Tough Luck Hero (32 page)

Then she looked up at him, breathing hard, her breasts rising and falling with the motion. “I'm not afraid,” she said, her voice trembling. “Is it too much for you to imagine that I simply just don't love you?”

“Yes, yes it is. Because I think from the moment you met me in Ace's bar, you wanted me. I think it's why we couldn't stand the sight of each other, because we knew that all we really wanted was to tear each other's clothes off. To disappear into our desire and never come out of it. I think we both knew it from moment one. I think we loved each other then.”

“Lust,” she said, “that's all it is. And lust isn't love.”

“Right. So it was only lust that had you losing your mind up against the woodshed with me? That was lust? Simple lust ruins all of your carefully cultivated control? I don't believe that.” He took a step closer to her, the broken mug crunching underneath his shoe. “It certainly takes more than that for me.”

“I guess it doesn't take more for me. You're hot in bed—I'm not going to deny that—but that's not the same thing as...feelings.”

“I know what you're doing. Because it's what I've spent my whole life doing. You're running away from the hard things. From the big things.”

“We've already been through this, Colton. I was brave enough to change my life. I didn't cling to my family and get involved in some kind of codependent mess the way that you did.”

“No. You ran away because you felt like they were crushing you. And it was good that you did. But did you ever set yourself free after? Or did you keep on living the way that they wanted you to? How long has it been since you were really happy, Lydia? How long has it been since you really cried?”

“Is that what you want? You want me to cry, Colton? Well, I'm not going to cry over you.” She tried to brush past him and he grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her back against him.

“I don't need you to cry for me,” he said, his chest feeling full of broken glass, digging into him with his each and every breath. “But maybe you should cry for you. Maybe you should try to feel something. You pour everything into this town, Lydia. Everything. Because it isn't a person. It can't love you back. It can't hurt you.”

“Right, because you know me better than I know myself. After a month and a half of marriage, you're an expert on me,” Lydia said, pulling away from him again.

“Tell me I'm wrong.”

“You're wrong,” she said, turning away sharply.

“You do all these things so that you can pretend you're being brave. Running for mayor looks brave on the surface. It makes you feel like you're a part of something, a part of Copper Ridge, but it just distances you even further from people. You stay busy, you make yourself important. But it's not the same as loving someone.”

“That's a really nice story. And it's pretty convincing. The thing is, I care about a lot of things. I risk a lot. None of this is a story I tell myself—this is a story you're telling yourself. Because you can't deal with the fact that I have feelings, I just don't have them for you.”

Then she turned and walked out of his house, leaving him there with a broken mug, and a broken heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

L
YDIA
DIDN
'
T
KNOW
where she was going. She thought maybe she would go to her house, but she passed on by. She continued driving down the winding road that afforded a brilliant view of the ocean during the day. Right now, everything was blanketed in gray. Including her.

She parked her car in one of the small lots above wooden stairs that granted beach access, got out, letting the salt air blow over her skin. Cautiously, she walked down the stairs and down to the sand. Her feet sank in immediately, and she kicked her shoes off. The ground was freezing cold, the coarse grains wrapping themselves around her feet, making her skin ache. But she didn't care. She carried her shoes down to the water's edge, closing her eyes and listening to the invisible waves crashing in front of her.

She was numb. Scenes from a few moments ago playing through her mind. Colton telling her she was scared. Telling her she was protecting herself.

Telling her that he loved her.

Her knees felt wobbly all of a sudden, and she gave in to the weakness, sinking down onto the sand, not caring when the cold and moisture seeped through her jeans.

She didn't know what was happening to her. She didn't know what had happened tonight. Colton was never supposed to love her. Why would he? He was Colton West. And she was not a woman who made men lose their heads. She certainly wasn't a woman who lost her head over a man. And yet, here they were.

Her shoulders shook, a sob catching in her chest. What was she doing? She had been elected mayor less than twelve hours ago, and now she was sitting on the beach, by herself, on the verge of an emotional breakdown. She had everything she had come here for.

The full and total acceptance of the town, the position she had wanted... And she felt...nothing.

She was hollow. A kind of echoing hollowness that radiated aching pain all through her body. She wanted to lie on her face in the sand all of a sudden, feel the coolness pressed up against her, see if it would take away some of the hideous restlessness rioting through her.

It was as if a lifetime of pain suddenly rolled over her like a sneaker wave from the sea. Pure misery gripped her, swamped her, made it almost impossible to breathe.

Something cracked inside of her, and from there it all just poured out. Her pain. Her misery. Tears. A deep, unending grief that shook her. Rocked her.

She had never cried for Frannie. Not really. She'd shed tears, but she hadn't cried from her soul since the moment she found out her sister was dead. Not since her father had told her she had to bottle it back up because it was far too upsetting for her parents to witness. But there was no one here to see now. And there was nothing but that aching, vacant place inside of her that made her feel like half.

It was bleeding now. As though she had suddenly removed the tourniquet and reopened a wound she'd long thought healed. It wasn't healed. Not even close.

She thought of what Colton had said earlier, about temporary fixes. That's what she had been doing. Putting Band-Aids on deep, fatal wounds and hoping to ignore them for the rest of her life, while they killed her slowly.

She took a deep, shaking breath, tears slipping down her cheeks. She wiped them away, leaving behind grains of sand that had been stuck to her hands. “Stupid town,” she muttered, the words breaking as her insides continued to shatter. “You were supposed to fix me. You weren't supposed to break me.”

She was supposed to find quiet here. A place to hide. She was not supposed to find Colton West.

Wasn't supposed to find a man who dragged her out into the open, who insisted that she didn't hide. She clutched her chest, trying to push the pain that was radiating from her back inside. Trying to push it back down deep. But it would not be contained. It hurt. It physically hurt.

She sobbed, deep and long, harder than she could ever remember crying. For everything. For Frannie. For herself. For her parents. And most especially because she was such a hypocrite. Because she had pushed Colton to take things that he wanted while she continued to hide. Because she had told him he had to go for his dreams because that's what she believed she had done. She hadn't. She was a coward.

Hiding from grief. Hiding from joy.

Using a community to fill empty spaces inside of her because, Colton was right, she didn't have to love it in a personal way. She had taken her parents' issues and made them her own. Had taken their fear of pain, of strong emotion, and owned it. Even while she pretended she was going off to make a life of her own.

Because this was scary. It was horrible.

And she was so afraid to reach for more.

She closed her eyes, replaying in her mind the moment she had told Colton she didn't love him back. The hurt, the naked, unguarded pain in his blue eyes reverberating through her.

She did love him. She did. And he was right, she probably had from that first moment she'd seen him in Ace's. No wonder she had hated him so much. Because underneath it, she had known what could be. Because she had known that he would challenge everything, that he would breach her defenses, scale the walls that she had erected around her heart, around her soul.

He was an enemy to her quiet life. Her safety. That was why, instinctively, she had shut him out of her home, of her sanctuary in the beginning.

She had been smart. Because if she had wanted to stay safe, she should have stayed away from Colton West from the beginning. But here she was, on the other side of safety. She couldn't go back. That deep foreboding she had felt at last night's election party was true beyond a shadow of a doubt. She had been changed by Colton. She could try to pretend that she wasn't. She could try to go back and reclaim that quiet existence she'd once had. That didn't contain deep grief, deep happiness, deep pain or deep love.

But, looking at that, looking back at the person she was, at the half, she knew she couldn't do that. Knew she couldn't go back to the gray.

She stood up, her eyes fixed on the horizon line. She could see an orange glow starting around the edge of the mountains, spilling over and out across the ocean, illuminating the whitecaps, brightening the gray.

She watched as the sun rose higher, wrapping the trees in a golden wreath, the glow extending down over the large, jagged rocks that dotted the shoreline, and the mist that rose up above the sand. The light mixed with the slate-gray waves, turning them a velvet purple.

It had always been there. All of it. Shrouded in the gray. It only needed the light to be revealed.

It made her wonder. It made her wonder for the first time if perhaps she wasn't a half at all. If maybe, just maybe, she had always been whole.

She just had to let the light in to see it.

* * *

D
RINKS
WERE
ON
his brother-in-law that night at the brewery, and Colton was in no position to say no.

His father's health was stabilized, but there was still no way to know how he would recover. Only the coming weeks would really tell. Additionally, his disgraced brother was skulking around town.

Worst of all, Colton hadn't seen his wife since she stormed out of his house early that morning.

She didn't love him. She had made that clear. And whether or not Colton believed it, she did. And that was all that really mattered. At least at the moment. He'd never had his heart broken before. He had done such a damn good job of insulating himself against anything like that, that it had never been a factor.

This was what happened when he stepped outside of what was expected. He realized now that this was what he had been avoiding for years. It was jarring. Being faced with Gage's return, his father's failing health and the loss of Lydia. It made him take a good, long hard look at himself and the reasons he did things. He didn't like any of it. He didn't particularly care for introspection. What man did? But it was difficult to avoid in this situation.

The real reason he worked so hard to do exactly what his parents needed him to do, the real reason that he did everything he could to hold it together for Maddy and Sierra, was because he was afraid of losing them too. Simple as that. If things got too hard, someone else might leave. If he failed in some way, someone else might give up.

As pissed as he was at his older brother, he had missed that bastard. Seeing him had driven that point home. He wasn't ready to hug it out with him. He wasn't even sure he wanted to talk to him. But the first emotion he'd felt when Gage had walked through that door was relief.

He'd made that speech to Lydia about the prodigal son stuff. About resenting the idea that Gage would be given a hero's welcome if ever he returned home. The real issue was, Colton had always known he would be tempted to give Gage a hero's welcome if he ever came home. Colton would be tempted to forget the past seventeen years had ever happened and embrace his older brother as if nothing had ever gone wrong.

And then he would be hurt all over again when he left.

A lot of good this bit of self-actualization had done. He had lost Lydia. He was living his worst fear. He had lost the person that had come to mean the most to him the moment he had demanded too much.

He closed his eyes and took another sip of whiskey, imagining the first moment he had seen her back in Ace's bar. She had gotten to him then. It was her. And it always had been. He had held it off for as long as possible, and look what had happened.

“More?” He opened his eyes and came face-to-face with Ace.

“Yes. I would like to drink until I can forget the last couple of days.”

“I'm the right person to see about that. But I do feel like I should remind you the last time you did that you ended up married.”

“Yeah, maybe this time I'll end up divorced.” He picked his glass up and tipped it back, draining the rest of the contents before setting it down hard on the bar. “Keep it coming.”

“That bad, huh?”

“That bad.”

“Drinking for the whole family?”

Colton turned and saw Jack Monaghan coming up to the bar.

“Unless you want to help,” he said to his half brother.

“I would. But, I need to stay sober in case my wife decides to go into labor. Any day now. Really, any moment now. She's overdue.”

“Then I guess the drunken debauchery is up to me.”

“What happened with Lydia?” he asked.

“What makes you think something happened with Lydia?”

“Well,” he said, sitting on the stool next to him. “You left the hospital after her in a hurry last night. None of us have heard from you since and now you're here getting shitfaced.”

“First of all, are you on the family text chain now or what?”

“Madison agreed that I should be kept in the loop.”

Colton snorted. “Madison did? That's something.”

“She's...prickly.”

“She's been hurt.”

“Who hasn't been?”

Colton had to laugh at that. “Good question. Maybe I'm getting drunk because I'm worried about my dad.”

“No. I recognize this. This is woman related.”

“Had your share of female drama?”

It was Jack's turn to laugh. “You don't think Kate made me work for it? She made me work for it hard.”

“I told Lydia that I loved her. And she said she didn't love me.” He must have been a little further into the bottle than he had originally thought. He didn't bother to explain exactly why his wife might not love him, or why confessing his love to her meant something.

“I've been there.”

“Kate rejected you?”

“Big-time. And I kind of deserved it. I mean, I had never shown her a reason to trust me where women were concerned. And she'd been hurt too many times, lost too many people.”

“What did you do?”

“I went after her.”

“Okay, and what would you have done if that didn't work?” Because he had gone after Lydia last night, dammit, and she had still rejected him.

“I would have made sure she knew I was there. No matter what. I would have waited for that woman 'til the day I died. Because if your life is empty without them, there's no point in pretending you're going to move on. She changed me. Everything I was. Everything I am.”

That was true for Colton too. Somehow, in the past month and a half Lydia had taken him from a place where he had been willing to marry a woman he didn't love and continue on in the life he didn't want, to a man who loved passionately, and couldn't imagine going on without it.

“I might be waiting for a long time,” he said.

“Is she worth it?”

“Yes.” Ace set another glass down in front of Colton and he took a drink. “She is,” he finished, setting the glass back down on the bar.

“Check that out,” Ace added, gesturing to the other side of the restaurant.

Colton turned and saw Lydia getting up onto the stage that was normally reserved for live music. His heart stopped. Was this where she was making her acceptance speech? Had he unwittingly decided to drown his sorrows in the middle of her victory party? That would figure.

“Hello,” Lydia said, her voice trembling as she bent down and spoke into the microphone. “Most of you know me. I was elected mayor last night.”

A short cheer went up from the crowd and Lydia raised her hand to stop it. “Thank you. But that's not why I'm here.” She took a deep breath. “Most of you also know that I married Colton West. After he got stood up at the altar. Which a lot of you also witnessed.”

He felt most of the eyes in the bar turn to him, and he shifted on his stool, his hand wrapped firmly around his drink.

“Sorry,” she said. “I promise, Colton, I have a point,” she said, addressing him, putting his concerns about this being her victory speech to rest. She knew he was here. And she was talking to him. “It's just that from the beginning this relationship has been very public. In fact, I know that you only stayed married to me to help my odds of winning the election. Which is probably a terrible thing to admit now that I've won, and I guess if that's going to get me in trouble we're going to have to deal with that. Or I will. But, since all of this has been so public, from the wedding that didn't happen, to our surprise wedding, I thought this needed to be public too. I made a mistake last night. When you told me that you loved me and I walked away, I did it because I was afraid. I did it because you're right. I'm afraid of big emotion. Of things that will devastate me if I lose them. I'm afraid of caring about something too much, and wanting to hold on to it forever in case it gets taken from me. Well, my fear is stupid. It isn't going to protect me. It's just going to keep me living the kind of life I left Seattle to get away from to begin with. I don't want that.”