A Copper Ridge Christmas

by Maisey Yates

  “No. I don’t. Don’t say it again. You keep telling me I’m worth so much, Ryan. You keep telling me I can have normal. So let me go find that then. I won’t find it with you.” Stop taunting me with what I can’t have. She swallowed hard, moving away from him, pressing her back against one of the brightly lit pillars in the gazebo. She closed her eyes, turning her face away, willing him to leave.

  She heard footsteps, first on the wooden steps, then on the grass. When she looked up, Ryan was walking into the house, closing the door slowly behind him.

  She crumpled to the ground then, the cold from the wood seeping through her jeans, making her shiver. She closed her eyes, a sob wrenching through her, threatening to tear her apart. She’d thought that ending it herself would hurt less, but right now she couldn’t imagine anything hurting more.

  But she knew it was either now or later. Now or in a decade. It wouldn’t last. Because it couldn’t. Not with her. He wanted something to fix the emptiness inside him. She couldn’t be that. She couldn’t have that kind of pressure put on her. Couldn’t fail at it again.

  More than anything, she simply couldn’t bear to love someone with all of herself only to be rejected again. Better to do it now. Better to stay in control.

  It might break her now. But it would have killed her later.

  She shifted her position, rocked back so that her butt was on the ground, her back pressed up against the support for the gazebo. She tried to catch her breath, and couldn’t. She watched it escape on a cloud in the cold air, a shiver working its way through her.

  She looked at the people inside, could see them through the window, talking and laughing.

  She had always felt like Dan and Margie had given her Christmas. Tonight, Ryan had taken it away.

  That isn’t fair. You took it from yourself.

  “God rest ye merry gentlemen let nothing you dismay...” Her voice cracked and she sucked in a gasping breath as a tear rolled down her cheek.

  She had always known it would end in heartbreak. She just hadn’t thought she would be responsible for it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AFTER MOVING IN with Margie and Dan, Christmas Eve had become the longest night of the year for Ryan. They got Christmas presents for all the kids, no matter how long they’d been in the home, no matter whether or not they were staying for good. There was always Christmas dinner to look forward to, the tree, music. And all of it built anticipation for the main event that was Christmas Day, made waiting to open presents feel that much closer and that much further away.

  Tonight, Christmas Eve was the longest night for an entirely different reason.

  He looked across the room, at his entire living space. He was lying on his bed, the pitch and roll of the ocean just making him sick, where normally he found it soothing. But then, everything made him feel sick at the moment.

  He had never told a woman he loved her before. Had never loved a woman before.

  But he loved Holly. He knew he did. What he’d said to her in the gazebo was true. He had probably always loved her. He’d just been too afraid to admit it. Not only to her, but to himself.

  She didn’t trust him. He didn’t believe she didn’t love him, but he knew she didn’t trust him. He didn’t deserve her trust, that was the bottom line. It was the truth. He wasn’t sure he deserved anyone’s trust. Had never done anything to earn it. He was untested when it came to relationships. He had a boat.

  He didn’t deserve her trust, no. He wasn’t the perfect man. But he wanted to fight for it. Life, his boat, everything, seemed pointless without her. It didn’t seem right that she was still holding herself back, still lost in the pain of her past.

  He wanted to fix it. Wanted to fix her.

  Wanted to fix himself so that he could be magically worthy of everything she was.

  She had told him he wasn’t good enough. Had confirmed everything he’d ever feared. He should be grateful. That she’d demanded what she deserved. That she’d let him off the hook. So he could slink back to his boat and his damaged life without having to worry about another person.

  But he wasn’t relieved. He was angry. He was...he was brokenhearted. And he would have thought that was impossible.

  He’d offered love like it was a magic cure. She’d turned him down.

  Maybe that was the problem. There was no magic. There was no fix. She was right. They were pretty broken. How could you come through everything they had and not be?

  But they’d had help along the way. They had people to show them how it could be. They had each other. And they were damn sure capable of love. So, maybe he could never be the perfect man for her. Maybe they could never be unbroken. But maybe it didn’t matter.

  He wanted her broken or fixed. He wanted her even with every piece of himself smashed.

  He didn’t need magic. He just needed Holly. It wasn’t about being worthy, or good enough. God knew he never would be. It was just about ending this vicious cycle they’d lived in for too long.

  Being alone. Being bogged down in the past.

  It was about making sure their parents—parents who had never loved them like parents should—didn’t get a bigger say in who they were now than Dan and Margie did. Than the people who’d told them they were enough.

  He stood up, the top of his head brushing the ceiling of the boat. He wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight. But tomorrow morning, hopefully things would be different. Hopefully, he could get her to see things the way that he did.

  Margie and Dan’s house had always been a place of new beginnings. And tomorrow, he hoped the first day of the rest of his life would start there.

  He would just have to convince Holly.

  He went over to the kitchen cabinets, and got out a jar of peanut butter. It was a place to start.

  * * *

  HOLLY HAD ALMOST opted out of coming to the Christmas get-together today. But then Margie would worry about her, and she really didn’t want to make Margie worry. Ryan had left the party without saying goodbye and Holly had spent the rest of the party with a smile pasted on her face that she knew looked as fake as the acrylic evergreen garlands hanging over her mantel.

  At least Ryan would skip the party. He hated Christmas anyway. But apparently he loved her.

  She ignored the stab of pain in her chest that accompanied that thought.

  When someone loved you, was it supposed to hurt so very much? This was what it should feel like when someone rejected you, turned you down. This was what Ryan should feel like right now, not her.

  But you love him, and you don’t have him.

  She gritted her teeth, shifting her hold on the stack of presents in her hand so she could press the doorbell.

  The door jerked open, and her mouth fell open in surprise when she saw Ryan on the other side of it. “Oh. You’re here,” she said.

  He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Yes, I am.”

  “I thought you would skip, all things considered.”

  “I thought I would come, all things considered. Because I knew you would be here. And we need to talk.”

  “It’s Christmas.”

  “Yeah, all the more reason for us to talk. Because I don’t intend to spend Christmas with a broken heart.”

  “Did I break your heart?”

  “Into about a thousand pieces, Hollyberry. You’re the only one that can fix it, so don’t look at me with those regretful eyes.”

  She tried to breathe around the pain, but she found it impossible. “Would you take these presents, please?” She shoved the stack of them into his arms without waiting for him to agree and pushed past him into the house.

  “Margie isn’t going to rescue you,” he said, effectively stalling the progress she was making into the kitchen. “No one is. I told everyone what was happening
.”

  “That is emotional blackmail, you bastard.”

  “Is it? If you don’t love me nobody’s going to pressure you to be with me. But if you’re just continually punishing yourself for something you feel like you did wrong when you were a teenager, then yeah, people will pressure you to make a different decision.”

  “Ryan, I told you...”

  He set the stack of presents down on the floor in the entryway. “I know you did. Now, I want to tell you. Let’s go outside.”

  The living room was suspiciously vacant, and she imagined that the entire family had shuffled themselves to another side of the house to give Ryan privacy.

  They were conspiring against her. And Ryan had a key and she didn’t. She was tempted to determine, based on all that evidence, that they loved him best.

  He led her through the room, out the double doors, to the back deck that looked over the tops of the evergreen trees, sloping down toward the ocean.

  She walked toward the edge of the porch to lean against the railing.

  “Okay,” she said, her eyes resolutely fixed on the horizon line where the sea met the sky. “Talk. Make it fast, because I want my turkey and ham and pie. I don’t want drama.”

  “How about a sandwich?”

  She turned sharply to the side and saw that he was extending a plastic baggie with a sandwich inside of it toward her. “What is this?”

  “It’s a peanut butter sandwich.”

  Her stomach lurched, her heart twisting. “Why? Because you wanted to remind me of the worst day of my life? That accepting a little bit of peanut butter got me thrown out of my house?”

  “No. I want to take care of you,” he said, his eyes filled with such sincere emotion she had to look away again. She didn’t deserve it. She wasn’t worthy of it. “Take it. Take all the peanut butter I have, or ever will have, or can ever buy. Take whatever you want. I want to give you everything. All of me.”

  “Ryan...”

  “Stop punishing yourself.”

  His words hit her with the force of a brick. Because she realized that he was right. It was exactly what she was doing. She was punishing herself. She wasn’t afraid of losing his love so much as she didn’t think she deserved it in the first place. “What kind of daughter sits in her mother’s kitchen and talks with her father’s mistress?” she asked, her throat tight.

  “One who’s hungry. Not just for food, but for affection. One who got dragged into games she didn’t know the rules to. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “You should have seen her face.”

  “I saw her face out on the street just last week. She’s sad. She doesn’t have any color. The life is completely drained from her. And that’s all on her. She was wrong to send you away. She blamed the wrong person. She clung to the wrong person and let go of the one she should’ve held onto.”

  He leaned in, his expression growing more intense as he continued. “I’m not going to do that, Holly. Don’t you make the same mistake. Don’t you hold on to them, to that pain, and let go of me. Don’t sell us short.”

  He swallowed, closing his eyes for a moment. “You’re right, we’re broken. We’re never going to be perfect. You can’t take away the fact that I spent the first few years of my life getting the crap beaten out of me for looking at my father wrong. That can’t be erased. The neglect, the pain that your parents put you through, no one can wash it away like it was never there. But we can overcome it. Why do they get to decide what we are? Why are we giving them that much power? I’m begging you.” He reached out to her, his hand held there, a lifeline she was scared to grab hold of. “Let go of them. Take my hand. Take my sandwich. Please.”

  “I’m afraid,” she said, the words coming out a whisper.

  “I know. I know, because I am, too. I want to be perfect for you, and I know that I’m not. I want to be able to promise you that I’ll never let you down, because you’ve been let down enough. I want to promise you that I will be the perfect boyfriend, the perfect husband. I can’t promise those things. I can promise you, though, that I will love you. I can promise you that I will never leave you.”

  She closed her eyes, a wave of longing washing over her, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Will you stay with me? Will you really?”

  “If there’s one thing I know how to be it’s loyal. If there’s one thing I know how to do it’s stay. I know you don’t like my boat, but it’s something I’ve been committed to for the past fifteen years. Even though it’s hard, I keep at it. I do the work, even though it’s tough on the body and the soul sometimes. Because I know in the end it’s worth it. We’ll be like that.”

  “Did you just compare me to your boat?”

  “I do love that boat.”

  She laughed, a shaky, watery sound. “I... I want to believe you. I want to say yes.”

  “Then say yes. I might not be perfect, but I do think I’m the man for you. Because no one will ever love you as much as I do. I know you. I’ve known you for years. I’ve seen you at high points and low points. I watched you experience your first happy Christmases, saw your face when your parents didn’t show up for your birthday. I know you almost better than I know myself. And I know that I want to spend my life feeding you, and giving you parties, and just loving you. Not because they didn’t, but because I feel so much for you I can’t do anything but show you. All the time. From now until forever. But I can’t do it if you won’t let me.”

  Joy and terror filled her in equal measure, her heart pounding so hard she could barely hear herself think over the sound of it. She stood and looked at him, at the grumpiest, strongest, most prideful man she knew, holding out a peanut butter sandwich and laying his heart in front of her feet. She knew in that moment if she couldn’t match that offer, she didn’t deserve him. He was being brave. He was risking everything. He was a boy who’d received more punches in the face than hugs all through his growing up years. Yesterday, he had offered love, and she’d given him nothing but pain.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, nodding slowly.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t mean that. Just... For yesterday. I’m so sorry that I hurt you. I was so afraid, I didn’t know what else to do. I thought if I hurt you, you would go away. You would stop asking me for things. My parents sent me away for a lot less. It should have been easy to get rid of you. But you’re right, it isn’t about being afraid you’ll leave. I trust you. You’ve been here all these years, why would you leave now? That isn’t it. I have been punishing myself. I felt unworthy.”

  “You aren’t.”

  “Thank you. But...even if I am...I’m going to take it. Think of everything we’ve been given. All that Dan and Margie gave to us. Every Christmas present...we didn’t have to earn those. Maybe we don’t have to earn this either.”

  “Holly...”

  “I love you, Ryan. I do. You’re right, I have loved you forever. Whenever I thought of a life spent with someone it was always you. And I told myself that I didn’t want to make a move on you because I didn’t want to risk what I had with the Traverses. And if something were to ever go wrong between us it would ruin that. But I was just protecting myself. And I’m tired of that. A safe existence is nothing more than an existence. And I want to live. I want to live with you.”

  He pulled her into his arms, his hands—and the sandwich—pressed against her back as he leaned in to kiss her, hard and deep. When they parted, they were both breathing hard. “I think you destroyed the sandwich,” she said, her tone slightly dazed.

  He loosened his hold on her, holding the bag up, examining the squished bread inside. “So I did. But there’s more where that came from.”

  “We really aren’t normal,” she said. “You know that, right?”

  “Peanut butter sandwiche
s, purple condoms, and a Christmas-birthday-Hanukkah-Valentine’s Day party aren’t typical aspects of human courtship?”

  “Who cares? They’re part of ours.”

  He tossed the sandwich onto the deck, taking her back into his arms and pulling her in close. “You’re damn right they are. And that’s all that matters. I don’t want normal. I just want you.”

  There were a few things Holly Fulton knew for certain. The first was that this was the best Christmas she’d ever had. The second was that she’d never been so happy in her entire life. But the most important thing of all was that she loved Ryan Masters with everything she had in her. And he loved her right back.

  * * ***

  Don’t miss any of the Copper Ridge series from Maisey Yates and HQN Books:

  SHOULDA BEEN A COWBOY (prequel novella—Jake and Cassie’s story)

  PART TIME COWBOY (Eli and Sadie’s story)

  BROKEDOWN COWBOY (Connor and Liss’s story)

  BAD NEWS COWBOY (Jack and Kate’s story)

  Read on for a sneak peek of the next Copper Ridge novel, ONE NIGHT CHARMER!

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  “Yates returns to a western setting in her latest, and fans of Robyn Carr and RaeAnne Thayne will enjoy her small-town romance.”

  —Booklist

  USA TODAY bestselling author Maisey Yates welcomes readers to the charming small town of Copper Ridge, Oregon, where love finds you when you least expect it.

  Don’t miss these other sweet and sexy titles from the Copper Ridge series:

  Shoulda Been a Cowboy (novella)