CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LUKE WAS IN a mean mood and had a terrible headache by the time he got down to Get Out of Dodge the next day. He had a feeling that no amount of manual labor was going to fix it for him, either. Which made him angrier. Because that was what he had counted on for most of his life. Physical punishment.
But so far he had mucked every stall, dug new holes for fence posts, exercised three horses, and he still didn’t feel any closer to dealing with the anger that was swirling around inside of him. The regret. All directed at himself.
He had opted to go and move river rock that Wyatt was transferring from one part of the property to another for landscape, because hefting giant-ass stones from a pile into the back of his truck was both painful and somehow metaphorical for the weight inside of him.
He was still angry. So it was almost a relief when he saw Bennett crossing the property and heading toward him. Because that would give him a place for some of his anger to go.
Right. Because that’s completely reasonable. Yell at Bennett.
Oh well. He wasn’t in the market for reasonable. He was in the market for blood and mayhem. “We need to talk about this,” Bennett said, striding across the rocky ground and heading straight toward Luke.
“About what?”
“You carrying Olivia out of the saloon last night like she was a bag of feed.”
Luke snorted and picked up another rock. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d have slung a bag of feed over my shoulder.” He walked over to his truck and slammed the boulder down on the tailgate before pushing it back into the bed against the rest of them.
Then he turned and wiped the sweat off his brow. “She wanted to go,” he said. “Or she wouldn’t have come with me.”
“I realize that.” Bennett shook his head. “But I never figured you’d be one for putting on a show for the town.”
Luke shrugged. “Neither did I.”
Bennett stared at him for a moment, the crease between his dark brows deepening. Then he let out a slow breath. “You really care about her,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Luke returned.
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter? You just about started a fight with me last night in front of the entire town. It mattered plenty then.”
“Well,” Luke responded, “it doesn’t matter now. Don’t you have a cow who needs a hand stuck up her ass or something?”
Bennett shook his head. “Not at the moment. I thought you were using her for that land.”
“Damn, I wish,” Luke bit out.
“And she was using you because she was mad at me.”
Luke nodded once. “Well, she was. At first.”
“But not after a while,” Bennett said, his eyes fixed on Luke’s.
Luke looked away. “Like I said. Doesn’t matter. It’s done now.”
“I swear, Luke, if you hurt her...”
“I did,” Luke said, picking up another rock and turning, dropping it in the back of his truck with a loud crash. He turned back to Bennett, dusting his hands off on his jeans. “I did, because that’s the only thing I know how to do to people I love. How about that?”
Bennett looked like Luke had just hurled one of the rocks in that pile right at his head. “You love her?”
“I sure as hell do,” Luke responded, almost laughing because the whole thing was ridiculous. So damned ridiculous. “Do you know what’s terrible about that? There is nothing in the whole world that I can do to make that enough. It is the biggest emotion I have, the biggest damn emotion anyone has and it’s not enough. I don’t... I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know what else I can give to her. Except for me.” He picked up another rock. “I already know I’m not enough.”
“What are you talking about?” Bennett asked, looking genuinely confused.
Luke dropped the rock back on the ground, between his feet. “Do you want to know who my family is?”
Bennett looked hard at him. “I actually do.”
So this was the second time in just a few days he was going to talk about this. Cut his chest open and let it all bleed out. And why the hell not? He’d lost Olivia already. Nothing else mattered.
“I never knew my father,” Luke said. “When I was sixteen my mother killed herself.”
Bennett’s expression shifted, his jaw going slack.
“Shit. Man, I had no idea.” Bennett looked genuinely stricken. “You never...you never told us your mother was dead.”
“It didn’t matter.”
“Our mother is dead, too,” Bennett said. “If anyone would have understood...”
“It didn’t matter to me. I just wanted a place to be. A new place. Somewhere I could have a different life. But that’s why I have money. You wanted to know? Now you do. I had money from my mother’s life insurance settlement. That’s why I came here in the first place. Because I didn’t have anyone. Because I might as well have been an orphan. I loved my mother, Bennett. It still ended the way it did.”
“And you think... What? Living with you is going to make Olivia depressed?”
“I just can’t... I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve for her to love me. And it won’t fix anything. It won’t fix me.”
Bennett shrugged. “You can’t accept love.”
“No,” Luke said.
“Not at all?” he pressed.
“You have a point, Bennett?” Luke snapped.
“I do. What do you think this is?” Bennett asked, gesturing around them.
“A fucking ranch,” Luke responded.
“Not the ranch, dumb-ass. All of it. Us. Wyatt, Grant. My father and Jamie. What do you think holds us here? What do you think holds it all together?”
Luke gritted his teeth. “That’s different.”
The Dodges were the best family Luke had ever known. Not that he’d known many. Not perfect, not like Leave It to Beaver, but they loved each other. And Quinn Dodge was his father figure, sure as hell. The man was made of grit. He’d raised his kids mostly alone and had taken Luke onto the ranch when he was a surly teenager.
“Is it? If I didn’t love you like a brother, Luke, I would have flattened your ass the minute I saw you with Olivia.”
“You said I wasn’t like you.”
“Because I was pissed,” Bennett said. “And I was jealous, which is bullshit, because you’re right. I’m not in love with her. I feel protective of her, and that’s not the same thing. If you’re really in love with her, and she’s in love with you, then dammit, man, you’ve got to do something with that.”
“Why? You were going to marry a woman you didn’t love. You clearly don’t believe in it, either.”
Bennett shook his head. “I cared for her. I’ve never expected more than that. I wanted to protect her, and I mean that. I never would have hurt her. But you obviously have something with her. Something that has you acting all kinds of messed up. Something that has her acting crazy. I’ve never known Olivia to act crazy in my life. So it has to be something serious. That kind of thing my dad had with my mom. And that he has with Freda. My dad believes in love, even though he was hurt. Even though he lost someone.”
“Your mom’s death is different than mine. It just is.”
“I’m not going to pretend I understand exactly how you feel,” Bennett said. “But I know loss. I understand what it does to you.” Bennett spoke with such depth that Luke had to wonder if he was still talking about the loss of his mother, or if there was something else. Bennett had said Luke didn’t know everything about him. That made him wonder. “I think that’s what’s holding you back. You’re afraid of losing someone you care about.”
“Well, I lost Olivia, so your theory doesn’t really hold up.”
“You lost her on your terms, man. That’s not the same thing.”
Luke scowled. “I don’t need a lecture from you, Bennett. Run along.”
“Shut up,” Bennett said. “Luke, I’m sorry that you lost your mother. And I’m even sorrier that I didn’t know about it until now. I know that losses like that leave scars, but I can’t let you sink into that. I wouldn’t be family to you if I didn’t put aside the anger I’ve had for you for the past couple of weeks. If I didn’t put aside any lingering issues I have with Olivia and tell you that you should be with her. Because any woman who makes you look that miserable obviously matters. Any woman who makes you just about start a bar fight matters. Matters in a way that goes way beyond anything I’ve ever felt. You should be with her. Because she deserves that. Deserves a man who looks this miserable when he’s not with her. That man isn’t me.”
“I know it’s not,” Luke said. “But that doesn’t change things. Olivia deserves everything. I want to...give her everything I have. I want to give her diamonds and that little farmhouse on the property I just bought that made her eyes light up like she was looking at the most beautiful mansion in the world. I want to pull down the sky and give her the stars. But it doesn’t change who I am. It doesn’t change anything.”
“You deserve her, too,” Bennett said. “You don’t deserve to live this half life, hanging on to the past. You always deserved to be here, always deserved to be part of our family. And you deserve to be with the woman you love.”
It was a strange thing, having the man he had just gotten in a fight with twenty-four hours ago standing there looking at him and telling him he deserved to be happy. But then, all of this was strange.
“I just can’t see how it’s going to be enough,” Luke said, feeling weary down to his soul. And it had nothing to do with moving boulders.
“It’s not love that fails people. It’s fear,” Bennett said. “I know a little something about that. And right now, you’re letting fear win. So stop it.”
“I...” Revelation washed over Luke like a tide, and any words he’d been about to speak froze in his throat. “It can’t be that easy.” He finished the sentence by tearing those words out from deep inside himself.
“Why not?” Bennett asked. “Nothing is broken between you two. You haven’t destroyed anything. You’ve...changed each other for the better. Hell, I’ve never seen anything like it. She’s happier with you, Luke. Take it from the guy who was with her before.”
Then Bennett tipped his hat and walked away, leaving Luke standing there feeling like the grade A asshole he was.
He stared at Bennett’s retreating figure, backlit by the sun that was piercing through the furious gray clouds slowly breaking into pieces above the mountains. Mountains he knew by heart. Mountains that encircled this land he knew better than his own heart.
For years, this place had been his heart. This place, and the people on it.
It wasn’t love that failed.
Suddenly it all hit him with blinding clarity. He had love all around him. It was easy for him to think that he’d had it and lost it when his mother had died. But that wasn’t it.
He had been loved from the moment he had stepped onto the Get Out of Dodge Ranch. Had been embraced and accepted by them. And if there had been any distance, it had been on his part. Because he had resisted caring too much. He had loved this land with all of himself. And he had found a new ranch, a new place to love.
And there was Olivia.
He had loved her from the beginning. From the moment he had first begun to see her as a woman. And in all that time, that love had sustained him. The love of this place, the love of the Dodge family. And now, his love for Olivia. It had been enough.
Suddenly he couldn’t breathe, pain slicing through his chest like the sharp edge of one of his whiskey tumblers had broken off and stuck in there last night when he’d tried to drink all this away.
It wasn’t that love had failed the day his mother had killed herself.
It was that fear had won.
His mother’s fear of the future. Her fear of walking through that darkness she’d been in for the next ten years, twenty. The fear that it would never get better. And maybe even that it would never get better for him if she didn’t do something drastic.
On that day, fear had been stronger, and there had been nothing he could do to combat it. But right now he had a choice. A choice between love and fear. He couldn’t have both. He knew it. They couldn’t exist side by side.
One had to win. He had seen that play out.
But today it was his choice which one got the victory.
He pictured Olivia’s face, the way that he had left her, curled up on the floor, and the way he had spent the night curled up on the floor after. He had made them both miserable because of his choice. And he wanted to fix it. He just had to hope that she would let him.
Love was going to have to be enough. It was all he had. But he had it. And for the first time in twenty years he was ready to embrace it.
When he had driven himself to Get Out of Dodge at sixteen, in that old beater car of his, his heart torn to pieces, he’d imagined that love had let him down. But all this time he’d missed that love hadn’t failed him. Love was what had held him up.
And now it was the only thing strong enough to make him move forward.