Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
The door to Zeke’s swung shut behind Cade, cutting off the drone of voices and clattering of dishes.
He scanned the area for Tessa and found her leaning against the brick wall, arms locked across her middle. She panted. Her jaunty red coat gaped open, and one mitten was gone.
He stopped a few steps away, close enough to show he was there, far enough not to box her in. Spooked things needed space. That held true for horses and humans alike.
“What happened back there?”
Her head jerked up, but she didn’t look at him. “Nothing. Just too many people. Too much noise.” She flicked a hand, brushing him off. “Not a big deal.”
Cade didn’t move. In the round pen, a colt circled until it chose to face you. Same here.
Behind them, Main Street carried on. Chains clattered on a truck rolling past. People walking on the sidewalk. Ordinary sounds, but far removed from this moment.
“Didn’t look like nothing.”
“It’s the way they look at me,” she said. Her shoulders rose and dropped. She scraped her boot through the salt on the sidewalk, back and forth, wearing a groove in the slush. “Everyone wanting something. Like I have to deliver.”
“That why you bolted?”
“Don’t make it sound so dramatic.” She tipped her head to the brick, eyes shut. Her throat worked on a hard swallow. “I just needed some air.”
Cade kept his hands at his sides. Touching her now would be like seizing a live wire. “What’s pressing on you, Tessa?”
Her mouth tried for a grin. It skewed instead. “Syrup set me off.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“Yes it did. You wouldn’t understand. It’s stupid.”
“Try me.”
She fixed on the empty flower boxes across the street, dirt frozen hard inside it. Her arms locked tighter. The false smile slid away.
“It’s like being back there. Too many expectations.”
“Back where?” Cade asked.
“With my parents. They were both trial lawyers. Always fighting and I do mean always.”
“You were caught in the crossfire.”
“I was stuck with them,” she said. “Especially on vacations.”
He frowned. “Vacations?”
Her shoulders hitched. “Right. You wouldn’t know the word. Vacations are when families take trips together. Time off work, supposed to relax, have fun.”
“Only rich folks did that back in my time.”
“I must sound spoiled and selfish to you.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t. You sound like this vacation thing has been a burr under your saddle for a long time.”
“Yeah. It meant being trapped in a car while my parents invented new reasons to fight. Hotels, coffee lids, whether to stop at Arby’s or McDonald’s. They could weaponize anything.”
“Arby’s?”
“Oh right.” Her laugh was rueful this time. “It’s a roadside restaurant. So is McDonald’s.”
“Go on.” He nodded.
“When I was ten, in a last ditch effort to save their marriage, they decided to take a road trip from our home in Chicago to Disney World.”
“Disney World?” He shook his head. “Never mind. Continue with your story.”
She rubbed her arms as if she could scour the memory away. “Picture this. Backseat, luggage piled high, them bickering over everything. I mean I had headphones, but it didn’t drown them out. By Arkansas, I thought I’d crawl out of my skin.”
He didn’t understand a lot of what she was saying, but he knew the feeling of being trapped. He waited for her to go on.
The brick wall behind her carried carved names and dates, people trying to outlast time. She looked small against all that history.
Her glance flicked to him, then away. “Outside Graceland, we stopped at IHOP. Fluorescent lights. Sticky menus. Waitress calling everyone “hon.” Banana and peanut butter sandwiches on the menu.”
She had a rhythm going now, reliving the pain. He didn’t interrupt. This was something she needed to get out.
“Dad tried to act relaxed, loosening his tie like that would fix anything. Mom just sat there stiff, already gearing up for the next round. They hid behind the menus, but the fighting spilled out anyway, about coffee, then work, then each other.”
“That must have been tough.”
“Not nearly as tough as you raising nine brothers and sisters. I feel like a whiner.”
“No,” he said. “Don’t even compare. You had your troubles and I had mine. Neither were better or worse. Please, finish the story.”
“My waffles were drowning in corn syrup. I remember thinking, if I could just make them laugh, maybe they’d stop.
When I was little, I’d play with my food, pull faces, anything to get them smiling again.
It worked sometimes. So I picked up a waffle, syrup running down my wrist, and hurled it. Right at my dad.”
Cade grunted, imagining it.
“They didn’t laugh.” She hiccuped. “My mother slapped me across the face. She’d never done that before.
The restaurant went dead quiet. A kid at another table started crying.
Dad dabbed at his tie with napkins and said nothing.
Like my mother hadn’t hit me. Like I wasn’t there. Like I was just another mess to clean.”
She pressed her forehead to the brick. “The waitress brought wet towels, saying ‘accidents happen’ while I sniffled into my elbow. So yeah, syrup, waffles, it still hits me sometimes. My body remembers what my head tries to forget.”
Cade curled his hands into fists. He wished he could have been there to whisk her away from all that.
“And I guess… I kept chasing the next thing anyway. Next joke. Next idea. Next distraction. Because maybe the next one would stick. That’s what makes me flakey, Cade. I never learned how to stay. I only ever learned how to pivot.”
“Tessa, that was a kid doing her best in a fight she couldn’t stop.”
Her eyes lifted, raw and searching.
Cade’s chest pulled tight. He wanted to reach for her cheek, erase that memory, but she held herself away from him as if touch would break her. He steadied with words instead. “That was then. You’re not that kid anymore.”
Her head snapped up, eyes raw. “Doesn’t matter. My body doesn’t know the difference. Put me in a diner with too many people asking too many questions and suddenly I’m ten years old with syrup on my hands and nowhere to run.”
Truth lodged in his gut. Bodies remembered. His own still carried aches from old pain. He nodded.
“Now it’s happening again,” she whispered.
“Rent-a-Reindeer was supposed to be fun. A lark. Make Papaw proud. Keep the horses together. Four days ago, it was a madhouse. Horses fighting, bookings barely trickling in, me pretending at running a business. Then you show up, and suddenly it all works. Too well.”
“Too well?”
“This town thinks it’s the best thing since sleigh bells. My phone won’t quit buzzing. Cade. I feel like I’m drowning. Like I built a boat and now everyone’s piling on, and it’s sinking and I can’t swim.”
“You can swim.”
The words spilled faster now. “I know failure. I can fall short, make excuses, move on. Success? That’s different. That’s people counting on me. I don’t know how to be reliable.”
He let the silence carry the weight for a few minutes before asking, “What do you need from me?”
Her eyes lifted, wet at the corners, her whole face laid bare. “That’s the thing. If I shut the business down, if I walk away, I don’t need you at all.”
* * *
After they got back to the ranch, Cade mumbled something about feeding the horses and escaped to the barn.
Tessa let him go, clenching her hands at her sides to keep from reaching for him.
The kitchen door clicked shut and the house became a cavern.
Tessa gripped the counter. She couldn’t stop thinking about him or that kiss under the mistletoe.
It hadn’t been gentle or sweet or any of the things a first kiss should be.
It had been desperate, consuming, the kind of kiss that rearranged your DNA.
She could still feel his hands in her hair, still taste peppermint on his tongue, still feel the way her whole body lit up like lightning.
Even now, she touched her mouth and felt him. Every nerve ending screamed for more. More of his hands, more of his mouth, more of the feeling like she was falling and flying at the same time.
Four days. She’d known him four days and she felt ruined for anyone else.
It made no sense. She knew that. But neither did a time traveler from 1878.
Her laptop sat open on the table. Four new messages about Rent-a-Reindeer, bookings, success. She should care. Should be thrilled that her business took off, that was all her goal all along.
But it happened only because of Cade.
She stood frozen in her kitchen, every cell in her body pulled toward the barn like he was magnetic north and she was a broken compass pointing only to him.
She wanted him with a ferocity that scared her.
Not just wanted. Needed. Needed his solid presence in her impulsive life. Needed his strong hands and quiet strength. Needed the way he looked at her like she was capable of anything, even when she knew she wasn’t.
She pictured him at her kitchen table tomorrow morning, sleepy-eyed and rumpled. Pictured him in her bed tonight, those work-rough hands learning every inch of her. Pictured him here at Christmas and the Christmas after that and—
Stop.
She pressed her palms against her eyes. He was from 1878. He had Christmas card now, the one that could take him back. He could vanish while she slept, leave her with nothing but the memory of one perfect kiss and the ghost of everything she’d never have.
The thought undid her.
How had this happened? How had a stranger become essential in four days? She didn’t do this. Didn’t attach. Didn’t need. Didn’t ache for someone like her bones were trying to crawl out of her skin to get to him.
But she was aching now. Every breath hurt with wanting him.
Outside the window, barn light spilled gold across the snow. He was there, likely talking to Einstein in that soft murmur that liquified her insides. Being responsible and careful and all the things she wasn’t.
She should stay here. Should protect herself. Should remember that she was terrible at commitment and he was literally from another century. That this was insane, impossible, and guaranteed to destroy her.
Instead she found herself moving. Through the kitchen, grabbing her coat with shaking hands, shoving her feet into boots. Her body decided without her, pulled by something stronger than logic or self-preservation.
The cold hit her face when she opened the door, sharp enough to steal her breath. The barn seemed miles away across the frozen yard, but also too close.
Once she walked through those doors, there’d be no going back. No pretending that kiss hadn’t changed everything. No protecting her heart from the beautiful disaster of wanting someone she couldn’t keep.
She stepped into the snow anyway.
Because maybe he’d disappear tomorrow. Maybe she’d mess this up like she messed up everything. Maybe they’d break each other’s hearts in seventeen different ways.
But tonight he was here. Tonight she could touch him. Tonight she could stop pretending she hadn’t already completely, desperately, irrevocably fallen head over heels for a cowboy from 1878.