Page 28 of A Summer to Claim Her Cowboy

“I loved you,” she said. She hadn’t meant it like that, so she rushed on. “I loved all of you, like family. I couldn’t imagine not being there.”

“I’ve never done anything half so profound for you as you have for me. I don’t think I ever did anything half so profound for another person.”

“That just isn’t true. I had great parents. They’re still great. I still never see anybody love their kids quite the way that you do. Through everything. You’re honest with them, and you talk to them about everything. You’re there for them. You’re an extraordinary father. And it isn’t just what you did for Carter and Sky. It’s what you did for Anna too.”

“That means a lot.”

His voice had gone rough. “I really don’t know what to do. With them grown up. What I said to you, that was wrong. Saying we didn’t need you. And honestly, I think it has more to do with my fear that they don’t need me.”

“They do,” she said. “And they always will. They love you. You’re their father.”

“But I haven’t left much life for myself, have I? I have this ranch. I have them. But when they don’t need me all day every day, what is there? Just grief, I guess. Though it’s not the way that it used to be. It’s not a thousand sharp knives every time I take a breath. I’ve accepted that I’m not spending my life with her. That she’s not here. That she wasn’t my forever. But I have never been able to accept her dying so young. I’ve never been able to accept my boys losing their mother. Not really.”

“I don’t know why you would. It’s not fair.”

Her chest felt tender. Aching.

“We’re in kind of the same boat, Walker. Because I don’t really know what to do without your boys either. Only they’re not mine.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she knew this was when she lost the battle. “And I know that. They’re not mine.”

“Frankie.” He caught her chin and held her face steady, looking into her eyes. So deep it hurt. “They’re as much yours as they are anybody’s. You were there through the hardest thing.”

That did it.Nowshe was crying. Real tears. Leaking from her eyes and spilling down her cheeks.

“I know this wasn’t just a job for you. And that’s why it works. Because you did help raise those kids. I know that,” he said.

“I am very aware that they are not my boys, Walker. They’re your boys and Anna’s boys. I was lucky enough to get to see what kind of mother she was, and I knew that I could never be her.”

“But that’s why you matter so much. You never tried to be her. You wereyou. I think in some ways, I probably felt a little bit distant to them. A little too damaged by what happened. But you were someone younger. Closer to them, farther away from the tragedy. You are just so good to us.”

They had never talked about these things. Because it laid so many things bare. She was glad they were now, but it was painful. It was all so painful.

But maybe the only way to get untangled from this kind of codependent situation they were in was to acknowledge it. Of course, she was always trying to rationalize these things and it hadn’t worked for her yet. Witness her attempts at sex and relationships with other men. She had enough insight to know that she shouldn’t actually trust her feelings for Walker. That she needed to acknowledge that it was entirely possible they were so strong because she had such profound exposure to him from the time she was young.

But it hadn’t worked. Trying to have a relationship with someone else just hadn’t work. So it seemed like no matter how rational she tried to be, no matter how much she tried to be an adult about all this stuff, everything with Walker was just more complicated than that.

“We started dating when we were seventeen,” he said. “She was my first. I was damn sure ready for her to be my last.”

“That... That makes this kind of hard, doesn’t it?”

He shook his head. “Like I said. I accepted that peace a long time ago. I don’t wish that you were her.”

It was a shock to her system. A bolt of relief she hadn’t known she needed.

Because she had been part of the boys’ lives, and on that level, part of her had wondered if he had ever looked at her and wished that she was Anna. And then... This only made that worse. But he’d said it. Definitively. And she had needed it so very, very much.

The problem was, he was perfect. So much more than a man had a right to be. She was grateful, actually, that she knew that. That as much as this was compounding her pain, she couldn’t write it off as an experience.

She’d tried.

She had tried to love someone else. She’d tried to make sure that it wasn’t a trick related to being with him all the time, related to having known him, to having imprinted on him when she was a teenager.

The truth was, he was just a good man. A beautiful man. One who made her feel better about herself instead of worse. One who understood just the right things to say to her. One who exemplified everything she could have ever wanted in a partner. A father for her own children.

That made her feel hollow, because honestly, Carter and Sky might as well have been her own children. She loved them like they were. She was glad that Walker didn’t wish she was someone else. She was also glad that he had trusted her with his grief. She was glad that they’d taken the step. The more adult relationship wasn’t just sex. It was this. It was him trusting her to actually bear the weight of his loss. It was him listening to her talk about her past experiences.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“About what?”

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