by Nicole Helm
They all seemed to look toward the entry to the dining room, where Dad apparently was. Time to face the music.
Dad was parked at the table, somehow managing to look surly and blank at the same time. Mel went first, Caleb almost next to her, their shoulders nearly pressing together, a human shield.
Shielding their little sister. Sister—still a term she wasn’t used to, but it was becoming easier to think. It was pretty damn obvious this girl needed some sheltering.
“Dad, we have someone we want you to talk to.”
“If this is about the nurse thing, I called up Fiona myself today and did the apology bullshit, and she agreed to come back,” he said, not looking at them, his gaze completely focused on the rich wood of the table.
It was a surprise, that was for certain, enough of one that she and Caleb stopped and exchanged a glance.
“You called her?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So.” Caleb shook his head. “That is something. What we have to talk to you about is something too. Something important.”
“We want you to meet someone,” Mel said, sounding far more firm and in control than she felt. But she and Caleb parted, and Summer stepped in to be shoulder to shoulder with them.
“Who is that?” Dad demanded, but it obviously took him a few seconds to really look, because he jolted a little, eyes going from Summer to Mel. His hands gripped the armrest of his wheelchair. “What is this?”
“Hi, um, my name is Summer. And…” She looked to Mel, biting her lip. Mel didn’t do anything—what could she do? But in some bizarre twist of something, Summer seemed to take strength just from looking at her. “My mother is Linda Shaw, and she says you are my father.”
Dad looked surprised, but there was no confusion, no denial in his expression, and that made Mel’s stomach tighten and cramp. He couldn’t have known. No, this had to be the poker face he’d learned so well.
He didn’t say anything for the longest while, and Mel thought Summer and Caleb were holding their breaths just as she was. Silence stretched. Then he looked down at his lap and moved to wheel away.
Mel opened her mouth, but Summer grabbed her hand again. Held on to it for dear life. “Did you know about me?” she asked into the heavy silence.
Mel looked at her, shocked she’d blurted out the question like that. It hadn’t been the plan, mainly because Summer said she’d never be able to ask him directly, that she’d chicken out.
But she was standing there, holding on to Mel’s hand for dear life, and from the looks of it, Caleb’s as well. Holding on to their strength and doing something that just hours before she’d claimed she couldn’t.
There was probably a lesson in that, if Mel wanted to look for it, but Dad’s answer interrupted any lessons.
“Yes.”
Summer’s grasp loosened, but Mel held on. Held on because…well, she didn’t know. For the first time in her life, holding on to someone seemed like the right thing to do, the thing that would get them through the other side.
Yeah, definitely a lesson.
“Dad, you need to explain this to us,” Mel said, her voice far more authoritative than she felt.
He’d turned away from them, his wheelchair halfway out the other entrance toward the hallway to his room.
A sigh, silence, his body kind of slumped. “I knew your mother was pregnant when she left.” He let that hang in the air. “What more do you want to know?”
“Why?” Caleb demanded, finding words Mel couldn’t. “How? How could you have never told us? How could you have let that happen? How could you, when she…”
Dad glanced at Caleb, and the look they shared hinted at all kinds of deeper secrets. Dear God, what on earth was happening with her family? What had happened that she’d never known about?
“She told me she was leaving. That she couldn’t stand being here for another second, and when I argued…” The first flicker of emotion crossed his profile, his hands tensing on his chair. There was a long pause before he finally spoke again, raspy and uneven. “She said she’d take Mel and disappear if I tried to stop her.” Then he shrugged, all hints of emotion gone. “So I didn’t.”
Take Mel and disappear. Take her and disappear. Mel glanced at Caleb, the flicker of an emotion she’d seen many times and never understood on his face. She still didn’t understand, but Mom only wanting to take her didn’t make any sense. Surely Dad misspoke.
“But…that was over twenty years ago,” Summer said, her voice small and wavery but there, ringing out. “You had all this time.”
“To do what?”
“Find me. Be there for me.”
“You had your mother.”
“But I could have had this.”
Dad looked around like he didn’t understand what this meant, and Mel thought maybe he didn’t. Maybe the paralysis had taken away all his love for this place, or maybe it had been gone long before, only she hadn’t wanted to see it.
Or maybe, worst of all, he’d pushed away all the love and good because he was afraid it would break him. Because it had so many times before.
It was hard to breathe past that thought, because it struck a chord so deep it roused all the feeling she was trying to ignore. Push away. Forget.
All to end up like her father? No, no she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be the one in a roomful of people begging for her love and pushing it away because it was too much, too hard, too scary.
She’d take that burning lance of pain every time someone left or disappointed her over this…not living. What was the point of being alive, so many years stretching before her, if none of it mattered? Not her family, not Shaw, not…
Love.
She loved Dan. Her heart ached for him. Even when she tried to push thoughts of him away, even when she tried to pretend he didn’t exist, he was there. In her heart. She couldn’t muscle through that or pretend it away. She just wasn’t that strong, and for the first time in her life, she was glad she was weak.
“I did what I thought was right,” Dad said, his tone flat and emotionless. “I’m sorry if that hurt you.”
“That’s…it?”
“I can’t move my legs and I can’t even take care of myself half the time. I am and have nothing. What else would you want from me?”
“A father.”
Summer’s answer repeated in Mel’s head. It reminded her of all of the things she’d ignored and pushed away for five years. Ever since the accident, she’d just been so glad he was alive, so much so that she’d accepted the emptiness he’d become, because at least he wasn’t dead.
It wasn’t enough anymore, and being afraid of saying that, of hurting him…it didn’t matter anymore.
Better to break and fix than ignore, or lie, or pretend.
“I would like that too,” she said, squeezing Summer’s hand.
“Same for me,” Caleb said.
The three of them, standing in a line, holding hands and asking for their father back. It was like nothing that had ever happened to her, and the hope hurt as much as it lightened the heavy load she’d been carrying.
“He’s gone,” Dad said, and their breaths seemed to collectively whoosh out as Dad wheeled out of the room.
There was no denying the sting of hurt and betrayal and abandonment, but they had asked, and Mel wanted to believe that it was the first step. That they would try again and receive a different answer.
Believing that was so much better than accepting the crap as it was.
“I’m sorry it didn’t turn out better,” Caleb said, still staring at where Dad had left.
“Me too,” Summer returned weakly. “But, it could have been worse.”
“We’ll keep trying,” Mel said firmly.
Summer and Caleb looked at her, and for the first time she saw the resemblance. Something about the wa
y their eyebrows raised to practically the tops of their heads when they were surprised.
“He’s still in there,” she added. “The man he used to be. He just has to stop being so afraid. We should keep trying, I think. Not right now, but…we should. Don’t you think?”
Summer’s surprise morphed into a smile, and she flung her arms around Mel’s neck. “Yes, I think so,” she whispered, squeezing Mel tight.
Mel awkwardly patted her back, offering Caleb a “what am I supposed to do?” look, but he just shrugged, and if she wasn’t totally off base, his mouth curled up at the corner just a little bit.
“Let’s eat,” Summer said, finally releasing Mel. Of course then it was Caleb’s turn to awkwardly pat her back when she gave him a hug. “Emotional heartbreak makes me hungry.”
She jangled off to the kitchen, and Mel and Caleb stood there, looking at each other.
“You’re right,” Caleb offered.
“I know.”
This time Caleb really did smile. “That mean you’re going to go make up with that asshole hockey player?”
Mel pressed a hand to her stomach. Dan. Just the mention of him hurt in places that couldn’t be reached, couldn’t be soothed. Not by anyone but him.
But she had said some truly horrible things in her attempt to push him away. How did she face those? How did he forgive those? She might not be strong enough to deny her love for him, but was it too late? “I don’t know.”
“For what it’s worth”—he shoved a hand through his rumpled hair—“you probably should.”
Mel swallowed. “That’ll probably be met with the same reaction Dad just gave us.”
Caleb shrugged. “You’re the one who said we should keep trying.”
Right. Keep trying. Because the hope was better than defeat. Because…life with Dan hadn’t broken her. It hadn’t made everything hard. It had opened her eyes. It had cracked her open, so maybe she could heal instead of soldier on.
Because of him. His strength, his support, his love. She’d been cruel, and it hurt that she’d allowed fear the power to make her cruel. But she was still strong. She was still Mel Shaw.
And she was in love. If Dan didn’t forgive her the first time, maybe she’d just…keep trying.
* * *
Chicago was no longer home. Dan felt it the minute he stepped off the plane. It dug in during his meeting with Scott, as he walked around his apartment, trying to figure out what he needed to do before he could call someone to pack it all up. As he tried to remember why he’d thought he needed three days here. In retrospect, he wished he’d flown in for the press conference and flown out.
This was not his home, and maybe it never had been. Llamas and mountains were home. Mel was home.
“Well, fuck that,” he muttered. That was… He and Mel were… The word he needed was a word he was having trouble accepting.
Over.
Whether his brain wanted to accept it or not, it was one of those things beyond his control. He had laid his heart on the line, she didn’t want it, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it except accept it and not let it change the course of his life or the decisions he could control.
It was shit, and it did hurt, and maybe it would always hurt, but it wasn’t reason enough to run away. If there was something to be taken away from that phone call with Grandpa, it was that hurt and happy sometimes kind of bled all over each other, and the good parts were worth it. Escape didn’t change the hurt, but it sure as hell kept a lot of the good at bay too.
That phone call had killed him, but his grandpa thought Dan would stay. Someone believed that Dan Sharpe could be happy there. Even if Grandpa hadn’t known who he was talking to, he’d…known.
Mel and Blue Valley had changed Dan. He’d grown into someone else, someone who didn’t fit into his old life anymore, and that was worth the hurt.
It was all worth it.
If when someone knocked on his door his idiot brain fantasized it was Mel on the other side, it didn’t matter. Because it turned out to be his parents. Together.
Surely that had to rank higher on a scale of weird than llamas.
“Mom. Dad. I didn’t know you were both in town.”
Mom smiled at Dad, but it was one of her pressed-lip smiles, kind of pained—a forced show of politeness. “We thought it might be good if the three of us were in the same place.”
He moved out of the doorway so they could step inside. Any random thoughts that perhaps his parents had gotten over their unease with each other disappeared when they immediately separated. Dad going to one side, Mom to the other.
“Daniel…”
“We wanted to talk to you.”
Dan took a breath, let it out. He supposed he was about to get double-teamed on the “we’re worried about you” talk. At some point he was going to have to accept that neither of them would probably ever understand this.
He plopped on his couch and flashed an old-Dan smile. “Is this where you tell me there’s a psychiatrist waiting for me downstairs to talk me out of my cowboy delusions?” He looked at both of them. “A good rancher has to be a little crazy, guys.”
“We don’t think you’re crazy,” Mom said, clutching her purse, the pained look softening into something more like hurt.
That was enough for Dan to realize he was handling this all wrong. Pretending it didn’t matter, acting like it was a joke. No, that’s not what had gotten him this far.
“Look.” He pressed his palms together then stood. “Retiring is not a decision I came to lightly. And the llama-ranch thing, I’m sure it seems a little strange on the surface, but there are reasons, and they’re both good ones in general and good financial ones as well.”
He looked from his mother’s still-concerned face to his father’s surprised one. “This is not a whim, it’s not a joke. It’s not even running away from an unpleasant situation. It’s something I can see doing for a very long time, and I don’t see much point trying to ingratiate myself back into hockey just to prove a point or to help Dad or Scott’s career. The thing is, when you find something that…that fits you like a glove, that feels right and like home, you don’t let that thing go because it seems a little weird or isn’t what you’d planned on.”
Mom slid onto the very end of the couch, suddenly looking exhausted. “I think he just effectively undermined all our arguments, Gary,” she murmured.
Gingerly, Dad took a seat on the opposite side. “I believe you’re right.”
Dan stood before them, shocked that was all it took. Just a little honesty. Of course, that hadn’t worked with Mel…but he wasn’t thinking about her right now.
Of course, his own words haunted him. When you find something that feels right…you don’t just let that thing go…
Except he hadn’t let it go. She’d walked away. Period. No wishy-washy crap allowed.
“Let me take you guys out to dinner,” Dan said eventually. He’d much rather have a dinner with his parents than sit in this apartment, trying to figure out what parts of it would actually belong in his new life. “You can give me some press conference pointers.”
Mom and Dad looked at each other, both grimacing a little bit, but they seemed to come to some silent agreement.
“All right,” Mom said, getting back to her feet, purse still clutched to her stomach.
They had never been a demonstrative family. Not in all the time he could remember, so pulling Mom into a hug was awkward, but he did it. Because Mom certainly looked like she needed it.
She was stiff for a second before her arms came around him. “My, you have changed,” she said quietly.
“It’s for the better, I promise.”
“Well, you were quite fine before, but if you’re happy, then it is better.” She kissed his cheek and released him, and it didn’t matter that he didn’t fit in this place anymore
. He had that moment, and like the one with Grandpa on the phone, it would mean something for a very long time.
Chapter 26
Mel clutched her knees, mainly in an attempt to keep her palms from sweating. And her heart from leaping out of her chest, and her brain from zooming off into the horizon of so many bad outcomes.
“You look like you’re going to throw up,” Caleb offered, turning onto Dan’s property.
Oh, shit, maybe she was. “You’re not helping.”
“If he doesn’t immediately fall at your feet, he’s the asshole I always knew he was.”
“I messed this up. I really did. He was…” Sweet and perfect, and she’d been mean and awful. Why was she doing this?
Love. Right. She didn’t want to live without the cocky bastard. She wanted him in her life. She wanted to help him with his problems and she wanted to wake up each morning, in his bed, in his life—no. Their life. She wanted to face every trouble together, holding hands and knowing they would find a way to make it to the other side.
Caleb shrugged. “So what?” He pulled his truck next to hers. She’d half expected it to be gone. That Dan would have gotten rid of it since she’d been too busy to come get it.
And by busy, she meant chickenshit.
Dan’s Harley was nowhere to be seen. But Buck Haslow’s truck was in the drive on the other side of hers, and something about that made Mel’s stomach pitch. “He’s not here.”
“You gonna wait or come back later?”
Mel swallowed. Buck would only be here if… “I don’t know.”
Caleb gave her shoulder a little push. “Go. Wait. In fact, I don’t want to see your face at Shaw until you’ve got this sorted. Your heartbreak is getting on my nerves.”
“He might be…gone.”
“Then he’s an asshole and an idiot. And a fucker. And a whole other list of things. Go. Find out. You want me to come with you?”
“No. No. Go home. Summer might cry if you don’t get her up on a horse today.”
“That girl is going to cry either way. She cries at everything. Happy. Sad. Kittens.”
Mel snorted. “She’s a mess.”