The Last Christmas Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  “What, would you choose to do anything else now?”

  “No,” he said. “I could have. A long time ago. But this is what I love.”

  “It’s the same for me. And then I got thinking. Why hadn’t I dated? And yeah, maybe some of it was all that self-protection that I told you about before. But I think it was more. Logan, you always felt like another part of me. When you’re angry I can feel it. When I annoy you it makes my teeth itch. Like I can feel how yours are set on edge. And when we make love, I can feel all that pleasure echoing around inside of me. And I know it’s different. Not just me feeling good. I know I feel you, too. I think you feel the same about me. I don’t know if it’s soul mates or what. But I felt that from the beginning. Like my connection with you was something inevitable. Real. Like we made it working this land. So the roots are deep. Something happened. It all shifted. And that was when I realized, I’m in the place I love the most, with the man I love the most.”

  “Rose,” he said, using the word to try and deflect what she just said. To keep it from sinking down deep beneath his skin like a bullet. But he wasn’t sure he could. He wasn’t sure anything could. Because she’d said it. She’d said it, dammit. And he couldn’t unknow it. That Rose had said she loved him.

  Love.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “You can. We are. There’s nothing more... It fits. We fit. In all the crazy ways that we shouldn’t, we do. It’s so silly, isn’t it? Because I’m twenty-three, and you’re thirty-three. Because I was a virgin, and you’ve been with... No, I don’t want to know how many women. Because of those things people think we’d be too different. But we’ve lost. And we’ve lived. And we work the same piece of ground with all the passion we have to give. And when we come together at the end of a long day it’s like magic. The only thing close to magic I’ve ever known in this world. I’m not a dreamer. I never schemed for myself. But I’ve been a scared little girl all my life that the people around me might get tired of me and leave me. And when I accepted that I didn’t have anything to earn, I could finally enjoy these things I was given. This is our life, Logan. It’s the one that we have. Yeah, our parents died. And it’s awful. No one should have to deal with that at the age that we did. The magnitude of our tragedy was... It was awful. But why does it get to have the say in who we are? Why is it everything?”

  “Because some things scar you,” he said. “Some things change what you are, and you can’t un-change it.”

  “Of course not. Of course we were changed by all of this. Of course we were. But we don’t stop changing. That’s been my lesson. These last weeks. I learned more about life since all of this began with you than I had in years. I thought that I was grown, and I was done figuring it all out, but I’m not. And now I realize how little I know, and I’m happy about it. Because it means... It means there’s no end to the wonderful things that could happen. To the wonderful things I could know.”

  “There’s no end to the shit that could happen, either.”

  “Logan. There’s shit in life. There’s nothing we can do about that. But why can’t we have something good?”

  Desperation flooded his chest. And he couldn’t quite put words to why. It was just a feeling. Deep and enduring, and it felt like it was threatening to change the very makeup of all that he was.

  “That’s the thing,” he said. “You are young. And you were a virgin. So I get that you think that this thing between us is love. But it’s not. It’s... It’s not.”

  Saying that burned. It tasted like a lie. But looking at her, with all her great and glorious optimism, this idea that the world and all that she could be in it was ever-expanding...

  He could never give her that sense of wonder. Not forever. He couldn’t be what she needed. There was just no way. She deserved more. She deserved a hell of a lot more.

  A hell of a lot more than a man who wrecked her sister’s wedding by standing there in a tux looking identical to the people he was blood related to. People he lived across town from for years, and hadn’t shared any words with.

  Yeah. She deserved a hell of a lot more than that.

  More than what he’d been to his mother. A drain on her resources and her emotions. His one gift sending her on the trip that ended her life.

  He was toxic. And it was unavoidable.

  “Logan,” she said, “you accused me of not having any clue when a man wanted me. And you were right. You were right, I didn’t know. But you don’t know when the people around you love you. You wouldn’t recognize it if a woman stood in front of you and told you. And that’s on you. That’s some kind of dumb.”

  “Rose...”

  “I love you. I love you, and I know that you feel it. I know it. Because you know me better than anyone else. You know me. And I know you. You know I’m not making this up, or dramatizing, or anything like that. Don’t you dare dismiss me, Logan. Because you’ve never done that. You’ve never treated me like I was a stupid kid. Don’t you dare start now. Don’t you dare act like you don’t know me now. Like I don’t know you. Don’t be scared.”

  Those words hit him with all the force of a bullet.

  “I’m not scared,” he said. “I could say yes to you. I could be with you. I could take all the best years of your life, Rose. I could keep you in my bed, in my house, and I could give you every damn thing I’m capable of giving. But you know what? That is not enough. It’s not that limitless wonder that you’re talking about. I don’t know how to love somebody. Not really.”

  “Why do you think that? You held on to your mother’s necklace all this time, and you think that.”

  “I did love my mother. So much. And she loved me. That’s the important piece of that, Rose. She loved me. She lived poorer than she would have, if it weren’t for me. She was single for a long time, because of me. Because she didn’t want to bring a stepfather in my life who might not treat me right. Because she didn’t want to be distracted by dating while she was supposed to be raising me.”

  “No offense, Logan, and I’m sure that she thought she needed to do that. But it was a choice. It was her choice. Nobody made her do that, and she didn’t have to.”

  “What she did. For me. And Hank Dalton cut her open, Rose. He hurt her. He couldn’t be everything that she needed him to be, and he devastated her. Left her on her own with me. And I was a pretty piss-poor substitute. She gave me so much, and I wanted to do something good for her. So when your parents started talking about going on that trip to Alaska... She really wanted to go. But she knew that she wouldn’t be able to spare the extra money out of the budget. So I started saving. I did odd jobs around the ranch for your dad. I saved and saved. And I gave her the money to go. To pay for her part of that chartered plane that went down on its way there. To pay for a hotel room she never even used. Yet. That was my gift to my mother. The last Christmas gift I ever gave anyone. Before you.” His chest burned.

  “Logan,” she said, looking utterly stricken. Devastated.

  “Why do you think I don’t like Christmas?”

  “Logan... It’s...it wasn’t your fault.”

  “I know it,” he said. “I’m not an idiot. It would’ve happened whether she went or not. And maybe... Maybe your parents would’ve paid for her to go even. In the end. But I can’t let it go. Because that trip was the deciding factor about whether she was here for all of my life or not. That was what happened when I tried to show that I cared. You don’t get that stuff out of your head, Rose. You just don’t. It stays with you. What you do today. You take that road or the other road? Do you go on the trip or do you not? Do you get on the horse today, or do you stay in bed? Because those decisions matter. They make the choice as to whether you live or die, whether someone you love lives or dies.”

  “But you make choices. We all do. We make them every day. And there’s nothing anyone can do about what happens. We can’t control the universe,
Logan. We can’t control if other people decide to do us harm. We can’t control any of that. All we can do is try to do the best we can with what we’ve got.”

  “It’s not good enough for me. It’s not good enough for you.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me what’s good enough for me. You say this is because you’re not scared. And you say you’re not blaming yourself. But you are. You’re frozen. And you figure if you just...keep things the same that you won’t have to deal with the consequences.”

  “No. No. I had a family. I destroyed my family. I took it from myself. I took her from the world. My gift took her life. I don’t get to have another family. I don’t get to do it again.”

  “We didn’t use a condom last night,” she said, honing right in on his earlier realization. He should have known she’d realized it, too.

  “They make a pill for that,” he said.

  “No,” she said.

  He sighed heavily, the weight of the room pressing down on his shoulders.

  “No,” he agreed. “I know. It’s just... It won’t be anything. It’ll be fine.”

  “Logan, I wasn’t even going to demand anything of you. Nothing except for love. I never gave a moment’s thought to getting married or having kids. You make me think that might be the future I want. But it has nothing to do with why I want you. I’m not one of those people who dreamed about a wedding, or romance. I didn’t want it until I had you. I just... I love you. Not the idea of you. Not some romanticized version of a family or life. We can call it a family or not, I don’t care. I just want to be together.”

  “Already you’re settling for less. Less than you should.”

  “Is a soul mate less than someone should settle for? There’s no settling about it. I get out of bed every morning in part so I can see you, you big idiot. It’s half of why I look forward to my job.”

  “It’s just new relationship stuff. And someday it will be old relationship stuff. And you’ll get over it. You’ll barely remember that this happened between us.”

  “I’m not going to forget.”

  “That’s the thing, Rose. You will. Because this was nothing. It sure as hell wasn’t love.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ROSE COULD FEEL the pain and the fury rising up inside of her. Part of her had known. She had known that he would fight this. And she had also known that it was time to have the fight.

  She hadn’t realized he would fight quite so hard. That he would fight quite this way.

  And she realized that he was expecting things to go back to normal, because when they had been talking in terms of him teaching her about sex, they had both agreed that would happen.

  But things had changed. They’d changed.

  “You think you’re just going to go back to the way things were? That you’re going to work with me every day on this ranch in spite of the fact that you broke my heart?”

  “We talked about this.”

  “Yeah. But things change. Feelings change. People change. I did. You should have the balls to change too, Logan Heath. But you don’t. You just hide. You hide in plain sight. You act like everything’s great, everything’s fine, but you’re a big mess of fear. Hiding from your family. Hiding from me. Make all the excuses you want, but that’s what it is. I know, because I recognize it. It’s easy to stay safe when you don’t think about anything. When you don’t think about your feelings. When you don’t let yourself want anything after you had something you loved taken away. Just keep it all in a box.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing still? You’re telling yourself that you’re living some kind of dream? But isn’t that just you keeping to the status quo?”

  “You know, I might agree with you. Except me keeping the status quo demands that I stand here in a damn T-shirt, with a bowl of cookie dough from a recipe that I dug out of a mouse-infested barn. It demands that I humiliate myself. That I bare my soul to you. What does your hiding let you do? Lets you pretend that your damn father doesn’t live within walking distance of you. That your brothers weren’t in class down the hall from you all through high school. You know what, I think you do blame yourself for your mother dying. And I think you find it a great comfort. Because as long as you can find a reason to blame yourself, you can find a reason that you can’t be happy. And that’s the real thing you’re afraid of. You’re afraid to be happy, because then you’ll have something you might be able to lose again. I’m not going to be afraid of being happy. Not anymore. Not ever again. I refused to believe that a tragedy we suffered seventeen years ago means we have to live broken.”

  “I don’t want you to live broken. That’s why I want you to want something other than me.”

  “Then you’re gonna have to find somewhere else to go,” she said. “You’re not using Hope Springs to heal you anyway. You’re using it to hide. To keep you hurt. Well, I love you enough to not allow that anymore. And I love me enough to not put myself through seeing you every day after this.”

  She didn’t really have the power to send him away. And he owned part of the ranch. She knew that. She knew that she was being bitter and angry. That no part of her was being a friend or family the way she had demanded everybody who was angry at him during the wedding be.

  But she loved him. Big and bright. And her hurt was just as big and bright now. And it demanded some kind of compensation.

  A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”

  “It is.”

  She stomped into the living room and picked up her green dress, shimmying it up to her hips underneath the T-shirt. She grabbed her high heels, and she walked out the front door, making her way barefoot to the truck.

  “You cannot leave like that,” he said.

  “I can leave in whatever the hell manner I wish. I’m not going to tone my heartbreak down to make you feel better. But don’t worry. You can go back to hiding really soon. And I know how much you like to hide.”

  She got in the truck, and didn’t spare him a backward glance as she drove away. It was a good thing that she knew the road back to the main house by heart. Because she was crying so hard she couldn’t see anything through her tears.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  HE’D SPENT THE rest of Christmas Day drunk. He hadn’t had that much to drink since high school, and had learned his lesson in the years since. But the whole point of drinking had been to dull the pain, and when it hadn’t worked, he had just continued. And continued, and continued. When he woke up that morning, his headache had been the stuff of legend, and somehow that had seemed fitting in and of itself.

  He deserved to have a splitting headache. He just did.

  It was about the only thing that matched the ache in his heart. About the only thing that made all of this make sense.

  Pain. That was all he deserved. It was all he had.

  Two things repeated in his mind, over and over again.

  That she loved him.

  And that she wanted him to leave.

  He owned part of the ranch. She couldn’t make him go.

  But he...

  Well, he had to talk to Ryder. Dammit. Had confessions to make. Because Ryder would buy him out. He was sure of that.

  And that was about what needed to happen now.

  There was no getting around it.

  So, completely hung over, and with no pride whatsoever, he got in his truck and drove over to the main house.

  He knew there was a chance that he might run into Rose.

  And she was right. Just the idea of that...

  Just the idea.

  No. It couldn’t happen. They couldn’t work together every day.

  He was miserable as hell. But what could he offer her? Just a broken, bound-up asshole who couldn’t seem to figure out how to open himself up.

  You’re afraid.

  Her words echoed insi
de of him.

  That he did blame himself for his mother’s death. And that he found some comfort in that blame.

  Because without someone to blame... Wasn’t it all just random?

  He slammed his truck into Park, turned the engine off and headed to the house.

  He walked up to the door and knocked. It only took a moment for it to jerk open. And there was Ryder. He didn’t know whether he was relieved or not that it was his friend who answered the door. “Damn,” Ryder said. “You look rough.”

  “I feel rough.” He met his friend’s eyes, and it felt like...like he might just know. “We need to talk.”

  Ryder shrugged, and tilted his head back toward the house.

  “Not in there. Outside.”

  “All right,” Ryder said.

  “I need you to hear me out,” Logan said when his friend had stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind him.

  “I wasn’t planning on not.”

  “Yeah, but you might not want to hear what I have to say.” He took a long, harsh breath. “You need to buy me out.”

  “Okay.” Ryder said nothing more after that.

  “That’s it?”

  “You just told me to hear you out. Don’t be obnoxious.”

  “You need to buy me out,” he repeated. “Because... Look, I have to tell you... Something happened with Rose.”

  “Is this the part where you confess to me that you’re sleeping with my sister?”

  Logan took a step back. “Did she tell you?”

  “No,” Ryder said. “But I’m not an idiot. And you two are about as subtle as a rockslide.”

  Logan felt like he’d been whacked upside the head. “Why the hell didn’t you stop me?”

  “Was I supposed to? Was I supposed to grab you by the dick and lead you into town, shaming you on Main Street? Put you in a chastity belt? You’re grown-ass people. What you do is not my responsibility, nor is it my business. Rose knows her mind. As much as it pains me. And it’s been pretty obvious to me that she’s had a thing for you for... Well, a long while.”