Cold Heart, Warm Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  But she didn’t know which path to take that would hurt him the least now.

  “You keep saying that,” she said, her fingers digging too hard into the flesh of her arms. “While everything you do is emotional. Maybe you don’t know how to put your feelings into words. That’s not exactly a surprise. That doesn’t mean you don’t feel things.”

  “Telling me how I feel isn’t going to make my memory click back into place, Hannah. But it is guaranteed to piss me off.”

  She wanted to cry. Sob. “I’m not trying to piss you off.”

  Though she was about to do much worse than that.

  “Are you sure? Because from where I’m standing, you seem to be grabbing at things to be mad about.”

  Say it, she shouted at herself. It’s never going to get easy. It’s never going to feel right. Just tell the man.

  “You…” Hannah could feel herself begin to sweat. Her stomach churned. “I have to tell you…”

  He was staring at her. Waiting, though he could have no idea about the bomb she was about to drop.

  Hannah swallowed. She wished she could reach out and slap herself across the face, to snap out of whatever this was that held her in its grip.

  She had made this bed. She might have done it with the best of intentions, but what did that matter? Everyone knew what kind of roads were best paved with good intentions. And where they led.

  “Ty…” she started.

  “If you’re working up your nerve to tell me to get lost,” he said, something dark glittering in that gaze of his, “you’re wasting your breath. You and I made promises to each other. You sat in my truck and told me the story. This might not be a fairy tale, Hannah. It might not be working out the way you want it to. But I don’t believe in giving up on things when they get hard. If I did, I never would have met you in the first place, because I would have slunk away the first time a bull threw me on my face.”

  This got worse by the second.

  “That’s not what I was trying to say. I have to tell you—”

  But she didn’t finish her sentence because a pair of headlights swept over the front of the bunkhouse, illuminating the room. That was weird enough, since last Hannah had checked, the whole Everett family was home for the evening. Of course, there were a thousand reasons that someone could have taken a ride out somewhere, from ranch business to Brady in search of a single man’s social life. They’d been otherwise occupied for some time, after all. Maybe she hadn’t heard one of the vehicles leave.

  But in the next moment, a horn started blowing. Loud and long, and it didn’t stop.

  “What the hell…?” Ty muttered.

  He grabbed his shirt and shrugged into it as he moved out of the bedroom. He stamped into his boots and then headed outside. Hannah trailed along behind him, pulling on her own boots and grabbing one of his flannel shirts off the peg near the door to wrap around her. It got cold in these mountains at night, even in August.

  There was a truck parked at a weird angle in the yard, right outside the ranch house. A quick glance around showed Hannah that the outside lights were all turned on and Brady was already standing in front of the truck. Abby and Becca were standing together in the ranch house’s door, while Gray strode across the yard, the look on his face akin to another man’s shotgun.

  That was when Hannah realized she’d seen that truck before.

  She told herself she was confused. She didn’t know enough people in Colorado to go around identifying different pickups, but as she drew closer, her confusion spun out into something far more alarming.

  Recognition.

  Because once she got out of the glare of the headlights, she could see the woman standing in the open driver’s door. She wore her hair the same as Hannah, in blond curls that tumbled down past her shoulders. She liked her jeans, she loved her boots, and she’d never met a concert T-shirt she didn’t covet. She bought them off the internet, and pretended it was as good as going. Tonight’s featured Tim McGraw and Faith Hill in a spicy embrace.

  But Hannah couldn’t focus on Tim McGraw’s forearm and hands. She couldn’t breathe.

  Especially when she saw the bundle the woman held in her arms.

  “Mama…” Hannah whispered.

  No one could possibly have heard her, but still, Luanne’s gaze swung straight to her. And Hannah would have preferred to get hit with that truck, which she’d last seen in Aunt Bit’s driveway. She felt the way her mother’s gaze swept over her, taking in every detail. Ty’s shirt, haphazardly thrown over what were clearly her pajamas. Her wet hair, and most damning of all, the fact she wasn’t wearing a lick of makeup.

  Hannah might as well have come out here with a sign, lit up in neon, telling all of Colorado what she and Ty had been up to tonight.

  “Can I help you?” Gray demanded.

  But Ty was looking from Luanne to Hannah and then back again. On the other side of the truck, Brady was doing the same.

  “Well?” Mama said into the dark. Straight into the center of all that tension. Her eyes bored into Hannah, and Hannah knew that she’d never, ever back down. That wasn’t what Luanne did. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  Hannah’s mouth was dry. Still, she opened it and tried to say something, only to find no sound came out.

  Everyone was staring at her. And she couldn’t summon up any of the tools she normally used. No smile. No drawl. Nothing.

  That was when Jack began to cry.

  Hannah’s paralysis disappeared in a snap. She leaped forward, suddenly so greedy to get her hands on her baby that she forgot the situation she was in. It didn’t matter. Not when he was crying. Not when he needed her.

  She threw herself across the yard, pushing past Ty and Gray, her hands already out. Reaching. Desperate—

  Hannah plucked Jack out of her mother’s arms, already murmuring. Already saying his name and moving in to press kisses to the side of his face. The sweet baby smell of him rolled into her, soothing her. Just as her voice soothed him, because he stopped crying. His perfect lower lip trembled for a moment, and then he started to babble. He reached out and put his sticky, chubby hands on her face, right there on her mouth, and she couldn’t help herself.

  She smiled at him, big and wide, as if they didn’t have an audience, arrayed behind her in worrying silence.

  But they did.

  Hannah met her mother’s eyes over the top of Jack’s head and the soft, dark hair he got from his daddy. She cradled him close and didn’t react to the defiant challenge all over Luanne’s face.

  Then she turned around, slowly, and it was even worse than anything she could have imagined.

  The outside lights were beaming and so were all the lights in the house, so she could clearly see Abby and Becca standing inside the back door. Brady had his hand on the hood of the truck and a scowl on his face. Gray was on the other side of the open driver’s door. Ty had moved closer to Hannah, as if he was ready to protect her.

  She would remember them lined up like that for the rest of her life. She could feel this scene branding itself on her heart. The family she’d almost had, but lost.

  Right this minute.

  Because she could already see understanding dawning.

  “This is my mother,” she said, dimly amazed that her voice was working again, now that it was too late.

  She found Ty. She held his gaze even though it made her tremble. And she tried to pretend that they were alone while Jack made his noises and seized her braid, tugging on it as if it was a toy. His toy.

  She understood, suddenly, why a heart could break and keep hurting. Why each and every piece ached the way it did.

  Because she had never understood what it was to love, wholly and desperately and with her whole body and soul, until she’d met Ty. When he’d broken her heart, she’d been sure he’d kept all the pieces with him. Then she’d had Jack, and she’d understood her heart in a whole new way. That it was bigger and stronger and more fragile than she’d ever imagined. Tha
t it would forever live outside of her body, contained in a little boy who smelled sleepy and too warm and all hers, but wasn’t hers at all. He was his.

  Tonight, she had every love of her life standing there around her. Her mother, who she loved and despaired of, fought against and wanted so desperately to please. Ty, who she still loved, so hard and so deep there should be a different word for it, especially when it couldn’t possibly work out between them. And Jack, her bright and shining joy, whose presence on this earth made her life make a different kind of sense than it ever had before. She wanted to cry, because it was hard, and worse, because she could never protect him from things like this.

  Love and all the damage it did. All the ways it hurt.

  And how pointless life would be without it.

  Jack would grow up and learn all the ways there were to hurt himself. She would have to watch him do it. She would have to let him go.

  Letting go, over and over again, was all love ever demanded of her. It was such a tiny thing, and it was the whole world, and Hannah was terrible at it. More than terrible. As this whole mess proved.

  Ty was staring at her, frozen solid, a perfectly blank look on his face. She didn’t need to hear the murmuring from behind him. She didn’t need to feel her mother’s impatience at her back.

  She felt her own guilt just fine.

  “And this is Jack,” she said to Ty. As if they were alone and she’d done this the right way while she’d had the chance. If only she’d done this the right way … but she hadn’t. “I was trying to tell you about him. He’s your son.”

  18

  Her words didn’t make any sense.

  Ty stared at Hannah, uncomprehending. Except something in him comprehended fine, because his pulse was rocketing around the way it did before he climbed on the back of a bull. His adrenaline was kicking, hard.

  And he was still. Too still. The kind of still that kept him on bulls for eight crucial seconds. The kind of bone-deep stillness that kept him calm.

  When he wasn’t calm at all.

  “He’s ten months old,” Hannah was saying, pure misery all over her face. Though he had to hand it to her, she sure was trying to keep her voice bright in all this darkness.

  “Jack,” he said, though he didn’t sound like himself. His voice came from far, far away, lost somewhere in that stillness in him that wasn’t real. And wouldn’t last. “My son. Jack.”

  None of those words made sense.

  “Ty…” Hannah whispered.

  And she reached out to him.

  That was what did it. Because she shifted the baby as she reached out, and it was such an unconscious move. It spoke of long practice. Ten months of practice, if he could trust his hearing. Ten months of the life he’d made and hadn’t known existed.

  That pulse in his temples was more like an ice pick. Ty only realized that he’d stepped back—or staggered, really—when she dropped her hand.

  “Okay,” Gray was saying from behind him, at his sternest. “Show’s over.”

  Ty was dimly aware of movement on his periphery. Of his family going back inside and taking the woman Ty had known immediately had to be Hannah’s mother with them. He’d known who she had to be at a glance because she looked like she could be Hannah’s sister. But she clearly remembered him, if that look she’d thrown his way was any indication.

  He was aware of all that, but he couldn’t look away from Hannah. And her baby.

  His baby. His son.

  Ty had never wanted a family. He could barely tolerate the one he had. And now he had a son. Had actually had a son for the better part of a year already.

  He shook his head, but none of it went away, not even that pulsing pain in his temples. Hannah stood there, the baby on her hip, her eyes slicked bright with some combination of pain and a terrible longing. It caught at him.

  It quaked through him.

  “So in there…” He pointed in the general direction of the bunkhouse, but he couldn’t bring himself to look away from her. “Right now. You were going to leave and … never tell me?”

  “I came here for a divorce.”

  Her voice was rough, and maybe he only wanted to hear the note of guilt. But she also sounded … sure.

  He could remember the day she’d arrived so clearly, in comparison to all the blank spots and missing pieces that he’d grown to accept was who he was, now. They’d stood out here in the dirt, surrounded by all of this land, the unendurable weight of it. And he’d seen a pretty girl with blue eyes that made the Colorado summer sky pale in comparison.

  But Hannah had looked at him as if he was the enemy.

  Because he had been.

  “What happened that night?” he asked her, his voice low and furious.

  Ty couldn’t have said what he was furious about. Everything. Nothing. He only knew that the fury was everywhere. Dripping through him like whiskey and acid, burning hot everywhere it touched.

  Hannah didn’t ask him what night he meant. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and she held the baby closer to her, cradling his head.

  Because she was comforting herself? Or because she wanted to protect him … from Ty?

  How could he not know if he was a man or a monster?

  You know, came an old voice from deep inside him, entirely too familiar. You know what kind of piece of crap you are. Good-for-nothing punk.

  Amos might have died. Ty had attended the funeral completely sober, to make sure. But what good had the funeral done if the old man lived on inside him even now?

  “I found out I was pregnant,” Hannah said, her voice too thick. “And I told you. And you were not happy.”

  “‘Not happy,’” Ty repeated. He ran a hand over his jaw, but it didn’t feel like his. He didn’t feel like him. “Did you expect me to be happy? Had I turned into a man who wanted … this?”

  “He’s not a this.” Hannah glared at him, and something in Ty turned over and made him queasy. Because she’d been cradling the baby for a reason, hadn’t she? “He’s a little boy. His name is Jack.”

  “Just tell me what happened, Hannah.” Ty sounded old to his own ears. The kind of broken that settled in deep. “Make me understand why you would keep this secret all this time.”

  Her eyes were big and wide. She swallowed, hard. And Ty couldn’t understand why he wanted nothing more than to pull her close to him and comfort her. Even now.

  The urge made him … unsteady.

  “You said a lot of things,” Hannah told him, her pretty face solemn. “The major takeaway was that you couldn’t be a father. That you never wanted to be a father. The only example you’d had of fatherhood was a monster and you would rather die than be that kind of father to a child of your own. And then you got hurt.” She blew out a breath. “And maybe tonight, we can set aside the debate about whether or not you were more reckless out there than usual.”

  Reckless. That word again. His head pounded.

  “Of course, I rushed to your side.” Her face twisted. “What I mean is, I had to wait for hours and then sneak in early the next morning because I was still so worried that people would know about us. In case you thought you were the only one who acted regrettably.”

  “Regrettably,” he echoed, and almost laughed.

  What a prim word to describe the blackness in him. The desolation.

  “And you already know what happened after that,” she said.

  Ty was spinning. Everything was spinning, and the earth was buckling, and he was getting so tired of all that seismic activity when he still couldn’t remember the things he needed to know.

  He couldn’t remember, but he could certainly feel. Hannah might as well have stuck her hand into his chest and ripped his heart out. He tried to pull himself together, somehow, when he was more sure than he’d ever been before that he was nothing but a walking collection of broken parts.

  Ty could feel the weight of expectation, there in the night between them. Around them. In them. Need and longing, pain and suffer
ing, hope and fear.

  In Hannah. In him. In both of them, when he couldn’t get past the churning darkness that whispered to him in his father’s voice.

  Or the secrets she’d kept—for the baby’s good. His baby.

  This should have been impossible. Ty couldn’t remember falling in love, no matter how drawn he was to this woman, but he accepted that could have happened. But he knew without a shred of doubt that he’d never intended to have children. He’d wanted the bitterness to end with him.

  His head pounded.

  “Let me see him,” he said gruffly.

  Hannah made a hitching sound, like a sob checked. She turned the baby around in her arms, so Ty was finally facing his own child.

  His son.

  The baby—Jack, he told himself—gazed back at him, dark eyes big and his mouth open. He had dark hair that went wispy at the ends. He had eyebrows.

  That struck Ty as miraculous.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the moment I saw you,” Hannah said in a rush, and she sounded on the verge of sobbing. “All this time, I was sure that of course you remembered us. And didn’t want any part of us. Of this. And I didn’t want to subject Jack to that. To a father who didn’t want him at all, not even for the odd weekend here and there. Because I know what that’s like. I know exactly what that feels like, and I figured it was better to have no father than one who—”

  “Can I hold him?”

  Hannah stopped talking. She sucked in a breath, like it hurt. But her voice was quiet and solid when she spoke again. “Of course.”

  She held Jack out before her, and Ty took him, the way he’d taken hold of Becca a thousand times when she’d been a baby and he’d been home. He could have turned Jack into the crook of his arm, but he didn’t.

  Jack was solid. He kicked a few times, drooled, made a whole lot of noises that sounded like words, but weren’t.

  Ty held the baby up before him, eye to eye.

  Man to man.

  “Jack,” he said, testing it out.

  The baby’s eyes opened wider, and for a moment, they simply stared at each other. Then Jack reached out with his plump hands and put them right on Ty’s face.