The Hero of Hope Springs

by Maisey Yates

  It was impossible to think that she could come again, so quickly after she had the first time. But as he thrust into her, slowly pulling back out, pleasure built inside her like a thunderstorm, building and growing, waiting for the heavens to release. And when they did, when her release poured down on her like rain over the land, she wanted to weep. As her internal muscles pulsed around him, pulled him deeper, she understood something.

  He became part of her in a way that no one else ever had.

  It was so deep and intimate. Such a peek of all that they were.

  When she thought it couldn’t be more, he shivered. Shook. Thrust hard into her one last time and filled her with himself.

  She clung to him, breathing hard, holding his shoulders and fighting to keep tears at bay.

  She felt altered. Shifted. As if the very makeup of what she was had changed. But then, the roots of the world had become something new since Ryder Daniels had touched her, so why wouldn’t she be different also?

  She moved away from him, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, clinging to the mattress as she breathed hard, trying to collect herself.

  “Sammy,” he said, and she heard the rustle of the covers behind them.

  Suddenly, it was like the room tilted. And she could see clearly the past, when she would come in here as a girl, running away from life, and the present.

  Dammit.

  She was just the same.

  She was running away from something in her life. Pursuing this whole idea of a baby because she wasn’t happy with what had happened with herself. And... And then she had done it. She had climbed through his window, and she’d had sex with him, and they’d done it without a condom.

  She was always doing this. To herself. To him.

  Running and using him as a shield, and she had flung all those things at him, and she had been defensive when he had flung things at her.

  But the problem was she suspected that from the beginning she had wanted it to be him.

  Because she was using him.

  The way that she did.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, regret washing over her.

  What if she had ruined them? What if she had ruined this forever?

  “I...” She started to collect her clothes off that familiar bedroom floor. That scarred wood that she had walked across so many times. Just a few days ago she had followed him in here and seen him get out of the shower in a towel.

  Had that been only a few days ago? It felt like a lifetime ago. And that everything between them was so unutterably altered that she could never get back to that person. That moment.

  All the moments ever that had come before.

  She had thought she’d known what sex was. She had thought she’d understood what she was asking him.

  She was asking the man to let her carry his baby.

  A piece of Ryder. A piece of her. All of it growing inside her. And the way they had...

  She got dressed as quickly as she could.

  “Don’t run away,” he said.

  “Why not? You got to run away last night.”

  She didn’t face him when she said that. Instead, she just wrapped her arms around herself and stood there, waiting for him to argue. Waiting for him to push. Waiting for him to say more, because he got to be stubborn and unhappy whenever he wanted to be, but he would never let her do it.

  Except no reprisal came. He didn’t push. He didn’t tell her she was silly. He didn’t tell her she was wrong.

  She didn’t know what the hell to do with that.

  What was she supposed to do if not even Ryder would push? Did that mean that they were broken? Did it mean that this was a mistake? In ways that she couldn’t have fully anticipated? It all felt a lot like he knew things that she didn’t. It all felt a lot like dying.

  But she believed in rebirth, she really did. The problem was, she’d been trying to force one, and she didn’t know what came from that.

  If the phoenix lit herself on fire, did she get to rise from those ashes?

  Sammy feared the answer might be no.

  And she feared that she had turned her best friend to ash right along with her.

  She had no perspective, and she needed it.

  She went over to the window and pushed it open.

  “You’re not climbing out the window,” he said, his voice hard.

  “You want me to take the stairs?”

  “Don’t break your neck on top of everything else, please.”

  She was going to argue, but he had a point. The window had been a gesture.

  She walked to his bedroom door and opened it, walking out into the hall. And as she closed the door behind her, she felt the sense of change settle over her.

  Because Sammy, his friend, would’ve always climbed in and out the window.

  He was sending her out the door.

  Like a lover who was on a walk of shame. Like someone altered, changed and broken.

  Broken.

  She felt broken.

  She walked slowly down the hall, down the stairs. And she heard the clicking of nails on the hardwood floor, and suddenly the three farm dogs were swirling around her, silly, excited beasts barely able to contain themselves.

  They didn’t bark. She had a feeling Ryder had trained them to keep quiet at night.

  But she could tell that they wanted to bark, curious about why she was here when it was so late.

  She patted them on their heads.

  “At least you still like me,” she whispered. “But you’re dogs. So I suppose you always will.”

  She wasn’t sure what their owner would think of her right now.

  As he lay in bed.

  He hadn’t tried to talk her into staying.

  She didn’t know what that meant.

  And it was good, because she didn’t want to. Because she didn’t think she should.

  Because they needed to regroup and think, or at least she did.

  She gave the dogs one last pat, then sneaked through the living room and out the front door. And when she saw a figure out of the corner of her eye on the front deck, she startled.

  So did the figure.

  He looked at her, and when she could see him more clearly, she recognized that it was Logan.

  “Huh,” he said.

  Oh, screw him and his speculative sounds.

  “Don’t make that noise at me,” she said.

  “Rose doesn’t know shit.”

  Sammy rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”

  “I figured you guys would eventually. And based on the way he’s been acting the past few days... I thought it might be soon.”

  “I’m the one who instigated it,” she said.

  “I’m not really that surprised by that, either.”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “Thinking.”

  “What about?”

  “All the shit I shouldn’t do,” he said, leveling her with a look.

  Only a few months ago Iris and Rose had introduced the idea that Logan might have feelings for her, but she had been certain that he didn’t. She didn’t know why she was so certain. Only that she was.

  And something about the way he was sitting out there brooding confirmed it.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not any more than you want to talk about it.” It being her current parade of shame, she supposed.

  “Fair enough. Though right now I would argue that there’s a case to be made for inevitability. Whatever your issue is.”

  “I think there’s a bigger case to be made for self-control,” he said. “But then, what do I know?”

  “I don’t know. But right about now I don’t know much of anything.”

  “He’s a good man,” Logan said. “Better than
me, that’s for sure.”

  “Better than me,” Sammy said.

  “They had that foundation. Losing their parents was hard. But your parents are scum. My mom was great. I don’t even know my dad.”

  “You really don’t know who he is?”

  He paused. And that told her everything she needed to know. “Good night, Sammy.”

  “Good night.” She stood for a moment and listened to the crickets. Breathed in the warm air. “Aren’t you going to warn me not to mess this up? I mean, as the other nonblood relative, aren’t you going to warn me not to tear my square out of this crazy patchwork life of ours?”

  “Don’t mess it up,” he said, but there was no heat or heart in it.

  “That’s unhelpful to me.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say. Life is hard, and it’s lonely sometimes. And I’ll tell you this. I do know what it’s like, like you, to have a living parent that you still can’t see or touch or have a relationship with. They lost everyone, and that’s tragic.”

  “Yeah, ours just don’t want us.”

  “So all I’m saying is...well, nothing. I don’t have anything to say. Not about this.”

  “Well, good night, then.” She started to walk down the steps.

  “He was different before you came.”

  She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Huh?”

  “Ryder. He was different. Before he met you. You taught him to smile.”

  She laughed. “Not well. He still doesn’t do it often.”

  “Before you he didn’t do it at all.” He stood then. “Good night.”

  And she nodded, and fled across the driveway, letting her hair fly wild in the breeze, running until she thought her heart might burst from her chest.

  She’d had sex with Ryder.

  Everything felt changed.

  But he hadn’t smiled until she’d come to the ranch seventeen years ago.

  So maybe, just maybe, there was hope all this wasn’t broken after all.

  And neither was she.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WHEN RYDER GOT UP the next morning his whole body ached. Like it was punishing him for the pleasure that he’d found last night inside Sammy.

  Sammy.

  If he didn’t feel the effects of last night so keenly on his body he would be tempted to imagine that it had been a dream.

  A fevered dream that blended the past with the present, reality with fantasy.

  But no. It had happened. He was sure of that.

  His skin felt different. Hot. Because of her.

  Because she had touched him that way. All over. Because she had kissed him, taken him into her mouth.

  Because he had...

  He gritted his teeth, walking into the bathroom and turning only the cold water on in the shower. He stepped beneath the spray, bracing his hands on the wall and gritting his teeth. He waited. Waited for the cold water to do something. To make him numb so that he didn’t feel any of this anymore.

  She had left.

  They’d had sex without a condom.

  But she’d left.

  And he hadn’t fought to get her to stay.

  Those facts rolled around inside his brain, and they effectively distracted him from the cold shower, which ultimately did nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  He didn’t feel better. He didn’t feel fixed.

  He felt changed.

  And not necessarily in a good way.

  He got out of the shower and dried himself off, making certain to scratch his skin with his rather cheap and threadbare towel. Just as a continuation of the general physical punishment he felt that he deserved.

  He got dressed and jerked open his bedroom door and stopped. Right there in front of the door, between his bare feet was...

  A sugar cube.

  He bent down slowly and touched the top of it, looked down at the bright white shape on the scarred wood floor. Picked it up, rolled it between his thumb and forefinger.

  Sammy.

  He walked down the hall toward the landing, and there was another one, just before the first step. He picked that up, too.

  There was another in the middle of the staircase. And another.

  And Sammy was lucky that he got up earlier than anyone else in the house, or he was sure that the sugar cubes wouldn’t have remained.

  As he got closer to the kitchen he could smell bacon cooking. And on the dining table was a plate. At the center of it was of course—a sugar cube. His lips twitched.

  He sat down in front of the plate, but left the sugar undisturbed.

  A blond head poked around the kitchen doorway, a sheepish look on her face. “Good morning.”

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said.

  “You walked right into my trap.” She had a bright, triumphant look about her that seemed more hopeful than actually happy.

  “Don’t I always?”

  Their eyes met, and held.

  There was a weary look on Sammy’s face this morning, and he swore he could feel an extra line carving its way into his forehead.

  If he’d aged ten years last night he wouldn’t be surprised.

  Apparently, she felt the same.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Which makes setting traps for you fairly low risk. But I had my questions this morning.”

  “And what inspired you to set one in the first place?”

  “I wasn’t going to leave it like that. We both deserve a little bit better than an awkward walk of shame and waking up alone. Don’t you think?”

  “In fairness, I’m used to waking up alone.”

  “Well,” she said. “I don’t walk of shame.”

  “I didn’t want you to.”

  He hadn’t asked her to stay, either. But he hadn’t wanted her feeling...that. Not in a million years.

  “I know,” she said slowly. “The shame was all mine. But it doesn’t need to be there. Not with us.”

  “Why was it?”

  “Because,” she said, sighing. “I... I’m afraid that I was doing something terribly me. And I got you caught up in the middle of it.”

  “Something terribly you? What does that mean?”

  He had a very solid feeling that he wasn’t going to like the answer. Whatever answer it was Sammy came up with. He didn’t know why.

  “I used you as a lifeline,” she said. “Because I felt like I was drowning. And I don’t mean to do that to you. I know you’ve got enough on your plate, and enough people to take care of. I do. But something in me has always known that you would take care of me. That you could help fix me. And I’ve always wanted it. Craved it. And I just... I think I did that here. I’m really afraid that I did. It wasn’t fair. I lied to myself about how big it would be.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I wanted to fix my life. I wanted to feel better. I wanted to feel like I could be different and prove my mother wrong. And I thought that maybe having a baby would catapult me into a new phase of life. Just like moving here did. Like becoming part of your family. And I think that...”

  “You weren’t planning on having me be the father of your baby. Not initially.”

  “Wasn’t I?” she asked. “Because I asked you. It just blurted out of my mouth.”

  “Don’t you trust yourself, Sammy? Even a little bit?”

  “Sure. I trust myself to have extreme powers of denial and...and to be...sometimes completely and utterly willful when it comes to what I want versus what other people want. And I know what it comes from. Being raised with a father who genuinely didn’t care about my well-being. Quite the opposite. I think sometimes he just wanted to hurt me. Because he attached a lot of the rage in his life to my existence. And I got tired of apologizing for existing. So I think sometimes I go too hard t
he other way. And I’m afraid that without meaning to I...”

  “That’s an awfully big step back from you shouting at me about making light of your feelings.”

  “Well, I’m afraid that I...” She pressed a palm over one eye before releasing it. “Not that it was light. And I’m not saying I don’t want it. But... I got hung up on you calling me selfish. And what I really should have looked at wasn’t the word selfish but whether or not I was doing this for a bad reason. And I think maybe I was. Am. And look, the minute I thought of you being the father of my baby you were the only one that I could possibly... And on some level I must have known that, right? That you were the only one I would’ve been happy with.”

  Something in his chest froze. Because it was so very close to the right thing. But it wasn’t. Not quite. He didn’t even know what the right thing was in this case. Because he wasn’t supposed to want any of this.

  Not a baby. Not...her. In whatever capacity he was imagining he might have her.

  He’d offered to marry her.

  And he’d never wanted any of that.

  Because he hadn’t wanted to do any of that all over again.

  “I just don’t want this to ruin us.”

  “I already told you,” he said, the words coming out gruff. “Nothing’s going to ruin us.”

  “You said that,” she said. “And I believed you. Until... I didn’t know, Ryder. I didn’t know it would feel like that.”

  He felt like she’d just set a ton of bricks on his chest. He did his best to shove them off. “Of course you didn’t. You’ve never had decent sex.”

  “It’s more than that,” she said.

  “What’s the point of it being more than that?”

  She sighed heavily and then disappeared back into the kitchen, returning a few moments later with a platter of bacon and eggs.

  She retreated one last time and came back with mugs of coffee. Then she sat across from him and started to fill her plate. He just sat there looking at the sugar cube.

  “I don’t know what the point is at all,” she whispered. “But I’m not going to go out and have a baby with somebody random.”

  “You aren’t?”

  She shook her head. “No. I need to figure out what my problem is. Because it’s something to do with me. It’s something to do with being unhappy with where my life is, and I don’t know what that is. I mean, I’m happy with my business. It’s going pretty well. Is it as simple as being jealous that Pansy found a way to be normal?”