by Maisey Yates
It was like that feeling she had when they were in bed together, like that feeling she had when they made love, so foreign and entirely unlike anything in her experience.
Well, no. It was like one thing.
One thing that she’d always been afraid of.
Mom, why can’t we just have Christmas together?
It’s not Christmas without Dave.
Why can’t it just be Christmas with me?
Because it’s not enough, Elizabeth. Leave me the hell alone.
She swallowed hard and looked away from him.
She meandered over to the table, eating meat and cheese in silence until she felt far too self-conscious to remain in the room.
She went into the kitchen, where she found Tammy, who was baking away.
“Hi,” she said. “How are you?”
“Good,” she said, smiling.
“Really?”
“I will be,” Tammy said. “We will be. Things are...resolving. Hank talked to Caleb, and I guess Caleb said some good things to him.”
“Really? He didn’t tell me that.”
“I thought he told you everything,” Tammy said.
She thought back on all the years that he’d spent very much not telling her everything.
“He’s starting to,” she said.
“Good. We all need someone like that. Someone we can share our hearts with.”
That made her think of literally reaching into her chest, pulling out her heart and sharing it with Caleb. Literally giving him the source of her life and trusting him with it.
Because that was what sharing her heart with Caleb felt like.
That was what this...this feeling in her felt like.
She didn’t like it. Not at all.
“Yeah,” she said instead of saying any of that.
“Hank and I have made our share of mistakes. As parents. As spouses. I imagine we’ll keep on doing it. It’s a journey.”
Now that, that made Ellie feel slightly better. It was a journey. And whatever journey she and Caleb were on, they could keep going on it.
“You look thoughtful.”
“I am,” she said. She needed to tell Tammy. She did. “Caleb and I... He asked me to marry him.”
Tammy stopped mixing biscuit dough. She pulled floury hands out of the bowl and wrapped her arms around Ellie. “Oh, sweetie. I’m so happy.”
“You are?”
“Yes. I’m so happy that you have him. I’m so happy he has you.”
She hadn’t known what Tammy’s reaction would be. But Caleb was her son, and even though she had loved Clint, of course she loved Caleb, too.
“I love you both,” Tammy said as if she read her mind. “I love you all. I want you to be happy.”
“Don’t tell anyone. We were going to tell Amelia on Christmas. And...after that we’ll share it with everyone else. But she needs to know first.”
“Of course. Of course.”
“Can I help with anything?”
“Why don’t you preheat the oven for me. My hands are greasy.”
She did so, finding comfort in the simple motion. In Tammy’s presence.
“Are you going to have a big wedding?”
The question was innocent, but it made her mind jump back to her wedding. The wedding she’d already had.
She could picture herself so clearly, a bride walking toward her groom. Except...
All she could see was the best man.
Standing there, looking at her. The intensity and those shocking blue eyes pinning her to the spot.
And she tried, she tried to picture Clint, and she couldn’t. It froze her. Immobilized her.
She couldn’t picture him.
She should be able to. He was the love of her life. Her first love. Her only love. And he had been the groom. Caleb had just been the best man. And there was no...
Clint was Amelia’s father. And he was gone. It wasn’t fair.
It was Caleb she saw. Caleb who made her ache in all these horrible, uncomfortable ways.
It would never be enough. That was why it ached.
She would never be enough, not for this.
It was bigger than she was, and she’d never wanted that. Not ever. She’d wanted safe, and sweet and kind. And it had been enough.
Why wasn’t it enough now?
Why was Caleb all she could see?
“I...I don’t know,” she said.
“Are you okay?”
“Excuse me for a second.”
She rushed out of the kitchen and out the front door without saying a word. She took a gasping breath of the air outside and put her hand to her chest, trying to calm her rioting heartbeat.
A moment later she heard the door open. But it wasn’t Tammy who had come out after her.
“Are you okay?”
It was Caleb.
She looked at him and felt...
Everything.
Her heart was bruised, each thump against her breastbone physical pain. “I...I don’t know.”
“What’s the matter?” he pressed, those blue eyes electrifying her. Pinning her in place.
She’d looked into them once a long time ago and seen the possibility of a different future. And after that she’d made it a point to look into them and see only a friend.
But here they were.
Here they were, and it was too much. It was just too much.
“I...I don’t think I can marry you,” she said.
His face immediately turned to granite. “What?”
Terror was clawing at her; even as she was drawn to him, she wanted to run away. It had been like this from the moment she had said to him: It should be you.
She had been so sure that her words had flipped the switch. Sure that he was the one that changed, and suddenly he looked at her with burning intensity. But she could see now that he always had. It wasn’t him the switch had flipped in—it was her. Because suddenly she could see. See what had always been there. What had terrified her then, and why it should terrify her now.
It was too much. It was all too much.
It brought her back to the sad, lost little girl she’d been who had wanted too much from a mother who was never going to give it to her.
Who could never, ever be enough.
It wasn’t what she’d wanted. She’d gotten what she’d wanted. Companionship, care. She’d had it and it should be enough. Why could she never get enough?
And now here she was, with this man who should have been enough just as he’d been. But she’d let him in, and now she needed more and she didn’t even know what more was.
And already he eclipsed Clint and...
“I can’t. I can’t do this. It’s not right. It’s not fair. You were his best friend.”
“Ellie, that hasn’t been an issue this whole time.”
“But it is now. You were our best man. You are my friend. And you... You don’t even really want me,” she said, reaching, looking for an excuse. Something, anything, to avoid the intense, crashing terror that was caving in all around her.
Making her feel small and fragile, making her feel.
She didn’t want to analyze these feelings that were rolling through her.
She didn’t want these changes.
And the only way that she could think to keep from having to look at them, to keep from having to examine them, admit to them, was to make him go away.
“I’m just something else that he had.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“You said it yourself. If you hadn’t blamed him for the guns... If you hadn’t done it then, you would have done it with me. You told me that.”
“But it doesn’t mean that I didn’t have feelings for you.”
“How can you e
ver know that?” She couldn’t. She’d never be sure. How could she? Her own mother hadn’t thought she was enough and she was supposed to believe Caleb just wanted her? And that it had nothing to do with his complicated history with Clint?
“Is that what worries you? That I won’t feel enough for you?” He shook his head. “Fuck, Ellie.”
He breathed out, the gust of air a harsh sound in the silence, visible in the cold. He looked down and then up at her, his eyes burning with intensity. “I love you. I have loved you from the moment I met you. I didn’t even see him standing there when you walked in. Woman, you made the world fall away. And I know that you’re never going to love me the way that you loved him, but I don’t care. That’s how much I love you. I will love you enough for the both of us. And I will love Amelia like my own. I already do. I don’t need you to give me any damn thing, woman. Just let me take care of you. Let me have you. Because if you don’t, then my life is never going to be anything. Christmas tree farms, cattle farms, what the hell ever. None of it matters. It’s all just me trying to fill a hole. And I thought that I could do that. I thought that I could draw a line under you, under this, and call it done. But it’s never going to be done. Not for me. He might have been the one for you, but you’re the one for me. And that won’t go away. He’s not here. I am. Let one of us have it.”
His words cut her like a knife. And she realized, with that knife, he’d given her an escape. And she felt...like the world’s biggest coward using it. But she was going to.
“I can’t do that,” she said. “You should be with a woman who can love you right. Who can love you first. It’s not going to be me, Caleb. It never could be. I know what love is. I had it.”
Her throat began to tighten, those words strangling her. “It’s fun. And it made me laugh. And it’s not...whatever this is. We’re friends. And we have wonderful sex. But that isn’t love. Whatever this is... I can’t live with it. I can’t.”
“You are my whole life,” he said, grabbing her and pulling her up against him. And she knew that anyone from the house could look out and see them now, and she knew he was past the point of caring. “You are my whole heart. I have not taken a breath that wasn’t for you in more than ten years, Ellie Bell. Don’t you tell me what love is.”
That thing he was talking about, that feeling he was proclaiming, it sounded like hell to her. It sounded like horror. Because this felt bottomless and painful already.
“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t. Please. Please don’t ask me to do this.”
“I can’t ask for anything else. I want to marry you. I want to be with you forever. Let me give you this.”
“No,” she said. “Please. Please, Caleb. Don’t make me... Don’t make me be cruel. This was just supposed to be fun. It was supposed to be my Christmas wish list. It wasn’t about forever. It was never about forever.”
“You said yes,” he ground out.
“And I couldn’t put your ring on. Because I can’t. I can’t put another man’s ring on. I’m not ready, and I might never be. I loved him. I don’t love you.”
He looked like a man being submitted to torture. Whatever he’d said about not needing her to love him, she knew that wasn’t true. Right then. The look of stark pain on his face was enough to make her crack, break into a thousand pieces.
But what was she supposed to do? What kind of mother would she be if she surrendered everything to him? Not any better than her own.
What kind of woman could she be?
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t you dare fucking apologize to me,” he said.
“I didn’t want to hurt you...”
“You’re hurting yourself. You’re hurting yourself. Don’t bullshit me, Ellie. Don’t do it. I have known you and loved you for more than ten years. And I can see that you’re scared. That you’re scared of loss...”
“You don’t know what the hell I’m scared of, Caleb. And you know what? You’re not going to. Because my life is going to be my life. And your life is going to be yours. And we should draw a line under it and call it done.”
“This is yours,” he said, digging into his pocket and pulling out the ring box.
“I don’t want it.”
“It’s yours,” he repeated, pressing the box into her palm. “Merry Christmas. I’ll make sure that Amelia has her puppy on Christmas morning. Someone will bring it.”
“You don’t have to...”
“She deserves magic,” he said. And then he stopped, a muscle in his jaw jumping, a slight tremor to his lips that shocked her. But he composed himself. “I’m still here to give her that. I’d give it to you, too. If you’d let me. But don’t take it from her.”
“I would never keep you from her.”
“Well, I don’t know what you would do. Not at this point.”
And then he walked away from the house, headed out toward his truck.
“Where are you going?”
“Oddly, I’m not really in a Christmas mood now. Enjoy the party.”
So she stood there and watched him go. And damned if it didn’t feel like her heart had gone with him.
She looked down at the ring box in her hand, and she wondered if it was too late for her to salvage anything at all.
She felt like her life had fallen apart, for the second time. Except this time...
This time she had broken it herself.
And she didn’t know if it could ever be fixed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CALEB DROVE. HE DROVE for hours. To where, he didn’t know. Until he found himself turning on a winding mountain road that led up to a place that was somewhat familiar. It had been the base camp of the wildfire they’d been fighting when Clint died.
And the crash site... It was close.
And he didn’t know why the hell he had come here, because he knew that wherever Clint was, it wasn’t here. His afterlife was sure as hell not going to be spent near the site of the smoldering wreckage that had taken him out of this world.
No, he knew his friend better than that.
He almost laughed at the absurdity, but he didn’t think he could laugh again.
Because he didn’t know what the hell was going on with Ellie, but it wasn’t just about the fact that she couldn’t love him, though her saying that had torn chunks off him.
He had accepted it, but hearing her say it...
“I tried,” he said, resting his forearms on the steering wheel of his truck. “I tried to be a good man. I tried to take care of her. But I’m just hurting her.”
And that, even in the moment, was one of the things that hurt him most of all. That he was hurting her still. He was supposed to protect her, but this wasn’t protecting her.
“Dammit, Clint,” he said. “Why did you have to die? You could’ve gone on living, and that would have been just fine. You could’ve watched your little girl grow up. You made us happy. You did. And I know that things were tricky between us. But... I didn’t ever want you gone. I love Ellie. I love her. And you being gone means we both have to try this thing, because God knows... God knows we feel stuff. I know she does for me, too.” He took a deep breath, his chest a ball of pain. “If you were just here, it would be simple. I could go on pretending I didn’t love her. She could go on ignoring that she was ever attracted to me. We wouldn’t have to sort any of this shit out. But you’re not here. Because life’s not fair.”
He cleared his throat. Feeling like an idiot for talking to the wind. But he felt wrong, and he’d never damn well feel right again. So he might as well talk to the wind. Talk to a ghost.
“You were a good man. You didn’t deserve my jealousy. And you didn’t deserve to lose this beautiful life that you had. And I shouldn’t love her. I shouldn’t have been...made to love her. I love her. I love her, and everything is twisted up. I know it. No one will ever lov
e her more than I do, though. I can promise you that. I love her now. Hell, if her marrying you didn’t fix it, her saying something to me isn’t going to, either.”
He didn’t know why he was here. Because there was no closure to be had.
He got out of his truck and looked around. And he felt nothing. Saw nothing.
Because Clint was gone. Except...
Except Caleb was different. For having known him.
Just like Ellie was different for it.
And those pieces, those changed pieces, would never be gone.
But they would keep on changing. And they had. Hadn’t Ellie said that very thing? That she wanted to get back to that girl that she’d been, but she couldn’t.
Yeah. They were changing, because they were still here.
And they would keep on changing.
And one thing he knew for sure was that Ellie did want to marry him.
Maybe she didn’t love him.
But she wanted to be with him.
She at least wanted him for Amelia.
So whatever he needed to do, whatever he needed to say...
He would wait. Because he was good at waiting. He had become so good at it over all these years, and he could wait more.
He could.
He told himself that, over and over again. Told himself that until he thought it might be true.
And he pictured Ellie, as a bride, walking toward him... Except, he knew that she hadn’t chosen it. Hadn’t chosen him.
And he looked into the emptiness all around him, and he had to accept the hardest truth he ever had.
Even with the best man gone, Caleb still wasn’t the man she would choose.
And as much as he didn’t want to accept the defeat for himself, there was a point at which he had to accept it for her.
If he really wanted to protect her, then he had to protect her. And if that meant walking away...then he would have to walk away.
But there was one thing he knew. Whether she felt the same or not, he would love Ellie Bell until the day that he died.