Page 116 of This Time Around
I’d expected to come home and tell Cooper everything—that I was letting Joseph go and moving on.
And even then, in that moment, the words Cooper wanted, words I wanted so desperately to give him, still stuck in my throat.
“I—” Goddamn it.Tears fell down my cheeks and I didn’t swipe them away.
“Rebecca.”The way his name rolled off his lips, so tortured, ripped right through me.
“Yesterday, I saw that package come in the mail, and I figured you were leaving.I wanted to see if we could stay together, work something out, long distance.”
I was messing this up.Royally.The words wouldn’t come smoothly enough.
“You want me to go do the movie?You wanted me to leave?”His face couldn’t have flinched anymore from the confusion.
“And then come back.You know, in between them.”
He swiped his hand over his face.“I’ve done that, Rebecca.I’ve lived a marriage spending most of the year in different time zones or different countries and that didn’t work so well for me.”
I wasn’t Camilla.He wasn’t Joseph.But clearly, they weren’t far enough in our pasts to be behind us.He’d just implied the same fear I had about him going, but I’d thought it wasn’t a valid concern.That he would never cheat on me because he knew the pain from the other side, and yet there he was, confessing it wouldn’t be as easy as I wanted to believe it was.
“I want a home and a family.I want a wife I sleep next to every night.That was my dream, more than a career.”
A sob tore from my throat and I stepped toward him, but he moved back.Away from me.
It was the first time he’d moved away from me since the first time we kissed and it slashed through me.
“I think…” He stopped and cleared his throat.Then he twisted and bent, picked up the scattered papers from the bed, leaving the ones on the floor where they were.When he was standing again, he didn’t look at me, but over my shoulder like I didn’t exist.
It was colder than the worst winter wind I’d ever felt whipping through me, the kind that chilled your bones and froze your face.
“I think,” he said again.“I’ve just learned I thought I’d found my dream, but that it’s not the same as yours.”
His chin shook.That strong jawline and handsome features that had captured me and held me prisoner before I knew what was happening, wobbled with emotion he fought back.
“That’s not it,” I said.I went to him and pressed my hand to his chest before he could stop me.“I want to be everything you think I am.I want you, Cooper.I just need more time.”
His hand wrapped around my wrist.I dug my fingernails into his shirt before he shoved me away, but he held me tight, almost painfully.His eyes grew wet.
“Will four weeks be enough?”he asked.That was how much time he had before he was supposed to leave.“Plus ten or twelve apart help?”
I loved him.I was certain.But, if I couldn’t tell him with the words he needed, did I really?“I don’t know.”
God.Would someone just slap me with a two by four?I was sabotaging something I so desperately wanted, something I couldn’t imagine living without.
He squeezed my wrist and pulled it from his chest.My eyes burned, tears falling faster than I could brush them away.“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”he asked.“I need to know that you feel the same way toward me that I do about you.And you don’t.”
“I do,” I cried.“I want this to work, but I can’t help but think if you give up your career for me, something you’ve always said you loved and you were born for, like I was born to work this ranch, that someday, you won’t look back and regret the choice you made.”
“And that’s how I know you don’t love me.That you don’t feel the same way about me as I do you, because for me, until today, until this very moment, I had never had a doubt in my mind you were worth it.That I would sit on the porch with you or ride the horses or drive around town in your truck and hang out with your friends who have become mine, and I would never need anything more in my life.And the fact you can think in your mind I’d regret anything other than that, tells me you’re not as certain of us as I am.”
I pulled my hands down my cheeks.When I pulled them back, they were streaked with black and I couldn’t find it in me to care a single bit.“Don’t go.Just because I can’t say the words doesn’t mean I don’t feel them.I do.I swear it.”
“If you did, you’d say it.I know you, Rebecca.You don’t hide anything you’re feeling.But this, this I don’t see, and as hard as I’ve tried to look, I can’t find it.”
I gaped at him.He had to be wrong.I gasped his name.“Cooper.”
Everything I thought I had was crumbling before me, falling through my fingers with no hope of me grabbing any of it.How had this gotten turned so sideways?
