Down Home Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  “Why would he love me?” she asked, the words miserable, and so self-pitying she wanted to punch her own face. “It doesn’t make any sense. He’s so gorgeous, and he’s a fantastic dad. He’s strong, and he’s... He’s everything. My own parents could hardly bring themselves to pay any attention to me. They disapproved of everything I did. They acted like affection was gold and giving any out would bankrupt them. And then my husband... My husband promising to love me turned into this warped, grotesque thing. Why would Cain love me? Nobody ever has.”

  “I do,” Lane said.

  Rebecca nodded silently, and Cassie stood up, walking toward her and putting a hand over top of hers. “Me too.”

  Now Alison was just a soggy mess, tears flowing freely, sobs shaking her fragile frame.

  “You were never a different person,” Cassie said, curling her fingers around Alison’s and squeezing. “You were always you. You always deserved somebody to love you more than they did. You’re strong though. And even in just the years I’ve known you you’ve changed. You smile more. You warm up to people faster. You don’t look scared. I totally understand why you want to protect that. But...if you stop now... If you stop changing and growing now...”

  “I’m still living for him,” she said, her tone soft. “And for my parents. I’m still letting other people control my life.” It was funny that a sixteen-year-old’s words, the words that had been echoing inside of her for the past few hours, were the ones that rang true now.

  “And if you don’t love him, don’t let him push you into anything either,” Cassie said. “But I think you do. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be perfectly soft, or perfectly strong. You just have to be you. Tell him what you want, tell him how you feel. A relationship doesn’t have to stay one way. If at any point it starts to feel oppressive, tell him. But I think... I think you’re going to find that when somebody loves you, when they really love you in that way that they should, you’ll feel the most free that you ever have.” Cassie removed her hand. “That’s real love, Alison. It makes you feel stronger. It makes you feel more alive. It breaks down all that fear inside of you. It doesn’t ask you to be perfect.”

  She thought of Cain, the way he had looked at her this morning. The way it had made her feel in those first moments when he had told her that he loved her. He did that. He did all of those things. But she was holding on to fear, and as long as fear was the biggest thing inside of her she was never going to be able to accept that love.

  “What if I don’t know how to...to take it?” She took a deep breath. “I mean, I’m really scared. It would be so much easier if it was because I didn’t trust Cain not to hurt me. But I do trust him. He’s a good man. And I... I love him. I really do. I want to be with him. But I’m afraid that I can’t be a strong enough woman for him. Or a strong enough woman for myself. I can’t just drop my fear and grab onto him, even though I want to.”

  “My advice would be that you tell him that. You just said that you trust him. You have to trust him with this too.”

  Alison took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She pictured everything that she had. The bakery, her little apartment, her newfound position in this town as a businesswoman, and not as an abuse victim. Not a victim. She wasn’t a victim. So she wasn’t going to live like a victim either.

  Wasn’t going to use her past, her shop, her relationship with the women who worked for her, as excuses for why she couldn’t also be with Cain. All of those things, those very good things, had become blockades. Initially, she had needed them, to give herself purpose, to keep herself safe.

  Yes, she had needed that cave, the one that created walls and necessary limits, and a sense of security. But it was time to walk out of it. It was time to stand in the sun.

  She looked at her friends, her very strong friends, all of whom had banished demons from their past in order to find love. They were flawed. Because everybody was. But that didn’t make them undeserving. She could see that easily. It was just so difficult for her to see when it came to herself.

  But suddenly, she saw with clarity that, much like when she had left Jared, this wasn’t about feeling ready. It was just about moving forward. Because it was the right thing. Because it was the only thing.

  Because it was what she deserved.

  To be happy. To be loved.

  To be with Cain.

  Maybe she didn’t have to wait until she didn’t feel afraid. Maybe she just had to take that step.

  “I need to go,” she said, standing up, her limbs shaking. “I have to go talk to him.”

  That earned her the round of unified noises she had hoped for earlier. Only instead of shocked gasps, there were cheers. “Go!” Lane said.

  “Yes,” Rebecca said. “Go. We’ll eat all the pie.”

  “We’ll save you some fruitcake,” Cassie added, nodding seriously.

  “Keep your fruitcake,” Alison said. “Keep it all. I’m going to go tell a man that I love him.”

  * * *

  FOR ONCE, POUNDING nails into wood wasn’t doing anything to alleviate his tension. Or maybe it never had. Maybe he had just been existing in a stage of deep denial. Keeping all of his emotions in the deep freeze so that he didn’t have to deal. And now that he had let them rise to the surface they were causing him a metric fuck-ton of pain.

  There was no denying this. No denying that losing Alison hurt with every breath he took. That each gulp of air was a stab of burning agony that didn’t seem to end.

  Really, no wonder he had avoided this for all of his life. No wonder he had done so much to keep his feelings under wraps.

  Theoretically, this letting his feelings out thing might be healthier, but it was like kale. Bitter, available in abundance and tougher with age.

  That was the thing. He’d been married before. He had a child who was nearly grown. Everything felt like it was ending. And then this. There wouldn’t be another woman after Alison. It was her. Only her. Which meant this was going to hurt forever. Great.

  The sun went down behind the mountains and it got dark inside the barn he was nearly done renovating. He turned on a shop light, flooding the area with light, which also flooded it with heat. He took his shirt off, sweat rolling down his back as he continued to work.

  He was so busy, and doing nothing to dampen the noise he was making—it was therapeutic—that he didn’t hear anyone come in. Didn’t notice anything at all until he heard her voice.

  “I thought maybe we could talk.”

  He whirled around, then dropped the hammer he’d been holding. “What are you doing here?”

  “I hope these floors still aren’t...”

  “I don’t give a damn about the floors.”

  She took a deep breath. “I came to talk to you.”

  His heart squeezed tight, his fingertips itching to touch her. To make contact with the smooth, perfect skin, to tuck her hair—gleaming like copper in the light—behind her ear before sifting his fingers through it.

  Who was he kidding? He didn’t want to stop there. He wanted to strip her naked. Wanted to bury himself inside of her so that she would remember. So that she would know what it was like. So that she would ache the way he did. So that she would be full of the same regret that he seemed to be made of.

  “I’m not in the mood to talk,” he said. “Talking is stupid. I experimented with talking, I didn’t like the results.”

  “Cain...”

  It hit him then that he’d never asked Kathleen to stay. Had never gone after her. They’d never once fought all through their marriage, and in the end, he hadn’t fought for her.

  But Alison mattered too much.

  Fuck being a good guy. Fuck her space.

  He walked toward her, and this time when he did it she didn’t take a step back. Instead, she stood there resolutely, her eye
s never leaving his. He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her up against his chest—damp with sweat from the exertion—which was fine with him, she deserved to feel that. She was the reason he was out here.

  “Why are you here?” he asked, his tone ferocious. “Did you come to kick me again? Did you come to tell me again that you don’t love me?”

  She shook her head, and then she reached up, dragging her fingertips across his cheekbone. “No.”

  The simple touch, so gentle, so small, carrying the impact of a steel beam swung to the gut, stole all of his rage. Stole all of his words.

  “I came because... Because I’m scared.”

  He frowned. “You mean you were scared?”

  “No. I am scared. I sort of thought that if I were ever supposed to do something like this, if I were ever supposed to take this kind of step it would feel...easy. And I would feel ready. But I’m not sure why I thought that, Cain. Because there has never been a big change I’ve made in my entire life—for better or worse, really—that didn’t feel hard. That I felt ready for.” She took a deep breath. “So I’m scared. But I’m here.”

  He tightened his hold on her, afraid to let her go. Afraid that if he did she might walk right back out. Of course, he was also afraid that if he held on any tighter she would vaporize completely, prove to be a figment of his overactive imagination.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice rough, almost a stranger’s. “You are.”

  “I’ve been thinking. And talking. Talking to my friends. And to your daughter, actually.”

  “My daughter?”

  Alison nodded. “Yes. She was not very happy with me.”

  “No,” he said, not seeing any point in denying that. The fact that Violet had been on his side was one of those victories he was going to take.

  “I’ve spent the past twelve hours trying to untangle everything. And I’ve come to some conclusions. But mostly? It was all a big ball of fear.”

  He raised his hands, cupped her face, slid his thumb along the edge of her lips. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Alison.”

  Her eyes glistened, her mouth pulling tight. She nodded. “I know. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t that simple. I’m afraid of myself. I’m afraid of what I might find out about my own value if I try again. I’m afraid you’ll figure out I’m not worth anything.”

  Cain shook his head slowly. “Alison, you aren’t worth just anything. You’re worth absolutely everything.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek, her lower lip trembling. He wanted to kiss it. But he didn’t want to stop her from saying what she was going to say next. “I’ve been holding on to this idea that he stole who I was. Because it was easy. Easy to think that I was one thing when I went into that marriage, and that he transformed me into something else. But I don’t think I ever knew who I was. Everything I’ve ever done was a reaction. To my parents, to his anger. To my own anger. My own fear. To what I wanted the town to see. But now I want to choose. I don’t want to prove anything. I don’t want to show the town anything. I don’t want to be safe. I just want to be happy. I just want to love you.”

  A shudder ran down Cain’s spine, and he crushed her up against his chest, holding her tight, cupping the back of her head. “Then love me, Alison. Please love me.”

  “I do,” she said, her voice muffled. “I really do love you.”

  He pulled her back away from him, tilting her face up, watching as tears slid down her cheeks. Tears for him. For them.

  “And a very good friend of mine said that I needed to talk to you,” she said, a smile touching the corners of her mouth. “Which is funny, because I think we’ve kind of come full circle now. Since you were the one who did the talking first. And I was a little slow to learn. I’m scared, but I want this. And I’m not going to wait until I feel ready. Because I might never feel ready. Change is hard. And I’ve made a lot of changes in the past few years. But I sort of bought into this idea that I was done changing. Because change is hard,” she said, laughing a little bit. “And I didn’t want to have to do it anymore. I wanted to believe that everything was fixed, that I was fixed. But I wasn’t. I’m not. I’ve been married before, Cain. But I don’t know how to have a marriage, I don’t know how to be in love. I’m not really sure I even know how to accept love. Even though it’s something that I want. But I do know that I love you. And that I want to be with you.”

  “There’s nothing to know,” he said. “At least I hope not. Because I don’t know what I’m doing either. I just know what I feel. And I know it’s something I’ve never felt before. I don’t have a map for this. Maybe I’ll suck at it. But if I do, I want you to tell me. And we can work on this together. We can make this work together.”

  “I want to,” she said, the words coming out a whisper.

  “Then we will,” he said. “And if something is wrong with you, I’m going to ask you what it is. And I need you to tell me. Because we’re not going to let things get bad. We’re not going to let fear get in the way. We’re not going to let other people who didn’t love us anyway decide what we do with the rest of our lives.”

  “I told you I never asked my parents for what I wanted. For what I needed. I just rebelled, and acted out, I did things just to make them upset. And when that didn’t work, I tried proving myself by changing my plans and giving them everything when times were hard. But that won’t be us, Cain. I’m going to try. Because while that scares me, while it terrifies me to cut myself open and bleed all over the place in here, to tell you that I love you, to tell you that I want to be with you, to take the risk that I might get hurt, it scares me even more to think that I might not have you at all. One is a risk I can take. The other one? Not so much.”

  “The problem with reaching out to people,” he said, echoing words from an earlier conversation they’d had, “is that they might pull away.”

  “And then I did. I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t be sorry. Because I would do it again. And you know what? I think I would have tried. Again and again. I probably would have gotten a boom box.”

  “Oh, God forbid. Not a boom box.”

  “Desperate times. And life without you was pretty desperate, Alison.” He shook his head. “The first time I got married, commitment chose me. I wasn’t looking for it, but Kathleen got pregnant, and it was the right thing to do. This isn’t about doing the right thing. This is about going after something that I want desperately, something I wasn’t looking for this time either, but something I can’t imagine living without.”

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  He was more than happy to oblige. He dipped his head, claiming her, long and deep, and pouring all of the love he had inside of him into that kiss. When they parted, her lips curved upward.

  Warmth flooded him, love filled him, and he dipped his head and kissed her again. “I love you,” he said, his lips still pressed against hers. “And I always will. Always.”

  “I like the sound of always. I like it a lot.”

  “Good. Also, I hope you’re not averse to living in a barn. Or with a teenager.”

  “As long as you’re there, I think I can handle it. Plus, Violet and I do pretty well. We even bake together, and I am very particular about who I bake with.”

  He smiled and tightened his hold on her. He’d moved all the way to Copper Ridge from Texas to try to build something new for himself and Violet. For just the two of them. Instead, he’d built something better. A family. A relationship with his brothers.

  Cain Donnelly had been alone for four long years. Four years of trying to battle through being a single parent. Four years of going to bed alone. A lifetime of not understanding just how much he could love a woman. But he did now.

  He’d wondered—more than once—how his life had ended up at that point. Hadn’t been able to connect the dots and make sense of it.
But he could see them all now, bright and brilliant.

  They had all led up to this. To Alison. To forever.

  He understood now. It took more than good intentions and a desire for stability to make a family. Took more than hard work and working the land and pounding nails.

  It took love.

  “Which one of us gets to tell Violet?” he asked.

  “You’re her dad,” Alison said. “That’s all you.”

  “Should I offer her a chance to be the flower girl?”

  Her eyes widened. “Are you proposing to me?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

  “Isn’t that a little bit fast?”

  “As my daughter keeps reminding me, Alison, I’m not getting any younger. I need to move fast.”

  Color flooded Alison’s face, along with the kind of happiness he’d only ever dreamed someone might look at him with.

  “Ask me why I’m smiling, Cain,” she said, a dreamy expression on her face.

  And all he could think of was that moment, that one that he had only told one living soul about—her—that moment when he had asked his mother why she didn’t smile. And she’d answered it was because of him.

  “Why are you smiling, Alison?”

  She put her hands on his face, those delicate fingers tracing the lines on either side of his mouth. “Because of you.”

  EPILOGUE

  VIOLET DONNELLY DIDN’T consider herself sentimental. Not really. She was almost seventeen, after all. But still, when she watched her dad exchange vows with Alison at Grassroots Winery, she cried.

  It was impossible not to.

  Her dad was in a suit, which was something she never thought she’d see, and ultimately was about the biggest testament to how he felt about his new wife. And Alison...well, she was perfect in her simple white gown with its fluttering, sheer cap sleeves and deep V in the back. As far away from an evil stepmother as it was possible to be. The simple, short bridesmaid’s dress she’d chosen for Violet to wear was even pretty. Flowing and the same deep green as the trees.