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  She went on, hoping she had. Hoping she’d reach him. “Guilt you seem to need to protect yourself. All those people love you, Jacob, you asshole. Is loving me so damn difficult? My parents can’t do it, my sister can’t do it without a heaping dose of effort on her part. And you can’t. The father of my child. The man that I let into my body. The first man that I’ve ever been with sober. I gave myself to you in a way that I’ve never given myself to anyone else. I gave my heart to you in a way that I’ve never... In a way that I never even knew I could. You can’t give me this. Because you—you need to protect yourself. Because you’re a coward,” she said. The words were flying faster now. She was spitting them out like acid, and she couldn’t stop herself because if she let them inside her chest she knew they would burn a hole straight through her heart. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t there at all, and he was just standing there. Standing there looking like granite. Like the mountain that this cabin was built on. He was immovable.

  And she was falling off a cliff.

  “It’s not about you,” he said. “It’s about me.”

  “Then you really haven’t learned anything. All this stuff you’ve been through and you haven’t learned a damn thing.”

  “You don’t have any therapy talk for me?”

  Rage burned right through the pain in her heart. “No. I’m sorry. I can’t detach and make us both more comfortable. I don’t have therapy talk, I just have a broken heart. What do you have to say to that?”

  Nothing. He said nothing. He simply stood there and stared at her. She launched herself forward and hit him on the chest with her closed fist. “I love you. I was never going to love anyone like this.”

  “We can still get married,” he said.

  The world’s worst consolation prize. The lamest and most ineffectual offering after she’d cut herself open and bled for him.

  “I don’t want to marry you,” she said. “I want to move as far away from you as I can and forget that I ever met you. But I can’t. Because we’re having a baby. Now I’m stuck with you. I’m stuck with this. Stuck with this feeling... Right now I think I hate you as much as I ever loved you.”

  She slipped her clothes on. Not talking. Not saying a damn thing. No amount of bile that she spit out seemed to change anything. He didn’t relent. Didn’t say never mind that he loved her, he was sorry that he hurt her.

  He just didn’t say anything at all, while she collected everything and made her way toward the door. And she hoped, even still, that he would stop her. That he would tell her to wait. That he would realize he was making a mistake. Because surely, he would. What they had was so real, and raw, and it felt deeper than any feeling she had ever experienced before in her entire life. How could he not feel the same?

  She just didn’t believe what he said. She just didn’t believe that he couldn’t feel. Not when she felt so much.

  But he remained unmoved. He was just watching her go.

  And then she realized she couldn’t go. Because she didn’t have a car.

  And she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of stopping now. Not at all.

  “You don’t have a car,” he said, his words feeling maddeningly redundant given she had already realized that.

  “I’ll call for a ride.”

  “You don’t have to do that. You live two miles down the road, I’ll drive you.”

  “I do,” she said. “I can’t stand to be with you for another second.”

  And she wasn’t sure she could stand not being with him either, but something had to give. Something had to.

  She stormed out the cabin door and into the still, cold morning. She took out her phone and looked at it.

  She could call Ellie, and really, she wanted to, but Ellie was probably at home by herself with Amelia, and she wouldn’t be able to leave her little girl to come and get Vanessa.

  Olivia.

  She would have to call Olivia, who had a husband at home with her, so she would be able to leave.

  And why not? She was bleeding all of her feelings all over everything. She might as well show Olivia what a mess she was. That she hadn’t changed.

  She wrapped her arms around her waist for a moment like it might hold her together, keep her from flying into pieces. Then she pulled out her phone and dialed her sister’s number as she began to walk down the driveway.

  She would just hope she didn’t get eaten by a cougar.

  If she did, maybe Jacob would be sorry.

  She let out a heavy breath and lifted the phone to her ear. On the fourth ring, Olivia answered. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  She stopped in the middle of the gravel driveway and looked around, at the sad gray sky fading into lightness with very little morning glory to be had, at the grim, gray trees that lined either side of the road. “No,” she said. “I need a ride.”

  “From where?” She could hear her sister springing into action already.

  “Just from Jacob’s house down to mine. But I don’t really want to walk on the road because it’s, like, two miles and I might get eaten by a large predator.”

  “Well, don’t get eaten.”

  It took Olivia about ten minutes to arrive. When her car pulled up, Vanessa was bathed in a glow from the headlights.

  She trudged sadly to the passenger side and got in.

  “You want to just go get some coffee?” Olivia asked.

  “Yes,” Vanessa said.

  She buckled, grabbed hold of the shoulder strap and leaned her head against it as Olivia turned around and they began to head down the driveway and toward town.

  “What happened?” Olivia asked finally.

  “I think he broke up with me,” Vanessa said, misery washing over her in a wave.

  “That dickhead,” Olivia snarled, hitting the steering wheel. “Did he really?”

  “Wow,” Vanessa said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that sort of language.”

  “Luke is a bad influence,” Olivia said. “And I’m kind of okay with it at this point.”

  “I think I am too.”

  “Plus, he hurt you.” They pulled up in front of Sugar Cup. It was just now six o’clock, and it was starting to open. They sat for a moment at the curb in front of the little coffee shop.

  The old white brick building was a staple of Vanessa’s past, and for some reason it made her feel unaccountably sad now.

  Maybe because she’d gone there before her life had gotten cruddy and complicated.

  Because it reminded her of nice times in Gold Valley, and she couldn’t access any feelings about nice times right now.

  “I know I’ve hurt you,” Olivia said. “So maybe I don’t have the right to get angry at him for doing it too. But I’m angry at him all the same.”

  “You came to pick me up,” Vanessa pointed out.

  “I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “I’m so sorry that I was so...useless when you needed me.”

  “You weren’t useless, Olivia. I pushed you away, and you didn’t know what to do. We were young, and we were stupid. I think every time we interact now we carry a little bit of that with us.”

  “Yeah,” Olivia said. “I’ve changed, though. I think I still default back to prickly prude, though. I try not to.”

  “I think you’re going to have to tell me about how you ended up with Luke.”

  “Maybe after you tell me what happened with Jacob?”

  “I’d rather hear a nice story first.”

  They got out of the truck and pushed on the black door, walking into the coffeehouse, bathed in a cozy, welcoming aura, a welcome change from the cold light outside.

  It was empty, all the tables vacant, and Vanessa knew that would change within a half hour.

  The place was as adorable as ever, the redbrick wall at the back decorated with a large photograph of the main street of town, the floor all made of scarred barn wood and a giant rustic chandelier hanging at the center of the place.

  Home.

  A piece of home, and a
happy piece of it, at that.

  “Do they still make sugar bars?”

  “They do,” Olivia said. “Though, I’m partial to cinnamon rolls.”

  The two of them ordered coffee and their preferred treats, and went and sat down at the table.

  Olivia told Vanessa about how she had been dating Bennett Dodge. And how she had broken up with Bennett when he’d failed to propose when she had expected him to, and then had landed upon the bright idea of using Luke Hollister to make Bennett jealous.

  It hadn’t worked.

  And Olivia had found herself falling in love with unsuitable Luke, even while trying to win back the man who she had decided was suitable.

  “I was obsessed with being perfect,” Olivia said. “At the expense of other people, I might add. I’m sorry... I think I did the same to you.”

  “Mom and Dad are hard,” Vanessa said slowly. “I felt like they needed us to be perfect too. But my response to that was not to...try. Because I didn’t think I could ever be good enough. So I tested the limits, and I found them.”

  “They never quit loving you,” Olivia said. “But that doesn’t make it okay that they couldn’t show it.”

  “I don’t know,” Vanessa said, sighing heavily. “We all could’ve made some different choices, probably.”

  “That’s probably the truest thing,” Olivia said. “We all could have done a little bit better.”

  “I wish I knew how to do better now. I’m ready to ask for better,” she said. “I’m ready to...have better. And Jacob doesn’t... He doesn’t love me.”

  Olivia looked down blankly at her cinnamon roll, then looked up at Vanessa. “Does he really not?”

  “I thought he did, and he was just being afraid. I yelled at him. And I figured he was bound to come to his senses and stop me from leaving.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about big, bad cowboys,” Olivia said slowly, “it’s that they are big and strong, and often their fear is bigger and stronger. Luke was like that. Do you think he went quietly into falling in love with me? Hell no. He really didn’t want to.”

  “But here you are, together,” Vanessa said.

  “Yes,” Olivia said. “Here we are. Don’t give up on him just yet.”

  “It’s different. He feels stuck with me because we’re having a baby.”

  “Clearly he doesn’t, since he found it easy to break up with you.”

  “Well, how will I know? How will I know if he loves me, or if he just regrets breaking off the marriage.”

  “You’ll know. Because when a man loves you it’s pretty damn obvious. Even if he says he doesn’t.”

  Vanessa closed her eyes and took a bite of the coconut-and-white-chocolate confection in front of her. She chewed for a moment, hoping that the sugar would pour a little sweetness on her soul.

  But not even that did it.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Well, I’m not going to walk away from you,” Olivia said. She reached across the table and took Vanessa’s hands in hers. “Whatever you need, I’m on your side. I’m so sorry that it took me this many years to say that. I am so sorry it took me this many years to reach out. But I will never, ever watch you drown. Never again. You were right, Vanessa. I turned away from you when you needed me.”

  “You can’t take all the fault,” Vanessa said. “It’s too easy for me to give it to you, and that’s not fair.”

  “None of it’s fair,” Olivia said. “But I could use a lot less self-righteousness, and a lot more humility. Because it was self-righteousness that kept us apart in the first place.”

  “Well, it’s easy to see now at twenty-seven, isn’t it? But we were sixteen.”

  “I know,” Olivia said. “But we’re not now.”

  “No,” Vanessa said. “We’re not.” She sighed heavily. “I need to call Ellie and tell her I’m not coming into work for the next few days. I can’t face him.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “When Luke said he didn’t love you...did you feel like your life was over?”

  “Yes,” Olivia said. “It turned me into the dramatic emo teenager that I never was before. It was funny, because I thought that I was in love with Bennett, but being without Bennett just felt inconvenient. Being without Luke made it hard to breathe.” She blinked. “But I did keep breathing. Because in the end, whatever had happened between the two of us, what he couldn’t take back was what I got from being with him.”

  Those words struck a chord inside Vanessa. And Olivia kept on talking.

  “He made me a stronger, better version of myself. He made me the girl who could stand in front of him and say that she loved him even while he rejected me. And I was miserable. Absolutely miserable. But I was stronger. Stronger because of him. I think that’s how you know it’s real. Whatever happens in the future... You take a piece of the love forward, and it adds to you. Makes you better.”

  “I know he did that for me,” Vanessa said softly. “And it was all that better he made me that ruined us. Because I can’t take less than love. Not now.”

  “And you shouldn’t,” Olivia said. “None of us should ever take less than love.”

  “I think...I have some thinking to do,” she said.

  She might not be able to change the way things were going with Jacob. She might never be able to fix it.

  But there were other things in her life she might be able to repair with the strength that he had given her.

  Whatever happened with him, she wasn’t going to waste these changes.

  “Can you take me home?” she asked when the coffee was drunk and the sweets were gone.

  “Sure.”

  They drove home in silence, and when Olivia dropped her off, she frowned. “Do you want me to stay with you?”

  “Thank you. But I need to be alone.”

  Alone with her feelings. Her very bad feelings. The sharp, awful feelings.

  And as she stood there alone in her living room with those feelings bearing down on her, she knew that she could withstand them.

  And that was the biggest gift she’d been given, one that had been building across all these years, and solidified with him.

  The giver of the heartbreak, the provider of the strength to withstand it.

  Because she was worth more, and that meant she would have to walk through this pain to get there.

  Because she was worth too much to dull her feelings and turn them into a muddy river that might sweep her away.

  So she stood strong in her pain, and she felt it. Felt it slice through her like a knife. Until she thought she might bleed out there all over the floor of her little house.

  And in the midst of all that pain, she gave thanks. Because she didn’t want drugs, and she didn’t want to drink. She wanted him, that was true. But more than anything, she wanted to be her, even now, even when it was hard.

  Because she had work that she loved. She had a strength cultivated from pain. She had a future.

  Her child. This relationship that she was growing slowly and steadily with Olivia. Her friendship with Ellie.

  Even now, even in all this pain, she wasn’t a black hole. Not anymore.

  She was Vanessa Logan, and she would endure.

  And she was damn proud of that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  VANESSA DIDN’T SHOW up to work the next day, or the day after that. And the only person who knew why—Ellie—wasn’t speaking to him at all.

  You asshole, you know why.

  Because of him. He was worried, worried sick because of course he was afraid that there was something going on with her physically. Something to do with the baby.

  Yeah, that’s all you’re worried about.

  He knew enough to know that she was alive and well, and had made it home safely after she’d stormed out early that morning. But beyond that...he didn’t know a damn thing. Art class was canceled for the remainder of the week, and Jacob felt like the boys—boys who had acted like they didn’t ca
re at all—weren’t very happy about it.

  They built in more time for outdoor stuff, did extra writing, and he knew the kids all enjoyed that, but they did miss Vanessa.

  But it was Aiden who rounded on Jacob with dark, angry eyes one afternoon when they were doing chores. “So what happened to her?”

  “She’s just taking some time off,” he said.

  “Liar. Something happened. I can tell.”

  “You’re just a kid. You can’t tell anything,” he said, immediately regretting the words, but not rushing to take them back either.

  “You did something wrong,” Aiden said. “And I don’t know why I’m surprised. You’re just an asshole like everyone else.”

  “I didn’t even think you liked art.”

  “I like her,” Aiden said. “She—she cares about people.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I think she knows... I think she knows how hard stuff is.”

  “She does,” Jacob said. “And she’ll be back.”

  “No, she won’t,” Aiden said. “I bet you she won’t.”

  He turned and stormed away from Jacob, leaving him stunned.

  “What the hell?” Caleb asked, moving over from where he’d been by the barn, helping one of the kids tack up a horse.

  “He’s just pitching a tantrum. He’ll be fine.”

  “About Vanessa not being here?”

  “The kids really love her class.”

  “And they love her,” Caleb said. “What’s going on? Because you’ve been a snarling asshole for the past few days.”

  “We broke up,” Jacob said. “So sorry, I guess you don’t get to be my best man anymore.”

  Caleb shook his head. “You dumb asshole. What did you do?”

  “Why the hell do you think I did anything?”

  “Because we’re related. And we’re related to Hank. So I assume that it all runs in the family.”

  “I’m not... I can’t love her. And I told her that.”

  “Why the hell not?” Caleb asked.

  “I don’t...want to talk about this with you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re the sad sack wandering around after a woman he can’t have, and I am not in the space to get a lecture from you.”

  And just like that, Jacob found himself getting knocked backward, his back crashed up against a tree, and his head hit pretty hard. He almost saw stars, and his brother didn’t look at all apologetic. “Watch it,” Caleb said.