Authors: Maisey Yates
Gage thought about telling Colton about Rebecca. But he didn't know what to say. And he realized there was only one person in the world he should talk to about Rebecca. And that was the woman herself.
If she would talk to him.
He didn't deserve it. That was for sure.
But he was ready to try. He was ready to strip himself bare, he was ready to open himself up. Even if it meant pouring himself out until he was dry.
He supposed that was the other side of the coin. The other part that you needed to make love mean anything.
You couldn't hold anything in reserve. You just had to trust that the other person would give back what they took.
It was a big risk. One he had spent the better part of his life avoiding. Because...well he'd never seen it. Never experienced it. For all he knew, what he wanted didn't exist.
But he looked at Colton and Sierra...the happiness they had with the people in their lives and it made him hope.
And Rebecca felt worth it.
Hell, Rebecca didn't even feel like a risk.
If she could only forgive him for everything he'd done. That was a risk. But it was one he was willing to take.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
R
EBECCA
WAS
JUST
about to close the shop for the night when she heard the bell above the door. She let out a long, exasperated side. She really wasn't in the mood to deal with seeing anyone. She just wanted to go home and crawl under a blanket.
In the overall scheme of things, she supposed she was doing well. She had ordered a bunch of things for her house that she had put in her store, and it was starting to come along nicely. Operation “turn her house into a home” was a step in the right direction.
In the small, personal scheme of things that had to do with the state of her heart and whether or not it was broken into a million tiny pieces, she was doing pretty badly.
Someday, she would emerge from this stronger. She was confident of that. Mostly, she wanted to lie on the ground and howl. This was heartbreak. And it was terrible.
She looked up, ready to snarl at her customer and let them know she was about to close. Okay, maybe she wouldn't snarl. She would keep her feral on the inside.
Then, she realized it was Gage. Her breath caught, her heart slamming against her breastbone. What was he doing here? It was too mean. It was way too cruel. She couldn't see him again. She just couldn't.
“I thought you were going to give me papers to this place and get out.”
He pushed his hat back with his knuckle, then shoved his hands into his pockets. “And I thought you didn't want them.”
“I don't,” she said, busying herself with an imaginary task. “But since when have you ever given a damn about what I want?”
Gage started to move toward her, his blue eyes intense, his beautiful, sensual mouth set into a firm line. She still wanted to touch him, to put her hands on his face, feel his rough stubble beneath her palms. She wanted to melt into him.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that he could say all those things, all of those terrible things, and she could still want him like this.
And then, even more unfair, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her toward him. Then, he put his hands on her cheeks, held her still, studying her face. “I care,” he said, his voice rough.
“Maybe you would care if you loved me,” she said, shooting his words from yesterday back at him.
“You know what, Rebecca, I am damn glad I didn't tell you that I love you yesterday.”
She wiggled out of his hold. “Really, asshole? Did you really come to add insult to injury? Just because you don't have a heart, because you can't feel love and pain doesn't mean that I can't. I feel it. You broke me.” A tear slid down her cheek and she did nothing to wipe it away. “So if you came back for more, you're too late. And, you're terrible. Just terrible.”
He tightened his jaw, a muscle there twitching, his face looking tortured. He reached out for her again, cupping her chin, sliding his thumb over her cheek, wiping the tear away.
“It's a good thing I didn't tell you I love you yesterday because I didn't know what it meant.” Those words sounded pulled from him, like they had come hard won from the very depths of his soul. “I've spent years running so that I never had to ask myself any questions. So that I never had to love anyone, answer to anyone. So that I never had to spend more than one night with a woman. So that I never had to make a friend that was close enough to count on me. So that I never had anyone that I counted on. It was easier. Easier than hanging around my family home being everything my father wanted me to be, then desperately acting like everything he didn't want me to be, hoping to get some sign that he loved me.”
“If you wanted your father's love, then you had some idea of what love was,” she said, knowing that her words were unkind, not really caring.
“No,” he said, “I didn't. Because I thought that love drained you. I thought that it left you empty and hollow and broken. Just like my mother. That's what I thought I was. Not my father. But somebody who would let themselves be consumed by this thing that seemed more like a curse than a blessing to me. But that wasn't love. It never was.”
He continued. “You asked me what I was if you weren't a victim. I didn't have an answer for you. But I have a few now. If you weren't a victim, then I wasn't a villain. If I wasn't a villain maybe...maybe I didn't need to run. Maybe I needed to stay. I thought if I told myself I deserved to be punished, I deserved to walk around aching and wanting and never finding satisfaction. I thought maybe if I believed that, I could learn to live with it.” He cleared his throat. “But even more than that, if you weren't a victim, then I might have to give you something more than just a Band-Aid for your life before I left town again. If you're more than that... Then I have to be more than that. I have to give more than that. I have to give you some of myself, and it's been so long since I've done that I'm not even sure I know who I am.” He took a deep, ragged breath. “Unless it's the person I am when I'm with you, I'm not sure he's worth knowing.”
“Gage,” she said, tracing the lines on either side of his mouth, giving in to her need to touch him. “I know who you are.”
“Tell me.” He said the words unsteadily.
“You're the man who came into my life when I wanted him least. The man who pushed me to challenge everything about myself. You're the only man who has ever seen me naked. You are the only person to hold me that I can even remember. You're overbearing sometimes, and stubborn as hell, but that's okay because I am too. And you...you want love, don't you? More than anything. But you've been standing on the outside of your own life looking in for so many years that you don't know how to take a step inside. So you fix things. You fix things because it's the only thing you know how to give.”
She blinked back tears, a heavy weight in her chest. “You helped me, Gage. You helped me get rid of so many terrible burdens. Please, please let me have yours.”
She put her hands on his shoulders, then ran them down his back, felt him shudder underneath her touch. “Let me,” she said. “Let me in.”
He was an impenetrable rock wall, even now as he shook beneath her touch, it was like they were miles away from each other. And then, he looked up, his eyes locking with hers, and she saw it. Fear. Fear that went down so deep she didn't know if there was an end to it.
“I lived my whole life wanting love, wanting something neither of my parents could give me. And it was much easier to go live a life where I wasn't even tempted anymore. To put myself in a different category, the kind of person who couldn't have it. I had no connections with anyone, so how could I miss what wasn't close? When it was right there... That was when it was hard. When my mom was there, but wouldn't look my direction. When my father was within arm's reach but would never give me a word of reassurance. And it is the most wussy-ass thing...”
“How?” she asked. “Nobody goes through life alone. We aren't meant to. If we were, why would we live like we do? Why would we give our lives for our families? Why would we make vows to one person, pledging ourselves to them until we die? We aren't meant to live alone. The people that are around us mean everything. To have them right there and to feel like you don't have their love? That isn't a small thing. Was it a small thing that my mother left me?”
“Of course not.”
“But it's wrong for you to feel bad? That doesn't make any sense. Those things leave scars deeper than any car crash ever could. I know. I know, because I have the ones to match.”
She let her fingertips drift from his back, up his neck and to his jaw where she moved on to trace his familiar features. “Don't hide it. And don't pretend it isn't there. That's how we make monsters, Gage. By hiding ordinary things in the closet and letting them feed off the darkness.”
“I've always been afraid that no one could ever love me,” he said, his voice a rasp now. She could tell that it cost him to admit that, that his whole body was alive with shame.
And so, she kept on touching him, kept on moving her hands over every inch of him. She looked back down at the tattoo on his forearm, the one that had made her so angry at first. “I did a little bit of reading on tattoos. A black band is usually to remember somebody that died.” She looked up at him. “Nobody died in that accident, Gage. We're both alive. And we both deserve to live. Really live.” She wrapped her fingers around his forearm, drawing them down to his wrist, rubbing her thumbs over the tattoo.
“I know what I want it to symbolize,” he said, his blue eyes blazing into hers. “I want it to be about death. The way that I lived. The way that I was. The fear. It doesn't have a place in this. With us.” He pulled away from her hold, wrapping his hands around her wrists, pulling her forward. “I love you, Rebecca.” The words weren't easy, they sounded as tortured as the rest of them had. As the rest of him was.
But she didn't mind. Because choosing to love Gage West wasn't convenient. He was the last man on earth it made sense for her to be with. But he was the only man alive that she wanted.
He closed the distance between them, kissing her hard, a physical affirmation of everything he'd just said.
When he finally pulled away, she laced her fingers through his hair, never letting her eyes leave his face. “I love you,” she said.
“I've always thought that I would destroy somebody with all this need inside of me. That it would destroy me.” He took her hand, placed it on his chest. “When I say I love you, it's with all of me. And I don't know if that's too much to ask one person to take.”
“Maybe. Maybe if I were a normal everyday woman who hadn't been to hell and back, the kind of woman who wouldn't threaten to shoot you the first time you showed up in her store. Maybe then, I wouldn't be strong enough to handle you. Maybe then, you would be too much for me to take. But Gage, I've already walked through hell, and when that happened I felt like I was alone. Now, I want the chance to walk through life with the man I love. With you.”
“Is that a challenge, Rebecca?”
She smiled, her chest swelling with emotion, her stomach tightening with desire. “Hell yeah, cowboy.”
He wrapped his arms around her, taking a step back, knocking her into a display of Christmas decorations. She didn't care.
Rebecca Bear was perfectly happy to be set up on top of one of the holiday displays laid out on her antique armoire, since she was being kissedâand kissed wellâby the man she loved more than anything.
She moved her hand, bracing herself on the furniture, brushing her fingertips against something. She broke the kiss, looking down at the object. A ceramic bird.
She stared at it for a moment, and then a smile curved her lips.
She had always liked birds. They could fly anywhere, but they always came back home.
All this time, that was why she'd stayed. All this time, part of her had known she was waiting for him.
She looked up at Gage, then pressed a kiss to his lips. “I'm so glad you came back home.”
Epilogue
“I
NEVER
THOUGHT
I would see Ace Thompson pouring drinks while holding a baby.”
“Lily is hardly a baby anymore. She's mobile now,” Rebecca said, looking up at Gage and smiling. Still, even after two years, his heart felt like it got bigger every time she looked at him like that.
And she did it a lot.
“That's why he's holding her, I think,” he said, looking over at his brother-in-law who was pretty expertly balancing work and fatherhood as he dispensed refreshments to the guests at the annual Fourth of July barbecue.
The entire town had turned out for the event, held on the Garrett Ranch every year. This was the second time Gage had attended. He could see why it had become such a popular tradition.
Sheriff Eli Garrett and his wife, Sadie, were running around making sure every plate was filled and that people were having fun. Connor and Liss Garrett were standing off to the side, Connor gazing intently at his wife, who was smiling up at him. Like they weren't aware they had a ranch full of guests.
“Hopefully Ace will get a chance to sit down with us for a while,” Rebecca said, moving over to the West family's patch of grass, which had been claimed earlier in the day.
Sierra was already sitting there along with Colton, who was watching as his wife, Lydia, did the rounds. Since she was mayor of Copper Ridge, it was difficult for her to get a moment when she wasn't being bombarded by people.
“I thought the Wests were supposed to be the pillars of the community,” Gage said, sitting down on the blanket next to his siblings. “You both married people that outshine us.”
“How about you?” Colton asked. “Rebecca is way more popular than you are.”
“That's true,” he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “But, I haven't married her yet.”
“You only have a week left before that stops being true,” Rebecca said.
“I can't wait for the week to be over. Then you'll be my wife and your brother will stop asking you if you're ever going to make an honest man out of me.”
“I'm like the wind,” she said. “I cannot be tamed. But, for you, I will concede to being tied down for life. Because that's love.”
“If Maddy were here, there would be a rude comment about Gage tying you up,” Sierra said.
“Where is Maddy?” Gage asked. “Are they coming?”
“I just checked my texts,” Sierra said. “She said they're running late because they got distracted. I don't want to know.”
Gage looked around, still sometimes unable to believe that he was surrounded by family. That he was surrounded by love.
“Jack and Kate said they would stop by the blanket,” Colton said. “They want to bring Jasper over to say hi to his cousin. And his aunts and uncles, presumably.”
Even stranger was the fact that they had managed to build a relationship with Jack over the past couple of years. That relationship had not extended between Jack and their father, but he had definitely become one of them as far as the siblings were concerned.
It was most definitely a testament to forgiveness on Jack's part. And love. A whole lot of that.
As the day wore on, they all ate too much and talked too much. Later, Rebecca lay across his lap, looking up at the sky, waiting for the fireworks.
He touched the ring on her left hand, always happy to be reminded of that outward symbol that showed the world, and him, that she was his.
The first firework went off in a blaze of brilliant color, bathing the crowd below in bright light. He looked down at Rebecca and realized that she wasn't watching the sky. She was watching him.
“What?” he asked.
She reached up, drawing his head down, kissing him gently on the lips. “I just wanted to let you know that I love you,” she said. “And that I'm so thankful I found a man who loves big enough that he can make up for all those years I felt like I didn't get enough.”
Gage kissed her back, his throat tight. “I feel the same way.”
Then, he drew her up against his chest, and they settled back with the rest of the town to watch the show.
Gage West was home, and there was nowhere else on earth he would rather be.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from
TOUGH LUCK HERO
by Maisey Yates.