by Maisey Yates
And sometimes, life just wasn’t fair. Here at the place where Clint had died, that was the most apparent truth.
Life wasn’t fair, and you couldn’t make it so. Two people who loved each other had to be separated sometimes. And that didn’t always mean there would be more happiness. Sometimes it just meant someone else ended up in love alone.
* * *
NO ONE SAID anything to Ellie about Caleb leaving. And really, she didn’t deserve their deference. Not now. Not after what she’d done.
She’d hurt him. Because she’d been terrified. Afraid. Of all the things that were happening inside her. But she just...
She had promised to love Clint. And even if wedding vows only extended until death did them part, she just didn’t know...
If Caleb had been a stranger, maybe things would be different.
But he wasn’t. He was a man she had known before she got married, and that added a layer of confusion to all of this. Because Caleb didn’t feel like a second choice, and that actually frightened her. Down to her soul.
The implications of all of this terrified her. What it meant for them, for the future. For her heart.
What it would require of her.
It wasn’t until it was time for dessert that Tammy cornered her in the kitchen.
“What happened?”
“I can’t marry him,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Tammy... I loved Clint. And I know you did, too. I know you loved him like a son. And he... He was wonderful. He was everything I needed. And... And when I picture my wedding I can’t even see him anymore. I see Caleb. And that’s not fair.”
“Because you love Caleb,” Tammy said.
“But this isn’t what love is supposed to be. It’s not supposed to eclipse everything else. It’s not supposed to be all-consuming. That’s how my mother was. That’s how she ruined her life. Clint gave me this wonderful, measured, sweet love, and I can’t even remember it anymore. All I see is Caleb. He’s all I...” She swallowed hard. “It’s not fair to Clint.”
“Honey,” Tammy said. “Clint is dead. And you’re right. That’s not fair. It never will be. But it’s true.”
“I don’t want to forget all these things he gave me.” And she didn’t want to start over, loving someone else. Clint had made her feel sure-footed. It had all felt easy.
She’d never felt afraid she couldn’t get enough from him. Never felt afraid she couldn’t give enough.
“You need to quit thinking about yourself so much,” Tammy said. “Stop thinking about how he loved you. Honey, do you have any idea what the way you loved him meant to him?”
Ellie couldn’t make sense of those words. Because Clint had saved her. He’d changed her. She was just...well, she’d never thought about what she’d given to him. “No.”
“He doesn’t need you to stand as a vigil to him. He doesn’t even need you to love him most forever. Because when he was here...the love that you gave him... It changed him. I had never seen him so happy. His family was such a mess... They hurt him in a thousand ways. And I never thought that he would find somebody to love. I didn’t know that he could. But he loved you. And you loved him. And the way that you did it... You keep talking about it like he loved you to teach you something. And maybe he did. But you keep forgetting that you loved him right back.”
But she’d never thought of her love as mattering. Not really. Her mother hadn’t cared. And Clint had loved her but...but she’d never thought of it like this.
“It taught him so much,” Tammy continued. “His life was too short, Ellie. And I know he didn’t get to be a father. And he would’ve been a damn good one. But he got to be your husband. And that made him happy till his dying day. And how many people can say they were happy until their dying day? Not enough. But he was. Because of you. Because you gave him that gift. You gave him a gift of a happy life. Caleb gave him that gift. Don’t deny yourself happiness because you think you owe him some kind of eternal sadness. Some kind of eternal statue to his memory.”
Something felt like it broke inside her. Came loose and a flood of emotion washed forward.
“But I...”
“Honey,” Tammy said. “It’s not about whether or not he would have wanted you to be happy. It’s about the fact that you made him happy. You did your work. You were the wife that he needed. And now he doesn’t need you. But what do you need? And if it’s not Caleb...then it’s not.”
Terror curled its way around her heart, along with the rush of relief and clarity.
Need. What did she need?
The idea that she might need someone. That she might need Caleb...
Love is easy.
Love is fun.
Her own words echoed in her head. Those things that she had shouted at Caleb. In desperation. In self-defense.
Love is easy.
Love is fun.
And she thought about Amelia. And the love that she felt for her daughter. How she carried her little girl’s pain. The way that her heart had broken when she had asked if Caleb would be her dad.
That wasn’t easy. That wasn’t fun.
Sure, it was a joy to love her daughter, but there was a weight to it. Something she hadn’t appreciated when she had been younger. And...
Something she would have avoided.
She had been able to love Clint at the time because she hadn’t realized that love could contain those bright, brilliant things he had brought into her world. But she was older now. And she had endured pain beyond anything she had imagined she might.
And she knew now.
Love had a cost.
Love always cost, because the loss of it would devastate.
Love was heavy. As heavy as it was beautiful. Like a precious stone.
And whenever you had something of value, you worried about losing it.
And then there was...
There was Caleb himself. The depth of what she felt for him. It encompassed her whole body. It encompassed her soul.
This thing that she felt for him...it was different. It was deep and rich and terrifying, and when that man had looked at her and said that he loved her...she wanted to run from it. Because his love would give, it had for years, but it also took. His love was a demand as much as it was a blessing.
It was why she had turned away from that question in his eyes that day up on the ridge.
And it was why she turned away from him now.
Because love terrified her.
When she had been young she had found an easily digestible kind of love. It had been real. It had given her something beautiful. Stability like she’d always craved. A confidence in herself that hadn’t been there before.
It had given her Amelia.
It had been lovely. It had been good.
But Caleb...
Caleb was her heart and soul in a way no one ever had been before.
An enduring love that her heart had recognized from the first day they had met.
And that she’d held at arm’s length for safety.
“I’ve never wanted to need anybody,” she said. “I grew up watching my mother need men. And she was only ever hurt by it. I needed my mother, and she didn’t give me what I wanted, and I just never... I never wanted that.”
“I’ve been hurt plenty of times. And I hurt Hank. And I would never suggest that anybody should model their marriage off of ours. But you know, sometimes you find that one, and they just stick with you.”
“But I chose a different one,” she said.
“I know you did. You made the best choice for you at the time. Or you made the only choice you could make.”
Those words settled within her, and she took hold of them. Turned them over and examined them from every angle.
She had made the only choice she could make at the time
. She would never have been able to have a relationship with Caleb, not then.
They would’ve consumed each other.
There would’ve been no finishing school, that was for sure.
She wouldn’t have been able to handle him, and she didn’t know if he would’ve been able to handle what he’d gotten back, as much as he had believed he wanted it.
But now...
She was different. She was stronger.
She had walked through the fire and come out harder. And now she needed what he was.
That man who had always stood there, waiting for her.
He was the only man that would do for the woman she was now.
But she had to become brave enough.
She had to find a way.
Fear was like a wall, standing high before her, and she had no way to see what was on the other side of it. But she knew what was on this side. Grief. Loneliness. And maybe she could stay in her little house with Amelia, and she could be a kind of happy.
But maybe, maybe she could find a future and a hope on the other side of her fear that would make all of this seem pale in comparison.
If there was one thing she did know about love, it was that it had only added to her life.
Yes, losing Clint had hurt. But he had given her things. Things that she hadn’t lost, even when she lost him.
He had made her a happier person. He had given her Amelia.
Love was never a mistake.
And Caleb...
He made her whole. And if she had felt broken, for even a moment, when she was standing in her kitchen, watching that man move around her life as if he belonged, it was because those jagged edges were rearranging themselves so that they could fit together.
Because he was hers. Her shelter. Her strength. Her intensity.
He was the man who had brought her through that fire. Through those woods.
She and Clint had had a beautiful marriage, and they’d had daily struggles, but they’d never had to go through something shattering.
But she and Caleb... They had been shattered together.
And here they were. Together. Or they could be, if she could just find it in her to say yes.
“Can you...? Can you watch Amelia?”
“Yes. Whatever you need, honey.”
“Thank you. I might... I might have her spend the night... But I didn’t bring...”
“I have some extra pajamas here. Don’t worry about it. She’ll have tons of fun. And I’ll make sure she knows that Santa will be here for her.”
“Thank you. I have to fix this. But first I...I need to be alone.”
She said her goodbyes, and somehow managed not to cry, in front of her daughter, in front of her family. And then she found herself driving back to the farmhouse. The one that she had bought for a life that had ended up not existing.
She walked toward the chicken coop and stood there, watching the little brown birds scurry around beneath the heat lamp.
It seemed like a lifetime ago she had stood in here and reflected on the fact that sometimes she could fantasize about having a whole other life when she was in here.
Well, she’d gone and found a whole other life, and what had she done with it?
She had thrown it away out of fear. Out of guilt.
Her whole insides were a mess.
She turned away from the chickens and then walked to the porch, sat down on the steps and leaned her head against the support.
She could remember looking at this house with Clint, planning a future together that they never got to have.
“I loved you,” she whispered.
And something in her got lighter. She would always love him, as her first love. As the man who had made her brave enough to love. The man who had given her her beautiful daughter.
And at first she had imagined she would always love him as a husband. That he would always be her husband.
But he wasn’t.
She had said that to Caleb weeks ago, but she hadn’t really meant it. She had said that she was Clint’s widow.
But that wasn’t all of her. It wasn’t even most of her.
She sat on the porch and closed her eyes. “Goodbye,” she whispered.
Not just Clint. But to that dream. That dream that was tied up in this house. In that future.
And behind her eyes, that were swimming with tears, she saw Caleb.
Caleb.
She loved him so much it hurt.
Had she always loved him? She might have.
Beautiful Caleb, whom she hadn’t been ready for, and wasn’t really ready for now.
But she couldn’t face a life without him, either.
Her future was with him. Her future was at his Christmas tree farm—and dammit, she was going to make him keep those Christmas trees—it was in his arms. In his bed.
He wasn’t second.
He would never be second.
He was the first of this kind of love. He was the only man that the woman she was now could ever be with.
And she wouldn’t have been strong enough before. Wouldn’t have been steady enough.
She would’ve run away from the bigness of the feeling; she would never have been able to run toward it.
And just like she had felt the door open when the two of them had been together that night, a door into a part of herself that she had never before encountered, this time she felt one close, as well. Tightly behind her. And she knew. That it was time. Time to walk forward.
She loved Caleb so much it was terrifying. She didn’t know that it would ever be anything but terrifying.
But it was also beautiful.
He was the love of her life. It would have destroyed her to admit that before. But life was complicated, and so was love. With beauty and tragedy at the bottom of each valley, and the top of each hill.
You couldn’t stop tragedy. But if you were brave, you could grab on to the beauty and hold it tight.
She could have lived her other life. She would have. And she would have been happy.
She was learning there was a lot of space between happy and this. This soul-deep connection you could share with another person.
Caleb was the only person who had that part of her.
The beauty in the tragedy was they’d found this. And they would have never, ever known what could be without it.
She and Caleb had a complicated, terrible, wonderful history. But it was theirs.
And she was his.
And she loved him.
No matter the cost.
If Caleb was what she would find on the other side of fear, then fear had no place in her.
And so she stood up, wiped off the back of her jeans and walked forward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THERE WAS NOWHERE else to go. He couldn’t sleep. And so at midnight, he found himself out at the barn, getting his horse out of the stall, ignoring the fact that snowflakes had started to fall, swirling to the ground, promising a white Christmas that Caleb thought was a mockery of everything he felt.
White Christmas. Black soul.
Perfect.
He started to lead the horse out of the barn, and was stopped by a figure standing there in the middle of the gravel lot.
“West told me that I might find you here.”
“Jacob?”
“Yeah. I went to your house. You weren’t there. West said that he ran into you out here once.”
“Yeah. I’m going for a ride.”
“What happened?”
“What makes you think something happened?”
Jacob snorted. “Well, you left. Also, I know that you were sleeping with Ellie. And I’m not an idiot. That’s math that even I can do.”
“I’m the one that has trouble with math,” Caleb said
, hauling himself up onto the horse.
“What are you doing?”
“I told you. I’m going for a ride. I need to clear my head.”
“Great. Wait for me.”
“Come on—really? Do we need to do this? There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You love her. You love her, and you need to be with her. So yeah, we need to talk about it.”
“I proposed to her, idiot.”
He couldn’t see Jacob’s face in the dim light, but he did see his whole frame shift. “What?”
“She rejected me. She doesn’t love me. She loves Clint. She’s always loved Clint. And it makes me want to hate him. He’s dead, and it makes me want to hate him. What kind of man does that make me?”
“A man that’s in love, I would think. Why would you ever be okay with your woman’s heart belonging to someone else?”
“He’s Amelia’s father. He was my friend. I respect that. But he’s not here to be her husband. It’s not...”
“It’s not selfish to want her to love you. It was never selfish to want her to love you. Why shouldn’t it be you?”
“Well, she doesn’t. So now what? What? You were here to lecture me.”
“Yeah, I was here to lecture you about being a hypocrite. Because you yelled at me when I screwed things up with Vanessa. And you told me that if I had a woman that loved me I needed to take the opportunity.”
Caleb snorted. “And I would. I’m not a hypocrite. I love her. And yeah, I told myself for a long time that it could never work out. I told myself that we were just having sex, and it wasn’t going to end with her being my wife. But you know what? I don’t want a life that doesn’t end with her being my wife.”
It hurt to even say it. His whole chest felt like someone had shoved a broken bottle right through it and twisted. “But she doesn’t want to be my wife,” he said, the words scraping his throat raw. “So what am I supposed to do about that? I fell in love with the wrong woman, Jacob. I fell in love with her more than ten years ago and I can’t undo it. I want... I want her to be mine. I want her little girl to be my little girl. I want a family that I can’t have. So fix that. Go tack up your horse and let’s go riding. Fix my broken life, bro.”
