Cade wanted to ram his head into a wall just to get the images of Rose out of his mind. He was becoming a madman thinking of her. She had not come back! Why had she not come back? Did she not know how crazy he was about her? That he lived and breathed to smell her, to see her, to know that she was always there for him?
He knew full well that he didn’t deserve her and that he was a disappointment, but he had always planned to change. One day, he had told himself again and again, he would be better and she would have the man she deserved. But that day never came and she grew tired of waiting.
“Where to?” asked the coach driver.
“Do you pass Tall Pine?” Cade asked. He was sober right now and felt the undeniable need to go to the cursed place that harbored the woman he was so desperately trying to live without.
“I do.” The driver laughed when a cloud uncovered the sun and Cade cringed and covered his eyes. “Rough night, was it?”
Cade chuckled a throaty laugh. “Rough couple of years more like it.” He pulled the money from his pockets and held it up to the driver; even with the little he had it was still much more than most. “Take me to Tall Pine as quick as you can. There is someone I need to see.”
The driver shrugged and took the money. “You got the look of a betrayed man in your eye. Someone take your money and flee to that valley?”
Cade did not answer, but merely glared and hauled himself inside the coach. “Took my heart,” he growled to himself. “My heart, my soul, my pride.” His hand slid to the cold steel on his belt. He had not fired his pistol for a long time, not since things began to grow worse between himself and Rose. His work suffered, his family suffered—all for the game. The more he played, the more he hated himself, and the more he hated himself, the more he wanted to play the game. He tapped his pistol; it had been a wedding gift from his father, a goodwill gift symbolizing his acceptance of Cade’s choice in employment.
“I worry less now that you have a wife,” his father had grinned. “You’ll be more careful, more responsible.”
Cade had gripped his father in a hug, feeling more proud than any other day of his life. His college degree, his trophies in athletics, none of it compared to the moment that Rose had walked down the aisle. He had a job he loved and a woman who was the world to him.
“I will love you, protect you, cherish you, and do everything I can to make you happy,” he had told her before God and every witness in the congregation who’d come to celebrate their wedding.
Cade had done none of it. So Rose had done it herself. She’d found her own happiness, slowly shutting him out, slowly expressing less and less. At first he’d liked it. He no longer had a crying or angry wife waiting for him as he came staggering home after another loss, but then he realized what was happening: She was shutting him out. Replacing him in her heart with some other love. A love that made her glow, that made her laugh again, that gave her a joy not credited to him. Cade rubbed his temples. He’d almost hoped it was another man. At least then there would be someone to fight, someone to blame other than himself, but her actions were as pure as a mountain stream, a stream from which he could no longer drink. He removed his hand from his pistol. What exactly was he planning on doing in Tall Pine? He’d groveled before, telling Rose it was the last time—it never was. He could justify himself with shouting and harsh words. Sadly, he had often done that before, too. It only pushed Rose further from him.
He knew he would not change. He had told her enough times that he would and both now knew that was impossible. This was him- a failed man.
“I just want to see her,” he said out loud. Was she as miserable as he was? Was she happy? What about the baby?
It had been wrong of him to deny a helpless child, but he was a desperate man. So desperate to keep his wife he’d turned his back on an innocent being. When had he turned into this man? “You alright back there?” the driver shouted back.
The other passenger remained silent. Cade thought the man, too, had seen better days.
“Yes,” Cade snapped. My life is falling apart. I have no woman, no children, and I am a worthless man with no control, hiding in plain sight. “I am just fine.” He closed his eyes and leaned back, his heart racing with the habitual desire to play and his finger twitching with the need to feel a stack of cards.