * *
Maddy felt rage simmering over her skin like heat waves. She had not intended to have this conversation—not with Sam, not with anyone.
