Unbroken (25 page)

“Okay. Who did you recognize?”

“Jim Davis,” Sam said. “The guy he pointed to was Jim Davis.”

“What?” This time Cade was totally sure the ground under his feet tilted. Amber had said he should look at Davis, and she hadn't been wrong. But that was before he'd found out about Davis being a half-sibling. And then . . . well, the two together was too much.

Just too damn much.

“He was sure,” Sam said.

“Okay. That's . . . good. Thanks. I don't . . .”

He looked up and saw Amber standing there, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes wide, her face pale. “Cade . . .” she said.

He shook his head and held up his hand. “You're sure?” he said. “And sure enough that the guy he talked to was someone he was friends with?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “He was like his . . . assistant or whatever. Like Quinn and dad.”

“Okay. Thanks, Jake.” He watched Amber's expression change slightly, her distress turning to a kind of worried-distress that hardly seemed possible. “I need to go,” he said. “There's some . . . things I have to take care of. Thank you.”

“I'm sorry,” Jake said. “I can't . . . say it enough times.”

“Yeah,” Cade said. “You can. Once was enough. I don't blame you. I never have. Don't feel bad, okay?”

“I do though.”

“Don't,” Cade said. “It doesn't have to shape both of our lives. Actually, it doesn't have to shape either of our lives. Let's go on and do better things, okay?”

“Okay,” Jake said, his voice choked.

“Great. Talk to you later.” He hung up the phone and looked at Amber, not sure what to say. Not sure what to do at all.

There was just no processing things like this easily.

“Was that Jake?” she asked, wringing her hands.

“Yes.”

“What did he say?” She put her hand on her forehead. “No . . . wait. I can't know what he said. Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because I need to tell you something.”

“It's only going to take me a second to tell you—”

Amber ran over his words in a rush, while he was still speaking. “I'm pregnant.”

“Davis is the one who did it.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“No, you're right,” she said. “That's a huge deal. I should have let you go first.”

“You're what?” he asked, feeling like the world had just gone ahead and dropped away now. Just fallen out from under his feet and left him suspended in the air.

Amber tucked her hair behind her ear, her focus on the dirt in front of her. She looked . . . pale. And tired. She looked scared. It made his gut clench. Made him want to reach out and hold her, except the damn ground still wasn't under his feet.

“I think this Davis revelation is really interesting.”

He shook his head. “Amber. Focus. Pregnant. What. The. Hell.”

“Oh, that. Yeah. I'm . . . pregnant. At least that's what the test says. If you want to go off that. They're only like . . . ninety-nine percent accurate, and that, to me, seems like an error margin you have to consider. It's a whole percent, Cade. A whole percentage point of a chance that the test is just completely wrong.”

“How did that happen?”

“Well, Cade, when a man and a woman enjoy each other's bodies very much . . .”

“Amber . . .”

“And the man fails to wear a rubber when he screws the woman on a kitchen table, sometimes that careless lust results in a baby.”

“Amber. Be serious.”

“I can't,” she said, shaking her head, her dark eyes wide. “I just can't be. Because, Cade, if I take it too seriously, or I think too hard about any of it, I'm going to break the hell apart, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to make sense out of what's left.”

He should hug her. Or something. But he couldn't move. Mostly because he still felt like there was nothing under his boots and he really wasn't sure if taking a step was an option—or if he'd just fall straight down and keep on falling.

“I don't know what to say. Which is kind of shit, I know,” he said. “But . . . I don't know what to say.”

“I don't either. Except . . . you know, like . . . a lot of people have miscarriages.”

“Are you offering that up as a silver lining?”

“I don't know, Cade. I don't fucking know. I don't really know . . . anything.” A tear slid down her cheek, and her lower lip trembled. And he knew he really needed to hug her, but for some reason his boots were still rooted to that nonexistent earth.

“Well, don't look at me, I don't have an answer.”

“Oh, you don't?” she asked, her voice getting louder, shriller, and he couldn't blame her. But he hadn't been able to stop the asinine statement from coming out of his mouth either.

“No, I don't.”

“Well then . . . great. So I guess we'll just not deal with it. It's in your genes not to deal with it, isn't it?”

Her words jarred him back to reality and hit with all the impact of a bucking horse. For a second he felt like he was back on the ground, getting trampled, the air torn from his lungs, the flesh torn from his bones.

Like he was bleeding out into the dirt, dying in front of millions of people on live broadcast.

There had never been another moment like that one, a moment of reckoning. When he'd stared down death and fear and truly faced what they meant. That things might be over. There was a clarity to it that had remained unmatched. Until now. Until Amber had ripped his guts out, turned his life upside down and gone ahead and said the exact thing he'd always been afraid of. The exact thing he'd never been able to say out loud.

“Yeah,” he said, taking a step back. Finally his damned legs were working. “Yeah, I guess it kind of is in my blood. To leave bastard kids spread all over the place. Except, you know what? I haven't ever done that, and I'm not doing it now.” As soon as he said the words, he believed them.

He'd always been afraid of being his father. That he was just like him. All charm, no substance. Able to trick people into caring, into believing he was a good guy, without ever actually backing that up.

Worse, when his father had confided in him, he'd been afraid the old man had looked at him and seen where he would end up. That if he ever tried with a woman, he'd just send it all to hell in the end.

And this pregnancy . . . it seemed to confirm it. He'd been careless with a woman who had done nothing but give to him. He'd followed his own pleasure to an end with unfixable consequences. It was worse than bleeding out in a crowded arena. It was the evidence of his weakness, right in front of him.

Except in all of his worrying, in all of his doubt, he'd forgotten one thing.

He had the control.

He had the control over the manner of man he was, and no one, not his father, not a bucking bronco, not a half brother with some kind of daddy complex, not an older brother with a god complex, could take that control from him.

Shit happened. Hell, tons of shit had happened to him. He'd lost the ability to walk straight. He'd lost the ability to compete. He'd lost his mother too soon.

He would not lose his child. He would not leave his child. And he sure as hell would never be like his father.

There were choices to make in life, and for too long, he'd made none. For too long, he'd coasted on anger and grief over a lost career. Grief over the loss of a father who'd never been what he should have. Fear that he would never be the man he should be either.

But dammit, why not?

He'd given his father a pass with his fear, and that was something he hadn't fully realized until now. Feeling like it was hereditary meant he couldn't fight it . . . and his father hadn't been able to either. But that was a boy's perspective. And he wasn't a boy anymore.

He was a man, as his father had been. His father could have been better if he'd wanted to, and Cade had to face that fact. Had to face that his father had chosen to commit the sins he had. Had chosen to dishonor his wife, to abandon his children.

To lie to a whole town, and to the woman he'd made vows to.

It was hell to realize that. To admit it.

But it was also the key to freedom.

Dave Mitchell had made decisions about how he was going to live his life. And Cade was going to make his own. Independent from the man his father had been, independent from his fears about his own shortcomings.

He was always afraid before he got on a bronc in the rodeo. But he always saddled up anyway. And today, no matter how afraid he was, he knew it was time to saddle up.

“You just said you didn't know what to do,” she said.

“That was ten seconds ago. I just made a decision.”

“And what decision is that?”

“Amber Jameson, you're going to marry me.”

Twenty

“I'm . . . what?”

“You're going to marry me.”

Amber blinked and took a step away from Cade. He had a strange and frightening light in his eyes. Determination. Determination on a level she did not want to deal with. On a level she wasn't sure she
could
deal with.

“I don't . . . think I am. I don't recall agreeing to that.”

“You're having my baby.”

“I'm sorry, did we fall into a time warp and go back to nineteen fifty-three?”

“You're right, Amber. I've done some stupid things. And the difference between me and my father is going to be how I handle it. I'm going to be there for you. I'm going to be there for my child.”

“But Cade, we don't . . . you don't . . . you don't love me,” she said, forcing the words through her tightened throat.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked.

“Um . . . lots.”

“Yeah, well . . . my parents were in love. I assume yours thought they were at some point. What the hell good did that do anyone? We have choices,” he said, like it was some kind of revelation.

“Sure,” she said. “We have choices. I fail to see why that has led to you deciding that I have one choice, which is to accept your half-cocked marriage proposal.”

“Because it's the right choice,” he said.

“I'm still waiting for that famous Mitchell reasoning to kick in.”

“This is Mitchell reasoning. Do you not remember Cole and Kelsey?”

“You know, that doesn't make your offer more enticing. ‘Well, when my brother knocked a chick up on accident, he proposed' does not make my heart skip. Even a little.”

“I'm not trying to make your heart skip, Amber. I'm just saying . . . how do you want this to go? Do you want our child to have a family? Or do you want what we had? A pile of broken dysfunctional?”

“I don't know how on earth you think you and I will pass as functional.”

“Because we will,” he said. “Because we're not going to start out blind, or in love, or lying to ourselves and each other. Because we're going to walk in knowing full well how fragile this family thing can be. Because we'll walk in determined to live for something bigger than just ourselves.”

“You're awfully philosophical about something that is a massive freaking deal.”

“At least I have a plan. What was your plan?”

She let out a short, snortlike noise. “I . . . was planning on . . . being in denial for the next six months and then figuring it out after that.”

“Well that's one way to go about it,” he said, taking another step toward her. “Or, we can go with my plan. Which is an actual plan.”

He was pissed. And it was her fault. She'd hit him low, and she hadn't even meant it. Cade was nothing like his father. Nothing at all. But she knew, with that instinct friends had about things, that it was the thing he was afraid of. So she'd smacked him across the face with it.

And now she was reaping the unforeseen consequences.

She sort of wished the consequence was just him yelling at her and not proposing. Because yelling she could do. She could yell back with the best of them. But handling a proposal? Yeah, she had no idea how to do that.

Not when half of her really wanted to marry him.

There, she'd admitted it.

Because marrying Cade would mean she had him forever. And he would always sleep with her. And hold her. And kiss her. And he would be hers.

She was forgetting why she was supposed to resist. Why she should protest.

Oh yeah, that love business. Love was A Thing. It was supposed to be The Thing when it came to marriage. But then, wasn't he right about their parents? Love hadn't gotten her mother anywhere. Her mother had ended up alone, unable to cope and, in the end, without her child. Love had gotten Cade's mother exactly nowhere too. Living a life that was a lie, even if it was a shiny one.

Cade's father, for all that he professed to love Cade's mother, had been a faithless rat. So really, what was love? Did it make any difference at all?

Or was it all really what Cade said? Making choices and sticking with them.

“I have to think about this,” she said. “All of it.”

“You want the baby, don't you?” he asked.

“I don't want to not have it,” she said. She couldn't think about giving it up, or ending the pregnancy. She'd been unwanted. She'd been the afterthought. She wouldn't do that to a child of hers. That decision she could make with confidence.

“Well, that's . . . something.”

“Oh don't be an ass, Mitchell. You can't honestly tell me you're in a place in life where you want a baby.”

“No,” he said. “I can't. But . . . but why not? What else are we doing with our lives, Amber? And . . . think about it. We could have this,” he said, gesturing to the field. “We could have this ranch. And we can take care of your grandpa together. We can build this, build a family. And you won't have to wait tables if you don't want to. I sure as hell didn't think I would ever have a wife or a kid, but . . . but it's happening, so why not just . . . go with it?”

“It's marriage and children, not a road trip, Cade. I think impulsive isn't the approach we're looking for here.”

Except she wanted it. So bad her chest hurt. And that worried her. Because if her heart wasn't engaged in this whole relationship-with-Cade-thing, it seemed like her heart shouldn't hurt. Yet it did.

“Fine,” he said, his voice rough. “We'll talk about it later, but I'm not changing my mind. This is what I want.”

“You're annoying.”

“I know.”

“Can we forget about the baby for a second?”

Cade's eyebrows shot up. “I'm not sure I can.”

“I want to ask you about Davis though. And if you're okay.”

He put his hands on his lean hips and looked down, his hat obscuring his face. “No, I'm not okay. The man who is, apparently, my half brother, was responsible for the accident that almost killed me. The one that cost me my career. So . . . not okay.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Marry me.”

“Cade Mitchell . . .”

“I don't know. I don't really know what to do at this point. It takes unbelievably complicated to a whole new level, don't you think?”

“You Mitchells seem to excel at that.”

“At least we excel at something.”

“Wish I could say the same for my family,” she said. “We just excelled in splitting up.”

“That's what I want to prevent,” he said, the look in his eyes far too sincere. A sincere Cade was a dangerous thing to her senses.

“Let's go . . . I don't know, let's go eat.”

“You're hungry?”

“Starving. I slept in till two thirty. I want a cheeseburger.”

“Really?”

“Can has it?”

“You're reverting to lolcats.”

“I know. Don't make me text you a graphic to illustrate. I will.”

“No,” he said, holding up his hands. “I'll feed you. No need to bombard me with stupid cat pictures.”

This felt weirdly normal. And nothing should feel normal right now. But she couldn't say she was sorry that, for the moment at least, she felt like she was talking to her friend. Not her lover, not the father of her baby. Her friend.

Right now, she really needed her friend.

“For a bacon cheeseburger, I'll behave.”

“You sure you can go out in public?”

“Why? Do I have ‘preggo' stamped on my forehead?”

“No, I just thought you might be feeling . . . vulnerable?”

“I don't do vulnerable, Cadence,” she said—a total lie and they both knew it, seeing as she'd been standing in front of him weeping mere hours ago. But she was pulling false bravado because she needed it.

And thankfully, he let her.

“Nah. Of course you don't. Let's go feed you.”

*   *   *

“You have to let me out of bed eventually.”

“No,” John said, rolling over, his arms bracketing Nicole's head. “I don't.”

“You have a store to run. It was closed. All day.”

“I put a sign on the door that said I had a medical emergency.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You did not have a medical emergency.”

“I did. I had an erection lasting longer than four hours.”

“Ha!” She put her hands over her face and scrubbed her eyes. Really, she shouldn't find his shenanigans amusing. She should tell him he was being crass. But since she'd been in bed, naked, with him for almost twenty-four hours she wasn't sure she had any room to name-call. “You're a beardy weirdo,” she said.

“And you're a tattooed city girl. My mother warned me about women like you.”

“Well, no one warned me about men like you. But I still know better.”

He moved away from her and laid on his stomach, his chin resting on his forearms. “How is it you know better?”

“My dad. The way my mom was about him. Men are fun, but in my experience you shouldn't get too attached to the idea of keeping them.”

She extended her hand and traced his lower lip with her fingertip. She was attached to him already. And she hated that it was true. Even though she knew that there was only heartbreak at the end of it all, she was attached.

“Maybe,” he said. “But if you find one who wants to keep you too, it doesn't seem like it would be all that risky.”

“That's the hard part,” she said.

“Maybe not.”

“There's another Mitchell bastard.”

“Is that why you came last night?” he asked. He hadn't asked questions; he'd just opened the door and let her inside. And then they'd spent the night in bed. When they'd talked it had been about food and music. About places they wanted to go. About hypotheticals, not about reality.

“Yes. I had to go somewhere that wasn't there.”

“So you came here.”

“Yeah. I feel . . . more comfortable here, actually. Which is weird. And don't run.”

He laughed. “Why would I run?”

“Because. You're a commitment-phobic man-whore. I can smell it all over you.”

“You smell it on me?”

She leaned in and sniffed his chest, right between his pecs, the hair there prickly against her nose. “Okay. Metaphorically. Literally you smell like sweat, and pine and sandalwood. And it's very nice.”

“I think you're the first woman to ever smell me.”

“Lies. I bet the whole town sniffs you surreptitiously when they walk by you in your shop.”

“Even the cowboys?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah. The women want to smell you. The men want to smell like you.”

“And you?”

“I
am
smelling you,” she said. “I'm the envy of all.”

“Who knew it was so simple?”

“It would be more simple if I could stay here.” As soon as the words left her mouth she realized how they sounded. She winced. “I mean, not in a creepy way. Just that hiding under your covers is always preferable to facing reality. Hiding under your covers with a guy who resembles a studly lumberjack is even better. That's all I meant.”

“Right. Well, you can hide under my covers for as long as you want. But I will need to go down and open the store eventually.”

“I could, like . . . do your taxes.”

“Could you?”

“Yeah, man. It's what I do.”

“That's handy.”

“I know.”

“What else do you do?” he asked, giving her a smile best described as wicked.

“Why don't I get under the covers and show you.”