Page 45 of Worth the Trouble

“You should go,” she said. “I mean it. Not tonight. Altogether. Your business is about to be born in front of these people, and every day you’re seen with me costs you something. The price just went up.” She made herself say the rest. “Maybe we should stop seeing each other.”

“No.”

One word. It didn’t rise and it didn’t waver. It landed as a gate lands into its latch.

“Jason.”

“No.”

“You haven’t even thought about it.”

“I don’t need to.” He stepped closer, and there was nothing soft in his face, and nothing cruel in it either. “I need you to understand something about me, so listen. I don’t make decisions fast. But I only make them once. And I don’t unmake them.” His eyes held hers. “I decided about you a long time ago. What you told me tonight doesn’t unmake it. It just tells me what the next while is going to cost, and I’ve never once cared about the price of a thing I actually wanted.”

Her breath came apart in the middle of that.

“Now hear the other half,” he said, “because I mean it just as much. What you did matters. I’m not going to tell you it doesn’t. I’m not going to stand in front of it for you. And I’m not going to tell you how to make it right, because it isn’t mine to fix.” He reached out and took her hand at last, his thumb rough across her knuckles. “You already know that. It’s why you couldn’t look at me just now.”

She stared down at their hands. “What if the town never forgives me?”

“Then they don’t.” He said it plainly. “That’s tomorrow’s trouble. Tonight you stood there and told me the truth with nothing in your hands. No spin. No soft landing. I’ve watched you work a room, Cece. I know what it costs you to leave the tools in the box.”

He walked her back to the lodge the long way, her hand in his all the way. He didn’t fill the silence and neither did she.

At the edge of the parking lot he stopped and touched her cheek for just a moment and then he was gone. Cecelia stood alone under the coldest stars yet of the season. He hadn’t forgiven her, but he hadn’t left her. This was her mess and she was the only one who was responsible for fixing it.

And standing there, the beginning of an idea came to her about what to do with it. Not a plan yet. Just a direction, intuition.

It was going to cost her everything else.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The town found out fast.

Cecelia couldn’t have said how. She hadn’t been named in anything official, and the council minutes read like nonsense. But small towns had their own notice system, older and faster than anything posted on a board, and that one worked fine. The girl at the boutique found something to do in the back when Cecelia came in. The Sip ’n Shop went quiet in a way that had a shape to it. Wendy texted her, just once. I’m not going anywhere. But you’ve got some calls to make, honey.

She drove out to the Dennison place because Jason had a session with the Baileys’ mare and she’d promised to be there for it. She was leaning on the round pen rail as he moved that anxious animal around the pen with nothing but his shoulders and a rope he never used, when the silver truck came up the drive.

Mrs. Bailey didn’t get all the way out. She stood behind her open door as if it were a shield, and her boy sat in the cab staring at his knees, and the whole thing was over almost before it began.

“We’re going to try the fella over in Ennis,” she said. “For the mare. And Danny’s lessons too. My husband already talked to Tate about the deposit.”

Jason crossed the pen and stood at the gate with the sun behind him. “The mare’s making progress, ma’am. She’s close to loading without a fight.”

“I know.” Mrs. Bailey’s eyes flicked to Cecelia at the rail and away again, fast, as if off a hot pan. “It’s not about the mare.”

The quiet that followed had teeth. Cecelia’s own face went carefully, professionally pleasant. The mask came up all on its own. Eight years of training.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jason said. “I’ll have her ready whenever you want to haul her. Tell Danny to keep his heels down wherever he lands.”

He didn’t argue. He didn’t look at Cecelia. He held the gate while the woman turned her truck around, and he touched the brim of his hat as she drove past, courteous as a church usher, and Cecelia stood at the rail while half of his brand-new business rolled down the driveway because of her.

“Jason.”

“She’ll be back.” He said it to the mare, mostly. “That gelding of theirs pulls like a freight train and the fella in Ennis is eighty.”

“That’s not the point.”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”