Page 37 of Hero for the Holidays

He cleared his throat.

“Good to know,” he said.

“I think it’s good to know where you stand.”

“I don’t think you or I have ever been confused about where we stood with each other.”

Everyone around them might have had questions, but as far as they went, they’d been crystal clear. It had been great, until it wasn’t. It had been love until it was hate.

And now it was...civility of convenience?

“Fair. So now we need to what? Lay down ground rules? Is that what you want?”

“It’s been a day. How do you feel?”

“It has not been a whole day, actually. But thank you. And I feel... I don’t know. In some ways happy. In some ways sad. In some ways shell-shocked. I think I really felt like for the first time in a long while my life had settled. And now I am a mother. I suppose in some ways I am, I have been. But in other ways no. So this is new. Except... I don’t know, you’ve been with her for three weeks. How does it feel?”

His chest went tight. “I pretty much want to cry every day. That’s how it feels, Fia.”

She looked at him, shocked. “I thought cowboys were allergic to tears.”

“It’s a kid.Ourkid. How can you not want to cry? Looking at her, thinking about it. It’s... It’s intense. Every day is intense. And I know that I feel for her more than she does for me. I’m not even sure if she cares that I’m her father, or if it’s all the same to her. And I get what it would be. I do. It was good for me. To hear you tell her that it was okay she wasn’t looking for us. Because that hurt me when she said it to me. And you responded better than I did. You change the way I thought about it.”

“Look at us,” Fia said. “Being civil.”

“We blew up over the biggest reason a couple can. A kid. In some capacity I think kids are often the cause of explosions. And now we’re trying to be civil for the same reason a whole lot of people try civility. A kid.”

Fia put the lid back on her coffee, and bit her lip. “That is true. You’re definitely not wrong about that. This is... I don’t know. I’ve been caught between wanting to fall to my knees and give thanks for this, or...cry. I wanted to spare her. From trauma from... She’s back with us anyway. And I just want... I want us to make the tragedy she’s had to live through into something good. And that means we need to behave ourselves.”

Yeah, there was a real sense ofwhat was the pointthat overtook him sometimes too. She was back here anyway. And he could admit it had been part of what fueled his anger when he’d made the decision to keep his choice from Fia.

He was relieved to see her grapple with it too. It made him feel like he wasn’t alone. Which was maybe a strange thing to think. But Fia was the only one he shared this with.

That had been true all these years. And they’d never talked about it. Never dealt with it.

The part of him that carried this felt stuck at seventeen sometimes, maybe for that reason. Because he’d locked it up in his chest back then and didn’t take it out ever.

“Agreed. We need to keep it together,” he said.

That much he knew.

“So just whatever conflict we have—because you and I both know we’re going to have conflict. There’s no way we spent the last thirteen years at each other’s throats and were just suddenly going to be amazing at conflict resolution.”

He laughed. “I guess that’s a good point.”

“We can’t drag her into it. We can’t have her feeling like she’s somehow responsible for the tension between us.”

“I think I’ve done a pretty good job of making sure she knows we come by the tension honestly.”

“We do.”

She looked like she wanted to say something, but instead looked down at her coffee.

“What? We’re alone. It’s free-for-all time. We have to get it out of our systems so it doesn’t affect Lila.”

Fia looked away. “I was remembering. Some things that I don’t always let myself. I know why I was so jealous. I found out that my dad was cheating on my mom, and I basically didn’t feel like I could trust men. Anyone. If my dad, who I always thought was a decent guy, was cheating, then why wouldn’t my boyfriend cheat? That was why I was continually losing my mind whenever you were with some other girl. Or looked at one. Why were you?”

He huffed a laugh. “Because I was an idiot.”

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