by Donna Alward
He turned back around. “Did you or did you not have an appointment at the clinic in Edmonton?”
She put her hands on her hips. “I did.”
He let out a sound of frustration. “You’re still bent on this asinine idea of using a sperm donor! Have you been planning this all along? Just amusing yourself with me? Heck, let’s go out with Coop and have some good times, but it’s never going anywhere because I have my own plans. Never let anyone too close! And whatever you do, never trust anyone again. You went ahead with another treatment like what we had meant nothing!”
“Wow.” She looked at him, but she’d masked her emotions so completely that he couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling. “Now I know exactly what you think of me, Coop. What was your plan, to come in here and fix me and solve all my problems? News flash. I can solve my own problems. I’ve been doing just fine on my own.”
“Oh, no doubt,” he answered. The TV chattered in the background, the sound rasping on his already frayed nerves. “You’re one hundred percent capable, you are. It’s all about you now. No one is ever going to hurt you again because you won’t let them. You’re so bent on control that heaven forbid there’s a father in your child’s life. Someone to love it and you, right? I can’t live like that, Mel. I can’t. I can love for only so long without getting anything back.”
He grabbed his hat from the back of the chair and put it on his head. “I deserve better.”
He paused in the doorway. “You could have at least been honest with me instead of playing games.”
The door was just starting to swing shut again when she came through it. “Playing games? Believe me, Cooper Ford, this has been anything but a game!”
“Keep your voice down. The neighbors will hear you.”
She scoffed. “Oh, like you’ve ever given a good damn about that.”
He stood on her front step. “Let’s just leave it, before we say something we’ll both regret.”
“Oh, you mean leave it now that you’ve had your say and I don’t get mine? How convenient for you. You don’t want to hear how you got it all wrong, do you? Let me tell you something, Coop. Being with you—taking a chance—came with a whole lot of built-in pressure. It’s pretty hard to be breezy about a relationship when the other person confesses to being in love with you half your life. There’s no halfway in. It’s all the way or no way. The only choice I had was taking it slow.”
“Funny, because you always seemed to have one foot out the door.”
“That’s right,” she admitted. “I did. Because being with you was the single most terrifying thing to happen to me since walking in on my husband in bed with another woman.”
“Great. I’m so glad that we’re equating dating me to the horror that was the end of your marriage. That tells me a lot.”
“You’re deliberately misinterpreting. What are you so afraid of?”
“Me?” Their voices were raised now, and he knew he should lower his, but couldn’t seem to find the ability. “That’s your thing, not mine.”
She came all the way out onto the porch. “I moved on when we were kids, and I never looked back, right? And now you’re so afraid of not holding on to every piece of me that you’re pushing me away. Finding something to blame. Mainly me. After all, if you leave me first, I don’t get the chance to leave you.”
He shook his head. “This is ridiculous. You’re the one who blew me off. You were the one who refused to take a next step with us, who backed away from intimacy, who started making bogus excuses when I called. You’re doing all the pushing away. You don’t think I see? You’re lonely, Mel. And if you have a baby you won’t be lonely anymore, and won’t have to risk your heart, either. Win-win for you.”
Her face paled as his words struck their mark, and he almost wished he could take them back. Almost. For the sake of total honesty he was glad he’d put into words something that had been bothering him for some time now.
She pressed a hand to her chest as if wounded. “That’s a terrible burden to put on a child.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “It is.”
“Look, let’s leave the baby thing out of this for a moment. You’re right. I took a step back. To think. To make some plans. But tonight? You’re so scared this is the end that you’re making sure it is. You’re making sure you can walk away from here absolutely certain that it’s my fault.”
“I don’t see how it can be anyone else’s,” he answered. “That paper...”
“You didn’t even ask what that paper was about. You saw what you wanted to see, Coop.”
“If it’s not that, what the hell is it?”
She shook her head and suddenly looked very sad. “No. Not tonight. Not now. Maybe not ever. But definitely not now. I’m too damned angry with you.”
“I don’t understand.” She was talking in riddles.
“Because you never asked! Please leave, Coop. I don’t know what to think right now and I don’t want us to say more that we can’t take back.”
He looked at her and realized that it was really over. He’d just been fooling himself, seeing what he wanted to see because he’d loved her for so long. But he needed more. He needed someone who loved him as much as he loved her. He couldn’t live his life waiting for crumbs of affection. She had to be all-in, meet him in the middle. Maybe he’d been right the day he’d sat outside her shop with a container full of cookies. Maybe what he really needed was to let her go. Maybe they had to go through all of this so he could finally let the dream of her go and move on with his life.
“Just answer me this.” He had to know. It was the one question that burned, the one he couldn’t come up with an answer to no matter how he turned it over in his mind. “What changed? One day we were planning to grab a bite at the diner and the next you’re home in your pajamas crying and refusing to see me again.”
She was quiet for such a long time that he felt the traitorous stirrings of hope in his chest. Her eyes glistened as she shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. I can’t talk about this now.”
He’d bided his time, done everything slowly and the way she wanted, but this time it was truly, truly over. He didn’t want to be bitter, but bitterness blackened his heart, anyway. “I was right,” he murmured. “I do deserve better. I can’t go on giving all of myself and getting nothing back in return. I’m not your fallback when things don’t work out, Melissa. It’s not fair to either one of us, so maybe it’s better for us both to leave it here.”
He walked out to the truck on wooden legs, got in, turned the key, put the vehicle in gear and backed out of the drive as if he was on automatic pilot.
It was time he faced the truth. He couldn’t carry their relationship all on his own. He needed a partner. And Melissa, with all her plans and lists, needed guarantees and absolutes before she’d risk her heart.
The trouble was, no one could offer guarantees, and he knew for sure that whoever did was a liar. Life didn’t work that way. It took a little faith. He could try to make her happy, but unless she gave up this crazy idea of relying only on herself, they didn’t stand a chance.
And maybe what hurt the most was realizing how little faith she actually had in him.
* * *
Melissa waited a few days. She needed that time to let the dust settle. To stop being angry at Coop’s erroneous assumptions. To put what had happened in perspective, and to get up the nerve to go to see him.
She was terrified. The only thing to do now was bare her soul and tell him everything, if they were going to have a chance to be together. She’d spent a very long time feeling “leavable” and never wanted to put herself in that position again. But Coop had walked away anyway. And she could be hurt and she could be angry, but she’d spent too much time on those sorts of feelings. He had jumped to conclusions, but she understood why. He was right. She had a
lways kept one foot out the door because she was scared. Just as she knew he’d lashed out because he was scared.
They could either leave things as they were or she could take the first step toward repairing the damage. There really was no choice. She was miserable without him. Everything had changed. Loving him would be a risk, but for the first time in her life, it was worth the potential consequences. She had to at least try.
And that first step was telling him the truth about her appointment in Edmonton.
She waited until a weeknight, when he was most likely to be at home at the Double C, and drove out there in the dark. Her fingers drummed on the steering wheel as she forced herself to observe the speed limit even though the short drive seemed to take forever. The pounding of her pulse intensified as she turned in the lane and saw his truck parked in front of his house. The porch light was on and as she pulled up next to his half-ton she noticed potted mums on his front step. She inhaled deeply and breathed out slowly. This was so Coop. He was so settled, so sure of himself. He knew what he wanted and where he belonged. Except when it came to her. She knew he wasn’t sure of her at all, because she’d never given him a reason to be. It was time she finally set things right.
The slam of her car door sounded terribly loud in the quiet night. She stopped for a moment, gathering her wits, staring up at the stars. Even though it was long past twilight, she focused on one twinkling pinpoint of light and closed her eyes. Please let him be the one, she wished. It was nearly the same wish she’d had the night on the swings. But then she’d wished for a baby, and tonight she was wishing for something else entirely, something that had somehow become more important to her—a future. Tonight was all about Coop and trying to repair the damage to their relationship. And please, she added, let me find the right words to fix this.
When Coop answered the door, she lost her train of thought. All her practiced introductions flew clean out of her head now that he was before her. She just stood there, looking up at him, loving him so hard, scared to death and without any idea where to begin.
“Mel,” he said quietly.
“Can we talk?” She managed that much without stuttering.
He shrugged. A barrier fell over his eyes, shutting her out, but he stepped aside. Knees shaking, she moved past him into the foyer of his house.
She lost her breath momentarily. His place was beautiful. It was all creamy walls and high ceilings and gleaming hardwood. Ahead of her, white-painted railings wound around a circular staircase leading to the second floor. She’d expected a smaller version of the main house, but she hadn’t expected it to be this fancy. Not for a bachelor. How lonely this huge house must be for one person.
“You want a glass of wine?”
“If you have it, that would be nice.” Maybe it would steady her shaky nerves. It would at least give her something to occupy her hands.
She followed him into the kitchen, still bundled in her wool jacket. It was only when he turned around with the glass of wine in his hand that he noticed. “Oh. Let me take your coat.”
She shrugged it off and handed it to him, exchanging the coat for the glass. As they traded, his fingers brushed against hers. Sparks jolted up her arm at the very touch, and their eyes clashed. Thank God, she thought. Some things hadn’t changed. It gave her hope.
Melissa had just spent days avoiding him, sorting through feelings, wanting to work through what was in her head. Ironically, the one person she’d wanted to talk to most to work things through was the one person she couldn’t ask—him.
But he was here now, and all she wanted was to draw from his strength. To feel safe. She put her glass down, stepped forward and wound her arms around his ribs.
She needed to feel close to him. Needed nothing more complicated than a hug right now from the one person who always seemed to make things better. She closed her eyes and pressed the side of her face against the solid wall of his chest while his arms cautiously came around her, still holding her coat. “Hold me,” she murmured into the soft cotton of his shirt. “Just for a minute.”
His arms tightened and he rested his chin on top of her head.
A lump formed in her throat. It was going to be okay. It had to be. She would find the right words somehow, and he’d understand. It couldn’t be too late.
But there was so much to say that she truly didn’t know where to begin.
“Why’d you come here?” he asked.
She spread her hands over the warmth of his back. He felt so good. So right. She tilted her head just a bit and replied, “I needed my best friend. I’ve needed him for a very long time, but I shut him out.”
Coop backed out of her embrace. “You know how I feel, Mel. I don’t want to be just friends.”
“That’s not what I want, either. But right now I need my friend Cooper to listen to what I have to say. It’s important.”
“You’re asking too much.” He put her coat over a chair and then rested his hands on top of it. His face was all hard lines and uncompromising angles. “Mel, if you’re coming to say you’re pregnant...”
He looked so tortured that she instantly took pity on him. “I’m not pregnant,” she said clearly. “That would be impossible.”
His eyes met hers, the barrier stripped away for a moment as he latched on to that one very significant word. “Impossible?”
She nodded. “Can we go sit down somewhere? This could take a while and right now it feels like we’re in a standoff.”
And down came the shutters again. “Of course. Let’s go into the living room.”
She grabbed her glass of wine and took a healthy sip before following him there. The room, vaulted with cathedral ceilings, featured a surprisingly large angled window that faced north. During the day there was surely a gorgeous view of the Double C pastures. A fire snapped and popped in a fireplace complete with stone flue. It was like something out of a magazine. Mel had known that the Double C was doing well. She’d had no idea it was this prosperous.
She sank into the cushions of the soft leather sofa and toyed with the bowl of her wineglass for a moment. Then she put it down and shifted so she was facing him. “When you found my appointment card, you thought I’d gone for another fertility treatment, didn’t you?”
“You mean you didn’t?”
She shook her head. “No. I didn’t.”
“But...”
She reached out and put her hand on his forearm. “What bothers me most about that moment was that I realized you really don’t trust me. You honestly thought I would go ahead and do that even though we’d started seeing each other.”
“It was a pretty strong statement about where you thought our future was going,” he remarked, pulling his arm away. “Nowhere. If you saw a future with me, you wouldn’t be looking to be carrying someone else’s child. You had to know that I...”
“That you what?”
He looked away. “That I’d find that impossible to live with.”
She’d hurt him. Badly. She got what he was saying. She’d given him hope and then, in his eyes, stripped it away. She knew how cruel it was to have hopes crushed. Even though she really hadn’t, and certainly hadn’t meant to, she knew the fault was partly hers, because she hadn’t wanted to say the words in the middle of an argument. She’d wanted everything to be perfect...and because of it she’d ruined everything.
“I backed away from us without telling you why, so I can’t blame you for making the wrong assumption. I wasn’t ready to explain and I certainly didn’t want to do it when we were arguing. So I waited a few days. Thought a lot.”
“Planned it? Like you plan everything?”
She nodded. “I do plan things. It comes from being surprised and blindsided and never wanting that to happen again. And this time it also comes from being scared and not wanting to mess up the most important relations
hip in my life.”
She sighed, gathering strength. “Coop, when everything went wrong with my marriage, the one person I wanted to turn to was you. You had always, always been there for me, only this time you weren’t. I think you probably would have been if I’d asked, but I couldn’t. You hurt me, you see. I felt so foolish that I hadn’t seen what was right in front of my face. I even felt foolish in front of you. It seemed everyone knew what was going on but me. Poor innocent Melissa. I decided then and there that I wasn’t going to rely on anyone again. Especially not you—even though I missed you like crazy. Coop, we’ve always had a special bond, even when I was married to someone else. I made so many mistakes. When you said you deserved better? Well, if I’m being completely honest, we all did. I know that Scott and I should never have married in the first place. I’m partly to blame. We didn’t have the kind of marriage we should have, and when that happens, people stray.”
“People should get out first and not cheat.”
“Agreed. But I can’t help but wonder if Scott wasn’t a bit jealous of our friendship.”
Coop nodded. “I know he was. He threw it in my face when I threatened to tell you.”
“It was all wrong,” she said quietly, “but the one thing we can’t do is turn back the clock and fix our mistakes. Which brings me to a few days ago.”
She reached out again and took his hand in hers. “I know what scared looks like, Coop. I know because I’ve been terrified of my feelings for you. Ever since we made peace you’ve been everywhere I go. First the housing project, then Thanksgiving, at church, in my life. Not only that, but I had to get used to the idea of what you said that day by the creek.”
She gave her head a little shake. “When I was fifteen you were all I thought about. I tried not to pressure you, because we were friends, but I wanted so much more. It finally got to a point where I just had to let go. I valued your friendship too much to push you away by demanding something you didn’t want. So finding out over ten years later that you finally felt the same way... This all could have ended so differently. Sometimes that’s made me a bit angry, to be honest. So much pain could have been avoided. But then I tell myself that maybe we weren’t ready then. Maybe we were too young. Maybe we had things to learn before we could be together. The last thing I wanted to do was play with your feelings. I know what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t love you back. That’s why I wanted to take it slow. I was unsure, and I didn’t want either of us to get hurt.”