by Maisey Yates
That made her angry. Made her heart beat faster and her palms sweat. No one had ever offered her help. No one. And here she was, offering what little she had. Everything she had, and he was rejecting it.
“I don’t think that love has to be such a terrible thing,” she said. “Love doesn’t have to be a burden.”
“How would you know?”
His words ran her through like a sword, deflating her lungs, making it so she couldn’t breathe. “I guess you have a point there,” she said, the words coming out strangled.
She turned and started to walk back toward the cabin and he reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her back.
“Casey, wait...”
“No. Don’t ask me to wait. You can ask me to stay, Aiden. But don’t ask me to wait if in the end you’re just going to let me go.”
He fell silent, the space stretching between them saying more than words ever could.
“Don’t say you didn’t mean it, either,” she continued. “Because you did. You meant it. You don’t think I know what love is because I didn’t have a family to love me. But sometimes the absence of something, the need for it, teaches you a whole lot more than having it. I’m not used to love. I don’t take it for granted. There is no way for it to be there and for me not to notice. I’m...changed by it. Completely. The way I think. The way I feel. The way I breathe. Don’t ever tell me I don’t know. I know better than you.”
She walked quickly, then broke into a run, up the steps and into the cabin, gathering her things as quickly as possible. There were perks to having all the pieces of your life compacted down so small that they fit into one bag. It didn’t take long to leave. And right now? She desperately needed to leave.
“So, that’s it?” She heard his voice coming from behind her, and she forced herself to keep from turning. “You’re just going to go?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of what I do.” She stuffed a pair of underwear into her bag. Then looked at the bed they had been sharing for the past week. She had been happy here. Happy with him. And it wasn’t because the cabin was amazing. Wasn’t because she wanted to live here the rest of her life. It was because this was where he had held her in his arms. It was because for just a little while they had belonged to each other when she’d never belonged to anyone before.
She’d never had anything that had felt too good to last before. She’d just had a lot of shit that had lasted however long it had lasted and then gone away. So she hadn’t been prepared for what it would feel like when this was over. It was horrible. It was violent and shocking, tearing at her insides like a savage beast.
You always knew it would end this way.
Yes, she had. Except in the days since she had come here, during the nights when she had fallen asleep in his arms, she had begun to entertain a strange, warm glow in the center of her chest. One that she now recognized was hope. Hope unlike any she’d ever had before. Hope like she imagined she would never have again.
“I’m leaving.”
“Leaving town?”
“Don’t know.” She shrugged one of her shoulders. In reality, she was no closer to having her car fixed. It was parked over at Jake’s garage now, but it still wasn’t running, and she still didn’t have much in the way of funds.
“You’re not going to tell me.”
“What do you care?”
“Dammit, Casey, you know I care.”
“Yeah, but you care about your drunk of a father. You care about this farm. You care about your mother. You care about a lot of things in an angry, protective way. But do you love any of it? Do you have any love left inside of you at all? Or is it all just grim, forced duty?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not about how I feel. My dad follows his feelings. Follows them right down into the bottom of a bottle. And I’ll never be that.”
“No. You won’t. I believe that. But you know who you’ve become? Your mother. You were so busy keeping yourself from becoming your old man that you became her. You think you can fix it for him. You think you can want it enough. But you can’t. He has to want it, Aiden, and the simple truth is that he doesn’t. You don’t know what to do with that. So you push everyone else away to try to heal this one broken person who doesn’t even want it. This is why Caroline left you. Because she could see that you would never open yourself up to her. She could see that this was never going to end. And I see it now, too.”
“Great. Maybe you can go find some other guy to give you what you want. That’s what she did.”
She shook her head, gritting her teeth against the anger and sadness that were fighting for dominance in her chest. “I won’t. I’m not going to find anyone else.” She laughed and shook her head. “I mean, there might be some someone elses. In the biblical sense. But...it was never like this before you. It sure as hell won’t be like this after you.” She flung her backpack over her shoulder and breezed past him, walking out of the house and starting down the road. Part of her hoped the whole way that he would ask her to stop. That he would be the first one to ask her to stay. She hoped, and she hoped, until she went around the first bend in the drive. And then she hoped some more. Until she was back at the campsite. Until darkness had fallen around her with finality, smothering the light, smothering her last bit of optimism. He wasn’t going to come after her. And at this point, she wasn’t even certain if the sun would rise.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AIDEN KNEW THERE were no answers in the bottom of a glassful of whiskey. His father had tried to find them for years. He had never been tempted to do the same. But he was now.
It was such a dark, damp night, and he didn’t know anything. Didn’t know what he was going to do tomorrow. Didn’t know how he was going to fix all of the shit that had just gone down. Didn’t know what he was going to do with every day of his life that didn’t have Casey in it.
It didn’t make sense. He’d only known her for a week. She was a drifter who knew even less about love than he did. She’d also been the only bright spot in a world of darkness for longer than he could remember. What he found with her wasn’t simply physical release. He wanted to share with her. Wanted to open himself up to her and give her pieces of himself. Wanted to take pieces of her back into him so that they carried enough of each other around that they became inseparable. Now she was just gone. And he felt empty.
It was nothing like when he’d lost Caroline. That had felt like an inconvenience. An annoyance, because he was a man and he didn’t like the idea of his one source of sexual release being taken away. This wasn’t about the sex.
He could live with Casey for the next hundred years and never touch her as long as he got to wake up and see her face in the morning. As long as he got to go to bed next to her every night. It would be torture, but not like this.
She gave him more than sex. She made him feel like life wasn’t an endless bid for control and nothing more.
She loved him.
The realization made his heart seize up tight.
She loved him, and it’d been so easy for him to turn her down because of the farm. Because he was too busy with it. Because his father required his care.
She was right, but she was also wrong. He hadn’t become his mother, not really. But he’d been afraid of it. Deep down, more than he’d ever been afraid of becoming his father. And staying here, doing this, was easy in comparison. Easier than opening himself up again and hoping again. Because she was wrong about that, too. He didn’t really hope his father would change. He knew he wouldn’t. Aiden wasn’t a fool. But he was a coward.
There was nothing to hope for here. Nothing ever changed. Casey... She was soft, alive, dynamic. She would change all the time. Would ask things of him, real things, that he’d have to dig deep for. Not just hard work and sacrifice.
All those were easy. They didn’t cost anything but money. Didn�
�t cost anything but sweat.
Love...love cost more. You had to open yourself up, show all of your ugly places and ask for someone else to give you theirs.
He would have to care for someone who wanted him, and keep her wanting him.
That was terrifying. Not a life spent on this farm, but a life spent away from it.
His chest tightened and anguish rocked him. He could see her face, the way she looked when she said that she loved him and he’d told her no.
This woman who had spent so much of her life being turned away by people, and he had just become one more in a long line of them. He was a bastard.
She didn’t deserve a bastard. She didn’t deserve one more guy using her for his own selfish desires. She deserved someone who would give her a home. Who would keep her forever. Who would give her all the chocolate that she wanted. Who would call her beautiful names, give her enough kind words to erase the ugliness she’d been forced to endure for all those years.
And if he was going to be that man he would have to leave for it. He would have to open himself up. He would have to release his hold on all this anger. He couldn’t love her while he was angry. Couldn’t give her everything she wanted.
Anger made such a wonderful shield, but it kept everything away. Everything bad. Everything good.
There could be no Casey as long as anger and fear controlled him.
He dropped down onto his knees at the foot of his bed, bone cracking hard against the floor. He didn’t know what he wanted. He only knew it wasn’t this.
That’s a lie. You know what you want. You’re too afraid to take it.
Yes, he was. He was too afraid to be the man she needed. Didn’t know what the hell he would do if he didn’t have all of this to hide behind.
You won’t know unless you stop fighting. Stop blaming other people.
It was easy to blame his father for the situation he was in. But they were his choices. His. She was right. He couldn’t continue laying blame in his father’s door. Not for decisions he’d made. He was nothing more than what he decided to be. And now he would be alone because of his decisions, too.
“No,” he said out loud, rising to his feet. “No.”
He had given up a future once. One that he didn’t see the use in fighting for. But he was not giving Casey up.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SHE WAS DYING. Okay. She probably wasn’t dying. But she kind of wished she were dead. And if someone called her baby one more time tonight she was going to shank them with the wrong end of a busted ketchup bottle.
Heartbreak made her mean.
Casey sighed and walked back behind the bar. She pulled out a towel and wrung it out into the bucket of water before setting it on the countertop to wipe at imaginary dirt. Anything to keep her hands busy. So she didn’t, like, strangle someone. Or pull out her own hair. Or rend her garments in some biblical expression of grief she hadn’t even known she was capable of feeling. Damn Aiden.
He was a damn ruiner. Worse, he was a fixer who ruined what he fixed because he was an assbutt who couldn’t handle anything real.
She should know.
She’d been the same until a week ago.
And now she was...devastated. Stripped completely of all of her pride. Still waiting tables in a bar, alone as always, and hating it.
So, great. That had really worked out.
Except in some ways she felt lighter than she had in years. In some ways, she felt completely different even though the circumstances around her remained the same. She was back to sleeping in a tent, but that tent had felt different ever since Aiden had made love to her in it. She felt different. She was different.
Too bad he was choosing to stay the same.
He was stubborn. He was scared. It was pretty sad when a maladjusted foster child was able to sort out her own shit faster than a guy like him. She grimaced as she continued to scrub at the already clean counter.
The door opened and she looked up, her heart rolling over when she saw the striking figure standing in the door, backlit by the sun. Without seeing his face, she knew who it was. She had to do a quick sweep around the bar to see if his father was in here. He wasn’t. Which meant that Aiden was here to talk to her.
He walked deeper into the dining room, a white-and-red shopping bag clutched tightly in his hand. His jaw was clenched tight, his expression as stormy as the first night she’d seen him walk into the bar. He was here, but he wasn’t happy to be here.
Then his eyes met hers, and she revised her opinion. He wasn’t angry. He was scared.
Which, on Aiden, she had discovered looked about the same.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Out of breath and dizzy, she didn’t have it in her to wait to hear what he had to say. If he was going to be awful, he could hurry up and get it over with. If he had come here to grovel, he could hurry up and get that over with, too. She’d suffered for long enough.
“I came to give you this,” he said, thrusting the plastic bag toward her.
“Are you, like...giving me another piece to my luggage set for the trip out of town? Because that’s fucked up.”
“No,” he said, his expression horrified as he drew the bag back toward his chest, opening the top of it and pulling out a bag of chocolate. “This.” He thrust it back toward her. She could only stare.
“Is this...candy?”
Which was a stupid question to ask, because obviously it was. But she wasn’t entirely sure why he was handing it to her in an empty bar in the middle of the day. Especially after he had just broken her heart.
“It’s chocolate. You should have all of the chocolate that you want. Which is why I bought you a bunch of chocolate. It was supposed to be symbolic. Not offensive. But I’m bad at this. I’m bad at feelings. But I’m stepping outside my comfort zone. My very uncomfortable comfort zone.”
“Which is?”
He took a heavy breath. “The farm. It’s easy to stay disconnected from everything when you’re throwing yourself into something that’s so all-consuming. Even easier when you’ve convinced yourself it’s the moral high ground.”
“Right,” she said, pulling the bag of chocolate into her chest and holding it tight.
“I was using it as a shield. You’re right, I was afraid of becoming my mother. But not with my father. Not with the farm. I was afraid of what it would mean to love someone so much that I would overlook anything they did. That I would even enable their self-destruction because I didn’t have it in me to speak up. Because I wanted to keep the peace more than I wanted to fix their problems.”
“People like that... You can’t fix their problems.”
“I know. But I watched my father hurt her with his drinking and infidelity, with every broken promise, with no end in sight. I watched her retreat deeper and deeper into this fake idea of a perfect life. Love is... The love that I saw was toxic. It did nothing but destroy. At least in choosing to tie myself to the farm, it was something I could control. It was something that would never devastate me.
“I never thought I could save him. Not really. I was just trying to save myself.” He rubbed his hand over his forehead. “I thought that I was doing it right. That sacrificing myself on the altar of the farm was somehow noble. But it was just a shield. It allowed me to keep everyone at a distance. And when you told me you loved me... It was easier to choose the farm. Because I would rather work hard for no return than make myself vulnerable.”
“So, did you just come here to give me the chocolate and leave?”
He closed his eyes, swallowing hard. “No. I came here to tell you that I’m done hiding. I’m done dealing with other people’s mistakes. I’m finished pouring myself out into something that can never be filled. I want more than that. I want you more than that. And it scares the hell
out of me. To want something. To invest in something that can actually succeed. But being without you scares me even more. I love you, Casey. One week, one month, one year, one lifetime, it won’t make a difference. I’ll love you just the same.”
She looked down at the bag of chocolate and flung it back on the bar top. “Then I don’t really need this chocolate.” She took a step forward, flinging her arms around his neck and kissing his cheek. “The only thing I really need is you.”
“But you don’t have to choose. You can have chocolate and me.”
“That seems... That seems too good to be true. Like a whole lot more than I can fit in one trash bag.”
“I’m a little bit heavy for a trash bag. I’ll tear the bottom out.”
“Then I guess I’m going to have to stop moving.” She looked at his face, and his serious blue eyes. “Unless you want to. If you want to run, say the word. We don’t even have to wait for my car. We can get in your truck and drive away.”
“Actually, I was thinking that you should stay. We should stay. Together.”
She smiled, her heart expanding until she thought it might explode. “I would like that.”
EPILOGUE
STARTING FROM SCRATCH was never easy. Casey knew that better than most. She had been starting over every few months for most of her life. But this was different. This wasn’t a temporary fix, short-term plan or a Band-Aid on a life-threatening injury.
She and Aiden were planting roots deep, and it would take time. But it was worth it.
“What do you think?” he asked, walking up beside her and taking her hand.
She looked out across the flat expanse of land, at the mountains behind it, then looked back behind them, at the view of the ocean. “I think it’s perfect. Do you want me to start pitching the tent?”
He smiled at her. “You’re ridiculous. We’ll keep the rental until we can get the house built. And you can choose whatever style you want. It will be your house from the ground up.”