“I want you to ride,” he said. “Because it’s important to you. And I’m going to work on letting go enough to let you be who you need to be. Even if it scares me. Callie, when you fell I realized if something happened to you it would have been because of how I raised you. What I encouraged you to do, and that would have killed me.”
“Dad, I’m myself. And while I appreciate your worry, and you know I want your support... I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. It could never be your fault.”
He chuckled. “Well, that is true. I’ll tell you, when I thought you married Jake Daniels, I was pretty terrified.”
“I mean, I did marry him,” she said. “Legally.”
“No, I know. But I just... All I could see was you getting hurt. And not only that, I had to face the fact that you were a woman, and I didn’t much like that, either. Because a lot of that overprotective stuff... It only works when I can convince myself that you’re a child. And that’s the way that I feel I can protect you.”
“I’m not a kid. But... It’s okay that you want to protect me. I have to remember that it’s not you thinking I can’t do things. It’s... It’s just loving someone. I get that now. I want to protect Jake, from his own pain, and I can’t do it. I feel inadequate, and I feel I can’t reach him. And I don’t like it.”
Her dad nodded, and picked up his own fork, going into the other side of the cheesecake. “Yeah, I could see that he had some issues. And I could also see that you two were falling in love.”
“Yeah. He does love me. He just says it doesn’t change anything.”
“The wound has to be addressed,” her dad said. “You can’t just cover it up and let it fester. That’s the hardest thing to do.” He sighed heavily. “Listen to me. I say that, and I’ve never done it in my own self. I told myself that grief over losing a child is something you’re not supposed to heal from. And I’m afraid I’ve made you suffer because of it.”
“No. I’m an adult. And I should’ve talked to you, and I didn’t. If you treated me like a child it was because I kept on acting like one. A rebellious child who didn’t want any kind of honesty, because I was too busy protecting myself.” She sighed. “For just a little bit I felt so powerful because I was brave enough to show him my whole heart. But I didn’t feel so brave when it was finished and he told me we couldn’t be together.”
“But sometimes that’s just the step,” her dad said. “Failing before you figure out how to make a life. We do it over and over again. I did it with you. We could’ve had this conversation and you might not have married Jake to get what you wanted. But then you wouldn’t have fallen in love with him. And maybe this is an important step, too. You just can’t see to the end of it yet.”
“I didn’t take you for an optimist,” she said, taking another bite of the cheesecake.
“I don’t know that I’m an optimist. I’ve seen some pretty terrible things in life. I lost a child, and that’s about as bad as it gets. But I’ve got six more. And they’re as wonderful as that was terrible. So what I know is that life is good along with the bad. I have your mother, and she loves me, even when I’m a bullheaded ass. I love her even when she’s badgering you about making cookies. Everything is good and bad, darlin’. Every damn thing. And it doesn’t end on one spot or another. It just keeps going. So it’s bad right now, but it’ll be good later. And maybe... Maybe this will never be okay. Losing your sister was never okay. But other things have been. Other things have been damn great. Like having you.”
Emotion rose up in her throat, and she swallowed it, along with another bite of cake. “Thank you. I guess I just have to hope that... Hope that in the end I find something that I want just as badly as I want him.”
“Don’t count yourself out just yet. Let time do the work. Let him think about it. Let him taste what it’s like to live without you. It was easy for him to make a decision not to be with you when you were standing right there. But he’s been through... Grief. And I understand grief. When you lose someone the way that he did, the way that I did, you want that person and there’s no way you can have them back. Well, he could have you. So any hopelessness... That’s all his choice. Let it marinate for a while. See where it gets you.”
“I will,” she said, not feeling much better, but knowing that someday she might be able to reflect on her father’s words and find some comfort.
“Come on,” he said, hitting the top of the counter.
“What?”
“I want to watch you ride again. I want to be involved. Even if it scares me.”
And while Callie wasn’t sure how this would all untangle, and she wasn’t sure how she would ever not have a broken heart, she had gotten something. She had become a more whole version of herself. And she had this moment.
Maybe in the end, that would be enough.
Maybe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JAKE WAS DAMNED miserable but he knew that if he didn’t go to Sunday dinner it would only bring more questions than not, and Colt was still in town. And he... He found himself wanting to talk to his brother. Because he’d been alone all by his damn self for days, and the echoing inside of his chest wasn’t going away. Wasn’t getting any better.
And maybe it was time. Maybe it was time to talk to Colt, even if it wouldn’t fix anything. He felt like there was poison inside of his chest and he had to drain it out.
He managed to eat lasagna, even though it tasted like cardboard to him, and had two more beers than he normally did.
And then, when all was said and done, he found himself out on the front porch with his brother.
“Where’s your wife?” Colt asked.
“You’re the first person who asked that,” he said, looking out on the backyard miserably, and wishing he still smoked cigarettes, that it wasn’t a habit he’d left behind along with his teen years. Because he could sure use something. Something to help distract him. Something to numb the pain. “Nobody else asked.”
“Everybody else is afraid of you.”
“She left me.”
“I didn’t think it was a real marriage.”
“Yeah, funny thing about that.”
“Shocking,” Colt said dryly. “You married your best friend, who you have so clearly had a thing for for a number of years, and it blew up in your face.”
He stared out into the darkness for a long time. “She’s in love with me.”
Colt looked at him. Long and hard. “I don’t have to ask you if that’s a bad thing or not.”