Rebel Cowboy Page 26

  She ignored everything in the past few weeks that proved the opposite. The way he’d dealt with Mystery getting caught in the fence, the way he had built this place with only the very basics of her help. She had to ignore it; she couldn’t believe he would stay.

  If he did, what would happen? She’d love him and what? Always feel ineffectual and lost? Always run away and not know what to do? No, she had to go back. Back to when she’d been strong. She was saving herself, like Caleb had said they needed to do.

  If it felt wrong, if it felt like sacrifice and hurt and cruelty, then that was just the nature of saving herself, she supposed.

  Had to be.

  “Come on, Mel. If you believe it, if you’re so damn convinced I don’t deserve your faith, look me in the eye and tell me.”

  So she swallowed and forced her gaze to meet those green eyes, dark with the storm of whatever emotions she didn’t want from him.

  “I don’t believe in you.” It was similar to ripping off a Band-Aid—actually, a lot more similar to breaking her arm when she was ten. Snap. A moment of disbelief, and then a blast of pain. Once the pain hit, it was so overpowering she could say anything. Because nothing could match that initial searing stab. “I don’t think you’ll make it through the winter. I think you’ll run away and leave someone else to clean up your mess. It won’t be me.”

  She wanted to look away, to close her eyes. Well. Really, if she was talking about wanting, she wanted to rewind and tell him she loved him, but the easy thing had never been the right thing in her life. So she couldn’t possibly give into it, give into him.

  “Huh.” His throat worked, but he said nothing else. He didn’t need to say anything else—the hurt and pain was all over his face, and the only thing that kept her tears from falling was sheer force of will.

  Which meant this was exactly right, because if her sheer force of will was back, then she’d done exactly what needed to be done.

  “I’m going to get my things,” she said, surprised that her voice was still cracked and shaky. Why should she be any of those things when she knew she was doing the right thing? She knew, she absolutely knew she was.

  But her legs were weak as she walked to his room, as were her hands when she grabbed her bag that she’d only minimally unpacked in the past few days. Because this had always been temporary. He had always been temporary. The aching wound in her chest was just…just…disappointment she had to hurt him in the process.

  But he’d thank her eventually. He would. He’d see she was right.

  I fell in love with you. She could barely breathe through the pain of that. She couldn’t think about that. The way his hands, calloused and rough, had held her face in place, like so many times before. The way he’d looked at her and said it as if it were true.

  But it wasn’t. It wasn’t true. She blinked at the tears and grabbed what belongings she could immediately see and pretty much gave up on the rest. She had to get out. Get out before the feelings swamped her and she lost her sense of right. Lost herself.

  She stepped out into the kitchen to find it empty and breathed a sigh of relief. She could leave without any more threats to herself.

  But when she walked outside, he was on the porch, looking over at the llama stables, the mountains in the distance. For a blinding second of pain and fear, she saw something that was theirs.

  But it wasn’t. She had Shaw. Not this. Not him.

  “Good-bye, Dan,” she forced herself to say. Closure would be good. For both of them. Good-bye. And this was the end. The end.

  “I won’t play the Tyler role in this.”

  She stopped her quick strides to the stairs, to escape. She didn’t want to look back at him, but she glimpsed him out of her peripheral vision: arms crossed over his chest, silhouetted by sun and mountains.

  “Regardless of what you think, I’m not going anywhere. I won’t run away from you.” With every sentence, he took a step toward her, and she could feel his anger and his hurt like it was a living force pushing against her.

  And with it came something else. Something he’d misplaced, because he couldn’t love her. No one loved her so much she felt it. So this was…not that.

  “I will be in this town, in Georgia’s diner, in Felicity’s store, and when I see you, it won’t be a polite hello and a how are you doing. I’m not going to fade into the fucking background. You think I’ll be like Tyler and give you space? Fuck no. Give up on life like your dad? Not me, Mel Shaw. You will see me in this town, season after season, year after year, and eventually you’ll have to face the truth.”

  She didn’t want to hear this. She wouldn’t. But his words followed her all the way to Caleb’s truck.

  “You made a mistake. You were wrong. There will be no one to blame—not your family, not this town, not your damn bank account. There will be nothing and no one to blame but yourself.”

  She climbed into the driver’s seat, shaking, the tears starting to fall, but it wasn’t just hurt. She might not believe most of what came out of his mouth this evening, but she couldn’t dispute that last sentence. Not even a little.

  There will be nothing and no one to blame but yourself.

  Truer words. She shoved the truck into reverse and peeled out of Dan’s gravel drive, ignoring the fact that her truck was still there. It didn’t matter.

  No, she had no one to blame but herself, but at least this was her choice and not something thrust upon her. At least it was really hers.

  * * *

  Dan hadn’t gotten drunk last night, though that’s exactly what he’d wanted to do. Instead, he’d made plans. Mostly llama plans, because fuck Mel’s lack of faith, but also some hockey plans, because while he was mostly happy with what he’d told Dad and Scott, there’d been a niggling worry.

  So he’d plotted and planned, and early this morning he’d called up Buck to help him out for the three days he’d be gone. He felt like shit when the llamas arrived, but even if he’d tried to sleep, he probably would have felt like shit.

  He’d never been in love before, never felt loss like this. It was somewhat similar to his grandparents, except they still existed and loved him, when they remembered who he was. He didn’t have to accept that they were gone yet. He could pretend all was all right by not visiting or calling. Just send messages through an email with Mom or a card on holidays and birthdays.

  That was probably wrong, but he didn’t know what else he could do. He took a deep breath and looked away from the new llamas getting settled in the pen, to the mountains, the fields, the cabin.

  Maybe there was something he could do. Maybe it would mean nothing if Grandpa wasn’t lucid, but…he could try.

  Dan pulled out his phone and brought up the number to the nursing home in Florida. After talking with a nurse for a little bit, his grandfather’s scratchy voice came through the receiver.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, Gramps. It’s, um, me, Dan.”

  “Who?”

  “Dan. Daniel, y-your grandson.” He shouldn’t have done this. Why was he purposefully putting himself through more pain? What was this supposed to prove?

  “Daniel. Ruth, do you hear that? It’s Daniel.”

  There was a way Grandpa sometimes talked, like he didn’t remember but knew he was supposed to, so he pretended, and Dan couldn’t get over that feeling now. The way he said Daniel like he was some long lost friend, not his grandson.

  “How are you?” Grandpa asked politely, clearly having no idea who he was.

  “I’m good. Okay. How are you and Grandma?”

  “Oh, you know, they keep us all shoved into this room. Won’t let me go see the horses. I know there are horses out there.”

  As nice of a place as it was, there were no horses near the nursing home, and Dan had to close his eyes and lean his forehead against the rough wood of the fence. It was the old par
t. Grandpa probably built it, and he and Mel had added onto it.

  And they were both, for all intents and purposes, gone.

  “How do you feel about llamas?”

  “Llamas?”

  Then Dan felt like a tool for confusing a man with dementia. “Never mind. Sorry. Really. I…” Dan tried to think of something, something that would matter, that would make this stupid phone call worth it.

  He looked around him. “You know, I’m, um, in the mountains. Montana. It’s, um, late morning and the sun is already really bright. Makes the mountains look like…glass almost.”

  “Drought?”

  “We had some rain last week. It helped.”

  “That’s good. I’ve missed the mountains for years,” he said wistfully. “What else you got out there besides mountains?”

  “Well, there’s a cabin.” A cabin Grandpa had been born in, raised children in, loved with everything he had. “It’s small, and old, but I think it was well lived in.”

  It certainly put some perspective on the whole romantic heartbreak thing. Not that it alleviated the uncomfortable truth that Mel didn’t want his love. Didn’t trust it or believe in it. That the fence they built together was not a symbol. No, that still sucked, because in some half-cocked vision of his future, he’d wanted her there. Kids and all sorts of stupid, stupid shit.

  Dan cleared his throat. One heartbreak at a time. “I just wanted to tell you…”

  “You know, I know someone else named Daniel. He’s going to fix up my place back in Montana, you know? A cabin just like that. That’s right. He was going to spend the summer there. I think he’ll love it though. He’ll stay. He’s a good boy. I knew him when he was young, but I don’t think he’s young anymore.”

  Even knowing Grandpa wouldn’t understand, that he was too lost in some confusing, muffled place, Dan said it anyway. “I’m staying, Gramps. I love it. You’re right.”

  “Maybe you’d like to talk to Ruth? I don’t think my hearing aid is working quite right.”

  “Sure. Yeah. Sure.” Dan cleared his throat again, trying to dislodge the tears—the happy and the brokenhearted kind. The words hurt as they healed, and broke as they fixed it all up. He didn’t know what to do with it.

  Except say “I love you,” listen to Grandma talk about some neighbor she didn’t like, and then say “I love you” to her too.

  Then sit on the damn ground and cry like a damn baby because no one was there to see it.

  But once he was done, wrung all the way out, feeling worse and somehow better at the same time, he got up and went to check on the llamas.

  Chapter 25

  Mel fiddled with the end of her braid. She couldn’t stop doing that, but having Summer in the Shaw kitchen filled her with a fidgety, itchy kind of dread.

  They were going to tell Dad.

  Summer pulled something out of the oven that smelled like heaven. For all the ways Mel didn’t want her to exist, no matter how harsh that wish was, Summer had breathed a weird kind of fresh air into Shaw.

  If it wasn’t her youth and the way her jewelry jangled or the way she oohed and aahed over every horse, every chore, every inch of Shaw land and every scrap of attention Mel or Caleb threw her way, it was the fact that she could cook and clean in ways Caleb and Mel had never dreamed of.

  They didn’t have her in the big house very often yet, wanting to keep her out of Dad’s sight. But tonight was the night. She’d been here four days. Mel couldn’t admit to feeling sisterly toward her—that seemed fraught with a kind of emotion that was still too raw from everything with Dan—but she did cautiously, carefully, almost like Summer.

  If only feelings didn’t make her think of Dan and then have to deal with the sharp, stabbing pain of being without him. Shouldn’t that be going away by now? At least turning dull instead of the sharpness that lingered, seemed to deepen every day. Wasn’t heartbreak supposed to get better with time?

  “Are you sure you didn’t want to invite your boyfriend? I don’t mind. I know it’s uncomfortable family stuff, but if he’s part of your life, I’m okay with it.”

  It was the third time Summer had asked, but the first time with Caleb in the room. Before, Mel had waved it away, not bothering to explain, but with Caleb there, she…well, she couldn’t. Not without a look. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  Summer blinked up from the casserole she was cooking. “Oh, but…” She glanced at Caleb then smiled in the brilliant, ridiculously happy way she had that made no sense to Mel. “No worries!”

  Mel didn’t know what Caleb had done behind her to get Summer not to argue, but she appreciated it. She hadn’t told Caleb exactly what happened, and he hadn’t asked, but her being here every day was a pretty clear indication.

  What was there to talk about?

  “Should I go get Dad?” Caleb asked with more gentleness than Mel had heard from him in a long time.

  Summer clasped her hands together and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. She had no poker face, no guile, this girl Mel was somehow related to. It hurt to look at her sometimes, all that emotion just there, needing to be dealt with.

  Reminding her of all the emotion inside of her she flat-out wasn’t dealing with. Because there wasn’t time for that.

  That was your excuse last time. And the last.

  Didn’t that make it the right excuse?

  “If you guys think this is the right time,” Summer said. Even with her nerves written all over her face, she seemed…sure.

  Maybe there was some Shaw in there after all.

  “All right. I’ll bring him in the dining room,” Caleb said, disappearing into the hall. Whatever he felt about the whole situation was buried down deep beneath a veneer Mel couldn’t breach, and she wondered if they’d made any progress at all.

  But they were here, moving forward on the Summer issue, so maybe it was something. Enough of something anyway.

  Summer continued to clasp and unclasp her hands, blinking steadily and breathing in short puffs.

  “It’ll be fine.” Which was such a lie. How did Mel know it was going to be fine? “Even if he reacts badly or doesn’t react at all, Caleb and I…are…here.” Which was a lame promise, but Summer’s whole face lit up like it was some kind of offer of riches. “You don’t have to be there when we tell him if you don’t want,” Mel continued.

  “I want to be there,” Summer said. “I’ll never be able to believe if he knew or not if I don’t see it.”

  Mel nodded, all the sick nerves falling over themselves in her stomach.

  Summer spoke again. “Can I ask you a quick question though?”

  “Sure.”

  “That guy from the other day…was he your boyfriend and something happened, or was he really just your colleague or whatever?”

  Mel turned away, hating both answers. They were both wrong and terrible and she hated this feeling. Hate, hate, hate.

  “It was nothing,” Mel said, wanting this moment to be over. “Just a…thing.”

  Summer’s warm, soft hand slid over hers, and Mel had to fight the urge to pull away. It was another part of the whole weird Summer package. She touched people. All the damn time. “I know we don’t know each other very well just yet…” Summer began.

  Just yet. Like she had every belief they would.

  “But if you want to talk about it,” she continued, “I’m a good listener.” She smiled brightly. “I know you probably have friends and stuff, but—”

  “Thanks, I…appreciate the offer, but I’m fine.”

  “I don’t know how you’re so strong, Mel. I feel like I’m falling apart every day.”

  Mel didn’t know why her eyes pricked with tears or why she suddenly wanted Summer’s hand to stay exactly where it was. Or maybe she did know why. Because wasn’t that exactly what she felt? Falling apart. She’d finally found a pl
ace where her whole life hadn’t felt like that, and she’d been so afraid it wouldn’t last, it wasn’t real, she’d pushed it away.

  You had to. You had to.

  Why did that voice in her head sound so desperate?

  “You guys ready?” Caleb stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. He offered a smile for Summer, but it was all frayed at the edges, as jerky as Mel’s fiddling and Summer’s hand clasping.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, we’ll never be ready for this,” Mel muttered. And again, admitting that was like that moment in Dan’s cabin when she’d said the horrible thing and everything after it was easy. Except those weren’t so much painful as they were…freeing. “It’s awful and painful and I wish I could just run in the opposite direction.”

  “I am dreaming about a bottle of Jack Daniel’s,” Caleb said in a scratchy, grumbly voice.

  Summer’s laugh was something more like a hysterical giggle. “I want to go home. Only…I don’t have one.”

  She realized Summer was still clutching her hand, so Mel swallowed and held out her free hand for Caleb. It took him a minute, but he finally took the steps necessary and clasped Mel’s hand. Then with a throat-clearing sound, offered his other hand to Summer.

  They made a circle, the three of them, and Mel knew it was important to make this mean something, no matter what happened when they told Dad. She couldn’t control Dad’s reaction, she couldn’t make the past what she wanted it to be—dear Lord, wasn’t that a realization—but maybe if the three of them could be honest with each other, they’d somehow resemble some kind of normal sibling relationship.

  “This is awful. But, that’s not on us.” Mel took a slow, deep breath and let it out. “Maybe…somehow we can make it less awful.”

  “You guys already have. Really.” Summer’s hand squeezed Mel’s. “This is more than I…well, not more than I fantasized, because I fantasized you guys were like royalty and had a spa and stuff, but this is way better than any of my realistic fantasies.”

  “This girl,” Caleb said, shaking his head. “Where did she come from?”