Wyatt shakes his head at me, familiar with my juvenile humor. “Honestly, it’s because she’d be horrified if I spent the rest of my life pining after her. She would hate it, and it would be, in her mind, the worst thing I could possibly do. To live the rest of my life without love. Like, I know that in my very soul.”
My chest contracts. He's not lying. She would be so fucking mad at me.
“But what if my only experience with love was always just from afar?” I ask, daring to look him in the eyes.
Understanding tilts his lips into a slight grin. “She'd say that love is love, and if you already know how to do it, even from afar, you can damn well learn how to do it up close. She’d also say that you’ve gotta have more faith in yourself.”
“It's not the same. Loving her from afar was safe.”
Wyatt nods. He and I've never spoken about Renée in this way, but we’re saying out loud the things that we silently agreed on all those years ago.
“Did it hurt? Loving her like that?” he asks, reaching out to grip my arm.
I stitch my brows together, trying to remember, then shake my head. “It stung for a while at the beginning, but I never really thought I’d get to love her the way you loved her. I was just happy to know that some version of loving her was possible.”
“Why do you think that is?”
I shrug, the tequila loosening my muscles and tongue in equal measure. “I made the love I had for her a pretty little knickknack to put on the shelf. Something I could point to and say, ‘See? I'm a real live boy. I have feelings and everything.’”
“Wick…”
I gesture away Wy’s pained expression. “I thought all the feelings had been beaten out of me, so a pretty little knickknack on the shelf is better than I had any right to believe in.”
Wyatt’s tears spill freely. “Goddammit, Wick. You break my heart.”
He opens his arms, and I step into them. I don't know why I thought it was safe to hug the guy because his firm acceptance tugs loose a dam I didn't even know I’d built. Emotions I’ve tried so hard to suppress are violently ripped from the very center of my soul.
Sobbing, racking cries pour from my body, even more than I cried for Renée when she died. Grief pulls on the stubborn glue holding together the skin on my chin, and the pain just fits. Wyatt rubs my back.
“Poor, sweet boy. You didn't deserve the things that happened to you when you were a kid.”
“Lots of people have shitty childhoods,” I dismiss, trying to make the tears stop.
Wy pulls back, forcing me to look him in the eyes. He raises his brow. “No person should ever doubt their ability to love. When I think about the things you and Sparrow did while we were all in the middle of that terrible grief…I can never repay them. Because your actions were born out of love.”
I nod my head because it’s true. I loved Renée, but I also love this found family of ours too much to let the ranch fail.
Despite the tequila, Wy fixes me with a serious look, his jaw tight. “If you ever doubt your ability to love, you let me know. I'll remind you. Because I saw your love in action again and again. You’re half the reason we still have a ranch today. That my son has a legacy he can build on.”
I blink, hoping to stop the leaking from my eyeballs, but there’s no hope of that. Wy pulls me in, and I hang on tight, crying for the woman I lost. For the childhood I lost. I even shed a few tears over the fact that I didn't get the opportunity to love the man holding me, at least not in the way I could've. I cry until I run out of tears, gripping Wyatt until my muscles ache.
God, how it hurts.
I take a few ragged breaths and finally step away from him. Wiping my face, I give a dry chuckle when I see the huge wet spot on his shoulder, his shirt plastered to his skin where I unloaded years’ worth of grief.
He laughs with me, then holds up a finger, striding quickly to his bedroom. He appears a few seconds later with an old T-shirt, looking no worse for wear.
I feel a little ridiculous and worn out after so much emotion, but there is no judgment on Wyatt's face. He knows. He gets it.
“Would you like some food to balance out all of the tequila?” he asks. “Desi made me a month’s worth of dinners, and his enchiladas are delicious.”
I sniff, happy for the tequila running through my veins. “Absolutely. Brunch enchiladas are the bomb.”
After we heat up the food, we sit on the back porch, enjoying the beautiful view of the lake off in the distance. And Wyatt’s right. These are some damn good enchiladas.
We fall into a comfortable silence, and without meaning to, I drift off in the plush lounge chair. My dreams are pleasant, but my memory of them fades when I wake a few hours later. I only remember an ethereal version of Renée caressing my cheek, kissing my forehead.
As I stretch and sit up, the doors are open, and Wyatt’s footsteps on the wooden decking alert me to his presence.
