by Maisey Yates
And he had been.
He would continue to be.
And she took that promise as good enough, and kissed his mouth, and he kissed her back.
For the rest of the night they didn’t talk.
But he took her up on her challenge. And by morning, neither of them had slept. And neither of them cared.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ELLIE WAS CONTINUALLY plotting ways to be alone with Caleb again.
She knew logistically she could sneak him up to her room at night, and Amelia would never know, but the idea of it made her feel uncomfortable.
Though there was something about that illicitness that excited her. Maybe she should chase that.
She craved him. Craved what he made her feel.
And she had been turning over the conversations they’d had on the couch, in her bed, in the days since their time together. And she had continued to do that while she worked on the food for the tree-harvesting day.
She and Vanessa had rallied the boys and were responsible for transporting them from the Dalton ranch, where their foster parents had dropped them that morning, to Caleb’s ranch. They had them all loaded up, and Tammy was going to follow behind with food and Amelia. Jamie, Gabe and West were coming, as well, to help with the actual harvesting of the trees.
Jamie had absolutely refused to involve herself in any of the cooking.
She was going to use her God-given muscles and affinity for hard work.
Her words.
And Ellie may have muttered something about hard work while sweating over a chili pot for hours the night before.
But Jamie was Jamie, and there was little point in getting bent out of shape over anything.
When they had the boys loaded in the cars, Vanessa looked up at Ellie. “Are you okay?”
“I’m great,” she responded.
“Okay.”
“I am,” she insisted.
Vanessa nodded—clearly not accepting the answer, but in no real space to argue—and got in her car, and Ellie followed suit. She had Marco riding shotgun, Calvin and Joseph in the back seat.
She had probably the quietest carload, though Marco was chatty, and a bit of a smart-ass. But she didn’t really mind him. But when the use of four-letter words got a little out of hand, she threatened to start giving pop quizzes.
That earned her a little bit of silence.
When they arrived at the tree farm, there were tables already set up, stations already prepared to go—which she knew was the handiwork of Caleb and his brothers.
Caleb started handing out assignments. Art supplies for Calvin, who was going to work on the tree lot signs, axes for the older boys who could be trusted, and would be cutting down trees. Under strict instruction that they would lose the axes quickly if they weren’t safe.
Then there was a station with twine and netting and everything necessary for bundling the trees up for transport.
They were purposed to attack it like a barn raising, a tree cutting that would be made into lighter work by all the hands present. Marco laughed. “Literally no one would believe that this is how I’m spending my day.”
“Oh, yeah?” Ellie asked.
“No way. I’ve never liked outdoor kind of stuff. I live in the city. I never thought...”
“You never thought what?”
“That I would like it here.”
Ellie smiled at him. “People change. We see more things, do more things, go through more things, and it... It changes us.”
She looked across the space, over at Caleb, who was talking with his brothers and demonstrating how to hold an ax.
He was beautiful. He really was. And somehow, she felt like she was looking at him for the millionth time and the first time all at once.
The familiarity was part of that beauty, but there was a freshness to it, too. And a deep, resonant ache that was only Caleb’s.
It had never belonged to anyone else.
“I’ve never seen anyone change. Not really. Everybody just kind of lives their life where I’m from. You either get a job, and you work yourself in the ground, or...you hustle. To, I don’t know, at least to get to something.”
“Like sent to a special school out in the middle of nowhere?”
“Yeah,” he said. “In my case.”
“When things are hard, your options feel more limited. I know that. And I wanted... I wanted something different than what I had. I knew that. And I was good at school. Naturally. So I thought maybe if I worked really hard at it I could get myself a scholarship and change the way that I lived.”
“Did it work?”
She nodded. “Yes. But it still didn’t make my life easy. My husband died. Money didn’t protect me from that. But money is good, and it helps with security. And that’s why my life didn’t fall completely apart when I lost him. I don’t know. But I’ve had a few different times in my life where things changed whether I wanted them to or not. And I had to decide what I wanted to do in response to them. We have endless opportunities to be different. To be stronger.”
“So I should just...leave my family and friends behind and end up staying here? Become a cowboy?” He laughed.
“Yeah,” she said. “If you want to. Why not? Or maybe work hard to get good grades, and I’ll help you find scholarships that you qualify for. I know we could find something. You don’t have to be stuck. You can change if you want.”
Marco looked down. “It seems stupid,” he said. “I wasn’t going to change because of the stupid school. I told my friends that I’d be back.”
“I think sometimes the worst part is not entirely fitting in to your new life but knowing you can’t go back to the old one, either. And I’m actually a lot more familiar with that than I would like to be. But you have to keep moving forward. You don’t owe them a worse version of yourself, not when you know you could be something different. Not if you want it.”
“Maybe. Maybe I’ll take you up on that scholarship thing.” He frowned. “Nobody goes to college in my family.”
“Nobody did it in mine, either. Well, maybe they did. I don’t know my dad, so I wouldn’t know. But nobody I knew did.”
He nodded slowly, then turned away from her. “I don’t want to miss the ax instructions,” he said.
She nodded. And she felt a strange sense of peace wash over her. She watched him walk away and she was infused with it. She was definitely stuck. Between a change she hadn’t chosen to make, and the next shift of her life. Not quite ready for either.
It was like she’d said to Caleb the other night. She missed the girl that Clint had helped her find. But she knew that pieces of her were still in there.
He had splintered her focus, and it was for the best. Because she had still gotten her degree; she was still a teacher. But she was a mother, too, and she was a woman who understood that she could want more than just a career, and still have stability and success. A woman who could have friends, who could have a lover, and not be afraid that she couldn’t balance all of that. That she might slip into those patterns her mother had.
So yes, that was still there.
And she had met Marco because of it. Had started the school because of that transition, because of the need for change. And maybe his life would be different because of it, and who knew what lives he would change as a result.
You might not always choose the changes that came at you, but you could certainly make something from them.
But...
The ache. That Caleb ache.
It terrified and exhilarated her, and she couldn’t turn away from it, either.
All she could do was hold on tight.
She smiled as she watched the boys work, as they spread out and began to cut trees, and Jamie directed the wrapping and the tying and the hefting of the trees into the big truck that would take them dow
ntown.
Calvin was painting, barely overseen by Vanessa, who trusted him at this point to take a job like this seriously and to do exactly what he’d been asked.
Her heart felt swollen. Because this was the result of her doing something decent with her pain. Of her moving forward. And following a passion. Following a different path.
She blinked, squeezing her eyes shut. “Thanks, Clint,” she whispered.
Because it was the woman he’d helped make who had accomplished this. Who had made her more generous and broader-thinking.
And it was some of that money he’d left behind that had helped to pay for it, and that money had come from his thoughtfulness when it came to taking care of her.
It was Gabe who opened up his truck, turned the key partway and began blasting Christmas tunes while they all worked.
Jamie looked at him with a grouchy expression on her face, and Gabe twirled her once before going back to cutting trees.
Vanessa and Ellie helped lift a giant pot of cider onto a burner to get it going, and then they began to heat up the chili.
West worked to start a bonfire, and pretty soon the whole thing felt a lot more like a celebration than it did like work.
And Ellie gave thanks yet again. For the gift of the Dalton family, which had also come through Clint.
Amelia was delighted by the proceedings, twirling around in the designated zone that Ellie had placed her in, so that nothing potentially sharp or hot could get anywhere near her. Because as joyful as the situation was, Ellie wasn’t without her standard maternal paranoia, which had come with the love and happiness her daughter had brought into her life.
A big Dodge Ram pulled up, gold-plating on the rims and around the license plate. And a hush fell over the proceedings.
And then Hank Dalton got out, holding an ax. “What? I’m here to help cut some trees.”
* * *
IT HAD NEVER occurred to Caleb that his dad might show up. He had figured that Hank Dalton was sitting somewhere in silent protest of the fact that all of his boys had turned out so differently than he wanted. So in opposition to everything he’d worked for.
Though Caleb had a feeling that he respected Gabe partnering with Ellie to start a school. Yeah, that had some of that cachet that Hank would feel he had earned.
Caleb fixed his mouth into a grim line and stopped, pushing the head of his ax down into the dirt. “You here to work, Dad?”
“I figure I will,” he said. “After all, this is your place. And family shows up for each other.”
He couldn’t even be scathing about that, because his dad, for all his flaws, did exemplify that.
He knew that Hank was changing, that he had changed. Caleb was angry about the way that things had gone down between them, but all that was water under a bridge that was more than a decade gone, and there was no reason to cling to it.
Except, sometimes Caleb damn well wanted to cling to it.
Since it had shaped his entire life, who he was and the most shameful moment in his past. But whatever.
“Thanks,” Caleb said. “Start swinging an ax, then.”
Hank joined in, his actions wordless, all of them chopping trees.
When the crew came out tomorrow, they would all use chain saws, but Caleb hadn’t especially wanted to do that with the boys, and anyway, with a crew the size of theirs, it was easy enough to get the amount of trees they would need for the lot downtown. Gold Valley was small, and a great many of the people preferred to go out into the woods and procure their own trees anyway.
But there would be plenty of people who would come out to the town to wander around and experience the festivities of the Victorian Christmas that they had every year, to enjoy the Christmas parade and wagon rides through the streets, and they might end up going away with a Christmas tree as a souvenir. So, it was a good idea to get everything ready. And to treat the lot in Gold Valley like a viable moneymaker. Because it was.
The Christmas music was still blaring from Gabe’s truck, something ridiculously light and cheesy, which seemed extra strange given the bit of tension that had settled over the proceedings.
“So you own the school?” Aiden asked Hank.
“I guess technically,” Hank responded.
“How come we never see you?”
“Because I’m rich I mostly get to sit on my ass.”
“Goals,” Aiden said, nodding and swinging at a new tree.
“I think you just became his favorite person,” Jacob said.
“Well, not totally,” Aiden said. “You saved me from the side of a cliff, so it still has to be you. But you do work really hard. You probably should have gotten rich instead.”
Aiden was joking, but the whole thing was so close to their family drama that it was more bitterly funny for Jacob and Caleb than it was actually funny.
Though Jacob had always seemed relatively fine with Hank, Caleb supposed. It was Gabe who had had the most difficult relationship with him. Openly.
Caleb and Hank had a lot of their problems down beneath the surface.
But they went on quietly swinging axes together, and there was something strangely therapeutic about it. All the Dalton men out working together, even West, on bringing Caleb’s vision to life. On supporting the school, and these boys.
Actually doing something good, instead of something destructive, which were issues that they had all struggled with at different times.
Well, maybe not West.
He didn’t seem to struggle with much of anything beyond the anger that he felt at his ex-wife. And from everything that he’d implied to Caleb, Caleb couldn’t blame him.
They worked until the pale sun was high in the sky, barely visible behind the sheet of gray cloud that had been rolled out over the blue. And when it was time to grab lunch, they all pulled up sporadic folding chairs and pieces of log, and sat around eating chili.
For his part, Caleb stood by Ellie, lingering as she served people, and waiting to eat until she started.
She looked up at him, a grin tugging at the corner of her lips. He wanted to kiss her. But he wasn’t going to. Not in front of everyone. More because of Amelia than anything else. Everyone else could deal with not having their questions answered. And wondering. But not Amelia.
The little girl was sitting on a rock next to Ellie, eating a bowl of chili that was mostly cheese and soda crackers with a tiny bit of chili underneath.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered.
“Good.” Maybe that wasn’t the nicest response, but it was honest. She had seen him every day for the past week, so if she missed him, it wasn’t seeing him. It was having him in bed.
“This is great,” she said. “Thank you for including the boys. This is the kind of thing that... It makes a difference. It really does.”
He felt like her talking about something other than them was a deflection, but given the fact they were surrounded by his family, perhaps a deflection was necessary.
“Well, happy to make a difference in your life.” And if that had two meanings, well, it was intentional.
Caleb wanted to hang on to the moment. Because there was something wonderfully simple about it. His family here, Ellie next to him. They’d had days like this countless times since Clint had died. But standing next to Ellie felt different this time. It felt like she was with him. Sex really did change things.
Because it was impossible to forget that he’d been inside her. And he didn’t want to.
Unfortunately, it was also impossible for him to forget that it wasn’t forever. That time was going to move on and forward and away from this moment. This moment when he was standing next to her eating chili, and everything was good and easy and peaceful. When there wasn’t another man at her side. When there was nothing between them at all.
So he looked around and took in the details. T
he crisp rows of pine trees still rising high over the jagged stumps they’d left behind. The velvet-covered mountains awash in green, rich and dark without the intense golden light of the sun to shift the green into yellows.
The house way off in the distance, the one that was his.
It occurred to him then that right in this moment he had absolutely everything he’d ever wanted.
And Hank was here to see it.
Of course, no one knew he had Ellie in his bed, but that didn’t matter. He did.
And to get that life, his friend had to die, and that was the damn worst stain over the whole thing. Like ink had touched the edge of a blank page and spread. Spread and spread, the darkness covering everything that used to be crisp and white. But the darkness was his.
So maybe he should just learn to be okay with it.
With this tarnished kingdom that he’d inherited in many ways.
Ellie looked around, then quickly brushed her fingertips against his, a small smile touching her lips, color infusing her cheeks.
He grabbed on to that and held it tight. Maybe he was selfish. But now there were no points for being anything else.
The boys were goofing around, being idiots, and one of them picked up the ax like he was going to swing it, and instead, the head fell off.
Gabe immediately launched into scolding him about safety, while Jamie sat on a stump next to her husband, looking up from her chili, a bemused expression on her face.
“I’ll get another one,” Caleb said, setting his own lunch down and shaking his head as he wandered off toward one of the barns.
The gravel crunched under his feet, and he looked up, taking a deep breath. The air had that crisp edge to it that let him know that winter was well and firmly here.
But he’d never felt warmer in his life.
In spite of himself, a smile tugged at the edge of his mouth.
When he got into the barn, he heard footsteps behind him and he turned, his smile widening, expecting to see Ellie standing there.
