Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(90)

“I didn’t take you for an optimist,” she said, taking another bite of the cheesecake.

“I don’t know that I’m an optimist. I’ve seen some pretty terrible things in life. I lost a child, and that’s about as bad as it gets. But I’ve got six more. And they’re as wonderful as that was terrible. So what I know is that life is good along with the bad. I have your mother, and she loves me, even when I’m a bullheaded ass. I love her even when she’s badgering you about making cookies. Everything is good and bad, darlin’. Every damn thing. And it doesn’t end on one spot or another. It just keeps going. So it’s bad right now, but it’ll be good later. And maybe... Maybe this will never be okay. Losing your sister was never okay. But other things have been. Other things have been damn great. Like having you.”

Emotion rose up in her throat, and she swallowed it, along with another bite of cake. “Thank you. I guess I just have to hope that... Hope that in the end I find something that I want just as badly as I want him.”

“Don’t count yourself out just yet. Let time do the work. Let him think about it. Let him taste what it’s like to live without you. It was easy for him to make a decision not to be with you when you were standing right there. But he’s been through... Grief. And I understand grief. When you lose someone the way that he did, the way that I did, you want that person and there’s no way you can have them back. Well, he could have you. So any hopelessness... That’s all his choice. Let it marinate for a while. See where it gets you.”

“I will,” she said, not feeling much better, but knowing that someday she might be able to reflect on her father’s words and find some comfort.

“Come on,” he said, hitting the top of the counter.

“What?”

“I want to watch you ride again. I want to be involved. Even if it scares me.”

And while Callie wasn’t sure how this would all untangle, and she wasn’t sure how she would ever not have a broken heart, she had gotten something. She had become a more whole version of herself. And she had this moment.

Maybe in the end, that would be enough.

Maybe.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


JAKE WAS DAMNED miserable but he knew that if he didn’t go to Sunday dinner it would only bring more questions than not, and Colt was still in town. And he... He found himself wanting to talk to his brother. Because he’d been alone all by his damn self for days, and the echoing inside of his chest wasn’t going away. Wasn’t getting any better.

And maybe it was time. Maybe it was time to talk to Colt, even if it wouldn’t fix anything. He felt like there was poison inside of his chest and he had to drain it out.

He managed to eat lasagna, even though it tasted like cardboard to him, and had two more beers than he normally did.

And then, when all was said and done, he found himself out on the front porch with his brother.

“Where’s your wife?” Colt asked.

“You’re the first person who asked that,” he said, looking out on the backyard miserably, and wishing he still smoked cigarettes, that it wasn’t a habit he’d left behind along with his teen years. Because he could sure use something. Something to help distract him. Something to numb the pain. “Nobody else asked.”

“Everybody else is afraid of you.”

“She left me.”

“I didn’t think it was a real marriage.”

“Yeah, funny thing about that.”

“Shocking,” Colt said dryly. “You married your best friend, who you have so clearly had a thing for for a number of years, and it blew up in your face.”

He stared out into the darkness for a long time. “She’s in love with me.”

Colt looked at him. Long and hard. “I don’t have to ask you if that’s a bad thing or not.”

“No,” Jake said, his voice rough. “You don’t. You don’t have to ask me because you damn well know.”

“Look, we’ve all got our own issues from this. And I know it’s not a thing we do. Prying. But...”

Jake felt resigned. Like he was going to the damn gallows. But he knew it was time. It was time. “Dad was going to leave. When they got back from the trip.”

“What?”

“I found a plane ticket in his things when we were cleaning the house up. He was going to LA. He wasn’t coming back.”

Colt’s face went hard like stone. “But he asked Mom to come.”

“Yeah, he did.”

“She wasn’t going to.”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Colt said, his tone hard.

“Maybe it was goodbye, I don’t know. We’ll never know. They died. That’s it.”

Colt nodded slowly. “Son of a bitch.”

“You can never know. You can’t trust instincts or anything because it could all be a lie.”

“Or it could be the truth,” Colt said. “I mean, really. One’s as likely as the other. I understand feeling like you can’t fix things. I get that. Under my soul. I don’t know what to tell you about relationships. I really don’t. Because... I don’t want one, either. It’s all fine for them.” He gestured back toward the house. “I’m happy for them. It’s not for me. Maybe because for our parents it wasn’t domestic bliss in the same way it was for theirs.”