by Imani King
“I know, baby girl. I know you feel that way. I won’t—I can’t—push you. But my God woman, you’ve been the brightest light I’ve ever seen—”
“Oh Jesus, just stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Being perfect,” I say, wiping tears away from my eyes.
He smiles, maybe a little sadly. “I am not that at all.”
“Just take me upstairs.”
“That I can do, sweetheart. That I can do.” Rowan sweeps me up into his arms and carries me to the stairs. The unopened jewelry box sits unopened on the grand old coffee table next to Rowan’s glass of expensive whiskey.
It should be that way. It’s the promise of a brighter future. And that happy ending just doesn’t exist, not for me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When we wake the next morning, the snow has fallen again, thick and deep like a blanket over the plains behind my house. With everything that’s happened between me and Cadence, I hadn’t checked to see if the flurry would change to anything else again. But we’re here again, stuck inside, and after a whole lot of talking that leaves both of us in a strange place.
Cadence is still asleep, and I catch myself looking at her again. Her chest rises and falls, and the look on her face is calm. Her eyelids flutter as if she’s dreaming, but her brows aren’t knit tight like they were last night when she told me about the thing I’d been wondering about for the last few weeks, that thing that weighed her down unnaturally.
If I could take it all away, I would.
But I can’t. There’s no cure to this pain, no way to make it end for her. So much time, so much loss. No wonder she came here, no wonder she took this job.
I brush the smooth skin on the side of her neck and trace my fingers down her shoulder, down to the tank top she wore to bed. I just held her. For the first time, we just slept together, nothing else. I held her until her body fell calm, until her breathing became heavy and deep, until her mind slipped into sleep. It was better without making love, just sleeping, just holding her and letting her know that I’d be there for her when she woke in the morning. That man—the man who left her—well, he was never there, it seems, not really.
There’s a world of distance between him and me. But hell, I don’t blame her for needing more time, for wanting to trust me but not knowing how, for wanting to take things slower. And we’ve been anything but slow.
I don’t often meditate on my own weaknesses. I was done with that when Joanna left—she pointed them out far faster than I could even think of them myself. But lying in this bed next to this woman, this strong, powerful, talented woman that I’m falling in love with, I know the weakness that’s reared its ugly head in the time that I’ve known Cadence. It wasn’t falling for her too hard, too fast—that was unavoidable. The universe brought us to the same place at the same time, and all of it happened just as it should. No, my fault lies in pushing her too hard, never stopping to listen to all the times she tried to convince me to put on the brakes, when she told me she wasn’t ready.
Her body was ready for me, ready to move on from the past and feel something else, something good. But her mind and her soul were screaming that it was too soon. And now she’s all the way past her breaking point, no turning back.
“I’m so sorry, Cadence,” I murmur, moving my fingers down the soft, rich skin of her arm. I could get lost in this woman’s curves forever, and I could lie here in this bed and die a happy man. But the pain I caused her by pushing too hard too fast, I wish I could take every bit of that away.
After a moment, Cadence’s eyes open, and she yawns. For a moment, her face remains still, just as it was in sleep. Then the worry sets in, and I see last night’s conversation written all over her face. I wish I could erase those lines from her face, do away with that expression she’s wearing.
She thinks she’s told me too much.
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” she mumbles. “If this is too much for you to handle—”
“What? What’s too much to handle?” I grin, and my voice comes out gravely from waking up too late in the morning.
“Me. All of the past.” She pauses and bites her lip, turning to look out the window. “Everything. I can go—”
“Go where, exactly? It’s Christmas Eve, sugar. And we’re buried under a solid foot and a half of snow. We thought it was bad two days ago, but that was just the beginning, apparently. This isn’t supposed to melt until sometime next week.”
She shivers against me, but her skin is still hot. “Oh God,” she moans, like she’s realizing she’s stuck here with the worst person in the damn world. There’s panic in her voice, and her body feels like a live wire against mine. I pull her in and put my arm over hers.
“Cadence, trust me. This isn’t too much. I’m too much.” I clear my throat and stop for a second to think. I might be able to talk up a storm when it comes to investors, but it’s hard to know what to say to a woman who’s trapped against her will in a snowstorm, a woman you’d like to hold onto forever. “I put names and titles on everything when you kept telling me to slow down.”
“You didn’t—”
“Hush. I did. I’ve undressed you whenever you tried to talk to me, and I made you breakfast the past two weeks, took you to dinner, got you to ride my horses. It was all too much, too soon, just like you said. If I’d have known...” My voice trails off because I have no idea what the hell else to say. The guilt sits like a heavy weight in my chest.
“You didn’t know. I should have told you I needed to stay in the guest house.” She turns over and her eyes meet mine, her lips millimeters from mine. I want to kiss her, make her body melt into mine, take that pain and replace it with pleasure. “But I didn’t.” Her voice is firmer now, more confident. And there’s a trace of something sultry in those words. “When I saw you, I wanted you, right then and there.”
She kisses me, simple and warm, like we’ve been lovers for years. And that’s what it feels like, with the fire raging through my own body, my cock growing stiff as she throws her leg over mine.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The snow melts over the next two days, and Rowan and I continue on in the pattern we’ve made for ourselves. He takes me into town when the snow has melted enough, and I paint the remaining stars and lettering for the mural. It’s nearly done now, and almost a week early. I don’t have much excuse to stay now, but still, I do. And we pretend like last week’s conversation didn’t happen. But there’s not much more talk about me staying. And he put the necklace away.
In the mornings, we go out and walk the horses. Symphony has taken something of a shine to me, and I feel better about her too than I did the first time. Rowan keeps telling me I have a country girl hidden inside, and if it were any other time in my life, I might think he was right.
But he knows, and I know. I’m leaving on December 31st.
And tomorrow is Christmas.
I pull the covers over my head at the thought, thinking back to that conversation by the fire. It was only a few days ago, but now it seems like it was ages past, like it was in another lifetime that I told him about Eli and all that I’d lost. And my relationship with Rowan seems both bigger and more real than I ever felt with Eli—or any other man before him.
But still, it’s Christmas Eve, and I’m leaving soon. I won’t be expecting him to ask me to stay, and I’ll be heading out on that damn private jet, come hell or high water.
But he might keep true to his word and follow you, come see you. And then what?
“And then what?” I say it aloud into the empty blue room. Last night, I told Rowan I needed to sleep alone. The bed was cold, even with Eliza hopping on in the middle of the night and snuggling in next to me. I was too tired to push her away, and too cold to want to. For a while, I tried to listen for traces of Rowan in the house, but I couldn’t hear him. And I was all alone.
I move my leg back and forth in the bed. Empty again. Even the dog has abandoned me in my time of need.
I close my eyes and try to think for a second. The ideas get all jumbled up in my head—the windy, narrow streets of Manhattan and the ridiculously expensive warm little studio with Anna in it... swirling together with the broad, open sky that hangs over Rowan’s ranch, the dog and the horses, and the scent of evergreen trees and mountains and waterfalls and runnels in the mountains.
“You can’t have it all,” I say to myself as I slink out of the bed and pace over the slick old hardwood floors, my eyes darting from the exposed beams on the ceiling to the blue painting that has presided over my time here. If I go to the window, I can barely see the guest house and the stables on the horizon. “And you wouldn’t be in this predicament if you’d stayed out in the guest house... now would you? Hell, I don’t know. Maybe I would be.”
My mind is all mixed up, and my heart is too.
I step up to the window and look outside to see the sun hanging low in the sky, just peaking over the mountains. My concept of time has changed since I came to this place—it always either seems early or late, never like it’s a real time that corresponds with a number. Either it’s time for breakfast, time for painting, or time for...
I blush at the thought. Rowan between my legs, Rowan’s taste upon my lips, Rowan making me scream for more even when I’m close to breaking down, close to sobbing uncontrollably, losing my mind completely. Rowan, bringing me back from the edge of reality into a world that’s just his and mine.
There’s a shadow that crosses in front of the stables—a dog-shaped shadow... followed by a vehicle shaped shadow. And the vehicle—a tractor?—is driven by a man with a titled cowboy hat and carries something firm, large, and heavy in its truck bed.
“Not a tractor. What in the hell are those things called? It looks more like a tank.” A Geyser? No. A Gander? No, Cadence, you’re an idiot. What the hell? “That’s a Gator! And what in the ever-loving hell does he have in the back part of that thing? It’s a... fuck, it’s big. Christ on a bike. What on earth...”
Rowan must see my silhouette at the window because he starts waving one arm wild and high, and even from this distance, I can hear the rumble of the Gator and Eliza’s barking mixing into a wild, joyous cacophony. As he rounds the corner near the patio, my eyes go wide and my pulse starts to race. I can feel the same grin on Rowan’s face, even though I can’t quite see his features from here.
“Well, I’ll be damned. I thought I wasn’t getting a Christmas tree this year. That crazy bastard went and cut one down.”
For me. For us. For this last little bit of time together. I try to shake the emotion rising inside of me, the hope that’s always gotten me into such sad, awful shit. But I don’t--right now, on this Christmas Eve, my hope and joy are unshakable. This man knew I was planning on waking up sad planning on making my final escape in just a few days time, but still, he brought me this. Just like we were together for years, like he knew just what to do to make me smile.
And on Christmas Eve. Hot damn.
Rowan comes wheeling around the corner, mud and snow splattering from the wheels, Eliza nipping at the snow and shaking herself wildly as she gallops toward the house with an inexpressible glee that somehow mirrors my own. Unable to stay still any longer, I throw on my jeans and boots under my nightshirt and run down the stairs as fast as I can, grabbing the jacket that Rowan gave me for riding. It’s one of his old ones, and the fabric smells like him. When I burst outside onto the patio, the cold air hits my face, and I can even smell the Christmas tree, mixed with the piney, earthy, uniquely Rowan scent of the coat I’ve wrapped around me.
“I got you a tree, city princess!” His Texas accent is working overtime, and he hops down off the truck, nimble as a schoolboy. “Bet you never had to check a tree for critters, young lady, but we gotta get this one cleaned off unless we want some eggs hatching or squirrels building nests in our rafters.”
“Oh my God,” I moan as I traipse toward him, nearly getting stuck down in the snow with each step. “I don’t want to check a tree for any kind of critters. That is definitely not my style.”
“Well the road into town is still good and blocked. We’ll have to make do with a critter-heavy tree, and whatever I can find around the house to cook.” He grins at me and runs over, catching me in his arms and twirling me around. When he sets me down, he kisses me hard, his tongue running over my bottom lip and sending shivers through my body that have nothing to do with the cold.
“Thank you,” I breathe when he pulls away. “Thank you for the tree. This is the first time I haven’t been with my family on Christmas. I told my mom and dad I needed to get away, and I didn’t realize how much it would mean to have something like this... something like home.” My voice cracks on the last word, and hot tears prick at my eyes, turning cold as they meet the early morning air. Rowan kisses me again and, not for the first time, he silences my sadness with his kiss.
In that kiss, I feel his answer for me, his wish for me—that he’s my family right here and now, even if I leave tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. And that even though my sadness is silenced and forgotten in this moment, he holds it in his heart and understands it in the deepest way. He accepts that part of me, and he carries it with him. And it doesn’t matter if it’s too intense, or if it’s too soon. Our love may be fleeting—it has to be—but this day is expansive, holding the whole of our relationship in its grasp, and honoring it even if its life must wane as the new year approaches. Tears stream down my cheeks unhindered as the thoughts flow through my mind, one after the other, my understanding of Rowan reaching its peak.
He was ready to fall in love, absolutely and completely. In his mind, I was the woman he was waiting for, the woman who would heal what Joanna left behind.
I touch the stubble on his face like I have a hundred times since I came here. Even though he shaves every evening before bed, there’s stubble that forms each morning, giving him a gritty look that no other billionaire I know of has. The stubble pricks against my fingers, reminiscent of his unbridled masculinity and the force with which he lives his life.
So different from any other rich man. So unconcerned with the thoughts of others, the designs they put on him.
And to me, that makes sense. He’s not like anyone else—he lives in the outer reaches of civilization, stowed away from life, because his heart belongs here. He’s never needed to prove himself beyond his interactions with Joanna because he’s happy as he is.
He looks at me for a moment like he’s reading my thoughts, trying to make sense of my tears and the feelings I keep hidden under layers that I hardly understand. “Happy or sad?” His voice is gruff when he speaks, and he kisses me again, the slight stubble scratching against my face and bringing me back to reality.
“Happy. Sad. Both, I think.” I wipe away the tears with the edge of my sleeve and look back at the fluffy tree that Rowan went out to cut before I was even awake.
“Those tears don’t need to be sad, Cadence.” He brushes a gloved thumb against my cheek, wiping the rest of the moisture away. I lean my head into his hand, grateful for the warmth and realness of Rowan, here beside me. “If I make you happy—and I hope to God that I do—I’ll bend over backwards to be with you. I’ve never been so sure about anything.” His dancing blue eyes meet mine, and he grips my waist hard, pulling me into him.
“You do make me happy. But we said we weren’t going to talk about this.” I pause for a moment and purse my lips. I think of that horrible day when the doctor glanced at the ultrasound and told me that—yet again—the pregnancy wasn’t viable. Six hours later, it had all started to end on its own, the pain and nausea cresting in waves as I watched Netflix alone in my apartment. “It’s a distracted happiness,” I continue. “There are things I need to work out on my own.
I need to go back and see what kind of life I want to lead. I need time to—”