Chance snorted. “Was I that obvious?”
“You curled your lip like this”—she showed him—“when you said Harvard. So maybe you just don’t like Harvard.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “I don’t care about Harvard one way or the other. Erik was an okay kid, I suppose, but he acted like he was doing Rye a favor by being his friend. Like Erik was so smart and gonna do big things, and he was taking pity on Rye.” Chance rubbed his chin. “I guess that was true, though, ‘cause he’s at Harvard.”
Oh, hell no, she wasn’t going to let that stand. “I’ve met a lot of people in this world,” Cordy said, “and the ones I’ve met who went to Harvard aren’t any better or worse than anyone else. And Rye is one of the best people I know.”
“Well, there you go.” Chance flashed a smile at her. “He turned out pretty good then.”
“Thanks to you.”
It turned out that Chance had been a dad all along, which explained why he’d taken to it with Madeleine so well. Not that he would ever admit it.
It only made Cordy love him more.
Chance ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked toward the names carved in the wall, then seemed to gather himself.
Cordy’s heart went sideways. He looked like he was wrestling with something. Something big.
She was paralyzed with fear and hope. Maybe she hadn’t bet and lost. Maybe he was about to say those words…
twenty-six
I love you.
The words clung to Chance’s tongue, filled his throat, made his chest too damn tight. He’d been like this since Madeleine's birth, half-crazy with his feelings and barely fighting the urge to tell Cordy how he felt.
His brothers were wrong. Falling in love wasn’t quiet, wasn’t a thunderbolt—it was gravity, always pulling, pulling, pulling Chance toward Cordy. She was the ground holding him up, the thing that caught him when he fell, his anchor to the earth.
Fighting it was driving him out of his mind, same as fighting gravity itself. No man could win that battle.
But he kept struggling all the same.
Chance stared at the names carved into the walls and considered the old story of Jesse and Ida. He’d been hearing it for as long as he could remember. His first trip to this cavern had been when he’d been too young to recall. This place was as much a part of him as the ranch was.
And yet, bringing Cordy and Madeleine up here had revealed something new to him. The other times he’d been up here, he’d focused on Jesse—his name carved into the rock, his role in thelegend. After all, Jesse was his ancestor. Ida wasn’t much of anything to Chance.
This time, Chance lingered on her name. Jesse must have carved their names—the handwriting was the same—but Ida’s name was deeper, like Jesse didn’t want this rock to ever forget her.
Why had Ida agreed to run away with him? She had to have known how dangerous it was, even before the blizzard had come up out of nowhere. And yet she’d gone with him.
If Ida had told Jesse no, she was staying put, Jesse would have stayed put, too. They would have lived.
And then what? Would they have found a way to be together in the end?
Chance honestly didn’t know. Jesse would have loved Ida until the end of his days; Chance knew that. But Kessal men weren’t smart about love. They fell into it, then heaved and hollered like a cow stuck in the mud. They couldn’t save themselves.
Ida must have loved Jesse with that same desperation, though. That was why she’d gone with him—it was the only explanation.
Chance was in love with Cordy the way only a Kessal man could be, but he knew he could never tell her that. If there was one thing Chance had going for him, he was smarter than Jesse. He wasn’t going to trap Cordy into thinking she owed him something, wasn’t going to drag her off into a blizzard, or even make her worry he’d do something stupid over her.
Chance would do the one thing Kessal men never did. He’d let her go.
Cordy would move into Reed’s house with her sweet baby, and the two of them would be a perfect, complete family. Chance would see her from the street no doubt, would wave to her and the baby, on the outside looking in. And he’d never let her knowhow much that hurt him. How badly he wanted to be on the inside with them.
He cleared his throat. The wordsI love youlingered, though.
“So.” Chance’s tone was tortured. “It’s something, huh?”
