Unbroken (28 page)

Twenty-Three

“I just needed to get away,” Amber said, looking from her
grandfather down to her hands. “I needed to think.” She'd already told him about the fact that she and Cade hadn't really been a couple. That she was having a baby. That Cade had proposed.

And that she'd run away.

“If I stay with him,” she said, not sure if she was going to get an answer; not sure if she wanted one, “well, if I stay with him, then . . . I'll be forcing myself on him.” Her words died out, a sob making her choke. “Like I did to you and Grandma. He'll have to take me because he's obligated to. He'll have to marry me because it's right. Because he's that good. And I just can't do that to him. And I can't do it to me.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “I want . . . I just want someone to choose to love me.” The words were so pathetic. She hated herself for saying them. It was such a stupid thing to have to want. To have to say. It was all so . . . sad.

“I do,” her grandfather said, his voice thin.

“Grandpa?”

“I love you,” he said. “Haven't I . . . told you?” he asked, his words slow.

“I know,” she said. “You did tell me. It's just . . . I always felt like I . . . invaded your house, and at first I was . . . I was so bad. Because I was daring you to send me back, but then . . . but then I started to love you and I wanted you to keep me so I tried to be good. But neither of those things were me. Not the bad Amber. And not the good one. I just wanted to stay.”

It was all clear then. Why she never called her grandparents' house her house, even though her name was on the title. Why she never wanted to make waves. Why she folded herself up small.

Because she'd always felt like as easily as she'd arrived, she could be sent away.

“We didn't choose to love you, Amber,” he said, every word halting. “We just did. From . . . the time you were born. Strong and . . . painful. Especially knowing that you . . . weren't being taken care of. I don't think I said this when I should have because . . . it felt disloyal to your dad. And as angry as I always was with him for not . . . for not ever seeing you. For not seeing us. He was our son. And we loved him too. He disappointed me. He hurt me. He hurt you, and I still loved him. Like I love you. You don't choose love like that. It chooses you. And I would never . . . change it. It's strong. It's the realest thing there is. We asked for you, you know. When we knew, we asked for you.”

Another tear slid down her cheek. “But Cade . . .”

“Is doing the right thing.”

“Yes,” she said. “And that's what I can't handle. I don't want to be just the right thing. I want love. I want him to love me,” she said, the words breaking. “I want him to love me.”

“Maybe he does.”

“I'll never know.”

“Then I'm sorry,” her grandfather said. “I'm sorry we failed you so badly. That you never learned to see what love looked like. We didn't want to force ourselves on you. Maybe we . . . should have.”

“It's not your fault that I . . . I'm broken.”

“We all are,” he said. “Look at me, in this damn bed. I'm extra broken right now. Does that mean you don't love me?”

“No. Grandpa, I love you. I'll always love you.”

“Then I don't see what . . . being broken has to do with anything.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Anyway, if I remember right, that Mitchell boy has a hell of a limp.”

Amber laughed, a tear falling from her cheek and down onto her hand. “Yeah, he does.”

She'd just hate to make his life any harder. If he was going to have a wife, it should be someone who wasn't so janked up.

Someone who wasn't just a little person-husk who couldn't seem to hold on to people in the same way the rest of the world did. At some point you had to ask when the problem was with you, and not with everyone else.

“Don't choose to be sad, Amber,” her grandpa said.

“I don't,” she said, shaking her head. “No one chooses to be sad.” She wondered if he was slipping out of lucidity.

“I think you choose to be sad,” he said. “Because you're scared of being happy.”

His eyes drifted closed, and Amber knew they were done with their heart-to-heart. She stood up and looked down at his sleeping form.

She couldn't really leave Silver Creek. Her grandpa was here. And anyway, she didn't intend to keep Cade from their child.

But there were bison at her grandfather's house, so she couldn't go back there. It wasn't like a herd of bison was easily transferable.

She took a deep breath and walked out into the hall, scrubbing her hands over her eyes. There was one place she could go for a while. A bonus for having retained her waitressing job.

So there, Cade Mitchell.

This was the very definition of a hollow victory. But better a hollow victory than no victory at all.

She swallowed hard and dialed Delia's number. At least she'd have a place to stay tonight. As for the rest of . . . forever . . . she wasn't going to look ahead to that. Because it didn't look very good at all.

*   *   *

“Everything is really coming together,” Cole said, looking out
across the field.

Cade knew he should feel triumph. Pride, because he'd gotten all this together and was proving to his older brother that, while the financial viability of his idea had yet to be established, he could follow through with something he'd set out to do.

But he felt nothing. Nothing but that same dull pain that started at his heart and radiated out, punching him hard behind the eyes at random moments and making him see black spots. Making it hard to breathe.

Amber. He missed that woman. He missed her stupid-ass texts. Her silly jokes. Eating breakfast with her. Waking up with her. Going to bed with her. Not just the sex, but the weight of her body over his as she slept. Not just the orgasms, but the smiles. Not just his lover, but his friend.

He was just sad, was what he was. He'd give up the rodeo again, ten times, and willingly submit to being trampled by that flipping horse, annually, if he could just fix this.

But she wasn't answering his calls.

“Yeah,” he said. “Everything. Every. Damn. Thing.”

“Okaaay,” Cole said, turning to look at him, “so not everything.”

“What? Do you see the bison? They're there. They're in the field. My life's work,” he said, spreading his hand grandly. “My life's work,” he repeated. “Damn bison.”

“What the hell happened to you? Was there a scorpion in your Cheerios this morning?”

“Nothing the hell happened to me,” he said. “I'm fine.”

“And I'm a purple unicorn. What the hell, Cade?”

“Can I call you Sparkles the purple unicorn?”

“If you want to eat my knuckles. And I'm being serious. I know we haven't been getting along all that well lately, but, you know, we used to talk. So what's happening with you?”

“My whole life is falling apart. No big deal. It's happened before. Of course, when it happened before, that time I might have actually died, I didn't really think I was going to die. This time, I'm concerned I might.”

“What happened?”

“Amber left me,” he said. “Without even a note. And she won't answer her phone.” He leaned on the fence, the wood from the top rail biting into his forearms.

“What did you do to her?” Cole asked.

“I got her pregnant.”

“Shit,” Cole said, leaning up against the fence. “Why didn't you say anything?”

“Because I asked her to marry me and she didn't answer.”

“I thought you were already engaged.”

“No. That was a lie.”

“What?”

“We weren't really together. I was just . . . Davis came and he was sniffing around, and plus I wanted to use the land for this, and it seemed like a good idea to just let Davis think we were a couple. Then it seemed like an okay idea to let you think it too. The engagement bullshit was courtesy of local word of mouth.”

“But you didn't correct that either.”

“My pride has been stepped on every which way for the past four years. I've been nothing but a hired hand to you, and even though I know you didn't mean to treat me that way . . . I couldn't carry the bulk of the work and I knew it. So I've been limping around feeling like a useless accessory to your operation and I haven't had a damn date since that horse tried to tear my femur out. So it suited me to go with the lie. Juvenile, sure.”

“Sure,” Cole said. “But it sounds to me like you used a lot of the same reasoning I used when I didn't want to tell you all that Kelsey's pregnancy was the result of a clinic mix-up. And the same logic Lark used when she ended up working for Quinn and didn't want to tell us she'd been tricked.”

“Mitchell pride and stubbornness,” Cade said.

“It's a helluva thing.”

“We started sleeping together when I moved in. It just . . . happened.”

“I'm only surprised you hadn't done it already.”

Cade shot him a glare. “I didn't want to mess things up. Which is what I ended up doing. Somehow. I asked her to marry me. That's what you do when you get a woman pregnant.”

“I'm having a flashback to another time and another conversation.”

“Yes, I told you you were an idiot for doing the same. But the clinic knocked up Kelsey, not you.”

“Didn't matter.”

“I get that now,” he said. “But she doesn't want to marry me. Obviously.”

“Well . . . do you love her?”

“Yeah,” Cade said. “I really do. And I didn't think I'd ever love anyone like this, but I do. With . . . everything.” He shook his head. “I'm standing here talking about my feelings. If that doesn't tell you what a mess I am . . . then nothing will.”

“Did you tell her?”

“No. I didn't realize it until after she left. And she won't answer her damn phone.”

“Then you have to go get her.”

“She wants to be alone, obviously.”

“So?” Cole asked. “What would you have told me? You'd have told me to stop being a pansy-ass and go get her back. You'd have told me not to mess up the best thing that had ever happened to me. Cade, I can tell you honestly, having known you with her and without her, that Amber Jameson is the best thing that's ever happened to you. As a friend, and as anything else. You'd be lucky to have a woman like her.”

“Sure, but is she lucky to have a man like me?”

“As long as you love her. That covers up a lot of mistakes, a lot of flaws, trust me. But offering marriage just to make things right? That doesn't work. Trust me, I tried it, remember? I had to offer it all.”

“But that's . . . hard. And it's scary.”

“Sure. But if you don't do it, you're left with nothing. And that's a whole lot scarier, in my opinion.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Gravel crunching under tires and the sound of a truck engine interrupted their heart-to-heart, and thank God, because Cade was going to break out into hives with all this feelings talk.

It was Davis's truck.

“You might want to arm yourself,” Cade said, only half-joking.

“What did you do?”

“Well, I'm doing my damndest to get him thrown out of the rodeo, seeing as he's the one who caused my injury.”

Cole's head whipped around to face Cade. “Seriously, Cade, you didn't think you owed me a phone call?”

“I told Amber,” he said. “She's the only person I told. She was the only person I'd talked about the baby with. She's the only person I talk about much of anything with, and right now she's not here.”

“That's the only reason you called me at all, isn't it?”

“Well, I couldn't get ahold of her to talk to her about how she broke my heart. Seriously, though, Davis might be here to kill me.”

Cole took a step to the left, away from Cade.

“Well, thanks a lot,” Cade said.

“I have a wife and children.”

“I have a child on the way,” Cade said, his throat tightening as he said it. “I'm going to be a father too, so I guess that means I better not die.”

“Guess you better not,” Cole said, stepping back toward Cade. “Though the mother of my children actually likes me.”

Davis stopped the truck and killed the engine. He got out, and Cade was relieved to see that at least the other man wasn't packing heat.

“'Sup, Davis?” Cade asked.

“I'm here to talk.”

“By talk do you mean bust my face? Because I have to tell you, there are two of us here, and if that's your intent, I will use that to my advantage.”

“I'm not here to bust your face,” Davis said. “I really do want to talk. Alone.”