Chapter 21

Gabe frowned at the white, fluffy hat Monica handed him.

“I’m not wearing that. I have a hood. And I’m a man.”

“A hood is not nearly as good at keeping your head warm as a hat. Now, if you want to put your hood over the hat because your precious manliness cannot handle a simple, white stocking cap.”

“It has a…thingamajiggie on the top,” he replied, pointing to the ball-shaped tassel.

“It’s just one little pom,” she said, jiggling it as if that would make it somehow less offensive.

“I was a Navy SEAL, Monica. Current or former SEALs do not wear pom-fucking-poms.”

“Who are you afraid is going to see you? The great god of masculinity?”

“I’m not wearing a hat with a pom on it. That’s final. The much bigger issue at hand is we don’t have a shovel.” He picked up the pots they’d gathered. It was the best option they’d been able to find for snow relocation.

“There’s a utility shed out back that might have some, but with the back door iced shut, we’d have trouble getting to it.”

“Have to get to the wood anyway. Might as well try.” Gabe opened the door and braced himself against the icy wind and blinding whiteness of it all.

Once his eyes adjusted, he could notice the sky above was almost as blindingly blue as the world below was blindingly white. But that was good. Sun shining might cause retinal damage, but it would also help melt some of the snow.

“I don’t suppose you have any sunglasses I wouldn’t be ashamed to wear?”

“How do you feel about purple?”

“I can pull off a purple as long as they don’t have sparkles.”

She rolled her eyes and went back inside, rummaging around in the kitchen for a few seconds. Gabe nudged the snow in front of him. Quite the mixture of hardpack and fine, blow away.

Monica returned to the doorway and handed him a pair of black sunglasses with a smirk. “Do I really strike you as the purple sunglasses type?”

“A few days ago, I would have said no, but I’ve seen your Christmas sheets. Now, nothing about you would surprise me.”

They both stepped forward, Monica trying to lever herself up into the snowbank. She sank to about waist deep. He tried to stifle a laugh, but she looked a little too ridiculous.

“I can handle this. You stay inside.”

She shook her head and began pushing through the snow with her gloved hands. “I might as well help. I don’t want to freeze for lack of firewood any more than you do.”

“Too bad we didn’t have electricity for your hair dryer idea.”

“If we had electricity, we could stay happily inside for the foreseeable future. Now hand me a pot.”

He handed her one of the pots without saying anything. There was nothing to say when that scenario would be a little too much of a fantasy he shouldn’t have.

Staying in the fictional world of snowed-in cabins and just him and her. Which was a fantasy she wouldn’t share because she missed her kid.

Somehow thinking about Colin in terms of this fantasy made it worse. He wouldn’t mind if the kid were here. Sure, it would cut back on the sex considerably, but he liked having Colin underfoot. He liked being with Monica. Put the two together and…

He wished he were Alex or Jack, wished he had that kind of certainty in right things and building. To them, the situation would be a no-brainer: build a foundation, forge a relationship and a future. He didn’t know how to be the kind of strong that just built whole worlds.

Alex had built Revival with Becca at his side. And she’d built plenty of Revival herself, with the therapeutic horsemanship. Jack had built a new life after his old one had imploded. He was building something so that Rose could trust it.

Gabe had to uncomfortably consider Rose for a second. The fact she’d had an even worse childhood than he had, and yet slowly, she was coming to accept Jack’s strength, a future with him, and a kid.

Gabe couldn’t allow himself to fall into the foolish trap of thinking he could do what other people did. After he’d set that fire at his mother’s wedding, he’d spent years trying to atone for it, trying to turn himself into something Evan would accept or at least would pretend didn’t exist.

He’d gotten excellent grades and never gotten in trouble at school, no matter how much he’d wanted to sometimes. He’d tutored Evan’s two kids from his previous marriage, Jenna and Zack. He’d sat with them and the three kids his mother had had with Evan later, through nightmares and illness. He’d been the best older brother to them he’d known how. He’d done everything he thought of to earn himself a place in Evan’s house.

The harder he’d tried, the more Mom had withdrawn. The harder he’d tried, the more Evan said he was the bad seed making everything problematic at home.

And then Jenna…

Gabe didn’t want to think about it. Not even in a fantasy world, where Monica could understand and believe him. It didn’t matter if she’d believe him when no one else had. She might believe him, but it would plant a seed of doubt, and those doubts always sprouted. Evan made sure of it.

Gabe shook his head, trying to physically eradicate the old thoughts, the old fears. Monica would need someone more whole, more sure of himself. The kind of man she could inherently trust to be around Colin. The kind of man who didn’t have any sort of blights on his past. A man not connected to her job who might undermine how she looked to her patients.

He needed to get that through his own head. Imprint it on his soul, so he’d stop having these moments of hope. There was no hope for him.

“Gabe?”

He looked up and realized he’d been standing in the same position while she’d scooped and pushed her way through the drifts all the way to the corner of the cabin.

“Coming,” he muttered, following the makeshift path her small body had cut through the snow.

“Where exactly did you disappear to?”

He could’ve pretended like he didn’t understand what she meant, but he didn’t feel like being kind right now. Kindness had gotten him into this mess. A soft heart and a stupid brain dropping his guard enough to entertain these feelings.

He snorted as he made his way to her. When the hell had he gotten stupid enough to allow himself feelings? Feelings he could never, ever allow himself to articulate.

It would be a beginning, and then it would be an end. Ends always came, no matter how hard you worked, and he couldn’t let an ending risk his sticking with Revival.

Jenna and Evan had made sure he couldn’t stay with his mother, but in the wake of all that, he hadn’t wanted to remain. He hadn’t wanted to watch them all turn on him. Better to leave. Better to not try and soldier through.

He couldn’t leave Revival, which meant he could not allow himself to think there was any future with Monica. All futures ended. Whether in threats or in fire, all plans blew up in his face.

“You already had your question for the day,” he muttered, harsh and mean, as he approached. He made himself watch the hurt chase over her face. Life was hurt, and life was pain. Better to give it to her now than pretend there could ever be anything different between them.

“With this weather, the snow should start melting. I should be able to get out of here soon, maybe even today.”

She was silent at that, and they moved slowly through the huge drifts of snow to the back of the house. There was indeed a shed in the back, and they worked in utter silence to clear the snow around it so they could get to the door.

“Even if you could drive out of here today, it wouldn’t mean you have to,” she said quietly. He stared at her in horror for a few humming seconds, sick to his stomach at the sheer amount of hope on her face.

She wanted him to stick around. As though she felt the same thing. Cared about him and fantasized about a future between them.

She hadn’t had anyone in her life for ten years. Maybe…maybe he was actually special to her. Maybe he was supposed to be here, and maybe they were supposed to…

Hell, when would he ever learn? He’d had the same thoughts once upon a time. He’d made it through BUD/S training, become friends with Alex. He’d motivated people and saved lives, and he’d started to believe his shitty adolescence had been worth something. Like he’d gone through all that to be there, helping people.

He’d allowed that feeling to grow and grow until the Navy SEALs was his entire life. Until all that mattered was the next mission. They suffered losses, and still he’d believed that he was exactly what and where he was supposed to be.

Then Geiger had thrown himself on that grenade and saved the rest of them. Geiger had been dead and the rest of them couldn’t be Navy SEALs anymore. And for what? What had been accomplished? What had he ever done to make Geiger’s sacrifice worth it?

He hadn’t belonged in Evan’s house. He hadn’t belonged in the SEALs. Gabe Cortez was a man who didn’t belong anywhere.

He couldn’t ever let Monica turn him into the kind of man who believed again, because men who believed only ended up blown up and alone.

“No matter what, I’m not staying past tonight.” And with that, he managed to jerk the shed door open. Then he pointed. “Look. Shovels.”

* * *

Monica hadn’t said anything to his proclamation of leaving. She’d worked with him to clear some paths around the house, to dig out the firewood and take it inside to dry out. They’d dug out paths to their trucks, and they didn’t speak.

He never even tried to, and she was just…numb. Confused. Silent because she had no words to fight the kind of broken finality his words conveyed.

She’d find some of her own words. She just needed time. Too bad time was running out.

No. That was silly. Even if he went back to Revival tonight, that didn’t mean she’d lose her chance forever. There would be time. In fact, time might be best. Something had clicked in Gabe. A kind of fear. A fear she didn’t understand, but it had to stem from the tragedies he’d faced.

She’d known men with worse backgrounds, that was for sure, but it was different when it was someone you loved.

She sighed heavily, working on fixing a very piecemeal dinner of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and canned fruit.

Gabe crouched by the fire, moving logs this way and that with a poker. Something had changed in him this afternoon. There’d been flashes of it here and there since this whole thing started, but it was sharper, harsher tonight. It wasn’t just considering silence, or even that weird silence from yesterday. This had a darkness to it, a heaviness.

She hated this feeling of premature despair. That it was all over before she’d even had the courage to try to start it.

She frowned harder at his back. She had never let someone tell her she couldn’t, and why would this be any different? No, she couldn’t make miracles happen and erase his past or magically heal all his scars, but she could get through to him if she tried. Love was powerful that way, and if he didn’t love her back…that didn’t mean her love couldn’t be powerful.

That’s what he hadn’t had growing up, so it made sense he might not believe it existed, might not want to trust it. She’d just have to prove it did and that he could.

Talking healed. The entire basis of her professional career. Talking could heal.

Her stomach turned. She was much better at listening, at guiding. She’d grown up in a household that held itself together no matter the cost.

Things had eased once her father had started seeking help for his PTSD, but by then she’d been twenty. It was too late to undo all the stoic, military acceptance her mother and father had impressed upon her.

“It’s never too late,” she muttered to herself. She’d raised Colin differently, and her family was different now. And most of all, she was different. She’d dreaded this week alone, but it had turned into an awakening.

She didn’t want to do this on her own anymore. She could, and if she had to, she would, but she didn’t want to. She wanted a partner.

She wanted Gabe.

Now, she just had to find the courage to tell him, and the right approach to convince him. She squared her shoulders. Her childhood might have made expressing emotions hard, but it had also taught her the value of hard work, and the importance of not giving up when the going got tough.

But as she marched a plate over to Gabe’s crouched form, a million words jostling for space in her brain, a knock sounded at the door.

Blinking, Monica turned to stare at it.

“Expecting visitors?” Gabe asked dryly.

She didn’t bother to respond. She put the plates down on the fireplace hearth next to Gabe, then opened the door.

“Oh, Caleb, hi.” Caleb Shaw ran the Shaw ranch and had rented her this cabin. Though he was Rose’s brother-in-law, Monica didn’t know him very well besides a few conversations over rental agreements.

“Hey. Just wanted to give you a heads-up that the road out is fairly passable. Probably another day or two before we get power, but…” His gaze drifted to Gabe, so Monica’s did too.

He’d gotten to his feet and was scowling.

Caleb cleared his throat. “Anyway, didn’t mean to interrupt your evening. Just wanted you to know we’re not so blocked in anymore. Path out will still be rough and slick though, so be careful.”

“Thanks, Caleb.”

He tipped his hat and then headed back to some kind of vehicle clearly made for traveling over snow. What little light remained of the day glowed in the west, and Monica sighed. It was beautiful, this snow-covered land of vast space and even vaster sky. She couldn’t say she enjoyed this long, bitter winter, but she’d fallen in love with Montana.

She smiled a little ruefully. Just as she’d fallen in love with the harsh, bitter man behind her. Because under all that bluster, something big and true and honest existed. Strong and good.

“Friend of yours?”

She frowned at Gabe’s voice, finally closing the door against the pretty Christmas exterior. “Caleb Shaw.”

Gabe just made a grunting sound.

“You know, my landlord, so to speak.”

“So to speak,” he repeated with an odd edge of something she really didn’t understand. Because surely that was not some kind of twisted jealousy lurking there.

She could only blink for a moment. Jealous? Of a married man who was her landlord? Which surely he knew. “He’s married to Rose’s sister,” she said, baffled beyond belief.

“Your point?”

“What’s your point?” she returned. She wanted to laugh, but his eyes were too dark, his scowl too deep.

“I don’t have one.” He shrugged, then picked up his coat. Because he was going to leave, retreat. Then he was going to build up all those boundaries he always kept around himself.

She couldn’t let it happen. She stood in front of the door, even as her heart began to pound in panic. “You can’t leave.”

He shook his head, a little sad but a lot determined. “The roads are passable. There’s no reason to stay.” He zipped up his coat as if it were some final goodbye gesture.

“Except that I want you to stay, and I think you want to stay.”