“Well, it looks like everything is coming together for Dad’s Christmas party,” Sierra said brightly, looking down at the car seat next to her that contained a sleeping newborn. “Gage will be there, kind of a triumphant return, coming-out kind of thing.”
Maddy’s older brother shifted in his seat, his arms crossed over his broad chest. “You make me sound like a debutante having a coming-out ball.”
“That would be a surprise,” his girlfriend, Rebecca Bear, said, putting her hand over his.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Sierra said, smiling, her slightly rounder post-childbirth cheeks making her look even younger than she usually did.
Maddy was having a difficult time concentrating. She had met her siblings early at The Grind, the most popular coffee shop in Copper Ridge, so that they could all get on the same page about the big West family soiree that would be thrown on Christmas Eve.
Maddy was ambivalent about it. Mostly she wanted to crawl back under the covers with Sam and burrow until winter passed. But they had agreed that it would go on only until Christmas. Which meant that not only was she dreading the party, it also marked the end of their blissful affair.
By the time Sam had left last night, it had been the next morning, just very early, the sun still inky black as he’d walked out of her house and to his truck.
She had wanted him to stay the entire night, and that was dangerous. She didn’t need all that. Didn’t need to be held by him, didn’t need to wake up in his arms.
“Madison.” The sound of her full name jerked her out of her fantasy. She looked up, to see that Colton had been addressing her.
“What?” she asked. “I zoned out for a minute. I haven’t had all the caffeine I need yet.” Mostly because she had barely slept. She had expected to go out like a light after Sam had left her, but that had not been the case. She had just sort of lay there feeling a little bit achy and lonely and wishing that she didn’t.
“Just wondering how you were feeling about Jack coming. You know, now that the whole town knows that he’s our half brother, it really is for the best if he comes. I’ve already talked to Dad about it, and he agrees.”
“Great,” she said, “and what about Mom?”
“I expect she’ll go along with it. She always does. Anyway, Jack is a thirty-five-year-old sin. There’s not much use holding it against him now.”
“There never was,” Maddy said, staring fixedly at her disposable coffee cup, allowing the warm liquid inside to heat her fingertips. She felt like a hypocrite saying that. Mostly because there was something about Jack that was difficult for her.
Well, she knew what it was. The fact that he was evidence of an affair her father had had. The fact that her father was the sort of man who cheated on his wife.
That her father was the sort of man more able to identify with the man who had broken Maddy’s heart than he was able to identify with Maddy herself.
But Jack had nothing to do with that. Not really. She knew that logically. He was a good man, married to a great woman, with an adorable baby she really did want in her life. It was just that sometimes it needled at her. Got under her skin.
“True enough,” Colton said. If he noticed her unease, he certainly didn’t betray that he did.
The idea of trying to survive through another West family party just about made her jump up from the coffee shop, run down Main Street and scamper under a rock. She just didn’t know if she could do it. Stand there in a pretty dress trying to pretend that she was something the entire town knew she wasn’t. Trying to pretend that she was anything other than a disappointment. That her whole family was anything other than tarnished.
Sam didn’t feel that way. Not about her. Suddenly, she thought about standing there with him. Sam in a tux, warm and solid next to her...
She blinked, cutting off that line of thinking. There was no reason to be having those fantasies. What she and Sam had was not that. Whatever it was, it wasn’t that.
“Then it’s settled,” Maddy said, a little bit too brightly. “Jack and his family will come to the party.”
That sentence made another strange, hollow sensation echo through her. Jack would be there with his family. Sierra and Ace would be there together with their baby. Colton would be there with his wife, Lydia, and while they hadn’t made it official yet, Gage and Rebecca were rarely anywhere without each other, and it was plain to anyone who had eyes that Rebecca had changed Gage in a profound way. That she was his support and he was hers.
It was just another way in which Maddy stood alone.
Wow, what a whiny, tragic thought. It wasn’t like she wanted her siblings to have nothing. It wasn’t like she wanted them to spend their lives alone. Of course she wanted them to have significant others. Maybe she would get around to having one too, eventually.
But it wouldn’t be Sam. So she needed to stop having fantasies about him in that role. Naked fantasies. That was all she was allowed.
“Great,” Sierra said, lifting up her coffee cup. “I’m going to go order a coffee for Ace and head back home. He’s probably just now getting up. He worked closing at the bar last night and then got up to feed the baby. I owe him caffeine and my eternal devotion. But he will want me to lead with the caffeine.” She waved and picked up the bucket seat, heading toward the counter.
“I have to go too,” Colton said, leaning forward and kissing Maddy on the cheek. “See you later.”
Gage nodded slowly, his dark gaze on Rebecca. She nodded, almost imperceptibly, and stood up. “I’m going to grab a refill,” she said, making her way to the counter.
As soon as she was out of earshot, Gage turned his focus to her, and Maddy knew that the refill was only a decoy.
“Are you okay?”
This question, coming from the brother she knew the least, the brother who had been out of her life for seventeen years before coming back into town almost two months ago, was strange. And yet in some ways it wasn’t. She had felt, from the moment he had returned, that there was something similar in the two of them.
Something broken and strong that maybe the rest of them couldn’t understand.
Since then, she had learned more about the circumstances behind his leaving. The accident that he had been involved in that had left Rebecca Bear scarred as a child. Much to Maddy’s surprise, they now seemed to be in love.
Which, while she was happy for him, was also a little annoying. Rebecca was the woman he had damaged—however accidentally—and she could love him, while Maddy seemed to be some kind of remote island no one wanted to connect with.
If she took the Gage approach, she could throw hot coffee on the nearest handsome guy, wait a decade and a half and see if his feelings changed for her over time. However, she imagined that was somewhat unrealistic.
“I’m fine,” she said brightly. “Always fine.”
“Right. Except I’m used to you sounding dry with notes of sarcasm and today you’ve been overly peppy and sparkly like a Christmas angel, and I think we both know that isn’t real.”
“Well, the alternative is me complaining about how this time of year gets me a little bit down, and given the general mood around the table, that didn’t seem to be the best idea.”
“Right. Why don’t you like this time of year?”
“I don’t know, Gage. Think back to all the years you spent in solitude on the road. Then tell me how you felt about Christmas.”
“At best, it didn’t seem to matter much. At worst, it reminded me of when I was happy. When I was home with all of you. And when home felt like a happy place. That was the hardest part, Maddy. Being away and longing for a home I couldn’t go back to. Because it didn’t exist. Not really. After everything I found out about Dad, I knew it wouldn’t ever feel the same.”
Her throat tightened, emotion swamping her. She had always known that Gage was the one who would understand her. She had been right. Because no one had ever said quite so perfectly exactly what she felt inside, what she had felt ever since news of her dalliance with her dressage trainer had made its way back to Nathan West’s ears.
“It’s so strange that you put it that way,” she said, “because that is exactly how it feels. I live at home. I never left. And I... I ache for something I can never have again. Even if it’s just to see my parents in the way that I used to.”
“You saw how it was with all of us sitting here,” Gage said. “It’s something that I never thought I would have. The fact that you’ve all been willing to forgive me, to let me back into your lives after I was gone for so long, changes the shape of things. We are the ones that can make it different. We can fix what happened with Jack—or move forward into fixing it. There’s no reason you and I can’t be fixed too, Maddy.”
She nodded, her throat so tight she couldn’t speak. She stood, holding her coffee cup against her chest. “I am looking forward to seeing you at the Christmas party.” Then she forced a smile and walked out of The Grind.
She took a deep breath of the freezing air, hoping that it might wash some of the stale feelings of sadness and grief right out of her body. Then she looked down Main Street, at all of the Christmas lights gilding the edges of the brick buildings like glimmering precious metal.
Christmas wreaths hung from every surface that would take them, velvet bows a crimson beacon against the intense green.
Copper Ridge at Christmas was beautiful, but walking around, she still felt a bit like a stranger, separate and somehow not a part of it all. Everyone here was so good. People like her and Gage had to leave when they got too bad. Except she hadn’t left. She just hovered around the edges like a ghost, making inappropriate and sarcastic comments on demand so that no one would ever look at her too closely and see just what a mess she was.
She lowered her head, the wind whipping through her hair, over her cheeks, as she made her way down the street—the opposite direction of her car. She wasn’t really sure what she was doing, only that she couldn’t face heading back to the ranch right now. Not when she felt nostalgic for something that didn’t exist anymore. When she felt raw from the conversation with Gage.
She kept going down Main, pausing at the front door of the Mercantile when she saw a display of Christmas candy sitting in the window. It made her smile to see it there, a sugary reminder of some old memory that wasn’t tainted by reality.
She closed her eyes tight, and she remembered what it was. Walking down the street with her father, who was always treated like he was a king then. She had been small, and it had been before Gage had left. Before she had ever disappointed anyone.
It was Christmastime, and carolers were milling around, and she had looked up and seen sugarplums and candy canes, little peppermint chocolates and other sweets in the window. He had taken her inside and allowed her to choose whatever she wanted.
A simple memory. A reminder of a time when things hadn’t been quite so hard, or quite so real, between herself and Nathan West.
She found herself heading inside, in spite of the fact that the entire point of this walk had been to avoid memories. But then, she really wanted to avoid the memories that were at the ranch. This was different.
She opened the door, taking a deep breath of gingerbread and cloves upon entry. The narrow little store with exposed brick walls was packed with goodies. Cakes, cheeses and breads, imported and made locally.
Lane Jensen, the owner of the Mercantile, was standing toward the back of the store talking to somebody. Maddy didn’t see another person right away, and then, when the broad figure came into view, her heart slammed against her breastbone.
When she realized it was Sam, she had to ask herself if she had been drawn down this way because of a sense of nostalgia or because something in her head sensed that he was around. That was silly. Of course she didn’t sense his presence.
Though, given pheromones and all of that, maybe it wasn’t too ridiculous. It certainly wasn’t some kind of emotional crap. Not her heart recognizing where his was beating or some such nonsense.
For a split second she considered running the other direction. Before he saw her, before it got weird. But she hesitated, just for the space of a breath, and that was long enough for Sam to look past Lane, his eyes locking with hers.
She stood, frozen to the spot. “Hi,” she said, knowing that she sounded awkward, knowing that she looked awkward.
She was unaccustomed to that. At least, these days. She had grown a tough outer shell, trained herself to never feel ashamed, to never feel embarrassed—not in a way that people would be able to see.
Because after her little scandal, she had always imagined that it was the only thing people thought about when they looked at her. Walking around, feeling like that, feeling like you had a scarlet A burned into your skin, it forced you to figure out a way to exist.
In her case it had meant cultivating a kind of brash persona. So, being caught like this, looking like a deer in the headlights—which was what she imagined she looked like right now, wide-eyed and trembling—it all felt a bit disorienting.
“Maddy,” Sam said, “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“That’s because we didn’t make any plans to meet here,” she said. “I promise I didn’t follow you.” She looked over at Lane, who was studying them with great interest. “Not that I would. Because there’s no reason for me to do that. Because you’re the farrier for my horses. And that’s it.” She felt distinctly detached and light-headed, as though she might drift away on a cloud of embarrassment at a moment’s notice.
“Right,” he said. “Thank you, Lane,” he said, turning his attention back to the other woman. “I can bring the installation down tomorrow.” He tipped his hat, then moved away from Lane, making his way toward her.
“Hi, Lane,” she said. Sam grabbed hold of her elbow and began to propel her out of the store. “Bye, Lane.”
As soon as they were back out on the street, she rounded on him. “What was that? I thought we were trying to be discreet.”
“Lane Jensen isn’t a gossip. Anyway, you standing there turning the color of a beet wasn’t exactly subtle.”
“I am not a beet,” she protested, stamping.
“A tiny tomato.”
“Stop comparing me to vegetables.”
“A tomato isn’t a vegetable.”
She let out a growl and began to walk away from him, heading back up Main Street and toward her car. “Wait,” he said, his voice possessing some kind of unknowable power to actually make her obey.
She stopped, rooted to the cement. “What?”
“We live in the same town. We’re going to have to figure out how to interact with each other.”
“Or,” she said, “we continue on with this very special brand of awkwardness.”
“Would it be the worst thing in the world if people knew?”
“You know my past, and you can ask me that?” She looked around the street, trying to see if anybody was watching their little play. “I’m not going to talk to you about this on the town stage.”
He closed the distance between them. “Fine. We don’t have to have the discussion. And it doesn’t matter to me either way. But you really think you should spend the rest of your life punishing yourself for a mistake that happened when you were seventeen? He took advantage of you—it isn’t your fault. And apart from any of that, you don’t deserve to be labeled by a bunch of people that don’t even know you.”
That wasn’t even it. And as she stood there, staring him down, she realized that fully. It had nothing to do with what the town thought. Nothing to do with whether or not the town thought she was a scarlet woman, or if people still thought about her indiscretion, or if people blamed her or David. None of that mattered.
She realized that in a flash of blinding brilliance that shone brighter than the Christmas lights all around her. And that realization made her knees buckle, because it made her remember the conversation that had happened in her father’s office. The conversation that had occurred right after one of David’s students had discovered the affair between the two of them and begun spreading rumors.
Rumors that were true, regrettably.
Rumors that had made their way all the way back to Nathan West’s home office.
“I can’t talk about this right now,” she said, brushing past him and striding down the sidewalk.
“You don’t have to talk about it with me, not ever. But what’s going to happen when this is over? You’re going to go another ten years between lovers? Just break down and hold your breath and do it again when you can’t take the celibacy anymore?”
“Stop it,” she said, walking faster.
“Like I said, it doesn’t matter to me...”
She whirled around. “You keep saying it doesn’t matter to you, and then you keep pushing the issue. So I would say that it does matter to you. Whatever complex you have about not being good enough, this is digging at that. But it isn’t my problem. Because it isn’t about you. Nobody would care if they knew that we were sleeping together. I mean, they would talk about it, but they wouldn’t care. But it makes it something more. And I just... I can’t have more. Not more than this.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Well, neither can I. That was hardly an invitation for something deeper.”
“Good. Because I don’t have anything deeper to give.”
The very idea made her feel like she was going into a free fall. The idea of trusting somebody again...
The betrayals she had dealt with back when she was seventeen had made it so that trusting another human being was almost unfathomable. When she had told Sam that the sex was the least of it, she had been telling the truth.
It had very little to do with her body, and everything to do with the battering her soul had taken.
“Neither do I.”
“Then why are you... Why are you pushing me like this?”
He looked stunned by the question, his face frozen. “I just... I don’t want to leave you broken.”
Something inside her softened, cracked a little bit. “I’m not sure that you have a choice. It kind of is what it is, you know?”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be.”
“Did you think you were going to fix me, Sam?”
“No,” he said, his voice rough.
But she knew he was lying. “Don’t put that on yourself. Two broken people can’t fix each other.”
She was certain in that moment that he was broken too, even though she wasn’t quite sure how.
“We only have twelve days. Any kind of fixing was a bit ambitious anyway,” he said.
“Eleven days,” she reminded him. “I’ll see you tonight?”
“Yeah. See you then.”
And then she turned and walked away from Sam McCormack for all the town to see, as if he were just a casual acquaintance and nothing more. And she tried to ignore the ache in the center of her chest that didn’t seem to go away, even after she got in the car and drove home.