The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(103)

The words made her shiver, as they resonated inside of her body. “I trust you,” she said.

And then, they were airborne, his arms helping to hold them both up on the rope swing, his impossible strength a marvel. They were flying through the air, and then they both plunged down into the water. When they came back up, she took a deep breath. And she felt... Baptized. Reborn. She had come back up to the surface. Because she hadn’t drowned. She had lived. But somewhere in there, she had forgotten. She had forgotten that living was more than breathing. She had forgotten that time had moved on. That it had marched on so vastly. So many, many years between now and that moment.

And that loss.

And it didn’t make it less sad. It was tragic, no matter how much time passed. But it was simply that. Past. And no one could make it present, no one could rewind the clock and fix it.

She felt a deep sense of acceptance settle over her shoulders. Her last conversation with Breanna had been a fight. But it didn’t erase the years of friendship they’d had before. She couldn’t go back and change it. It would never be a good memory—there was nothing she could do about that. But it could at least be... It could be.

She didn’t need to fight it. She didn’t need to waste time regretting it.

Because there was nothing that could be done about it. Eighteen years on, there was nothing anyone could do.

There was nothing anyone could do but make the choice to live.

There was no sense to be made out of that tragedy. There was no magical place to put it so that people could marvel at all the good that had come of it.

There was no good that had come of it. A young girl had lost her life too soon. But they didn’t need to compound the tragedy.

And it was fitting, somehow, that she was here with him. Though she didn’t know why. But she sensed that he carried grief inside of him. Not over the same thing she did, no. But it was there. She had never seen it before, hiding behind the bluster, the smart-ass smile and all the swagger that he conducted himself with at all times. It was the same as her hiding her own trauma beneath the no-nonsense exterior.

He was hiding.

Her Tag.

She needed to not think of him that way. She needed to realize that this was one night. And maybe it was a night that was deeper than she had anticipated, a night for them to come to new realizations. At least a night for her to come to them. Change was possible here, deep change.

They stayed down in the water until they were both shivering, and then he carried her back to the cabin. He started a fire and wrapped them in blankets, and they both lay down on the floor wrapped in a fuzzy blanket. The fire crackled behind them, and she put her hand on his chest, looking up at his face. “What made you decide to be different than your father?”

He went stiff. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

“Something must have. Something must have made all of you decide to be different. Because you are, and it’s not an accident.”

“Maybe it is. You know, we McClouds have a lot of charm that’s accidental. I think the choice might be the other stuff.”

“I don’t know. When you’re raised by that, and it’s all that you see... Don’t you think there’s a better chance that you’re going to turn out like the person who raised you than not?” She hesitated. “I know that my mother was afraid of that.”

“Was afraid of what?”

She took a breath. “Well, I don’t really want to talk about me. We’ve talked about me all night.”

“You’re the one who randomly showed up out of the blue to give me your virginity. You’re entitled to the focus.”

She swallowed. Hard.

“My father abused us. My mother changed her name and ran away to Four Corners to try and protect us.” She looked at Tag, directly in the eyes. “She was afraid that if he found us, he would kill us.”



CHAPTER FIVE


TAG HELD ON more tightly to Nelly. The idea that a man had hit her, when she was a child, that he had then threatened her... It was beyond the pale. It enraged him. It was wrong, on every level. And if he could find the bastard that had done that to her, he would cheerfully kill him. And he wouldn’t need alcohol to get mean and violent. No. Hell, the truth was, being a fighter was in his blood. It was just the alcohol that made him indiscriminate with it. And he might drink on occasion, but he made sure he only did it when he was in a good mood. He made sure he only did it when they went out for fun.

He never did it at home. He never did it alone. He never wanted it to toxify and turn into that thing his father did. That thing that seemed to rot him from the inside out. No. That, he had never wanted any part of.

He’d seen a lot of mean things, though, as a result of his father’s behavior. And he’d accepted that the world was essentially a cold, hard place. But he was not immune to the idea of Nelly... Of Nelly being hurt. By a man who was supposed to care for her. He didn’t put a lot of stock in fathers. His father had been terrible; his father’s father had been terrible. On that score, he supposed Nelly was right. Learned cruelty passed down through generations seemed to be a family value for the McClouds.

And while he and his brothers had definitely broken the cycle, none of them had married, either. None of the men had children. And he didn’t think they ever would. Sometimes he wondered what that meant for the ranch. But at the end of the day, Four Corners would endure. There were so many people who worked the land, so many people involved in the day-to-day running of the place, it didn’t really matter if it was a McCloud who kept things going at McCloud’s Landing. It only mattered that the place endured.