Chapter Twenty

Cade quickly hopped out of the truck before Sarah could yell at him and went around to her side. She was already standing by the truck glaring at him. “I’m trying really hard to think you have the best of intentions here.”

The door to the motel room swung open, and Carl stood there smiling. He was clean-shaven, his hair was combed and slicked back, and he was wearing a clean button-down shirt with a pair of skinny jeans that may not have been the best look but were still a vast improvement from the pleated polyester pants he’d been wearing last time.

“Carl?” Sarah gasped.

He spread his arms wide. “In the flesh. Nice to see you again, Sarah.”

“Carl, you look fantastic! You look so happy!” she said, hurrying over to him. Cade didn’t move. He really loved this part of Sarah. He hadn’t known it the night she tried to give Carl marital advice, but he loved how nonjudgmental she was, how genuinely caring she was. He had missed so many things about her.

Carl actually blushed beneath Sarah’s gaze, and if Cade weren’t so nervous, he might have even had a chuckle about it. “Well, I can’t take all the credit for it. You kids reminded me how important my marriage was. But it was all Cade who helped me get this new look.”

Sarah turned slowly to him, her eyes wide. “You went shopping with Carl?”

Cade shrugged but took it as a good sign that she seemed impressed by that. “Technically, no. I just guided him to some online shopping items. He went rogue with the skinny jeans, though,” Cade said, shooting Carl a look.

Carl smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, but Mary Beth really likes them.”

Sarah laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m so happy for you both.”

Carl rubbed the back of his neck, his face still red. “Well, thank you. Now I’m going to repay the favor to my new friends.” He gave him a wink—again, nothing Cade had approved of—and opened the door wider. Cade hoped like hell that he’d followed instructions and hadn’t gone rogue on anything else.

Sarah stepped in and gasped.

Following her in, Cade surveyed the room. Carl gave Cade a thumbs-up before he quietly left, shutting the door behind him. Sarah hadn’t said anything yet, but he could see she was taking in the arrangements of roses—the flowers she’d told Carl were a safe bet if you didn’t know a person’s favorite—the picnic basket on the middle of the bed that he’d had filled with gluten-free versions of her favorites, and also the new white cotton bedding that he’d given Carl strict instructions for, and maybe she even noticed the lack of decorative pillows. On one of the nightstands was the same brand of organic wine that Lainey and Hope drank from River’s, with real wineglasses, and a bottle of her favorite strawberry hand sanitizer.

“Cade,” she said softly before turning around.

He took the sheen in her eyes as a good sign and walked closer, stopping a couple of feet away. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away about your dad and the financials. I’m sorry for the reason I didn’t tell you sooner. I…” He struggled for the words to express his feelings, the stuff he’d been holding inside for so long. “There are people you meet and immediately know they’re bad, like they’re rotten from the inside. You see it in the hardness in their eyes; you hear it in the bitterness in their voice. Then there’s those people you know, deep in your core, that they’re your people, the kind who always assume the best about you. They can hurt you, but you know they’ll find a way to make it right.

“I learned early on not to trust anyone, and then I learned to trust myself, my instincts. The moment I met you, I knew you were my people. Then I spent time with you, and I knew you had guts like I’ve never seen before. I will never be that man who holds you back, who dampens your spirit. I thought that meant you could trust me with your weaknesses and I wouldn’t use them against you, but I did. I love you. So much. I couldn’t stand to see you hurt and in pain and I justified lying to you. I’m sorry.”

“Cade, I stood there and told you I loved you, and you rejected me,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

Self-loathing washed over him. “I know. I will never be able to take that moment back. I’m sorry. I…I just…” He took a deep breath and broke her stare, finding it within himself to be brutally honest because that’s what you had to do when you loved someone. “No one has ever said that to me before. No one has ever loved me, and for it to be you…a thousand thoughts ran through me, and I couldn’t handle what that meant. I still don’t think I’m worthy of it. But I’m here, and I love you more than I knew was possible,” he said, his voice raspy and thick.

He didn’t move, even though he wanted nothing more than to close the gap between them. She did take a step toward him and he thought that was pretty promising.

“I know why you did it,” she said. “I know it wasn’t because you wanted to control me, but the result was the same.”

He took a deep breath and spoke the rest, the stuff he was embarrassed to say out loud, to be so vulnerable, but he knew he would lay it all out there if it meant a chance with her. “It wasn’t just about wanting to protect you; it was about me and my self-worth. I’ve always had to prove myself to everyone, to be useful in order to be accepted. If I couldn’t fix things for you, then what did I have left?

“It’s not something I think about day-to-day. It’s not something I’ve ever talked about with anyone except you. But when you’re told every day that you’re nothing, you begin to believe it. It doesn’t mean I think I’m worthless or that I wallow in self-pity. I’ve never been the type. But when no one wants you, after a while you think there’s a reason, that there’s something wrong with you. No one has ever wanted me to belong to them. And that was fine. For my entire life, that was fine. Until you. I want to belong to you. I want you. I want you with my mind, my heart, my body. I want to love you.”

He stopped speaking when she rushed into his arms. “I love you, too,” she whispered. She raised one hand to his face and gave him a look that was almost his undoing. “You never had to prove anything to me, and you never have to be more than the man I know you are. That is already enough. You are enough, just the way you are. You’re perfect.”

That almost broke him, but he had to lay the rest out there. “What about your ranch? The fact that I bring nothing to the table?”

“My ranch? It’s yours, too. You build it with me.” She put her hands on either side of his waist, and it took all his self-control not to move.

“It’s not mine,” he said roughly.

“It is. It’s your ideas that will save the ranch. Your work. You’re the one who figured out what had happened to the money. You’re the one out there every day before dawn and after sunset. You’re the one who leads that team. How did you get it into your head that it isn’t yours? It’s as much yours as it is mine.”

“I can’t change where I came from, but I can change where I’m going,” he said. “I just want to be clear before we go any further. I don’t want to hide who I am. You need to know I have nothing to offer you.”

“Nothing to offer me?”

He managed a nod while also managing not to lean down and kiss her and tell her how sorry he was, because he loved her more than anything or anyone in his entire life. He stood motionless as she slowly unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt. He sucked in a breath as her soft hand slipped inside and stopped…covering his heart. She stared up at him, her eyes glistening with tears. “This. Your heart. You. This is all I ever wanted.”

She pressed her hand over his heart, and he felt it throughout his body. His gut tightened, his eyes were wet, and his chest constricted painfully. She was offering him everything, telling him that all she needed was him. There had never been a day in his life where anyone had told him that he was enough, just the man he was, yet here was this woman, a stranger a few months ago, now the most important person in his world. He loved her for that. For that fierce loyalty and sheer confidence in him.

Knowing he’d never be able to say no to her, to let her walk away from him again, but not knowing what that said about him, he leaned down to kiss her. He wanted to pull her into him, to feel the woman he never really ever thought himself worthy of. He kissed her like he’d never have another tomorrow, and he kissed her like she was the only woman he’d kissed before.

Forcing himself to pull back before they couldn’t, because he needed to finish what he’d started, he spoke the words that she’d said to him, that he’d rejected that night, that he couldn’t really believe. “I love you, Sarah. I love you so much, and if I could take it all back—the decisions I made and how I treated you that night—I would in a second.”

“I can handle life, Cade. I can handle the bad stuff, the good stuff. I need to know that you’ll let me handle it. I know that you’ll have my back if I need you, but that has to be my decision.”

He nodded. “I know that now. I will be there for you when you want me to. But from now on, we make the decisions together.”

“Deal,” she said, still holding on to him.

This time when they kissed, there were no secrets left between them. He kissed her with a liberation and an honesty he’d never felt before. When she undid the rest of the buttons on his shirt, it wasn’t in anger, and when they fell onto the bed, he reminded himself he had one thing left to do. “Wait a second,” he said, giving her one more kiss before standing and grabbing the bag of Peach Rings.

Her gaze went from him to the candy. “You have got to be kidding me. Please tell me this isn’t some kind of fetish you haven’t told me about?”

He laughed, some of his nerves dissipating slightly. He ripped open the bag and pulled one ring out, dropping the bag on the dresser. “I…I wanted to do this properly, but there was no time to get out to the city to buy what I wanted to buy,” he said, slowly getting down on one knee.

Her eyes widened, and she scrambled into a seated position. “Cade, what are you doing?”

“I know I never got to meet your parents. I know your last years with them after Josh were rough. But I also heard the love in your voice when you spoke about those earlier years. I know how much you loved them, how much their approval meant to you. I think your parents would have wanted you to have a real marriage proposal, and I think it’s what you would want, deep down. It’s what I want to give you, too.” He grabbed a Peach Ring and gently took her hand in his.

“I’ve never had a real family until I met you. You are family. You are everything to me, Sarah. I love you more than I knew was possible, and I want to spend the rest of my life loving you, if you’ll have me.”

She threw her arms around him, and he almost toppled backward, but the idea of being sprawled out on the carpet at the Highwayman made him steady them. He pulled back slightly to look into her eyes. “Yes. I love you, yes!”

She held out her hand, and he tried to put the Peach Ring on her finger, but it wouldn’t slide past the tip. She threw her head back and laughed at the absurdity of it all. He took the opportunity to kiss the exposed part of her neck, and when she gasped and tugged at his hair, he trailed his mouth along the smooth, fragrant skin exposed in the V of her shirt. “I swear, tomorrow we go into the city and get a real ring.”

“Our overdue road trip,” she said, kissing him.

He lifted her onto the bed. “We need to get off this carpet,” he said, kissing her again as she tugged him onto her. He covered her body with his and knew it didn’t get better than Sarah, that he was finally home. “And I promise you, our honeymoon won’t be at the Highwayman.”