“Sorry, Lindsay. Things got out of hand. Let’s avoid each other for both our sakes.” He didn’t wait for her to agree before he went inside.
If she wouldn’t avoid him, he’d just have to work harder to avoid her.
CHAPTER 3
Lindsay was a swirl of all the worst emotions. Anger. Frustration. Confusion. Hurt. She didn’t like that Cal had pulled out those old insecurities and, worse, she’d fallen into the trap of defending them. Like she didn’t know exactly what he was doing.
She wasn’t a teenager anymore and getting worked up like she was only proved Cal’s point. Lindsay Tyler, center of the universe. How many times in her life had she heard that one? And how many times had it been true?
But what no one seemed to understand was that being on her own, mostly, for the past six years had taught her how to be less selfish. She’d found a balance in going after what she wanted and also being cognizant of how that affected other people. She wasn’t a girl anymore, childish and peevish.
Except Cal had so easily shoved her back into that place.
She forced herself to reach out and take Sarah’s hand. “I’m so, so sorry you walked into the middle of that.”
Sarah looked patently miserable, but she shook her head. “You don’t have to be sorry. It’s my fault. I should have had us meet in town. Cal works so hard, I figured we’d be able to avoid him here, but . . .”
“I don’t understand how he can still be so angry when it’s been so many years.” She’d never meant to hurt him. She hadn’t wanted to break up with him, but they’d wanted completely different things. How could he blame her for needing to go after what she wanted? Still.
“Unfortunately, they’ve been rough years around here.” Sarah smiled warily. “Let’s go inside. I made cinnamon rolls.”
“I missed your cooking,” Lindsay said, giving Sarah’s hand a squeeze before she dropped it.
Sarah led her inside. “You have your mother’s and grandmother’s cooking. Theirs is far superior to mine.”
“Don’t be silly. My mom taught you everything she knows, which means you’re just as good as her.”
“I’d like to see you say that to her face.”
“Only if you want to see me die.” Lindsay was relieved they could move on from the awkwardness of the porch. Sarah led her to the dining room, purposefully no doubt, since the dining room attached to the kitchen but also allowed whoever was in the kitchen to go through a separate hallway to leave the house. Giving Cal the opportunity to leave without having to see her again.
It hurt. Lindsay didn’t know quite why it hurt that Cal was still angry with her. Those were his issues and had nothing to do with her. But it still hurt. A nagging ache in the pit of her stomach.
Cal was so good. He could be grumpy and mean, but she knew he’d developed that as a protective armor. He’d been dealt so many unfair blows, and still he was loyal to those he loved. A protector, fierce and determined to make right in a very wrong world.
She hadn’t broken up with Cal because she’d stopped loving him. She’d just needed to see the world so that curiosity didn’t eat her alive.
Lindsay took a seat at the table and thought about what Sarah had said out on the porch. “What’s been rough about the past few years?”
Sarah smiled thinly. “Oh, you know. I’m going to go get the cinnamon rolls and coffee.” With that, she left the dining room area for the kitchen.
Which left Lindsay alone. Despite over four years of dating Cal, she’d only eaten in the dining room twice. She remembered both times with awful clarity. One involved his drunk father going on and on about how his children were the reason his wife had left him. The other had been their last Thanksgiving. Cal’s stepmother had pushed and picked on Sarah so horribly, he had told her to stop, which then resulted in a fistfight with his father. Right here in this very room. They’d broken dishes and glasses, and Lindsay and Sarah had both watched in horror, crying.
It was hard to keep her anger at Cal when Lindsay remembered things like that. He’d had a rough go and it had been cruel of her to think he could ever understand why she’d had to leave. When he’d suffered so much leaving, truly suffered at the hands of it.
She’d had to leave. There was no denying that. But in retrospect, Lindsay felt a certain amount of shame at how she’d handled it, and how she was handling her return.
Sarah came back to the dining room with a beautifully decorated tray of cinnamon rolls and a big carafe of coffee. She’d already set pretty Christmas-themed dishes out on the table and Lindsay smiled.
“You’re so good at this hosting thing. It’s like you were meant to do it, Sarah. I’m so impressed at how mature you’ve gotten.”
Sarah smiled, a little shyly, and that was more the little girl Lindsay remembered. “Cal said the same thing to me last night. That I was good at this.”
“Cal and I might not agree about a lot anymore, but I think we can agree on that. And maybe partly it’s because I still see you as thirteen and shy.”
“I really like it. I didn’t expect to, either.”
“Then why did you do it? Weren’t you going to be . . . an accountant, was it? Yes, you were so good with numbers.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe I’ll get a chance someday, but right now I have to stay home with Cal.”
Which didn’t sit right with Lindsay at all. “Sarah, you don’t have to stay home with Cal. You can’t let him make you think you do. If you want to get out and—”
“Save me the lecture, Lindsay,” and there was an adult finality to that tone that stopped Lindsay in her tracks. “I know you mean well, but you don’t understand anything about what’s happened around here for the past few years.”
“So why don’t you tell me,” Lindsay said gently, because it seemed like this girl—no, woman—wanted someone to tell.
“Cal wouldn’t want me to spill it all, and I don’t really want to, either. Maybe you don’t understand why he’s still angry with you, but . . . I . . . I do. I may not understand everything that went on between you two. I was a kid and I kept my nose out of it, but it did hurt that you just left. I looked up to you so much. Your mom tried to help us, but that hurt Cal, too.”
Lindsay opened her mouth to pose some argument or offer some excuse or apology, but Sarah stopped her.
“You broke his heart. I’m not about to tell you that you were wrong, that you shouldn’t have done what you did. I don’t have that kind of insight. But I’m the one who’s been living with him the past six years, and I’ve seen him weather all of the storms. All of the broken hearts. Dad got married again last year, and this one wanted to travel the world. Dad drained our savings, including my college account, and took off for Europe.”
“Sarah.”
“It wasn’t terrible. The ranch does well and we were both kind of relieved he was gone, but the savings . . . I couldn’t put the burden of college expenses on Cal. I couldn’t leave him like everyone else already had. So, I came home to run the Christmas tree stuff and to take care of him. I can’t regret that. He basically raised me, and loved me when no one else did. So please don’t ever lecture me that I need to look out for myself over Cal. Cal is always looking out for me, not him, and I can’t be happy knowing I’m hurting him. And, you know, taking care of him and this place does make me happy even if it wasn’t my dream.”
Lindsay blinked back tears, because she’d come to some of those conclusions, too. That dreams didn’t have the power to make you happy. Sometimes the thing you wanted fell short of being what you needed. It was why she was home, learning to teach instead of spending her time painting.
It had just taken her a lot longer than it had taken Sarah.
“I’m sorry, Sarah. Sorry that I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong.”
“I have a great future with a really cool job. But my job needs help. Some art help.” She glanced at her watch. “And I’ve got about two hours to talk to you about it before I have to go man the tr
ee customers.”
Lindsay nodded, and she spent the next two hours having breakfast with an old friend and coming up with ideas on how to use her art skills to help a Christmas tree farm wedding venue.
When they were done, Lindsay knew she should head home. She should go tell her family she was staying in Gracely for good and throw herself into Shane and Cora’s wedding preparations.
She should do what Cal asked her and just stay out of his way. She stepped onto the Barton porch and looked out over the ranch and Christmas tree rows.
Instead of walking to her car, she started walking toward the stables of the Barton ranch.
* * *
There were few things a late winter morning on horseback couldn’t cure. Apparently Cal’s bad mood was one of them.
He just kept thinking about Lindsay. In his house. Talking and laughing with his sister and eating her cinnamon rolls. Lindsay was at his dining room table helping Sarah and likely having a grand time.
Staying. She was staying in Gracely. Oh, she thought it was for good, but Cal knew better. Mom had come back, ready to be a mother and wife again. It had lasted two years. Why wouldn’t Lindsay be exactly the same? Come back. Convince everyone she was going to stay, and then hightail it out of here for bigger and better. Again.
He was too old and too hard to get clobbered again, but Sarah . . . Chances were Sarah was going to fall for it hook, line, and sinker. Cal would be left to clean up that mess again.
Maybe he should force her to go back to school. What was some crippling student loan debt? The news was always saying everyone had it.
Cal dismounted his horse, tied it to the branch of a Christmas tree. He unloaded his tools from the horse’s saddlebag and studied the platform he’d built for the wedding. Sarah had asked him to check to make sure it was holding up to the snow and ice.
He cleared off the surface and got to work checking nails and screws and making sure everything was still level for the rehearsal and wedding that would happen over the course of the next few days.
Two people would get up here and pledge their lives to each other. Cal wanted to believe that marriage was a joke and that no one stayed. Sadly, the truth wasn’t that everyone left. It wasn’t that people didn’t love wholly and forever.
He, in particular, wasn’t good enough to inspire that kind of lifelong commitment. From parents or significant others. Cal wasn’t even sure Sarah would stick around once she figured out she had other options.
He’d stopped feeling sorry for himself over it. He liked his solitude quite well, but Lindsay’s reappearance reminded him of what it was like to be part of a partnership. Just her existence in his world reminded him what it was like to have someone he could confide in. His problems, his worries, his fears. All things he’d only ever been able to confide in her.
Christmas was always a little harder than the rest of the year, but Lindsay really was salt in that wound. He didn’t even have January to look forward to, because she’d be hanging around like a ghost of When Things Were Okay.
Well, he had this place and he had Sarah. Once Christmas was over, he’d find a way to numb that hurt and those reminders.
Cal noted the faint sound of hooves in the distance. He stopped his work and frowned. If Sarah came out to find him, she usually did it in one of the four-wheelers.
The rider who came into view wasn’t his dark-haired sister, though. No, Lindsay’s blond hair was flying in the wind as she advanced on him. She used to tease him that his heart skipped a beat when he saw her, and she’d always been right. There was a stutter in its normal beat, and time hadn’t stopped it. He felt it again, but her on horseback only reminded him of all the riding they’d done together, planning for a future she was never, ever going to be a part of.
Honestly, he shouldn’t blame her. He should thank her. She’d left before they could get married and have kids and ruin someone else’s life.
She was a goddamn saint.
Lindsay dismounted gracefully, and there was none of the anger from before on her face. She looked around the space he was working in with a certain amount of awe in her expression.
“This is amazing. It’s going to look so beautiful on Saturday.”
“That’s the plan.” He was not going to argue with her. He owed his sister at least civility to this woman whose very existence felt like an assault.
“I hope you don’t mind I borrowed one of your horses for a little ride.”
“Minding wouldn’t matter, since you already did it.”
She took a step toward the platform he was standing on. “Well, I came to apologize for this morning.”
“We already did that,” he returned, resisting the urge to edge away from her.
“No, you apologized to me to make your sister feel better. But I actually want to apologize to you because I reacted poorly.”
Cal shook his head, trying to keep a handle on his temper. Clearly Sarah had told her about their sob story and now she felt pity for him. Fantastic.
“Lindsay, please, I am begging you to just leave me alone. I have nothing to say to you. I have no desire to be around you. I don’t care if you’re staying or going. Let’s just leave each other alone.”
She looked so damn hurt he almost felt guilty.
“Can’t we be friends?” she asked timidly.
“Friends? No. God . . .” She didn’t get it. She just didn’t get how irreparably she’d hurt him, and he didn’t know what to do with that. He’d always assumed she understood that what she’d done, echoing everything his mother had ever done, was a betrayal, regardless of how much she’d needed to leave.
But she was clueless. She clearly thought they’d had some childish relationship and he should just get over the inevitable breakup to go be adults.
“It must be nice,” he said, and then tried to remind himself he was going to be civil. For Sarah. “It’s nice that you feel nothing but goodwill for me, but I do not feel the same. I don’t say that to be mean. I don’t want to hurt you, Lindsay. But you being here causes me to suffer, so I cannot be your friend.”
“But . . . It can change. It should change. Maybe if we tried to be friends—”
“No! No. Don’t you get it? I was stupid enough to trust you. Stupid enough to think we had a future, and all you are from this day forward is a reminder of that future that was never meant for me. I don’t hate you, Lindsay. I hate what you represent. And I want nothing to do with it. I’m happy here, and I’m happy alone, but I don’t need you flaunting that aloneness in my face.”
“You’re not alone. You have Sarah. I’m not trying to—”
“I don’t care what you’re trying to do. You have nothing to do with me. We have nothing to do with each other. What we had isn’t just gone. It’s dead. I don’t want to build anything on that gravesite. Not friendship. Not goodwill. Not anything.”
Still she didn’t leave. Still she didn’t get the picture, and it felt like his heart was breaking all over again. This woman who’d been his rock and partner as they’d grown up toward adulthood, and she’d ripped the foundation out from under him.
Now he’d built a life on that missing foundation and she wanted to rip it away again? He wouldn’t let her.
“Sarah told me your dad left.”
Cal simply stood there and waited, but she seemed to be waiting for him. “And?”
“And . . . I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
“What’s there for you to be sorry about?”
“I’m sorry that he did that. That he hurt you both. I’m sorry that it means Sarah can’t have the education she deserves.”
“I promised myself I wouldn’t fight with you anymore for Sarah’s sake, but my God if you start lecturing me about what Sarah deserves, I will . . .”
“You’ll what?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.
“What do you want from me?” he demanded, dropping his tools on the platform. “Why are you torturing me?” he said, too broken to b
e ashamed that his voice broke, too.
“I’m not saying any of this to torture you. I want to be your friend.”
“I want nothing to do with you, Lindsay. Someday, I will get what I want.” He hopped off the platform and jabbed a thumb into his chest. “It’s starting with not having anything to do with you.”
“Why . . . Why are you so angry? I know I hurt you, and I’m sorry, but I did what I had to do. If you’re happy being alone, why are you so angry?”
He didn’t have it in him to fight her. Not when his heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vice and he was losing her all over again when he didn’t even want her. He had to end this once and for all. “Okay. Fine. You win. Let me spell it out. I still love you. I will always love you. Nothing in my life and no one in my life matches up to that love. I have tried to find someone else. I have tried to forget you were ever mine. I cannot kill this awful, painful love I have for you no matter how much I want to. You being here is nothing but a constant reminder of all the things I am not good enough for.”
She moved for him, even reached out for him, but he sidestepped it because the stupidest, most beaten part of his brain was whispering for him to let her touch him. Hold him again. Be that thing he wanted.
“Me leaving had nothing to do with what you’re good enough for, Cal,” she said on a broken whisper.
But of course it did. Of course it did.
“I don’t want you here,” he choked out.
“I’m . . . sorry.” She was crying now, fat tears falling down her cheeks.
“I don’t care if you are,” he returned, willing himself to harden against her tears, against her confusion.
He loved her, but he didn’t want anything to do with her, and that was that. So, he picked up his tools and shoved them haphazardly into the saddlebag.
“Cal, please, I—”
But he couldn’t listen. He mounted his horse and rode off as fast as the horse would go.
CHAPTER 4
Lindsay cried the whole way back to the stables. She managed to get herself together to clean up the horse and lead it back into its stall. Then she drove almost the whole way home without crying.