Rebel Cowboy (24 page)

“Call him back immediately and take it back.”

“Are you joking right now?”

“Are you?” she demanded, flinging her arms in the air. “You must be. You’re throwing away your life. For what?”

He swallowed down the answer he wanted to give, the answer he wanted to shout.
You! I’m giving it all away because none of it compares to you and this.

Because if he said those words, she’d be gone. He had to find some better way of saying it. Some way of proving himself that navigated all her anger and all the ways she didn’t want to believe him. All that fear she kept buried so low she didn’t know how to deal with it.

He had to play this right, not choke, because this place gave him the strength to do that. He just had to find the right words.

Where were they?

“You can’t not try out,” she bit out, each word punctuated with some kind of surety he didn’t understand. What the hell was
she
so sure about? “You can’t retire.”

“Why not?”

“Because!” Again with the hands going up in the air. This should be a reaction for him leaving, not staying.

“What are you so pissed about? I weighed the options and I decided that I like it here better than I like the idea of trying to suck up my way back onto some skates for a year or two. I don’t for the life of me understand what you have to be mad about.”

“I-I’m not mad.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m frustrated with you for giving up on something you love. You…those aren’t the options. Hockey and leaving is the
only
option.”

Strike when afraid—he wasn’t always quick on the uptake, but he saw it now. He escaped his feelings, and she fought them like they didn’t exist. “Why do I get the feeling this isn’t about me?”

“Of course it’s about you! I saw you on the ice, Dan. I saw you skate with those kids and you glowed. I care about you too much to let you just throw that away.”

“Well, maybe I fucking glow here too,” he grumbled, hating the way she was using her feelings like a weapon.

“You don’t.”

“Well, so the hell what? This is where I want to be.”

“You don’t
mean
that.”

“What is with you?” He wanted to shake her, and quite honestly, if he thought he could touch her without the
L
word slipping out and over everything, he probably would.

“I don’t have the reserves for this, Dan.” Weary. “Call Scott back up and take the tryout.”

“You don’t have the reserves for what? I’m not doing anything to you. I made a choice about my life.” She didn’t get to do that. Act like she couldn’t handle it, say she cared about him and still wanted him gone. She couldn’t have it all the ways she wanted, no matter what shit was going on with her family.

“My life is here now,” he said. It wasn’t the time or the place. It would blow up in his face, but like the time when he’d been a kid and hadn’t been able to rein it in—all the emotion and confusion and hurt and love—it took over. It spewed out. So he touched her. He squeezed her shoulders, then cupped her face.

That beautiful, obnoxious face.

“My life is here. I am not giving up anything. I fell in love with this place, and I…” He knew better, every part of his brain was screaming at him to shut the fuck up, but his heart always won when he didn’t run. “I fell in love with you.”

She looked stricken, as if he’d slapped her across the face instead of admitted the depth of his feelings. “No, you didn’t.” Her voice was shaky, her head twisting back and forth in his hands as she pulled away. “You did not.”

“I see you’re set to be perfectly rational about this.”

“I can’t do this with you right now,” she said, still shaking her head, still talking in something little more than a thready whisper. “I have…I have too much on my plate already.”

“I wasn’t planning on telling you right now, honey. I was saving it for a better time. Maybe a nice dinner, add a little candlelight.”

“Candle… Are you crazy?”

“I think I may not be the one you should be asking that question to right now.”

“Is it because you know if you try out, you’ll choke? Is that it? You’re afraid of screwing up hockey? Staying here isn’t safe, and it isn’t…sticking your ground. This is not your ground. You do not belong on this ground.”

“You believe so little of yourself, that I couldn’t possibly love you and want to be with you?”

“No, Dan, I believe that little in you.”

Mel couldn’t catch her breath. It was all wrong. Everything she’d said since the moment she’d walked in. But she’d heard him talking about retirement and staying, and every piece of solid ground she thought she’d gained on the quiet drive over had disappeared.

No, it had gone up in flames.

He could not stay. Not now. He couldn’t ask her for more when she had no more to give.

He’d swept into her life and made everything wrong. She’d run away from her family. She’d been left with only “I don’t know what to do” as an answer when a real problem cropped up. Those things had never happened to her before he’d come into her life.

She hated it. She hated him. Yes, that was the feeling twisting up in her chest, around her heart, squeezing until she thought she wouldn’t be able to breathe. Hate. All-consuming, heartbreaking hate.

Yeah.

Dan cleared his throat. “I think I’ll pretend like
I
misheard
you
this time.”

She shook her head. “You didn’t.” There was no mishearing. There was no going back. She’d said what she needed to say to end this, because ending it was the only way to survive if he actually thought he loved her.

Loved her.

No. She could not allow that.

“Then say it again. Look me in the eye and say it again.”

She forced herself to look at him. She couldn’t manage eye contact, but maybe if she focused on the dark slash of his angry eyebrows. “I don’t—”

“You’re not looking at me, Mel.” There was a note she’d never heard in his voice. It was something beyond angry or irritated. It felt threatening, whatever it was. It sounded like bleeding, and she had to close her eyes against the thought that she was hurting him like that.

He’d hurt her first. He’d undermined everything she was, crumpled the life she’d always known, just by…just by standing by her. No, she couldn’t take that another minute.

She had to do this. She had to get some control back over her life, and getting rid of Dan was the best way. Besides, she was saving him from failure. He wouldn’t stay, and this way he could blame her instead of himself.

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 part. 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.