Page 20 of Charming the Cowboy
So much so that she barely noticed when he got into the wagon and started to drive the team forward.
“Oh,” she made a startled noise, and clung to the bench as they went forward. “Yeah. I told you, it’s a little loud and bumpy. Do you think you can tell ghost stories in this?”
She laughed. “Yes. I know that I can.”
“You’re just that good at telling ghost stories?”
“We’ll see,” she said.
Silence settled between them, comfortably. Which was odd. Because so much of the time between them had been uncomfortable this last little bit, but this was lovely. The scenery around them was glorious. She sniffed the air, taking in the scent of heavy pine, the moisture that was blowing in from the sea, and that sharp, crisp edge of fall.
“It must’ve been fun to grow up here.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was.”
She felt like a knife blade twisted in her stomach. “I’m sorry. I know your dad…”
“Yeah. He died here. Working this land. That’s definitely complicated. But then, what isn’t?”
“After my dad died, we just left everything behind. The house, everything that had a single memory of him. I don’t know which is better.”
“Not having your dad die?”
She laughed. “Yeah. That would be good. Too bad life didn’t offer us that one.”
“Right? I want my money back.”
“Sadly, there is a no-refund policy on bullshit.”
He chuckled. “Of course not.”
“I have a very real question for you,” she said.
“Okay. Then I’ll give a real answer.”
“Do you think that if your dad had lived, you would still be a cowboy? I mean, do you think this is what you would do, or are you all here because… You feel like you have to be?”
He was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know. The person that I am, the person that I became after his death, is the only person I can imagine being. I was only eight. I didn’t really have other aspirations. And now… This, carrying on his legacy, that’s my purpose. Turning this place into what he wanted it to be. Making sure he didn’t die for nothing, that’s who I am.” He was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know if I would have purpose if I had him. But I would have him.”
She understood what he was saying. The deep, complicated pain that came with the realization that if you could have a person back that you missed very much, you might not be yourself. “If my dad had lived, I don’t know if we would’ve come here. And I love it here.”
“You probably would have at some point. Your grandma has been here all this time.”
“Yeah. But my mom left for a reason. Because she thought she wanted to live in the city. Have a whole different life. I think she wanted to distance herself from the family and curses. She didn’t want to live in that space, and then she lost my dad, and it seemed to prove everything right, so she went back to Wild Rose Point. Because it didn’t seem like the enemy anymore. It just seemed inevitable.”
“And you really think it’s inevitable.”
“My mom thought it wasn’t,” she said. “And look at what she lost.”
He fixed his gaze on her, and her breath evaporated in her lungs. “But look at what she got. If your mom hadn’t married your dad, she wouldn’t have you and Marcus.”
She blinked hard. “I know.”
“So, can you really say it wasn’t meant to be? What if… What if your dad was always going to have that car accident? No matter who he was with. And because of your mother, he got to have two kids first. He got to be in love first.”
It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to her. She closed her eyes and let the breeze and those words wash through her.
She had always seen her father’s death as a punishment. For him, for her mother, as something that wasn’t supposed to happen, but did because of a curse. She had never seen their intrusion on his life as something beautiful, not when they were potentially what had wrenched his soul from his body.
