by Maisey Yates
What was she doing? She was leaving behind the man she loved for what?
She pulled her truck over to the side of the road, breathing hard, shaking. She didn’t have to leave. She could stay with him. She could go back and tell him that love didn’t matter. She could love him, he didn’t have to love her. It wouldn’t be a problem.
Love could fit on the shelf in his living room and never get in the way. It could be the thing he ignored. The thing they pretended wasn’t there. Only she would ever know.
She gripped the steering wheel tighter and she let herself imagine it. Let herself imagine turning the truck around and going back. Getting out and finding him and saying she was being an idiot. She didn’t need love and picnics if she had him.
She thought back to him, standing there and looking like he’d been hollowed out. Telling her he didn’t want love.
He was lying and she knew it. As well as she knew anything.
But she would have to be brave to test that theory. She would have to be willing to wait him out.
And she would have to hope that she was right.
That he was afraid. That he was lying—to himself and to her—about what he wanted. About what he needed.
She wouldn’t let herself think of the road ahead. Of what would happen if he meant it. If he would really never love her.
He would love someone. That was the great and terrible truth. He might think he wouldn’t. But he would. Someday his wounds would scar over. Someday he would decide it was worth the risk.
“I wish you would decide I was worth it,” she whispered.
She felt around on the seat for her purse, then opened it up, pulling out her phone. She weighed it in her hand for a moment before going through her contacts.
“Maddy?” she asked, when her sister picked up the phone.
“What’s wrong?”
“I just... Can I come and stay with you?”
“Of course! Is everything okay with you? Are you physically okay? Do I have to go and kill a bartender with my bare hands?”
“I’m physically okay,” she said. “Save killing the bartender for later. I just... I don’t want to deal with Colton right now. Or Mom and Dad. So I want to sneak into your place for a while and hide.”
“What are big sisters for but to offer a place to burrow in a time of crisis? Come over and I’ll make tea. And a voodoo doll.”
“Thank you, Maddy,” she said.
She hung up the phone and pulled her truck back onto the road, heading away from Ace, headed toward Madison.
She didn’t have Ace right now, and she hated that.
But she didn’t actually lack for love in her life, and right now, she was more grateful for that than anything else.
She would never truly be alone.
She would try to hold that close. Even though it still meant her bed would be empty. Even though she knew she would always have an empty space in her heart, too. Right where Ace’s love should have been.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SHE WAS GONE. Just like that. She’d walked straight out of the house and gotten in her truck and driven away.
And he’d let her.
He had pushed her.
Because it was going to end that way someday, so it might as well end that way now. When a little less blood would be shed. Before their child had to live through a bitter divorce.
Before he forgot why he shouldn’t love her.
It’s not her. It was never her. It was you.
He knew that. Damned if he didn’t know it well.
It was late. The bar was closed. Earlier he’d gone out riding. And he’d begged the universe for some sense of clarity. For that moment of total bliss he used to feel when he rode. When his muscles became one with the horse and everything around him became an indistinct blur, his mind wiped clean.
But his mind hadn’t been clear. Not in the least. It had been full. Of Sierra.
After that he’d gone in to work at the bar, where he’d had no time for anyone’s shit, and had in general been a terrible boss and an even worse bartender.
Then he’d gone to his office after everyone had left to pour himself a drink. And now he had no higher calling other than getting completely wasted.
This was his pattern, after all. When life got hard, he got drunk. He’d forgotten how to do feelings any other way.
He knocked back his first drink, letting the alcohol burn all the way down. Accepting it as his penance. This guy, this guy sitting here in his office drinking instead of dealing with himself, was the last thing a woman like Sierra needed. That was the honest truth.
He wasn’t even sure if he was the kind of father a child needed.
That thought made him feel like he had been kicked in the gut. Because he wanted to be there for his child. He wanted his child more than anything.
That thought brought Sierra’s face into his mind. Her clear blue eyes, the way she had looked at him the last time they made love. The way she had looked at him when she had walked out of his house for the last time.
He wanted her.
But he didn’t know how to have her.
Loving her would mean trusting. It would mean opening himself up. Changing himself. It was exactly as she said. Being together, being a real couple, meant changing in a real way.
He had spent almost ten years changing into something he didn’t recognize. It had been a slow process, one forged by grief and anguish and bitterness. But he didn’t know how to make that change again just because he wanted to.
He didn’t even know if he wanted to.
He poured himself another drink.
When Ace woke up a few hours later he realized that he was lying across his desk, his fingers still wrapped around a glass of scotch. He hadn’t had a night like that in a long time.
The sky was just starting to fade into a dusky gray, edges of gold shimmering around the mountains. It was Sunday morning, he realized. Years ago, that would have been significant. Now, it was just a regular morning.
But for years upon years Sunday morning had meant getting up early and going to church.
He had traded that for staying up all night and getting drunk. The thought made him laugh. Not because it was funny, not really. Just because there was really nothing else.
He stood up from his position behind the desk, the world around him pitching slightly. His head was pounding, his throat dry. Everything hurt. His body, straight down to his soul.
The sun was rising, but Sierra was gone.
He dragged a hand down his face and started to walk out of the office. He wasn’t sure where he was going. He still wasn’t sure when he got behind the wheel of his truck. When he started to drive down the main road of Copper Ridge and back out of town. He wasn’t really sure where he was going until he pulled into the parking lot of the little white church building that had been a second home to him for most of his life.
Of course, just like his family home, walking up to the doors of the place didn’t really produce that feeling of homecoming he had imagined it might. He was a different man. It was a different time.
It was early, and the parking lot was empty, but back when Ace had been a kid his father had had a policy about keeping the sanctuary unlocked. In case anyone had a need to come and pray. He wondered if that was still the case.
He put his hand out and tested the handle of the door. It opened.
That made him smile. Where else but Copper Ridge could you keep the doors of the church unlocked?
He walked inside slowly, his feet echoing on the wooden floors. He looked up the row of empty pews, to the pulpit, to the cross that hung just behind where the preacher normally stood. Then he looked up higher at the wooden ceiling.
When he’d been a boy it had alwa
ys made him think of Noah’s Ark for some reason. The shape of it looking like the hull of the ship. It always made him feel small, impossibly so. Like he was a pretty damn insignificant piece of the universe.
He started to walk up the aisle, tapping the tops of the pews with the tips of his fingers until he came to the third row. He slipped into the seat there, leaning forward, his forearms resting on the bench in front of him.
He took a deep breath, looking up at the cross. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Something. He was back in church, after all. For the first time in a decade and a half at least.
Back in church with a hangover and a piece of himself broken off inside.
He took a deep breath, lacing his fingers together and bowing his head. Just waiting in the stillness. Being back here made the years fade away. Made the time between the last service he’d come to and this moment seem so much shorter than they were.
He had been a boy here with his whole life stretching in front of him. And now, here he was, a good portion of that life lived, not a whole hell of a lot to be proud of.
He had a failed marriage behind him. Years of bad behavior. A brokenhearted woman who was pregnant with his child.
But on his list of sins, the one that stood out in red, the one that he couldn’t reconcile, was the child he had failed.
Memory grabbed hold of him, wrapped its icy fingers around his throat. For a moment he could barely breathe. He was just sitting there, gasping in the dark, the sound echoing in the empty sanctuary.
He had failed her.
He hadn’t fought hard enough. He had given up. He had left.
That child had loved him. The purest kind of love on earth. She had trusted him. And he had let himself be defeated. Had walked away because it was the only thing he could think to do. His strength had failed him. It had failed her.
How could he ever accept the kind of love Sierra was offering?
His heart clenched tight, his eyes stinging. She had told him that she loved him. He didn’t deserve to have anyone love him. Couldn’t accept it. How could he? His love had proven fallible.
He squeezed his eyes tight, trying to combat the anguish that was pouring through him. And he saw her. Not Sierra. Callie. Round-faced, two years old. Could hear clear as day her little voice calling him daddy.
He had failed her. He had left her.
He didn’t deserve love from Sierra. Or anyone. He didn’t even deserve to have a second chance with this child.
Sure. He was drowning. Drowning in alcohol and his own misery, but how could he accept a hand up when he knew that he deserved to be down here?
He opened his eyes and a tear rolled down his cheek. He wiped it away, looking up at the altar again.
He had imagined he’d hit rock bottom years ago. It turned out, he had farther to fall. It turned out, it hurt worse when you thought for a few minutes there was hope again.
“Ace?”
Ace looked to the left of the stage, to the sound of the familiar voice. “Dad?”
“Yes. I came here to prepare for the sermon. I thought I heard someone out here.”
“I hope I didn’t scare you.”
“No. I am surprised, though.”
Ace didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if he could say anything. He was sure that he smelled like booze, like a night spent in a bar drinking and serving. He was sure he looked like the mess that he was. And here he was, darkening the doors of his father’s church.
“Me, too,” he said, the only words he could manage to squeeze out through his tightened throat.
His father walked down to the pews, then settled himself in the one across from Ace. He rested his forearms on his lap, leaning forward. “They say confession is good for the soul.”
“This isn’t a Catholic church.”
“No, it isn’t. I won’t be taking your confession in an official capacity. But if there’s something you want to talk about, it’s quiet in here anyway.”
“Unsurprisingly I screwed up my life again.” He took a deep breath. “Found a woman who agreed to marry me. And now she says she’s in love with me. But I can’t...” He shook his head. “I can’t accept it.” He looked forward, fixing his eyes on the cross. “I feel like I had love. Someone who trusted me. Callie...” He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to hold everything together. Difficult when he felt like he was cracking apart inside. “It’s myself I don’t trust. It isn’t rich women or Sierra’s love. It’s my own. I don’t deserve it. Maybe at one point in my life I might have. But not now. Not like this. This man I’ve become.”
His father was quiet for a long moment. “While we were yet sinners, Ace.”
“I’m not sure how that applies.”
“The thing about love is you don’t have to be worthy of it. That’s why it’s beautiful. It’s a gift. It isn’t something you can earn, it isn’t something you can buy. It has to be given to you. And it will never be on your terms.”
“That’s a nice idea, but I think she deserves to love someone who’s worthy of it.”
“She chose you. There’s no shame in being loved. In needing that love. The only shame I can think of is turning down such a beautiful gift because you’re too afraid, too prideful, to accept it.”
“I need to... I need to get it together. I need to be something else. Maybe even be someone else.”
His father paused for a moment before he spoke again. “You don’t change and then find yourself worthy of being loved. When you’re loved, you find reasons to change. When you love someone you change for them because it’s your great delight to become everything they could ever need. It isn’t a burden. It’s something you want. Something you desire with every part of yourself.”
“I can’t,” he said, his throat raw.
“Why not?”
The words, so simple and quiet, pulled him up short. He didn’t know what to say to that. Because he already said he didn’t deserve it, and his father had an answer for that.
“It can’t be that easy,” he said finally.
“Love is the easiest and the hardest thing in the world. It’s almost impossible to understand because it transcends so much pettiness. It transcends fairness. Love is patient, love is kind.”
Ace could finish that verse, but possibly not the way his father knew it. Love, to him, was blonde. And bouncy. It was willing to call him out when he was being a jerk. Willing to stand its ground when it knew it needed to. Love wasn’t proud, it reduced itself to nothing more than pure honesty even while he rejected it.
Love was Sierra West. And he had turned her away because he was afraid. Because he was afraid of failing again. Because he was afraid he wasn’t enough.
“What do you do with the fear?” Ace asked.
“That’s where trust comes in. Perfect love casts out all fear. But I don’t think it’s instantaneous. I think it’s something that you have to deal with daily sometimes. But you hope, and you trust, and you talk to the woman that you love.”
“What if I fail her?”
“You probably will. But you ask forgiveness, and you work toward doing better. You don’t have to sit here with full confidence knowing you’re going to be perfect forever just to love somebody. You just take that one step forward with faith, and then another. Just keep walking forward. You’ll get there eventually.”
“You say that from experience?”
“Forty years with your mother, and I’m still just walking forward. I make mistakes, I try to learn from them. And I know that, no matter what, she’s the one that I want. So whatever changes I have to make, whatever mistakes I have to atone for, I do.”
Ace stood, his heart pounding hard. “I know that I want to be with her. And I know that I love her.”
“And that’s enough. Love isn’t a finish line. It�
�s the first step on the journey. You don’t decide you love someone, and everything is complete and finished. You’re just committing to taking the first step. One step.”
One step. That felt like something he could do. It was all possible. He looked around the empty sanctuary, something in his chest shifting, breaking open. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“She isn’t the only one I’ve shut out. I just haven’t felt like I could accept you and Mom. Your support. Your love. I felt like I couldn’t stand to disappoint you.”
“You never had to question our love, either. And we never stopped.”
He nodded, his throat tight. “I love you, too.”
His father stood, taking a step forward and taking his son in his arms. He patted Ace once on the back before releasing him. “Be happy. Don’t feel like you have to live the rest of your life atoning. No one wants that from you. We just want you. We just want you to live.”
“I’m not sure if I’m going to make the service this morning,” Ace said.
“I think we already had church.”
Ace laughed. “I guess so.”
“I hope you’ll consider letting me officiate at the wedding.”
“If there still is a wedding. If she’ll have me.”
“If she loves you, and I think she does, you don’t have anything to worry about. It wouldn’t hurt you to look a little worried, though. She might make you work for it.”
“She will.”
“Then she’s perfect for you.”
* * *
SIERRA WALKED OUT of the familiar barn and toward the corral, propping her boot up on the bottom rung of the fence and resting her forearms on the top, leaning forward and looking out at the view that she knew from memory. She had looked upon it from the time she was a little girl, at the perfectly manicured patches of green field, partly enclosed by tall, imposing mountains. And beyond that, the smooth, tan stretch of coastline, whitecapped waves spilling onto the shore.
The view from the West ranch was her comfort—at least, it had been for years. It had been when she was a child, and complications had yet to worm their way into her perfect life.