“Don’t do this.” When I step toward her, she steps back into the house.
“You were leaving in a couple of weeks anyway. We were walking headfirst into a heartbreak as it was. This way, we just save ourselves a bit of false hope and whispered promises we’ll never keep . . .” She takes another step back, the physical distance her way to reinforce the words she’s telling me. “It’s just better this way.”
“I meant everything I said, Tate.”
“There was a lot you didn’t say that you meant too.” Her breath hitches. “Goodbye, Jack.”
54
TATE
I hear his protest when I shut the door.
I see the knob wiggle after I turn the lock.
And then, before I allow myself to change my mind, I’m running down the hallway and falling onto my bed as I succumb to the hurt.
To the betrayal.
To everything I thought we would have together—a today, a tomorrow, a forever. God, how silly those thoughts are, have always been.
Jack Sutton was never going to give up his life on his fancy ranch for a small-town life here.
Jack Sutton, the man who moves over and over again to avoid falling, wasn’t ever going to stay.
I can repeat those truths to myself over and over, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t still hoping they were lies.
55
JACK
Lauren’s soft snores come from the room opposite mine in the bunkhouse, but I don’t listen to them.
I don’t care about them.
The past hours replay in my mind. The hour I spent on the phone getting her set up in rehab followed by another one to her ex-mother-in-law who is currently watching the kids to ask her if she’ll keep watching them while she sobers up. Just another revolution in a long list of repeats when it comes to my sister.
And I did all of that while fighting every goddamn urge I have to make Tate listen to me. To shake her shoulders until those storm-cloud-colored eyes of hers see the truth, see that I love her.
But I fucked this up. I fucked her over.
She deserves better than me.
Than this.
She deserves everything for her next time.
It doesn’t mean the ache in my heart agrees with me, though.
56
TATE
I force myself to watch Jack load his two duffel bags into the back of his truck and keep watching as his sister walks out, sunglasses on and looking like hell, and slides behind the wheel of her car.
I make myself stand at the kitchen window so I can physically watch him go . . . as if that will help my heart and my head and my hope be on the same page.
Sleep came in bouts, but I spent most of the night staring at the ceiling as I tried to process how something so good could turn so very wrong.
How I tried to process how I’m going to watch the man I love walk out of my life.
“It’s better this way.” But even I don’t buy the lie.
“Tate?”
I fight the urge to run and hide. I fight an even stronger urge to run into his arms and beg him not to go.
But I can’t do that.
I just can’t.
“I know you’re standing there,” he says as he pushes open the front door and walks into the kitchen.
Gracie’s tail thumps at the sight of him, but I don’t turn because I know it would hurt too much to meet his eyes.
“Can’t you even look at me?”
Tears threaten as I stare at the floor and shake my head.
“Tate? Look at me. Please.” The raw emotion in his voice begs me to do as he asks as surely as his words do.
When I do, it’s as if my heart constricts in my chest. He looks tired and worn out. Maybe he got as little sleep as I did last night.
“When I came to Lone Star, it was to fulfill both promises I’d made my dad. I never thought I’d get a chance to do them at the same time. The first was to make amends for some poor decisions I made in my last job. The other was to find out if you were every bit the piece of shit my brother was. A liar. A cheat. Someone I was ashamed to have my name associated with. I figured that, if you were any of those things, I’d tell the executor that I couldn’t find you. I’d get a copy of his death certificate to prove his demise and then turn Fletcher’s portion over to charity. But then you happened.” He shakes his head ever so subtly and a ghost of a smile—one laced with regret and sorrow—curves up his lips. “Your grit and ferocity and devotion and love and your wild happened.”
He blows out a breath and looks out the window toward the ranch we made new again. “Coming here, getting to know you? For the life of me, I didn’t understand how fate crossed our paths, but I know I wanted you to fight for all of this.” He waves his hand toward the stables. “I wanted to fight for it beside you. Hell, I wanted to help fix the things he broke in you. Maybe if I helped you, then I could figure out myself . . .” He emits a soft chuckle as he looks down and then back up to me. “But then you went and made me fall in fucking love with you, Tatum. Then you happened.”
It takes every ounce of restraint I have not to step into him and tell him to stay.
But I know I deserve better than what he did to me.
Both are painful.
Only one is what I’ll allow myself to accept.
“This has been in my wallet since the first day I stepped on this ranch.” Jack takes a step forward and sets an envelope onto the counter beside me. “Take your time. Figure out what you need to figure out. It’s a lot easier to love through the hate than to hate through the love. I know that better than anyone. I just hope you choose to fight as hard for me and for us as you did for this ranch. I just hope you choose me.”
Tears well in his eyes, and that muscle feathers in his jaw as he takes another hesitant step toward me.
I hold my breath.
I freeze.
And then he leans forward and brushes his lips against mine one last time. My tears tangle on his tongue as it slips between my lips. His thumb brushes back and forth over the line of my jaw. The wince on his face, as if it’s physically hard for him to step back, to walk away, tells me this is as brutal for him as it is for me.
“Until next time,” he murmurs.
He meets my eyes one last time before he turns on his heel and walks out of the door.
His feet clomp on the stairs, carrying him out of my life.
Tears course down my cheeks as every part of me wants to call him back.
As every part of me yearns for him.
But I glance over to the picture he took of me that’s sitting on my counter. It’s supposed to remind me of the beginning of my next time.
The one that represents my promise never to settle again.
And I know calling him back would be settling.
It would be allowing myself to accept things no one ever should. Deceit. Equivocation. Duplicity.
I pick up the envelope he left, and blink once and then twice at the check that is inside it.
His truck starts.
I stare at it, shove it back inside, and let it fall to the floor.
I follow the crunch of gravel as his sister’s car and then his truck drives to the road.
When the sounds are gone, when I’m all alone, I walk out of the back door and step into the pool—clothes and all.