The Hero of Hope Springs

by Maisey Yates

  “Sorry, but it’s the one thing you’ve never really done. Not from her necessarily, but from the past. Figure out what you want. Choose the life that you want. Figure out what kind of life you want to live. And show her that you’re not just here out of habit. That you’re not with her out of habit, or a sense of obligation.”

  “Can’t I just chase her down and kidnap her and lock her in my bedroom until she sees sense?”

  He was only a little bit joking.

  Honestly, it sounded more sensible to him. More certain than this relaxed stuff that Logan was suggesting. He wanted to go after her. He wanted to fix it. And he couldn’t understand why that bothered her so much. So what if he felt a sense of obligation? That was...

  Didn’t she understand that that was love to him?

  “No,” Logan said. “You can’t. Because you need to let her figure some things out on her own. She’s strong, but she’s been in your pocket all this time. She healed with you, around you. So stand apart for a minute. See where it gets you.”

  “Awfully confident,” Ryder said.

  “Yeah,” Logan said. “I am. Because I know you both. And because I think this place has a little bit of magic in it.”

  “I don’t know,” Ryder said. “I always thought it was kind of...the opposite of that. Not a whole lot of magic, mostly a bit of grief and irony. Hope Springs. I tell you what. It made me want to pick the names of things a lot more carefully. Like it was setting us up for disaster.”

  “That’s not how I took it. It’s just that even when things are hard... Well, there’s still hope, isn’t there?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Well, if there’s not hope, what is there? Maybe think about that. And see where it takes you.”

  Ryder had no idea what to make of any of that, because it felt to him like his hope had up and driven off along with Sammy Marshall.

  * * *

  SAMMY WAS A COWARD. And she was sneaking around in Gold Valley like the coward that she was. She had gotten as far as Copper Ridge, spent the day at one of the craft fairs there, and had come right back home.

  She was currently camped out in the spot that she had used to look down on Hope Springs Ranch when she was a teenager.

  And now she was sneaking around in town, restocking her jewelry at the various places on Main Street and in general feeling like a wounded martyr.

  She knew that Ryder wouldn’t see it that way. That he was currently probably feeling like the martyr. And she understood that. She did. But she was doing them both a favor.

  Of course, right now that favor felt like a giant knife wound to her heart. But whatever.

  She was just slipping out of Willow Creek when she ran square into Iris.

  One of the last people on earth that she wanted to see.

  Iris would be furious with her. Absolutely furious. And Sammy expected all kinds of angry words to flow from her friend’s mouth.

  But instead Iris just stared, and then her eyes filled with tears.

  “What are you...”

  “Are you okay?” Iris asked.

  Sammy took a breath that felt sharp and jagged, sharper than the words that she had expected from her sister-in-law.

  “What do you mean am I okay?”

  “I’m worried about you. You just disappeared. And you left him.”

  “I know,” she said. “And I understand that means I left the family...”

  “You didn’t leave the family, you fool. Is that what you think? That it would be that easy? We all feel cut in half, Sammy. Logan, Iris, Pansy and myself. We all feel torn. We love you both. And I hate seeing him like that, but I know that you didn’t do it for fun.”

  “Well, no. But...”

  “What’s wrong? I mean, I know he can be difficult but...”

  “That’s not it,” Sammy said. “He has taken care of us, all of us, for way too long. And I couldn’t... I couldn’t stand feeling like I trapped him into it.”

  Iris simply stared at her. “Really? That’s it?”

  “Yes,” Sammy said, her eyes filling.

  “He’s thirty-five years old,” Iris said. “He chose his life.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “I assure you that he did. Absolutely and completely. That man is far too stubborn to ever be railroaded into anything. I know that what he did for us when he was younger was out of duty, but this... The way that he works the ranch now, it’s not. It isn’t. He is absolutely everything that he’s chosen to be.”

  “Well, I don’t want him to choose to keep on taking care of me if there’s something else that he wants.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, I think that you believe you, but I don’t think that’s really the problem. I think that you are scared. And you’re making it about him.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. You were asking me if I disowned you in the first thirty seconds of seeing me. Of course you’re scared. And I get it. Anyone who’s lived the life that we have would be. But I’m still here. Choosing to care for you. That’s the thing. We were always making choices. We were never forced into anything. And neither was he. The only thing we didn’t choose was losing our parents. The one thing you didn’t choose was having the father you had. But we chose each other. We damn well did. Why do you get to decide that his continuing to choose you isn’t real?”

  “I appreciate where you’re coming from. I really do. I just... I can’t.”

  “You’re just afraid. And there’s nothing wrong with being afraid. Until you let it decide what you’re going to do.”

  “I can’t take a lecture from you, Iris. Not seriously. You know I love you, but you’ve never gone anywhere or done anything.”

  “Maybe,” Iris said, her voice measured. Even still, Iris refused to be angry. “Maybe that’s true. But I don’t pretend to be anything else. You do. You ran around lecturing and giving advice. You tell other people to be brave when you have no intention of doing it yourself. Again, I love you. But let’s stop pretending that you’re not running scared.”

  She began to walk away, and then she stopped. “And I still love you, by the way. You can’t push me away. Sorry, I’m not going to let you make yourself safe by trying to get rid of all the people in your life who love you. And you know what? I don’t think Ryder is going to let you do it, either.”

  And when she was gone, Sammy could only stand there. Frozen. And even though she had been found, she could not escape the feeling that she was still in hiding.

  That she was still bound up in all she had been.

  She’d started this journey to prove she wasn’t stuck.

  She’d only ended up proving that she was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  IT HAD BEEN a week since Sammy had left, and he was still coping with intense bouts of feeling like he’d lost his best friend in the world. Because he had. That just happened to be layered on top of the heartache that he felt every time he took a breath. Every time he didn’t take a breath. Every time he moved.

  He knew that he could survive it. He knew that he could survive anything.

  That was the problem, though. Just because you could survive something didn’t mean you’d won.

  It just meant you were still here.

  He knew from the experience of loving lives lost that being here was a victory.

  But it wasn’t a very happy one, and in fact, it rang hollow, like the whole rest of him.

  Still, he had gone down to town today and bought fencing supplies, and he had run into his former coach at Big R.

  Normally, he would have kept his head down and kept on walking. Assume that the man wouldn’t remember him. And anyway, sometimes Ryder didn’t much have the desire to get into nostalgic conversation with people. Because n
othing about that time was nostalgic for him.

  Dreams he had to leave behind, and fresh grief and loss.

  But he remembered what Logan had said, so he had started talking to him. And he had found out the old man was retiring. He hadn’t been head coach for some time, but he’d been assistant, and the school was looking to hire someone else. And of course he remembered Ryder, and still thought he was the best player to have ever come through Gold Valley High School.

  Assistant coaching football wasn’t something Ryder had ever given much thought to. And he supposed it wasn’t necessarily a vocation in a town this size, but he didn’t really need it to be, considering that he had a ranch to work.

  But now he was thinking about that. Getting back into football. Doing more than just watching it on TV on a Sunday.

  He had taken his number, and had put in a phone call. Just his name, and the word the coach had already put in had netted him an interview.

  And when he sat down to dinner that night, he knew the whole family was thinking they were going to have to avoid his foul mood, but he decided to surprise them instead.

  “I’m applying for a job.”

  Iris and Rose looked up. Logan, to his credit, didn’t really react.

  “What kind of job?” Rose asked.

  “Assistant football coach at Gold Valley High School. Junior varsity.”

  “Wow,” Rose said. “I didn’t know you could still... Well, I didn’t know you still remembered the rules to football.”

  “Of course I do, squirt,” he said. “I’m not likely to forget something that I used to live and breathe. But yeah, I figured it was high time I did something with those skills. There has to be some good to come out of it. Otherwise, it’s just sitting there and I’m not using it.”

  He would have said that it was impossible for him to feel excited about anything at this point in time, but he felt mildly excited about this.

  No, it wasn’t his life being put back together in the way that he wanted it. But it was taking some of the pieces that he was left with and shaping them into something different.

  Finding something new.

  He supposed there was something to be said for that.

  “I’m happy for you,” Logan said. “It’s a good thing.”

  “Well, I don’t have the job yet. My old coach is the one leaving the position, and he’s recommending me for it. So I mean, I’m going to have a bit of a personalized recommendation, which never hurts. But you never know. There might be somebody all lined up ready to take the slot.”

  “Nobody who would be as good as you,” Rose said, and her blind loyalty to him made up for her brattiness of a few moments earlier.

  “Would you have been a football player, do you think?” Iris asked. “If it hadn’t been for us?”

  “I would have been the wrong kind of man if I had turned away from my responsibilities. Not a man that I could’ve been proud of. It doesn’t really have anything to do with you so much as the shape of the life that we ended up with. I’m not unhappy.”

  “You’re not?” Rose asked.

  “I mean,” he said. “At this current moment I could be happier. But I’m... I’m doing something. All right? You know, Sammy said that I was retired. And now I think there’s something to that. And you all think that you’re obligated to me. Because I took care of you, or whatever bullshit. But I think if I would have done more than just sit around here all these years you might not feel that way. I mean, I chose to. I need you all to know that. I don’t feel stuck here. But I did think that maybe picking up a hobby wasn’t the worst idea in the world.”

  “That’s good,” Iris said. “Because I think sometimes I do worry about that. I know you’ve dug in and chosen to be here, Ryder. You’re the most responsible man I know, and I do wonder sometimes what you left behind.”

  “I’m in the most important life that I could be in. We all sacrificed. We all came together. And no, our lives aren’t the same as if our parents hadn’t died. But we have life. I was thinking... You know, I am not significantly younger than Dad was when he died. And I’m about to become a father myself, whatever happens with Sammy. It would have been impossible to not be affected by their deaths. But we can’t go on living for those deaths forever. Still, I think they would’ve been real proud of what we made here. And there’s not a whole lot more I could ask for than that. That we made something, that we became something that they could’ve been proud of.”

  “Dad would have been proud of you,” Rose said. “Because you are the reason we’re still here. You’re the reason the ranch is still here.”

  And he was proud of that. But still, it was difficult to feel triumphant when he had all those things but he didn’t have the woman that he loved.

  He went in for his interview the next day, and it went well. By that evening, he’d gotten the phone call that he had the job, starting at the end of August. Colt and Jake would be around when the cold settled in. Between them and Logan any work that might get missed by him would be well handled.

  It had all happened so quickly, and it wasn’t something that he was particularly able to fully process.

  It was all so strange. Had all come out of nowhere. And here he was, living an entirely different life, yet again, than the one that he’d been planning on living.

  He was used to grim grit and determination. Used to putting his head down and taking what life had dealt him.

  He agreed with Logan on that score. That he needed to get out there and make something of himself, so that he could for sure know that he was in a life he chose.

  But he didn’t agree with leaving Sammy alone.

  No, he needed to go talk to her. Not because he didn’t trust her. He trusted Sammy. He really did. And he’d had a lot of thinking time over the past few days.

  What he wanted to do was make sure that she knew exactly where he was coming from. That she understood what love was to him. And what it truly meant.

  Because there had been a lot of talk about love, and he had wondered if she understood what it meant to be loved by him. But he realized he hadn’t explained. He had said that he loved her, and before that he had shown it in a thousand different ways. But in all fairness, she had shown him the same. She had shown him love.

  And things had only changed and gotten complicated now.

  So he wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just the words, but what those words meant.

  They had made vows, but they were generic marriage vows.

  Vows that everyone made as they stood up there at that altar.

  But he had gotten a ring that was just for Sammy. And he needed to make sure that the vows matched. That the sentiment behind the word love matched.

  He knew from Iris that Sammy was still in town, because he knew that his sister had run into her out on the street. But he didn’t think that she was staying in town. No. He was pretty sure he knew right where he would find his wayward bride. And he was bound and determined to go and find her. And make sure that if she turned him down again she knew exactly what it was she was turning down.

  * * *

  SAMMY HAD GONE out looking for answers in just about every place but the one that had first raised the questions.

  She had been avoiding the conversation because she didn’t want to have it. She had been avoiding the conversation because she was afraid of what it might result in. But she couldn’t avoid it anymore. She wasn’t sleeping. She didn’t want to eat, but she needed to because she was gestating a life so she was forcing things down that tasted like sawdust and sat in her stomach like a rock.

  She needed answers. She had needed them for a long time. But more than that, now she was ready for them.

  She had destroyed what she and Ryder had. She had destroyed their friendship. Their romance. Because she was afraid.

  It was all bound up in seeing herself
as a burden. In seeing herself as not enough.

  It was all bound up in this toxic relationship with her mother, and it needed to be finished.

  Ryder was right. He couldn’t do everything for her.

  He couldn’t protect her from whatever was happening between them; it was impossible. Because now, finally, he was pushing her, rather than shielding her, and it was time for her to do something with that.

  He’d said after the midwife that he couldn’t have the baby for her. And he trusted her to be strong.

  Well, this was all wound up in that. He couldn’t do this for her, either. He couldn’t make her not afraid. He couldn’t make her okay.

  She had to try and find a way to do it for herself.

  She took a deep breath and walked up to the front door of the house that she hadn’t been to in years.

  She had come over when her father had died.

  But it was the first time she’d been back inside since that night they’d gotten in the fight. Since he had followed her back to her little caravan and unleashed his full temper on her. She had gone back because she had thought that her father was the barrier in keeping her and her mother from having a relationship.

  But she had begun to realize then that he wasn’t.

  That she had anger for her mother that was all kinds of separate. Over the way she hadn’t protected her.

  And that her mother had anger that went right back at Sammy.

  For doing what her mother couldn’t. For leaving.

  Except now...

  She had left Ryder. She had run, just like her mother had said.

  She had to sort this out. She had to fix it.

  She knocked on the door.

  And her mother opened it.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came because... I wanted to tell you that you’re going to be a grandmother.”

  Her mother looked down at her stomach. “Really? Did you go out and do that to spite me?”

  The fact that Sammy was quite so predictable galled a little bit. “It was a reason, yes. I wanted to prove that I could, in fact, be a good mother. That I do understand. But while I’m sure that I can be a good mother to this child, I don’t actually know how to be a well-rounded person. And I blame you. I blame you, and the fact that you didn’t protect me. That you made me feel like I was worth less than your husband, who quite frankly, Mom, was a piece of shit. He was. He was awful to you, he was awful to me, and he wasn’t worth a damn.”