My pulsed raced so quickly my blood was burning, running through my veins with such speed I was afraid for my health. I jumped off the bed, the unsigned contract flittered to the floor.

Cooper, the man I loved, was sitting here in front of me, essentially telling me he would walk away from his dream, from his life and his career…for me.

My head shook. “Why?”

“Why do I love you?” He hadn’t moved from the bed. Knees bent, bare feet settled on the floor, he leaned forward and clasped his hands together, elbows rested on his knees. “I have a list. But it’s long.”

“No.” I gestured to the floor where papers had scattered. “Why would you do that?”

Because I love you and I didn’t want to leave you.

He’d already answered. It made no sense.

“You can’t give everything up for me.” I stepped back. His laser-sharp eyes on my every movement.

His tongue rolled across the front of his teeth. “It’s funny, because until you said that, I hadn’t felt like I was giving up anything in choosing you.”

Oh my God. My hand flew to my chest, to my heart that was racing. Just yesterday, while folding socks, I’d wondered if something like that was possible. But I would never ask him to give up everything he’d worked for. “Cooper—”

I clicked my mouth shut. I had nothing to say.

He meant every word he said to me, I could see it in the lines tightened around the outer edges of his eyes, the sad pull of his lips.

“I can’t ask you to do that. To walk away from your life.”

He rolled his lips together, dropped his head. God, the pain on him. I curled my hands into fists to stop myself from reaching for him. This morning, I’d gone to church, dressed up and prettied myself up and took off, telling myself I needed some quiet. I needed a peaceful place to go to figure everything out. And then I went and did something I hadn’t ever done.

I sat at my parents’ graves. And Joseph’s. I cried my eyes out, gave him all my anger and betrayal and all my forgiveness. I sat in front of my mom and dad’s grave markers and told them everything. I told them about Joseph, about Jenni. I spilled everything I had felt much too ashamed of to speak to anyone who could actually respond until I’d given it to Cooper.

It hadn’t been enough, though, because the person I needed to give everything to was Joseph and even if he couldn’t respond, I still had to let it all go if I had any hope of ever moving on.

I didn’t expect to get home and search for Cooper, only to stand in the doorway to the guesthouse, the last place I thought to look for him, and I’d done it for several minutes, him not even realizing I was there, he was so wrapped up in whatever he was reading.

And he expected me to sit back and watch him walk away from something that enraptured him in a way I’d never seen? Not even when he was with me?

He stood from the bed, his hands on his hips as he scanned the papers on the bed, the scribbles in margins all over the bent pages like he hadn’t read through it only once, but a dozen times.

“I must have been wrong, then, because I thought I was walking toward something that’d be better than anything I could imagine.”

Me. He meant me, and more than anything I wanted to reach out and grab him and walk wherever he led me because I had no doubt he’d be right. But to choose?

I’d never ask that of him. One or the other.

All my thoughts from yesterday rushed through me. In all of the options I considered, him walking away from his career, one he always said he loved, had never been one of them. Not for me. Not when we were so new.

“Cooper,” I tried again, but this time, he held up his hand and stopped me.

“I’m in love with you, Rebecca. I want this life here, with you, the ranch, the animals. I want to build a life here and someday, ask you to marry me. I want kids to run inside, filthy from rolling in the dirt and chasing chickens and goats.”

“You sound so certain.” If I could slap myself, I would have. What was I saying. Why was I so doubting?

A look flashed through his eyes and his shoulders slumped. “You don’t love me.”

It was a statement, not a question and one I desperately wanted to argue with, but the words still wouldn’t come. I was too drained from the morning, the looks at church, the hugs and the condolences and the smiles and the welcomes and the conversation with Joseph and saying goodbye.

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?

“I’ll call Max,” Cooper said. His voice sounded scrubbed with shards of glass and he reached to grab his glasses from the bed. “I’ll pack my things. Get on the first plane out I can. I think that’s probably best.”

“Don’t. Don’t leave. Not like this.” This wasn’t ending. It couldn’t. “Cooper, please.”

I was steps from him. It felt like miles. Felt further when he looked at me, had to see the pain so visibly etched on my features and he didn’t flinch. “I think it’s for the best. Maybe this all moved too fast. Maybe you’re not ready. Hell, I don’t know, maybe I’m not ready. But I know that what’s best for me, isn’t giving my all to someone who isn’t sure they can give all of theirs back to me. That’s not fair.”

It was just time I was asking for.

His point was made. When he looked at me, he didn’t see how much I desperately loved him and needed him. Maybe because I hadn’t given it to him, too hung up still on Joseph and Jenni and affairs and death and struggling. Maybe I’d forgotten how to love someone.

Maybe I never knew how to love someone.

Maybe that’s why Joseph cheated on me in the first place.

“I’m sorry. So sorry.”

He came to me then, slid his hand to the side of my head, cupping it and I fell into him. His thumb brushed my cheek. “I’m sorry, too.” He pressed his lips to my forehead, stealing my breath, but before I could reach for him, he was gone, his back was to me and I stood in the room in the guesthouse and watched him walk away from me.