by Maisey Yates
“Yeah. Well.”
“You know, the difference is that back then I didn’t fight for us. That’s the difference. You’re the same. Standing there completely closed down. I was awake all night, by the way. If you thought I was sleeping you were wrong. I was lying there waiting for you to say something. I wasn’t going to turn you away when you needed me. I wanted to show you that I’m all in. I’m not a seventeen-year-old girl anymore. I’ve been out, and I’ve been back again. I’ve been in a city. I got engaged to that fancy man you told me I was going to find and there was nothing there. There was nothing behind it. Nothing against fancy men. If I’d loved him then it would have been fine. Well, also if he hadn’t have been a cheater who liked to make me feel bad about myself. But that aside, he wasn’t you. He never was. I was trying to prove something to my parents and to you all at once. And you know what, I never asked him to go down on me because I wanted that to just be you, Brooks. Something that we shared. Something I got from you. I didn’t try to fix our attraction or make it better because I wanted...because I was hanging on to you. Don’t you get that? I was hanging on to this place. I wasn’t me there. I’m me here. In the back of the truck, under the stars. Laughing with my friends and going to the Rusty Nail. And in my little store, surrounded by sugar. And who gives a damn about adrenal glands? I don’t even know what they do.”
She took a deep breath. “I want an over-caffeinated, over-sugared, quaint, small-town life. And if my parents think I’m not living up to their expectations of me then that’s too bad because their expectations have not made me happy. I can’t live for them. I can only live a life that makes me happy. And it needs to have you in it. It has to.”
He felt like he was clinging to the side of a cliff and her words were an outstretched hand. But if he let go to reach for her...
He might lose his grip altogether.
“Look, I get what this is. You’re having a whole emancipation situation. You’re reclaiming things, and that’s great, but I can’t get dragged into it because the fact remains that you’re you and I’m me. Hope and Brooks. And it was never going to work. Not twelve years ago and not today.”
“No. That’s bullshit,” she said, stamping her foot. “It’s bullshit that we told ourselves because we were scared. Because we couldn’t step far enough away from the situations we were in to make a new one. But we can do that now. We’re not kids. We’re thirty years old. We don’t have to live a life decided for us by our dysfunctional parents. You hated where you grew up so why would you keep on living there.”
“Woman, look around. I don’t live in that shithole. I live here.”
“You haven’t left. You haven’t left, not in your soul. You’re still there and it still controls you. So what does it matter if you live here or there? It’s the same.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough. “You’re right. It’s the same. And that’s the problem. I’m the same.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt them hit hard.
“You’ve spent the last twelve years blaming me, haven’t you? You figured I was going to leave anyway, but here’s the thing, Brooks. I came back. The only reason I left is that when I was seventeen I wasn’t brave enough to stand up and tell you that I loved you while you told me you didn’t want me. And you’ve gotten to live this comfortable, angry life back home, convincing yourself that it was me. That I was the one who was going to destroy us eventually. That you just lobbed a preemptive strike. That if I’d really wanted you I would’ve stayed. It was you.”
That last word fractured, and her calm along with it, but she kept on going. “All along it was you. Because here I am.” She flung her arms wide. “Here I am and I’m throwing myself at you. I love you. I know how the world works. I love you, and you can’t tell me that I don’t understand the way of things. That I would be happier if I was in a city. That I would be happier if I was married to a rich man. That I don’t understand what makes the world go round and I don’t understand what a life with you would be like. You can’t write me off this time, and because of that it’s all obvious now. You were the one who was running scared, and you were the one that was going to destroy us, not me.”
“Hope,” he said, his stomach clenched tight. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“At least own it. You’re the one who’s scared. You’re the one who can’t do it. It’s not me. Am I not good enough for you, Brooks? Is that it? Because it seems like you just want to push that off on me. Like I think I’m special or something, so what is it? You think you know how the real world works and I’m just so soft and coddled? Is that it? You think you’re better because you know the way of things?”
“No,” he said. “I will never be good enough for you, and that’s the damn truth. And I don’t see why I should try.”
“Stop telling me what I want! Because let me tell you something, I was with a man who thought he was too good for me. It didn’t do me any favors. And at the end of the day, good is relative. Yeah, all right, so you don’t look good on paper. You’re a little bit of a disaster. But you’re my disaster and I would really like to be yours. I have a litany of flaws, Sullivan Brooks. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have gone to Chicago and gotten engaged to the wrong man. I wouldn’t have walked away from you that first time. I wouldn’t have flung myself headlong into the abyss of trying to please my parents. But I did. So there you go. I’m flawed.”
She shook her head, her eyes dewy with unshed tears. “I did think, well, maybe Brooks is right. Maybe I do deserve a man who could buy me nice things. A man who can make me feel important. A man who can elevate me in the world, give me a big house and a flashy car. I thought all that. So maybe I’m not as good as you think I am. But I would really like to be your mess. The woman who knows that she isn’t happy without you. The woman who went out and tried fancy. Who tried all these bright and wonderful things that people tell you can make a happy life. And I found nothing there. It was hollow, because you weren’t there. So I already know. I already know, and I have no claim on being too good for anyone or anything. But I think I might be just right for you. You bitter, cantankerous asshole.”
“I can’t do it,” he said, watching as his words hit her across the face like a slap, as she recoiled from him. “Because you’re right. Things don’t change. I’m my father’s son.”
“And what? You can’t love?”
“Or won’t. Doesn’t much matter.”
The words scraped him raw as they exited his mouth. Hope’s eyes filled with tears. It might as well have been raining, just like the first time they’d done this.
But it was for her own good.
She would only end up unhappy.
“Don’t you think you should spend some time on your own?”
“Yeah, I thought that,” she said. “But I’m living for me, and that’s what counts now. And the fact of the matter is, Brooks, I spent twelve years without you, and that’s already twelve too many.”
That cut. Deep.
“You know, if you knew you were going to do this, you shouldn’t have touched me,” she said, turning away from him. He didn’t have any response to that because she was right. Because he already knew that, and he’d already called himself ten kinds of asshole over it. She disappeared into the kitchen and he could hear her say a few words, then slam his old-school phone back down into its cradle. Then she ran out the front door, and she was gone, and it was like he hadn’t learned a damn thing. Like he was still seventeen and swinging his own fists at himself.
Because why?
Because then you know when the hit’s coming.
Because it’s better to make them leave when you’re expecting it.
Because eventually they’ll leave anyway.
Because if there was one thing he knew about men like his father, it was that they couldn’t be enough for the women they loved, and then those women left.
>
His mother hadn’t taken him with her, so wasn’t that proof enough? Was that proof enough that he would lose Hope too?
Well, you lost her anyway. So congratulations.
He stood there in his big-ass house that he’d been using to prove something to her. To himself.
And realized none of it mattered because she saw who he really was.
And who he was just wasn’t good enough.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SHE DIDN’T TELL her friends what had happened. Charity had picked her up at the end of Brooks’s driveway and hadn’t asked for details. And in the days since, she’d kept quiet on what had happened.
She’d even had a whole conversation with Pru and given her grief about not sharing her issues, but for more than a week she hadn’t said a word.
She thought it would get better, but it only got worse. She was morose all through the day, and all through the Fourth of July picnic. She’d tried to banter, but it had been halfhearted at best and it wouldn’t be long before they all noticed.
They’d failed to off-load a meaningful amount of the salmon, even when fashioned into salmon mousse with endive by Charity’s capable hands, and the fact that they were returning to the farmhouse with it—and without Kit who had gone off with Browning West on the back of his motorcycle—seemed apt in some way.
Kit had been forced to attend the parade holding a hatbox—another slip—and had caught herself the biggest man-whore in all of Jasper Creek.
It was unjust.
“Okay,” Pru said. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, everything imploded again,” she said angrily, taking the entire Tupperware tray filled with salmon and dumping it into the trash.
“Hey!” Charity said. “That’s my Tupperware. And also, I made that.”
“And no one wants it,” Hope said, storming off into the living room. “It’s not about your cooking, Charity. It’s my symbolic salmon. And you know what? It’s symbolic in all the wrong ways because it’s just pieces of a life that I don’t want, pieces of me that I don’t want. And maybe it’s part of why Brooks still doesn’t love me.” She’d told herself she wasn’t going to do this. She’d told herself she wasn’t going to be pathetic. And here she was, on the verge of weeping quite pathetically.
“Oh no,” Charity said.
“That’s it!” Pru announced. “We’re getting the salmon and we’re putting it in his truck.”
“No,” Hope said. “I don’t want to salmon his truck.”
“Well,” Charity said, trying to keep her tone delicate. “You have salmoned the house. Throwing it in the trash was maybe not the best idea.”
“I don’t care. I was stupid, wasn’t I? Expecting a different result with the same guy. But I had it all built up in my head that it meant something to me, that it mattered. It felt like...finding a piece of myself, and I thought that it was the same for him. But it was just him getting in my pants because he never did in high school. And he’s the same dumb idiot that he was back then, talking about how he can’t be what I need. But he doesn’t know what I need.”
“What do you need?” Charity asked.
“A life that will make me happy. Not what will make anyone else happy. And I need everyone to quit telling me what I want. I tried all the things my parents wanted. I don’t want them. I want him. I want this store. I want to be with you guys. That’s what I want. It’s not actually that complicated.”
“So why do you think he’s intent on telling you otherwise?” Pru asked.
“Because he’s a yellow-bellied, lily-livered coward.” Dumb cowboys deserved cowboy insults.
“Sure. Granted,” Pru said. “But why?”
Hope closed her eyes. “His mom left him. And his dad was a piece of work, and I just... I just wonder if he can’t accept that we could be happy. That I won’t leave. I think he was testing me all those years ago and I failed.”
“That’s not fair,” Charity said. “You were kids.”
“Yeah, but we’re not kids now.”
“No,” Pru agreed. “You’re not. So I guess you just have to hope that he steps up and starts acting like a man and not a boy.”
“I guess so. And in the meantime, what do I do?”
“Well, you have us.”
“Not Kit. She’s a traitor. All it took was a motorcycle and the promise of Browning West’s hands.”
“In fairness,” Pru said, “they are very nice hands.”
“It will only end in heartbreak,” Hope said. “Men are evil.”
Charity looked thoughtful. “You have a point. But also, they are attractive.”
“Cowboys are the worst.”
“No argument here. But,” Pru said, “you love him, so I know you don’t actually think that.”
“But what is the point of love in this case, Prudence? What is the point?”
“It’s your chance to stay. It’s your chance to stay and prove how true it is.”
“You mean my chance to be pathetic?” Hope asked.
“No,” Pru said, a storm in her eyes. “I think pathetic is marrying a man you don’t love. I think pathetic is telling the woman you do love that you don’t love her because you’re scared. I think pathetic is living your life for another person. Nothing about you is pathetic, Hope.”
Hope blinked. Her eyes felt gritty. “Thanks.”
“What do you want?” Charity asked.
“I want to do well here. To have a place that’s mine. A place that I’m passionate about.”
“And you have that. You can’t control what he does. But we’re here for you. And we’ll help you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
HE WAS MISERABLE. That was a fact. And that was how he found himself wandering the same trail his dad had been on when he’d fallen to his death. It was morbid, and he knew it. But he wasn’t here because he had any kind of death wish. It was because he wanted to argue with a ghost, and as much as he knew that was pointless...
“So why were you such a prick?” he asked the pristine air around him, the tall green fir trees, and the mountains beyond.
There was no answer, which was probably fair. The mountains probably hated his dad as much as he did.
It had always seemed like a blight to him, that shack he and his father had lived in on this property that was so beautiful. Like some kind of metaphor for his family and the way they stood out in town.
“Did she hate you so much that she had to leave me too?” he asked. “Or did she hate us both? You’re dead and I can’t ask you. I never could. Because you just...committed to that. To that meanness. And you spilled it all over everything, including me.”
It was right there, pushing against the walls of his heart, and Brooks knew it, but it made him so damn angry that he didn’t want to confront it.
It was just a choice. His dad had made a choice. To embrace bitterness and alcohol when he could’ve embraced his son. When he could’ve done something to make up for the choices his wife had made. To be there for his son. He hadn’t made those choices. He’d leaned in to the bad parts of who he was, and Brooks had...well, he’d spent a lot of years doing the same thing. Being motivated by anger. And by...
Fear.
Because that was the thing, wasn’t it?
The real problem was if you tried to change, if you thought it might be possible, then someone could still reject you. And the thought of that was what killed him. If he tried and he still failed... If he gave all of himself...
Then what?
“Yeah, then what?” he asked nothing. Nothing. Because his father hadn’t been here to ask when he was alive, and he sure as hell wasn’t hanging around now he was dead to help his son.
His dad had never given a damn. He’d never done a damn thing for him and here was Brooks, still trying to show him, still letting him decide what he was.
Dave McAllister had seen more in him than his own father. He’d seen a kid worth investing in and why the hell did a father who’d done nothing have more say in who he was than that man did?
Than Hope did.
He knew what twelve years of his life was like without Hope.
Even her name... It nearly made him laugh. He was living a life without hope—in all the ways that applied—and what was the damn point of protecting himself, of hanging on to his pride? Using anger as a shield gave him nothing in the end. She still wasn’t here. He’d still lost.
He would rather cut himself open and bleed all over everything. He would rather have nothing left, no pride, no stone left to turn over in the dark recesses of his soul.
He would rather have her.
And if that meant risking himself, if that meant risking everything, then he would do it.
Before he could stop himself, he was in his truck and driving toward the old Gable house. Because he had to find her. He had to.
And since the woman had no phone, he couldn’t call her.
He parked his truck and went up the front steps, knocking firmly on the door. It opened, and three faces, none of whom belonged to Hope, were staring at him.
“What do you want?” Pru asked.
“To see Hope,” he said.
Kit flicked her scarf, wrapping it around her neck imperiously. “She’s not here and even if she were, she wouldn’t want to see you.”
“Because you’re a dick,” Pru added.
“Yeah,” said Charity.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“You’ve not earned the right to ask about the whereabouts of our friend,” Kit said.
“Not remotely,” Pru added. “You broke her heart. We don’t approve.”
“Not at all,” Charity said.
“Yeah, that’s the thing. I don’t approve either. I broke my own damned heart, so I just want to fix it. I just want to fix this.”
“I’m not sure if you can,” Kit said.
“You’re not sure if I can?”