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“Well thank God I’m not a mother because I couldn’t imagine going through that kind of torment every day. Y’all are masochists.” I forced the teasing around the clot constricting my airways, this brand-new feeling I didn’t quite understand.
“Just wait. You’ll know one day.”
“You know that’s not in the cards for me.” Too much sadness got wrapped around that.
Dakota caught it. Sympathy filled her sigh. “You’ve always said you didn’t want to be a mother, which is just fine if it’s because you really don’t want to be. But every comment you’ve ever made makes me believe you’re terrified of repeating the same mistakes your mother did. You’re worried you’ve got that selfishness running through your veins. But you aren’t her, Paisley. Not even close.”
My spirit clutched. “Well, it doesn’t much matter, does it?”
“Doesn’t it?” she pressed. “You think I can’t hear what’s in your voice?”
Panic blustered in my senses. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And she was getting way, way ahead of herself.
“You do, and I know you well, Paisley, and I know you’re scared right now, and the only time you get scared is when something really means something to you.”
Awareness throbbed. Throbbed in that place that knew I’d fallen for a little girl over the last two days. In that place I knew that my heart was hers.
My heart that had already been battered.
Dreams crushed.
And with Evelyn, those dreams had been breathed back to life.
Bigger than they’d been before.
And maybe the scariest part was I thought there was a chance Caleb might steal a part of that fractured heart, too.
“I don’t want to get hurt again, Dakota. It seems like every time I turn around, I leave myself in a position to get myself shattered.” I let the fullness of it come out.
The memory of Caleb saying the only person he’d ever allowed himself to love was his sister beat through my brain.
I was setting myself up for destruction.
Getting involved with a man who wouldn’t keep me.
One who would hold the power to rip away everything I’d come to love.
Now that was the scariest part.
“Anytime we love, we leave ourselves in a position to be shattered, Paisley. Every time. You have to decide if taking that chance is worth it or not. So, let’s weigh this—just how good was that phone sex?” Her words shifted into razzing.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Um, yes, I would very much like to know. I’m forever living vicariously through you.”
I groaned. “I’m basically ruined for life.”
“It couldn’t have been that good.”
“Oh, but it was.”
I would never get the sight of him out of my mind.
My heart thrummed, nerves scattering at the thought of moving in under his roof. Having no clue what he really wanted. What his intentions were.
I just had to hold onto mine.
The bottom line.
Evelyn.
I needed not to lose sight of that.
“Sounds like you’ve gotten yourself into trouble.”
“Don’t I know it.”
I felt it in the shift of the earth when the turnoff to Hutchins Ranch came up quick.
I heard a clattering on her end of the line. “I have to go, Ryder is here to fix a leak under the kitchen sink.”
“At ten-thirty at night?”
“He just finished up at the shop, and it was the first chance he had to come over.”
I laughed a low sound. I doubted much that I was the only one who was in trouble.
“But you call me tomorrow. I want details about what’s going on with that bad boy. And I need to make sure he doesn’t have you buried on that ranch somewhere.”
I giggled. “You have got to stop watching true crime. That paranoia is getting the best of you.”
“It seems to me he has secrets.”
Unease rattled me to the core.
He did.
I knew he did.
“Just be careful, okay? And go after what makes you happy. It’s time, and you deserve it.”
“Thank you, Doodle-Boo. I’ll try. How about you do the same?”
She sighed. “Someday, Paisley. Someday.”
She ended the call, and I made the turn onto the long dirt drive.
Somehow knowing my life was about to change forever.
TWENTY-SIX
CALEB
Hitting the first-floor landing, I started to pace down the hall toward the kitchen, needing to do something with the nerves ticking my muscles into agitation.
Rattled.
Shaken.
This chaos I’d been asking for. Invited into my life because I couldn’t seem to stop myself from going after what I couldn’t have.
First convincing her to stay here, then going so far as to kiss her like a lovesick teenager who had his first goddamn crush.
But the truth was, it was the first time someone had made me feel that way. Like I wanted to sink my fingers into her.
Hooks and snares.
Keep her for my own.
Fucking reckless.
She hadn’t returned for more than five hours, and my guts were tangled with the dread that she might have changed her mind. I should be relieved. Thank every star in the sky that she’d come to her senses since I didn’t seem to possess any when it came to her.
