by Maisey Yates
And if that meant risking disapproval, risking everything, then she would. She had. And she could see that her declaration definitely hadn’t been the most welcome.
Since she’d told him she loved him, everything about him was shut down, shut off. She knew him well enough to recognize that.
“I don’t know what you expect me to say.”
“Traditionally, people like to hear ‘I love you too.’ But I’m suspecting I’m not going to get that. So, here’s the deal. You don’t have to say anything. I just... I wanted you to know how I felt. How serious I am. How much my feelings have changed since I first met you.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she said. “Because you...you came into my life and you turned it upside down. You uncovered so many things that were hidden in the dark for so long. And yes, some of that uncovering has been painful. But more than that, you made me realize what I really wanted from life. I thought that as long as everything looked okay, it would be okay. But you destroyed that. You destroyed the illusions all around me, including the ones I had built for myself. Meeting you, feeling that attraction for you, it cut through all this...bullshit. I thought I could marry a man I didn’t even feel a temptation to sleep with. And then I met you. I felt more for you in those few minutes in the vineyard that night we met than I had felt for Donovan in the two years we’d been together. I couldn’t imagine not being with you. It was like an obsession, and then we were together, and you made me want things, made me do things that I never would have thought I would do. But those were all the real parts of me. All that I am.
“I thought that if I put enough makeup on, and smiled wide enough, and put enough filters on the pictures, that I could be the person I needed to be, but it’s not who I am. Who I am is the woman I am when I’m with you. In your arms. In your bed. The things you make me feel, the things you make me want. That’s real. And it’s amazing, because none of this is about optics, it’s not about pleasing anyone, it’s just about me and you. It’s so wonderful. To have found this. To have found you.”
“You didn’t find me, honey. I found you. I came here to get revenge on your father. This isn’t fate. It was calculated through and through.”
“It started that way,” she said. “I know it did. And I would never call it fate. Because I don’t believe that it was divine design that your sister was injured the way that she was. But what I do believe is that there has to be a way to make something good out of something broken, because if there isn’t, then I don’t know what future you and I could possibly have.”
“There are things that make sense in this world,” he said. “Emotion isn’t one of them. Money is. What we can do with the vineyard, that makes sense. We can build that together. We don’t need any of the other stuff.”
“The other stuff,” she said, “is only everything. It’s only love. It took me until right now to realize that. It’s the missing piece. It’s what I’ve been looking for all this time. It really is. And I... I love you. I love you down to my bones. It’s real. It’s not about a hashtag or a brand. It’s about what I feel. And how it goes beyond rational and reasonable. How it goes beyond what should be possible. I love you. I love you and it’s changed the way that I see myself.”
“Are you sure you’re not just looking for approval from somewhere else? You lost the relationship with your father, and now...”
“You’re not my father. And I’m not confused. Don’t try to tell me that I am.”
“I don’t do love,” he said, his voice hard as stone.
“Somehow I knew you would say that. You’re so desperate to make me believe that, aren’t you? Mostly because I think you’re so desperate to make yourself believe it. You won’t even admit that you did all of this because you love your sister.”
“Because you are thinking about happy families, and you’re thinking about people who share their lives. That’s never been what I’ve had with my mother and sister. I take care of them. And when I say that, I’m telling you the truth. It’s not... It’s not give-and-take.”
“You loving them,” she said, “and them being selfish with that love has nothing to do with who you are. Or what you’re capable of. Why can’t we have something other than that? Something other than me trying to earn approval and you trying to rescue? Can’t we love each other? Give to each other? That’s what I want. I think our bodies knew what was right all along. I know why you were here, and what you weren’t supposed to want. And I know what I was supposed to do. But I think we were always supposed to be with each other. I do. From the deepest part of my body. I believe that.”
“Bodies don’t know anything,” he said. “They just know they want sex. That’s not love. And it’s not anything worth tearing yourself apart over.”
“But I... I don’t have another choice. I’m torn apart by this. By us. By what we could be.”
“There isn’t an us. There is you and me. And we’re married, and I’m willing to make that work. But you have to be realistic about what that means to a man like me.”
“No,” Emerson said. “I refuse to be realistic. Nothing in my life has ever been better because I was realistic. The things that have been good happened because I stepped out of my comfort zone. I don’t want to be trapped in a one-sided relationship. To always be trying to earn my place. I’ve done that. I’ve lived it. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Then we don’t have to do this.”
“No,” she said. “I want our marriage. I want...”
“You want me to love you, and I can’t. I’m sorry. But I can’t, I won’t. And I...” He reached out, his callused fingertips skimming her cheek. “Honey, I appreciate you saying I’m not like your father, but it’s pretty clear that I am. I’m not going to make you sign a nondisclosure agreement or anything like that. I’m going to ask one thing of you. Keep the Soraya wine going for my sister. But otherwise, my share of the winery goes to you.”
“What?”
“I’m giving it back. I’m giving it to you. Because it’s yours, it’s not mine.”
“You would rather...do all of that than try to love me?”
“I never meant to hurt you,” he said. “That was never my goal, whether you believe it or not. I don’t have strong enough feelings about you to want to hurt you.”
And those words were like an arrow through her heart, piercing deeper than any other cruelty that could have come out of his mouth.
It would’ve been better, in fact, if he had said that he hated her. If he had threatened to destroy the winery again. If her ultimatum had made him fly into a rage. But it didn’t. Instead, he was cold, closed off and utterly impassive. Instead, he looked like a man who truly didn’t care, and she would’ve taken hatred over that any day, because it would have meant that at least he felt something. But she didn’t get that. Instead, she got a blank wall of nothing.
She couldn’t fight this. Couldn’t push back against nothing. If he didn’t want to fight, then there was nothing for her to do.
“So that’s it,” she said. “You came in here like a thunderstorm, ready to destroy everything in your path, and now you’re just...letting me go?”
“Your father is handled. The control of the winery is with you and your sisters. I don’t have any reason to destroy you.”
“I don’t think that you’re being chivalrous. I think you’re being a coward.”
“Cowards don’t change their lives, don’t make something of themselves the way I did. Cowards don’t go out seeking justice for their sisters.”
“Cowards do run when someone demands something that scares them, though. And that’s what you’re doing. Make no mistake. You can pretend you’re a man without fear. You’re hard in some ways, and I know it. But all that hardness is just to protect yourself. I wish I knew why. I wish I knew what I could do.”
“It won�
��t last,” he said. “Whatever you think you want to give me, it won’t last.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I’ve never actually seen anyone want to do something that wasn’t ultimately about serving themselves. Why would you be any different?”
“It’s not me that’s different. It’s the feelings.”
“But you have to be able to put your trust in feelings in order to believe in something like that, and I don’t. I believe in the things you can see, in the things you can buy.”
“I believe in us,” she said, pressing her hand against her chest.
“You believe wrong, darlin’.”
Pain welled up inside of her. “You’re not the Big Bad Wolf after all,” she said. “At least he had the courage to eat Red Riding Hood all up. You don’t even have the courage to do that.”
“You should be grateful.”
“You don’t get to break my heart and tell me I should be grateful because you didn’t do it a certain way. The end result is the same. And I hope that someday you realize you broke your own heart too. I hope that someday you look back on this and realize we had love, and you were afraid to take it. And I hope you ask yourself why it was so much easier for you to cross a state because of rage than it was for you to cross a room and tell someone you love them.”
She started to collect her clothes, doing her very best to move with dignity, to keep her shoulders from shaking, to keep herself from dissolving. And she waited. As she collected her clothes. Waited for her big, gruff cowboy to sweep her up in his arms and stop her from leaving. But he didn’t. He let her gather her clothes. And he let her walk out the bedroom door. Let her walk out of the house. Let her walk out of his life. And as Emerson stood out in front of the place she had called home with a man she had come to love, she found herself yet again unsure of what her life was.
Except... Unlike when the revelations about her father had upended everything, this time she had a clear idea of who she was.
Holden had changed her. Had made her realize the depth of her capacity for pleasure. For desire. For love. Had given her an appreciation of depth.
An understanding of what she could feel if she dug deep, instead of clinging to the perfection of the surface.
And whatever happened, she would walk away from this experience changed. Would walk away from this wanting more, wanting better.
He wouldn’t, though.
And of all the things that broke her heart in this moment, that truth was the one that cut deepest.
* * *
Emerson knew she couldn’t avoid having a conversation with her mother any longer. There were several reasons for that. The first being that she’d had to move back home. The second being that she had an offer to make her father. But she needed to talk to her mom about it first.
Emerson took a deep breath, and walked into the sitting room, where she knew she would find her mother at this time of day.
She always took tea in the sitting room with a book in the afternoon.
“Hi,” she said. “Can we talk?”
“Of course,” her mom said, straightening and setting her book down. “I didn’t expect to see you here today.”
“Well. I’m kind of...back here. Because I hit a rough patch in my marriage. You know, by which I mean my husband doesn’t want to be married to me anymore.”
“That is a surprise.”
“Is it? I married him quickly, and really not for the best reasons.”
“It seemed like you cared for him quite a bit.”
“I did. But the feeling wasn’t mutual. So there’s not much I can do about that in any case.”
“We all make choices. Although, I thought you had finally found your spine with this one.”
Emerson frowned. “My spine?”
“Emerson, you have to understand, the reason I’ve always resisted your involvement in the winery is because I didn’t want your father to own you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know you know. The way that he is. It’s not a surprise to me, I’ve known it for years. He’s never been faithful to me. But that’s beside the point. The real issue is the way that he uses people.”
“You’ve known. All along?”
“Yes. And when I had you girls the biggest issue was that if I left, he would make sure that I never saw you again. That wasn’t a risk I could take. And I won’t lie to you, I feared poverty more than I should have. I didn’t want to go back to it. And so I made some decisions that I regret now. Especially as I watched you grow up. And I watched the way he was able to find closeness with you and with Wren. When I wasn’t able to.”
“I just... No matter what I did, you never seemed like you thought I did enough. Or like I had done it right.”
“And I’m sorry about that. I made mistakes. In pushing you, I pushed you away, and I think I pushed you toward your father. Which I didn’t mean to do. I was afraid, always, and I wanted you to be able to stand on your own feet because I had ended up hobbling myself. I was dependent on his money. I didn’t know how to do anything separate from this place, separate from him that could keep me from sinking back into the poverty that I was raised in. I was trapped in many ways by my own greed. I gave up so much for this. For him.” Her eyes clouded over. “That’s another part of the problem. When I chose your father over... When I chose your father, it was such a deep, controversial thing, it caused so much pain, to myself included, in many ways, and I’m too stubborn and stiff-necked to take back that kind of thing.”
“I don’t understand.”
She ran a hand over her lined brow, pushing her dark hair off her face. “I was in love with someone else. There was a misunderstanding between us, and we broke up. Then your father began to show an interest, because of a rivalry he had with my former beau. I figured that I would use that. And it all went too far. This is the life I made for myself. And what I really wanted, to try and atone for my sins, was to make sure you girls had it different. But then he was pushing you to marry... So when you came back from Las Vegas married to Holden, what I hoped was that you had found something more.”
Emerson was silent for a long moment, trying to process all this information. And suddenly, she saw everything so clearly through her mother’s eyes. Her fears, the reason she had pushed Emerson the way she had. The way she had disapproved of Emerson pouring everything into the winery.
“I do love Holden,” Emerson said. “But he...he says he doesn’t love me.”
“That’s what happened with the man I loved. And I got angry, and I went off on my own. Then I went to someone else. I’ve always regretted it. Because I’ve never loved your father the way that I loved him. Then it was too late. I held on to pride, I didn’t want to lower myself to beg him to be with me, but now I wish I had. I wish I had exhausted everything in the name of love. Rather than giving so much to stubbornness and spite. To financial security. Without love, these sorts of places just feel like a mausoleum. A crypt for dead dreams.” She smiled sadly, looking around the vast, beautiful room that seemed suddenly so much darker. “I have you girls. And I’ve never regretted that. I have regretted our lack of closeness, Emerson, and I know that it’s my fault.”
“It’s mine too,” Emerson said. “We’ve never really talked before, not like this.”
“There wasn’t much I could tell you. Not with the way you felt about your father. And... You have to understand, while I wanted to protect you, I also didn’t want to shatter your love for him. Because no matter what else he has done, he does love his daughters. He’s a flawed man, make no mistake. But what he feels for you is real.”
“I don’t know that I’m in a place where that can matter much to me.”
“No, I don’t suppose you are. And I don’t blame you.”
“I want to buy Dad out of the winery,” Emerson said. “When Hold
en left, he returned his stake to me. I want to buy Dad out. I want to run the winery with Wren and Cricket. And there will be a place here for you, Mom. But not for him.”
“He’s never going to agree to that.”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll expose him myself. Because I won’t sit by and allow the abuse of women and of his power to continue. He has two choices. He can leave of his own accord, or I’ll burn this place to the ground around me, but I won’t let injustice go on.”
“I didn’t have to worry about you after all,” her mother said. “You have more of a spine than I’ve ever had.”
“Well, now I do. For this. But when it comes to Holden...”
“Your pride won’t keep you warm at night. And you can’t trade one man for another, believe me, I’ve tried. If you don’t put it all on the line, you’ll regret it. You’ll have to sit by while he marries someone else, has children with her. And everything will fester inside of you until it turns into something dark and ugly. Don’t let that be you. Don’t make the mistakes that I did.”
“Mom... Who...”
“It doesn’t matter now. It’s been so long. He probably doesn’t remember me anyway.”
“I doubt that.”
“All right, he remembers me,” she said. “But not fondly.”
“I love him,” Emerson said. “I love him, and I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. Which is silly, because I’ve lived twenty-nine years without him. You would think that I would be just fine.”
“When you fall in love like that, you give away a piece of yourself,” her mom said. “And that person always has it. It doesn’t matter how long you had them for. When it’s real, that’s how it is.”
“Well, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Hope that he gave you a piece of him. Hope that whatever he says, he loves you just the way you love him. And then do more than hope. You’re strong enough to come in here and stand up to your father. To do what’s right for other people. Do what’s right for you too.”