by Nora Roberts
“When you decided. I came halfway to New York to see you, to be with you. I’d wanted to go all the way, to spend real time with you on your turf. In your place. But you wouldn’t have that.” Those dark eyes stabbed at him, lethal as knives. “I guess you figured it would be harder to dump me if I was sitting in your New York apartment.”
“Jesus Christ, Lil, I didn’t dump you.” They wounded him, those eyes, spilled blood she couldn’t see. “It wasn’t like that.”
“What the hell was it like, from your perspective? You told me you couldn’t keep doing it, that you needed to concentrate on your own life, your own career.”
“I said we couldn’t, we needed.”
“Oh, bullshit!” Rocky shied a bit, disturbed by the tone, the temper. She controlled him with no sign of effort or concern. “You had no right to speak for me or my feelings. Not then, not now.”
“You sure as hell didn’t say so at the time.” His horse danced, as uneasy as Rocky. Coop steadied him, and would have turned so he and Lil were face-to-face. But she trotted off. Again. Setting his teeth, Coop nudged his mount to follow. “You agreed with me,” he added, annoyed with the defensiveness in his tone once he’d caught up.
“What the hell was I supposed to do? Fling myself into your arms and beg you to stay with me, to love me?”
“Actually—”
“I drove all the way to that damn motel in Illinois, so excited. It felt like years since we’d seen each other, and I was worried you wouldn’t like my hair, or my outfit. Stupid things. And I was aching to see you. Literally aching. Even my damn toes hurt.”
“Lil—”
“And I knew the minute I saw you that something was wrong. You got there before I did—remember? I saw you crossing the parking lot, coming from that little diner.”
Her voice changed. The anger leaked out of it as misery pushed in. Where the anger wounded him, the misery simply destroyed.
He said nothing, let her finish. Though he could’ve told her yes, he remembered. He remembered crossing that pothole of a parking lot, remembered the first instant he became aware of her. He remembered the thrill, the need, the despair.
All of it.
“You didn’t see me, at first. And I knew. I tried to tell myself it was just nerves, seeing you again. It was just . . . you looked different. Tougher, harder.”
“I was different. We both were by then.”
“My feelings hadn’t changed, not like yours.”
“Wait a minute.” He reached out to snag her bridle. “Wait a minute.”
“We made love, almost the minute we closed the door of that motel room. And I knew you were going to end it. Do you think I couldn’t tell you’d pulled away, pulled back?”
“I pulled back? How many times had you? Why had it been so long since we’d seen each other? There was always a project, a field trip, a—”
“You’re blaming me?”
“There’s no blame,” he began, but she swung off her horse, stalked away.
Struggling for patience, he dismounted to tether both the horses. “You need to listen.”
“I loved you. I loved you. You were the one, the only one. I’d have done anything for you, for us.”
“That’s part of the problem.”
“Loving you was a problem?”
“That you’d have done anything. Lil, just—hold still, damn it.” He gripped her shoulders when she would have walked away from him again. “You knew what you wanted to do with your life. You knew what you wanted, and you were doing it. Top of your class, honors and opportunities. You came alive, Lil. You were exactly where you needed to be, doing exactly what you needed to do. I couldn’t be a part of that, and I sure as hell couldn’t get in the way of it.”
“Now you’re claiming you dumped me and ripped my heart out for my own good? Is that how you choose to look at it?”
“That’s how it was, how it is.”
“I never got over you, you bastard.” Anger and insult in every part of her—face, body, voice—she shoved at him. “You ruined me. You took something from me, and I could never get it back, never give it to anyone else. I hurt a good man, a very good man, because I couldn’t love him, because I couldn’t give him what he deserved to have and you’d thrown away. I tried. Jean-Paul was perfect for me, and I should’ve been able to make it work. But I couldn’t, because he wasn’t you. And he knew, he always knew. Now you want to stand there and tell me you left for my sake?”
“We were children, Lil. We were just kids.”
“I didn’t love you any less, or hurt any less, because I was nineteen.”
“You were going somewhere. You were making a mark. I needed to make mine. So yeah, I did it for you, and for me. I had nothing to give you.”
“Bullshit.” She started to wrench away, but he yanked her back.
“I had nothing. I was nothing. I was broke, living from paycheck to paycheck—if I was lucky. Living in a dump because it was all I could afford, and moonlighting when I could get the extra work. I didn’t get out here often because I didn’t have the money for the trip.”
“You said—”
“I lied. I said I was busy, or couldn’t get time off. Mostly true, since I was working two jobs if I could get the extra work, and angling for overtime when I could get it. But that wasn’t why I didn’t come back more than I did. I sold the bike because I couldn’t afford it. I sold blood to make rent some months.”
“For God’s sake, Coop, if things were that bad why didn’t you—”
“Tap my grandparents? Because they’d already given me a start, and I wasn’t going to take more money from them.”
“You could’ve come home. You—”
“Come back here a failure, with barely enough to pay for a bus ticket? I needed to make myself into something, and you should understand that. There should’ve been money, a cut from my trust, when I turned twenty-one. I needed it, to get a decent place to live, to have a breather so I could work on the job and make that mark. My father tied it up. He was so pissed that I’d gone against his decisions, his plan for me. I had some money, what my grandparents gave me—what was left of it—my savings. He got my accounts frozen.”
“How?”
“It’s what he does. He knows people, he knows the system. Add that to the fact I’d screwed up in college, tossing money around like it was confetti. That’s my fault, nobody else’s, but I was young, stupid, in debt, and he had me by the balls. He figured I’d fall in line.”
“Are you telling me your father cut you off financially, cut you off from even what was yours, because he wanted you to be a lawyer?”
“No.” Maybe she’d never understand. “He did it because he wanted control, because he wouldn’t—can’t—tolerate anyone defying that control.”
Since she was listening, Coop eased back. “Money’s a weapon, and he knows how to use it. He’d release some of the funds if I . . . well, he had a list of conditions, and it doesn’t matter now. I had to get a lawyer, and it took a lot of time and money. So even when I got what was mine, I owed a lot of it in legal fees. I couldn’t let you come to New York and see the way I was living back then. I needed to put everything I had into the job. I needed to make detective, to prove I was good enough. And, Lil, you were flying. Getting articles published, traveling, making the dean’s list. You were amazing.”
“You should’ve told me. I had a right to know what was going on.”
“And if I had? You’d have wanted me to come back, and maybe I would have. With nothing. I’d’ve hated it. And I’d have blamed you sooner or later. Or you’d have given it all up and come to New York. And we’d have hated each other sooner. If I’d told you, Lil, if I’d ask you to stick with me until I made something, there wouldn’t be a Chance Wildlife Refuge. You wouldn’t be who you are now. Neither would I.”
“You made all the decisions.”
“I’ll cop to that. You agreed with them at the time.”
“I said I did b
ecause all I had left was pride.”
“Then you should understand that’s all I had.”
“You had me.”
He wanted to touch her, just his fingertips on her face, something to smooth away the hurt in her eyes. But it wasn’t the way.
“I needed to be someone, for myself. I needed something to be proud of. I spent the first twenty years of my life wanting my father to love me, to be proud of me. Just like my mother, I guess. He’s got a way of making you want that approval, then withholding it so you want it more, and feel . . . less, because it never really comes. You don’t know what that’s like.”
“No, I don’t.” She saw, so clearly, the boy she’d first met. Those eyes, those sad and mad eyes.
“I never knew what it was like to have someone care about me, for me, feel pride in me for anything until I came out here that summer to stay with my grandparents. After that, in some ways, it was even more important to get it from my own parents. From my father most of all. But I was never going to get it.”
He shrugged that off, something over, something no longer important. “Realizing that changed things. Changed me. Maybe I did get harder, Lil, but I started going after what I wanted, not what he wanted. I was a good cop, and that mattered. When I couldn’t be a cop anymore, I built up a business, and I was a good investigator. It was never about the money, though let me tell you it’s damn, fucking hard not to have any, to be afraid you won’t make the rent the second month running.”
She stared out over the canyon where the rocks rose in silent power toward the deepening blue of the sky. “Did you think I wouldn’t understand any of this?”
“I didn’t understand half of it, and I didn’t know how to tell you. I loved you, Lil. I’ve loved you every day of my life since I was eleven years old.” He reached in his pocket, drew out the coin she’d given him at the end of their first summer. “I’ve carried you with me, every day of my life. But there was a time I didn’t think I deserved you. You can blame me for that, but the fact is we both had to make our way. We wouldn’t have made it if we hadn’t let each other go.”
“You don’t know that. And you didn’t have the right to decide for me.”
“I decided for me.”
“And you can come back now, a decade later, when you’re ready? I’m supposed to go along?”
“I thought you were happy—and believe me it sliced up a part of me when I’d think about you going on, doing what you wanted to do, without me. Every time I’d hear about you, it was about the name you were making for yourself, how you were building the refuge, or off to Africa or Alaska. The few times I saw you, you were always busy. Heading off somewhere.”
“Because I couldn’t stand being around you. It hurt. Goddamn it.”
“You were engaged.”
“I was never engaged. People assumed we were engaged. I lived with Jean-Paul, and we traveled together sometimes if our work coincided. I wanted to make a life. I wanted a family. But I couldn’t make it work. Not with him, not with anyone.”
“If it makes you feel any better, anytime I heard about him, or about you seeing someone else, it killed me. I had a lot of miserable nights and days, hours, years, wishing I hadn’t done what I thought—still think—was the right thing. I figured you’d moved on, and half the time I hated you for it.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, want me to do.”
“Neither do I. But I’m saying to you I know who I am now, what I am, and I’m okay with it. I did what I needed to do, and now? I’m doing what I want to do. I’m going to give my grandparents the best I have, because that’s what they always gave me. I’m going to give you the best I have, because I’m not letting you go again.”
“You don’t have me, Coop.”
“Then I’ll fix that until I do. If for now all I can do is help you, keep you safe, sleep with you, and make sure you know I’m not going anywhere, that’s okay. Sooner or later you’re going to be mine again.”
“We’re not who we were.”
“We’re more than we were. And who we are, Lil? Still fits.”
“It’s not all your decision this time.”
“You still love me.”
“Yes, I do.” She faced him again, studied him with eyes that were both clear and unfathomable. “And I’ve lived a long time knowing love isn’t enough. You hurt me, more than anyone else ever has, more than anyone else ever could. Knowing why? I’m not sure if it makes it better or worse. That’s not an easy fix.”
“I’m not looking for easy. I came out here because my grandparents needed me. And I was ready to let go. I expected to find you the next thing to married. I told myself I’d have to suck that up. I’d had my chance. The way I look at it, Lil, you had yours, too. Take your time if you need to. I’m not going anywhere.”
“So you keep saying.” She stepped back, started to turn toward the horses, but he took her arm, swung her back.
“I guess I’ll have to, until you believe me. Here’s one for you, Lil. Do you know how many ways love can hit you? So it makes you happy, or miserable? It makes you sick in the belly or hurt in the heart. It makes everything brighter and sharper, or blurs all the edges. It makes you feel like a king or a fool. Every way love can hit, it’s hit me when it comes to you.”
He drew her in to take her mouth, to give in to that endless ache while the wind swept the air with the perfume of sage.
“Loving you made a man out of me,” he said when he let her go. “It’s the man who came back for you.”
“You still make my knees weak, and I still want your hands on me. But that’s all I’m sure of.”
“That’s a start.”
“I have to get back.”
“You’ve got color in your cheeks, and you don’t look so tired now.”
“Well, yippee. That doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off at the way you got me out here.” She mounted her horse. “I’m pissed off at you in so many ways right now, on so many levels.”
He studied her face as he swung into the saddle. “We never fought all that much the first time around. Too young and horny.”
“No, we didn’t fight so much because you weren’t such an asshole.”
“I don’t think that’s it.”
“You’re probably right. You were probably just as much of an asshole back then.”
“You liked flowers. You always liked it when we’d go hiking or riding and the wildflowers were blooming. I’ll have to get you some flowers.”
“Oh, yeah, that’ll make everything just fine.” Her tone was as brittle as juniper in a drought. “I’m not one of your city women who can be bought off with a bunch of fancy roses.”
“You don’t know anything about my city women. Which probably sticks in your craw.”
“Why should it? I’ve had plenty of men . . . bring me flowers since you.”
“Okay, point for you on that.”
“This isn’t a game, or a joke, or a competition.”
“No.” But she was talking to him, and he considered that a check in the win column. “At this point, I have to believe it’s just destiny. I worked pretty hard on my life without you. And here I am, right back where I started.”
She said nothing while their horses waded through the high grass and back to the trailhead.
He waited until they’d loaded the horses, secured the tailgate. Behind the wheel, he started the engine and glanced at her profile. “I brought some of my things over. I’m going to be staying there, at least until they have Howe in custody. I’m going to bring some other things over tomorrow. I need a drawer, some closet space.”
“You can have a drawer and the closet space. Just don’t assume it means anything but that I’m willing to make it convenient for you, as I’m grateful for your help.”
“And you like the sex.”
“And I like the sex,” she said, very coolly.
“I’ll need to do some work while I’m staying at the cabin. If using the kitchen table doe
sn’t work for you, I need somewhere else to set up my laptop.”
“You can use the living room.”
“All right.”
“Are you not mentioning how James Tyler was killed because you think I can’t handle it?”
“There were other things I wanted to talk about.”
“I’m not fragile.”
“No, but it’s wearing on you. They’ll have to wait for the autopsy, but from what Willy said, his throat was slit. He was stripped down to his pants and boots—so I figure his killer thought he could use the shirt and jacket, the cap he’d been wearing. His watch, his wallet. He probably destroyed the cell phone, or Tyler lost it along the way. The killer must have had the cord he used on