Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(24)

He chuckled. “Thanks.”

She kept on staring at him, and he wondered... He had to wonder, just for a second if she was... But even if she was, she didn’t know.

Good thing, too.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Weddings wait for no one.”

They loaded up into the truck, and began to drive out toward town.

“This is weird,” she said. She paused for a moment. “I didn’t think it would be weird.”

“You didn’t think it would be weird to marry your best friend?” The minute he said that, he realized it danced perilously close to a cliché, and didn’t sound as strange as he would like.

She shifted noisily beside him and he was all too aware.

Of her. Her clothes. “I don’t know. I thought that... I felt guilty about it. But I thought that because we talked about it, I would be in the right place. We know what this is. I know what it is. I guess...”

“What? Spit it out, Cal. I’m not a stranger. I’m Jake.” A reminder to himself, if nothing else. They weren’t anything different than they’d ever been. Whatever strange little moments had passed between them over the past week. Whatever electrical currents seemed to fizzle beneath the surface when he got too close to her. She didn’t know. She didn’t know, and that was what mattered. What he knew or didn’t know...

He had too much experience with women. With sex. That was the problem. And it was becoming pretty clear to him that she had absolutely none. Less than he’d thought, if he’d ever let himself think about it. And he tried not to.

But could she really not or was she just...

Denying it.

“It’s embarrassing.”

His heart hit against his chest, his breath stalling for a moment, and he clenched his teeth, doing his best to hold it together in that moment. Doing his best not to let his mind, his body, race ahead to the question that she might be about to ask.

“Who cares? You shouted anatomy at me last night. We’re good.”

“It’s just... I pretend, right? That I’ve never once in all my life had a basic... Girly dream. But I thought about it. Getting married. Even though I was never serious about it. Even though there was never... Any one person that I thought I might marry. I thought about it. And I imagined my family being there. And maybe I even thought I’d wear a dress, and I’d be pretty the way that women can be. Right? That’s when you’re supposed to look the best you ever have. Your wedding. In my head, I thought maybe it would be magic, and I would be beautiful.” A minute passed, just the sound of the tires on the road and the engine in the cab. Then she continued. “It’s so stupid, because I don’t care about any of that. I really don’t. But it’s this silly corner of my heart that just exists. A thing that I thought once, and then sometimes the image just appears. And this isn’t it. Not at all. That’s for the best, I think, because it’ll get rid of all that for good. Which is really what I want. It really is. But for some reason this feels like some kind of silly letdown all because I don’t have a dress and flowers.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Her words scraped against raw places in his chest that he didn’t want to examine. Expectations for the future. Admissions of dreams. He didn’t let himself have that sort of thing, but hearing her talk about it in that way made him feel... He felt like the biggest kind of ass, and he was doing what she asked him to do. The fact that she did, even Callie, tough as nails Callie, who pretended she didn’t care about any kind of softness, who acted like she didn’t have a whimsical bone in her body, it made him see the world in some kind of bright new way right in that moment, and he hadn’t asked for that. She already did that to him, too much already. He didn’t want more of it. He didn’t want to get down another layer.

Thinking of Callie as the kind of woman who wasn’t immune to those secret dreams of romance.

Oh, she hadn’t said that in so many words, but wasn’t the admittance that you’d fantasized about a wedding close enough?

And suddenly he wanted to do something about it. Wanted to do something for her.

Kill a bear with his hands to prove he could protect her and feed her.

Build a cabin right there on the spot to show her he could give her shelter.

Move a mountain, maybe. Just to show she made him want to do the impossible.

It was the strangest feeling.

This deep, driving desire to show up. To make sure that she wasn’t disappointed. To make sure that she felt something other than sad right now. Because whether or not it was his fault, he was part of the sadness, and he didn’t like it.

And it was met immediately with that violent, gnawing counterweight. That he couldn’t fix a damn thing.

That he didn’t deserve to try.

But that didn’t change the fact that Callie wanted something from him, needed something from him.

Dammit, he would do what he could.

Just then they passed a field, filled with yellow, scrubby flowers clinging to life in spite of the cold. Which he knew damn well meant they were weeds. But before he could stop himself and the impulse to go over, he pulled his truck to the side of the road.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m damn well going to make something happen,” he said. “It’s November, so... These are sad blooms that are barely clinging to life, but there’s something.” He opened the door and got out, then rounded to her side of the truck. He opened the door and she simply sat there, looking at him.