Misery swamped Meg’s chest as all of her old doubts, all of her own insecurities, rose up inside her like little monsters. “What if I’m the first thing he really runs from? What if I’m not important enough?”
“That’s not the issue, Meg. You’re too important. That’s what scares him. Never worry that you aren’t enough. You are now, and you always have been.” Nancy leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Meg’s forehead. “Take your time,” Nancy said, standing up and getting ready to leave.
“Nancy,” Meg asked, “would you mind if I stayed here tonight?”
Nancy smiled, the lines around her eyes growing deeper. “Of course you can stay. Have Christmas morning with all of us. Eat cinnamon rolls.”
“I don’t want to put you out.”
“You never have. We love you. Be confident in that. Always.”
Then Nancy turned and walked out the door, and Meg was left with a jumble of emotions rioting through her chest.
But the biggest one, the one that burned the brightest, was love. Even though Noah had left her hurt. Even though he had left her in many ways, she still loved him. She loved Nancy, and Jim, and the fact that even though fate had done its best to make sure she didn’t have a family, she had ended up with one anyway. One that was better than blood. One that was all about choice. Choosing to have one another. To stick with one another. To love one another.
She lay back on the bed, and she was keenly aware of how empty it was. How funny, that she had only spent one night with Noah and yet it felt like it had been forever. It felt like it had been the only right thing, and it was gone.
“Merry Christmas Eve,” she said to the ceiling.
* * *
Noah woke up on Christmas morning and decided that if he were in fact a grinch he would most definitely go around town and steal Christmas today. He wasn’t feeling very festive. He wasn’t feeling much of anything except grief that hit low and horrible every time he took a breath.
But it didn’t really matter that it was Christmas. He had chores to do. That was one thing he liked about ranch life. The work never changed. Cows didn’t care if it was a holiday. No. They just wanted to be fed.
He went outside and took a deep breath, watching as the cloud rose from his lips and disappeared into the snowy white morning.
He had Meg. For one night, he had held her in his arms. And then he had blown it all to hell.
No real surprise there.
She said that she loved him. And he knew that she thought she did. But it felt impossible. That she could finally want him. After all this time. That he could be anything to her but a consolation prize.
Does it matter if you are?
Part of him said no. It absolutely did not matter. As long as he had Meg, what the hell did he care? Except he did. That was the problem.
And why can’t you accept the fact that you might be her choice?
Because it didn’t fit together in his mind. It didn’t fit with anything he knew about himself, didn’t fit with everything he had been raised to believe.
He hadn’t been the first choice for his own mother. Why would he be for Meg?
He gritted his teeth against the bitter cold and all of the emotions rising in his chest and walked down the porch, shuffling through the snow and heading out toward the barn.
He wasn’t the kind of man who engendered deep emotions in other people. Not lasting ones. But he had this place. It was constant. It was his. Blood, sweat, and tears in this dirt. It was what made him a man. This piece of property that he had spent his entire adult life working toward.
What the hell did he need anything else for?
He kept on walking, and his foot hit a rock, making him stumble, his toe digging deep into the soft mud, scraping away the snow and revealing a deep trench of dirt. His dirt. His damned dirt.
He just stood there for a moment, staring at it. He had built his entire life here. On this place. On this ground. And he had convinced himself that it was everything. That it was all he needed.
He bent down, dropping his knee to the cold, frozen ground, the chill seeping through the denim of his pants. He picked up a handful of the mud in his gloved hand, squeezed it tight.
And he felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.
It was dirt. Just dirt. It didn’t know that he owned it. And it didn’t care.
He couldn’t figure out why that made him feel dizzy. Why that made it hard to breathe.
Except the sudden realization that everything he had spent all this time working on might not matter so much was a pain that surpassed most things. Except losing Meg. That still hurt worse.
He had a pile of dirt and no woman. And just a week ago, he would have said that was how he liked it. That he was fine with it. With friendship between himself and Meg, and hookups on the side.
He wondered then if he brought her back here to stay, to live, if he made her his wife . . . Could that breathe life into this place? Could it breathe life into him?
He doubted it. He didn’t think anything could.
He had spent too many years being batted around. Too many years having it proven to him, over and over again, that he was nothing. That he didn’t matter.
And he was afraid. Damn it all, she was right. He was afraid. And he always had been. It was the real reason he had never gone after her. Because if he made her the center of his world any more than she already was, and he lost her, he had known that there would be no coming back from that.
He had allowed her feelings for Charlie to win. He had sat back and resented them all the while telling himself there was nothing he could do. He hadn’t fought for the woman that . . . that he loved. Hadn’t even spoken the words out loud to anybody because he couldn’t say them to her. Because he was too scared of being rejected.
Because he had said them too many times to an unresponsive mother while she lay passed out on the bathroom floor. Had said them to her too many times while his face still throbbed from the beating delivered by one of her boyfriends.
And he had been afraid of what those words could mean, of the ways in which Meg could hurt him if he ever gave them to her.
So he had sat back like a coward and let another man hear them from her lips. Had nearly let that other man marry her.
But it had to stop. It just did. Because there was no point in protecting himself now. He was screwed. He hurt so badly every time he breathed, was so lonely he could scarcely stand himself. And he had just had the worst moment of clarity ever concerning the ranch and the fact that it was just unfeeling dirt. So there was not even any comfort to be found in that.
He had nothing to lose. And everything to gain.
The possibility of everything scared the living hell out of him.
Sitting here like this on his knees, in the snow, by himself scared him even more. And he supposed that was the thing.
He had to be more scared of life without her so that he could finally make the move. Could finally say the words.
And that really did underscore all the things she had said to him earlier. That sometimes things changed just enough for you to reevaluate everything you thought you knew.
He wasn’t second to Charlie, any more than she was second to the ranch. He wasn’t worthless any more than she wasn’t worth the sacrifice.
He stood up, determined to finish his chores as quickly as possible. He had to get down into town. He had to find Meg.
Maybe it wasn’t too late for the two of them to have a Merry Christmas after all.
CHAPTER 11
Meg was having the worst Christmas morning ever.
Well, the cinnamon rolls that Nancy had made were a decent enough bright spot, but still, as Christmas mornings went, it was pretty awful.
She had watched Nancy and Jim’s current foster kids open their presents and had tried her very best to smile. And then she had gone back to Noah’s old bedroom like a pathetic mole trying to hide beneath a pile of blankets.
She should go home. It was just
that she had arranged for everything to be taken care of for her to be gone for this couple of days, so she didn’t really feel any urgency. Same with the brewery. There really was no point in going in. Plus, it was closed today anyway.
Consequently, there was no good distraction for her heartbreak. She was marinating in it. Which was somewhat therapeutic in a way. And if it didn’t hurt quite so bad maybe she would even be interested in the contrast between losing Noah and losing Charlie.
She felt as if a rock had settled in her stomach. In the past couple of days she had lost both of her friends. But more than that, she had learned exactly what she wanted from a romantic relationship, taken a chance on it, and gotten it thrown back in her face.
Which was not fun. Not even a little bit.
There was a knock on the door and Meg groaned. She wasn’t really in the mood to be social. Which, she supposed, meant she probably should have gone back home to her apartment, where she lived alone. Except she hadn’t done that, she had stayed here, because she wanted to feel not so alone while she was being alone.
She didn’t really see why that should be so difficult.
Meg got up slowly and went across the room, opening the door a crack. Only to see a package of cookies being shoved through the small opening.
Her heart clenched tight, her chest feeling like it might break. “If all you brought is cookies, then you can take them and shove them up your . . . Well.”
“I’m leading with the cookies. I thought they might be a good peace offering.” Noah’s voice made her light-headed. She was so easy. Even when she was angry at him. It was strange. The veil had been ripped from before her eyes, forcing her to see Charlie as he really was. And she just couldn’t go back to seeing him the way she used to. She didn’t want to, either.
This was different. Noah hadn’t betrayed her. He had hurt her, but she knew that he had hurt himself in the process. He hadn’t done it because he was thoughtless. No. He was anything but thoughtless.
“I thought the cookies were a nice gesture, all things considered,” he said.
She still didn’t let him in.
“No. Cookies were a nice gesture when you didn’t know me and you had nothing to be sorry for.”
“I am sorry,” he said, his voice rough.
“Sorry for what you said to me? Sorry for what you did to us? Or are you just sorry and you want to be friends?” She opened the door a crack, frowning deeply. “Or are you sorry and you think that I should sleep with you? Was that your plan? You thought that we could sleep together and be friends or something?”
“Can I come in instead of talking about sex in the hallway with impressionable youth potentially within earshot?”
She sighed and opened the door, letting him in. Then she closed it behind him. “Okay. Go ahead. Give me the cookies.” She extended her hand.
“I thought the cookies were insufficient?”
“They are. But I want them and whatever else you have.”
He handed her the package and she sniffed. “Chewy. Chewy chocolate chip cookies. Just like you like.”
“Because they are the best.”
“We all make choices, Meg.”
“I’m sorry. Is there another choice to make?”
“Crunchy.”
She let out an exasperated, “The wrong choice.”
“The correct choice, I think you mean.”
“You’re already in danger of never being forgiven, so if I were you, I would tread very carefully on the subject of chocolate chip cookies.”
Noah sighed heavily and pushed his hand through his dark hair, then ran it back down his face. “I don’t actually care about cookies. I care about you.” He took a step forward, wrapping his arm around her waist and drawing her up against his body. “I love you, Meg.”
Her throat went dry, her eyes filling. “I figured you probably did,” she said, feeling a little bit weak in the knees.
She reached up and touched his cheek, and it was hard to remember that before yesterday she hadn’t ever done that. That these intimacies were new. Because they felt right. Because they felt essential.
These feelings for Noah weren’t new. They were just uncovered.
And she was ready for them now. Was ready to embrace them and not hide from them. Not bury them beneath excuses and decisions that her fifteen-year-old self had made in all of her limited wisdom.
“I love you, too,” she said.
She knew that he had more to say. That he had a grand speech all built up inside of him. At least, she assumed he did. But she didn’t need to hear it to know that she loved him. To know that, in the end, that would be how she felt.
He didn’t need to be perfect. He didn’t need to say all the right things. He just needed to be here.
If there was one thing she knew about Noah, it was that he excelled at being there. At listening.
“I went back to my ranch expecting to feel . . . I don’t know. Like I was complete. Because I had convinced myself that I was. Usually, I go out there and the ground feels alive. It didn’t. This morning, it felt like a frozen block. And underneath that was dirt. Nothing but dirt. It didn’t love me back. I’ve had a lot of years of not being loved back, Meg, so I thought that maybe I could handle it. But you . . . You made me hope.”
She laughed, shaky, unsteady. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Hope is a pretty damned amazing thing for a kid who can’t remember what it’s like. I feel like I was born old sometimes. Watching my mother suffer from drugs the way she did. Being a slave to all of her addictions—from heroin to men—I didn’t know what hope looked like. But gradually, I began to see glimpses of it. And, in the end, I put all my hope in hard work. In dependability. In the land. And the great thing about the ranch is that you can pour yourself into it endlessly and it never goes away. There’s always work to be done. It’s that stability we keep talking about. Yeah, sometimes the weather fights back. Sometimes things don’t go as planned. But in the end, it’s not over unless you say it is.”
He shook his head. “Caring about another person doesn’t work that way,” he said. “You can’t control what they do. If you really love them, you shouldn’t even want to. You should want them to be themselves. You should want their happiness above anything else. And I do. I do. But I also want you with me. I want it so bad it scares the hell out of me. It’s not like anything else I’ve ever felt. It’s been there, all this time. I knew I wanted you, but I didn’t know it would be like this. I didn’t know anything could be like this.”
He angled his head and bent down, capturing her lips with his. Warmth flooded her. Warmth and hope. Love. She dropped the package of cookies and wrapped her arms around his neck, held on to him tightly, and kissed him. With everything she had.
“Noah,” she whispered when they parted. “You were always there for me. You showed me what lasting friendship could be. What faithfulness looks like. Our parents didn’t give us a solid foundation, but I know that together we’re going to build one. Something real.”
“I believe it,” he said, his voice rough. “The reason that I . . . that I couldn’t . . . Meg, I was comfortable with the fact that I couldn’t have you. It was a great place for me to be in. One where I had convinced myself there was nothing I could do. But hell, if I had been brave enough to fight for you, I sure as hell could have fought. If I had been ready for it, I would have. But I wasn’t. I was hiding. Because I knew that what we would have together would be more than friendship. And it would be more than sex. I knew it would be everything, and I knew it would mean opening myself up. Really. And that . . .”
“I understand,” she said. “I think I was doing the same. I set my sights on something impossible. On something that wouldn’t break me. I convinced myself that I wanted Charlie for thirteen years, and when all of those plans went to hell I was wounded, but all I did was cry. When you rejected me after I had built up thoughts of a future with you for a full twenty-four hours—I felt like everythin
g was broken inside of me. And that was what I had been avoiding.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Me too. I guess I did a pretty bad job protecting us both.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said softly, going up on her tiptoes and brushing another kiss over his mouth. “We’re strong enough to stand a little bit of pain. And anything worth having is certainly worth a fight. I’m just glad we both realized it before it was too late.”
“I love you. I always have.”
She held on to his face, stroked his beard with her thumbs. “Same.”
“So what now?”
“You have to marry me,” she said. “And have my babies and the whole nine yards. I don’t want halfway. Not with you. Not ever. I want it all. And I don’t want to wait.”
She waited for him to turn tail and run. Or at least look nervous. But instead, he smiled. “I want that, too. Meg O’Neill, will you move out to my ranch with me and live in modest accommodations that will become increasingly crowded as we add to our family, and will probably be messy and loud for as long as we both shall live?”
She smiled. “I will.”
“I love you,” he said again. She would never get tired of hearing it.
“I love you, too,” she said. “Forever.”
“Merry Christmas, Meg.”
“Merry Christmas, Noah.”
EPILOGUE
Noah never missed Jim and Nancy’s Christmas party. Not one year since he’d first come to live at their house all those years ago.
But tonight it was looking like he wasn’t going to make it.
“Noah,” Meg scolded. “You’re going to have to slow down, because if you drift off the road, and I end up giving birth in a snowbank, I’m going to have to kick your ass. You know, once I recover.”