“You’re not going to fucking leave it, are you?”
“I can’t.”
“I see.”Like he often did when he was being contemplative, he pressed his hands together and considered her over the top of his steepled fingers.“So you can’t come to the ranch, enjoy it, enjoy this, us…”
“There is no us,” she said.In frustration, she raked back her hair and bunched it into a ponytail.Even that freaking reminded her of him, so she dropped her hands.
Agitation drove her to her feet.“There can’t be an us, Cade, not when you’ve shut yourself off from me, your family, your own damn life.You said yourself that they’re worried about you.And I am, too.I can’t continue to come out here and play house with you while you keep yourself holed up in this mausoleum.”
“You’re in dangerous territory.”
Rather than anger or heat in his voice, there was more control than ever, as if he was so tight he might snap.She didn’t want to be anywhere near when that finally happened.
“Am I?”She knew one thing.She wasn’t the kind of woman who was capable of having anything long-term with a man who couldn’t give just as fully.“You’re a generous lover and I’ve done crazy things with you that I would have never tried with anyone else.But I’ve never done a one-way relationship, and I won’t start now.You’ve given a lot, but you’ve demanded even more, trust that I never imagined myself capable of.Yet I get crumbs in return.”From the start, he’d warned her away.She had ignored him and her own instincts time and again.“You don’t know me if you don’t realize how important love and family is to me, how I do nothing halfway.It’s all of you or none of you.”
“So what do you need to be happy here?”He came to his feet.
Loopy put her paws around her face, as if trying to block out the humans.
“I know you’d share your money, your house.But I don’t want the stuff”—she waved a hand—“that money can buy.”
“So what is it, exactly, that you want?Let’s be clear.Is it my fucking emotions served cold on a platter for you to examine and pick through?For you to judge?For the almighty Sofia McBride to say whether or not I am allowed to be the way I am?”
“You don’t know me,” she snapped back, enunciating every word.
“So you want to help?Make it all better?Tell me everything’s okay?That I’ll get over it?That time heals all wounds?Platitudes.I’ve God damn well heard them all.”He continued in much quieter tones.“Like everyone else, you’ll want me to focus on the good, the happiness, the laughter, the sunset, the fact I’m still here, that I have all this, that there must be some greater meaning or purpose to the whole thing.”
And because maybe on some level he was right and she felt guilty about it, she wrapped her arms across her chest instead of responding.
“I’ll tell you this, nothing will change history.My dad’s not coming back.He was robbed of years, of the family he loved, of his potential, of the chance to grow old and maybe see his grandchildren.Do you know that kind of pain?Who have you lost?Who can you not live without that you’ll never see again?Whose gravesite do you take flowers to?”
The ache, the raw devastation in his tone was real and it etched a mark deep inside her, scarring her, too.“Cade…”
“Think about that when you make your demands of me.And while you’re considering that, I want you to remember that every morning I get up and I look in the mirror and I see my father’s eyes looking back at me.And I know that I’m the one who killed him.”
Chapter Fourteen
He was a fucker.A cold, hard motherfucker.In his defense, he’d never pretended to be anything else.
Cade watched her face transform, from shock, to pain, to apology, to compassion.He recognized it.He’d seen it a hundred times before from a hundred different people.The response was always predictable.And always disappointing.Except from Sofia.
“That sucks.”
He blinked.
“Sucks worse than most things I’ve ever heard.You’re right.I had no idea.I had no right to intrude.No right to demand anything from you.”She drew a breath.“And you’re right that there’s no way I can begin to imagine that kind of pain.I’m sorry you live with it every single day.But you know what?I’m not letting you off the hook.I’m not going to give you those platitudes you expect.I’m one of those people who likes to fix things.Probably like most women, or anyone with a heart, for that matter.”Tears swam in her eyes, but she dashed them away.“But I know I can’t fix you.I know your family has tried.I’d be stupid to think I might succeed where they’ve failed.”
After gulping in a breath that she seemed to force all the way to the bottom of her soul, she went on, “It would be stupid to try.And I also know that I can’t keep giving and giving to a man when I have to watch everything I say.A man who will expect me to stay in bed in the middle of the night while he goes to his office, pours a whiskey and mourns.I’m simply not that strong.Nor am I strong enough to keep coming out here and pretending, hoping, wishing, dreaming that one day we can enjoy watching the sunset by the river.”
She took a few steps toward him and stopped in front of him.Then she reached up and tenderly traced his cheekbone before dropping her hand to her side.“I’ll tell you this from the heart.I am sorry, more sorry than you can know, that I reopened the wound.”
He grabbed her wrist as she tried to walk past him.She stopped and looked at him for a moment, her beautifully sculpted eyebrows drawn together.When he gazed into her tear-filled eyes, he couldn’t see the flecks in them.He opened his mouth, but he had nothing to say.Not a single fucking word, not even a nasty one.
“You warned me,” she said.“You were always honest.”
He let her go.
A few minutes later, he heard her boots on the stairs.He told himself to go after her, but he couldn’t force himself to move.Letting her go out to her car and drive away in the dark was assholeish, even for him.But he still didn’t move.
