Chapter 18 #2
She could see everything clearly. Not a snow globe. But her life. Expansive and wonderful, not fragile. Not made of glass. Not a tiny little space that contained her, making her feel that if she stepped out, everything would shatter.
This was what real family was. Perry was right. She could make mistakes. She was never going to lose the people who loved her.
Maybe she would be hurt. Maybe something would devastate her. But she would be okay, because she had this. All of them. And because she knew who she was. Cassidy Wilder. It wasn’t a bad thing that she was Austin, Carson, and Flynn’s sister. It also wasn’t the only thing she was.
“You good?” Dalton asked.
She had been quiet for a while. “I’m … maybe better than I’ve ever been. Thank you.”
By the time they joined the rest of her family, hamburgers were being handed out to the crew, and Cassidy ended up getting a cheeseburger and some fries. They went to sit in the stands, eating and talking, until West came and found them again.
“Hey,” she said.
She leaned into him just slightly, and he smiled. There was no ambiguity in that smile. He didn’t hold her hand or kiss her or put his arm around her, but the intimacy that existed between the two of them was apparent.
And it had to be like that. Because she wasn’t going home with her family. She was going home with West. That was where she had been. She had been coy about that with everybody for a while now. But she wasn’t going to be coy about it anymore.
“Did you get something to eat?” she asked.
He smiled. “No.”
“Get something to eat,” she said. “Then we can go home.”
Her family definitely noticed. But no one said anything. It was entirely possible that Perry had already told everybody, and then warned them all to behave themselves.
She would take that.
“See you guys later,” she said, once West had returned with the hamburger.
“We’re going to talk later,” Austin said, clearly unable to keep his cool any longer.
“We will,” Cassidy said.
And by the time she was in West’s truck, she was laughing so hard she could barely breathe.
“You just about got me killed,” West said.
“I’m twenty-five years old. I’m not sneaking around. And anyway, we’re very obvious.”
“Are we?”
“Yes. We are very obvious.”
He snorted. “Good to know.”
The drive back up to the ranch wasn’t long. “Do you want to take a drive around the whole property?”
“Yeah,” she said.
It was almost dark, and she knew there wasn’t much she could see, but she had never toured the whole place.
And now he was offering to show it to her.
It felt meaningful.
He drove slowly past the house, continuing down a dirt road that she had never been on before.
He pointed out toward a flat, fenced-in field. “That’s where I’ll keep the cows. And I’m going to build a barn over in this direction,” he said. “What do you think about that?”
“I think it will be great. So you’re going to spend your days cattle ranching?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Have you done it before?”
“Yeah. I have. I mean, I went away and did the rodeo for a while.”
“Oh, that’s right. How did I … How did I forget you did that?”
“I don’t know. It’s actually one of the sexier things about me, I think.”
“Well, I definitely agree with that.”
“I loved it because of the adrenaline. That was … I got a kick out of that.”
“You and Dalton weren’t in at the same time?”
West shook his head. “I only did it for a couple of years. I did it, and I got bored of it. That’s just kind of how I’ve always been.”
“You said you had a girlfriend once. Is that what happened with her?”
He grimaced. “I hate to admit it. But I guess. She just expected something and I didn’t …
I wasn’t on the same page as her. That was when I realized that something that seemed fun to me wasn’t necessarily fun to somebody else.
And that I could hurt somebody, even if I didn’t mean to.
It was a good wake-up call. Especially good because nothing too serious was going on. ”
“That’s just ending relationships, though. It’s not anything you did wrong. It’s not a crime if your feelings aren’t as strong as somebody else’s.”
“It was awful,” he said.
He kept on driving, turning on the headlights to illuminate the twilight. “I love adrenaline. I love a thrill. But the idea that I might’ve been using somebody just for the thrill … I felt her pain. Like I was experiencing it. It was god-awful.”
“You didn’t mean to hurt her. I don’t believe you were using her, or you wouldn’t have felt hurt by her pain.”
“Thanks. But I’ve always used it as a cautionary tale.”
“Because you’re afraid it made you like your parents. Because they hurt you without realizing it.”
He winced. “I suppose. But that’s not quite right. My parents do love me. I do know that. They love me and my sister, but it doesn’t mean damage wasn’t done. It’s the blind spots, that’s what scares me.”
“Have you ever actually talked to them about it?”
She watched as a muscle jumped in his jaw. “No. I don’t want to hurt their feelings. I don’t want to say the wrong thing, and … I say the wrong thing a lot. Because I just follow my impulses.”
“But they’re people you have a relationship with. You can discuss things with them. That’s what you were doing with your girlfriend. You were being honest with her. And it did hurt her, but it would’ve been worse if you’d lied.”
“I don’t know. I just always felt like a blunt instrument.”
“People don’t like to have hard conversations.”
“I guess.”
“It’s more than ‘I guess.’ They don’t. They don’t like to be told that they’ve hurt somebody else, or that they have feelings that are stronger than the other person’s. I get that. But not having the conversation can be worse. It doesn’t do anyone any favors.”
“And you’ve had a bunch of hard conversations?” he challenged.
“No. I haven’t. Because I’m insecure. But I’m working on not being insecure. Genuinely. I’m getting better at it, even.”
“Well. Great.”
“Because of you, you know.”
The only sound in the car was the gravel meeting the tires. “Because of me?”
“Yes. Because you actually challenge me. And challenge the way I think about things. You make me want to be brave. In a way that I never have been before. Stepping outside of yourself for a second, seeing yourself the way somebody else does, it’s pretty clarifying.”
There was silence for a long moment, and then he spoke, his voice rough. “And how do you see me?”
“You’re a good man, West Hancock. That’s how I see you.”
There was a lot more to say. Because there was a lot more to him.
But she had a feeling he hadn’t been called good quite enough in his life.
So she was happy to do it. Because somebody should.
Somebody should let that man know he wasn’t a liability.
He had told her that she had changed her brothers’ lives for the good.
Maybe he needed the same kind of revelation.
When they arrived back at the house, she opened up the fridge and got out the jug of leftover cider, poured it into a pan, and started to heat it on the stove.
West came in, holding two leather-bound books.
The diaries that he had sent with her on her trip with Dalton.
She might not have read them, but they had definitely been a good luck charm.
Or maybe bad luck, depending on how you looked at it.
A token from West that had sabotaged whatever might have happened between herself and Dalton.
“Are we going to read them?”