Page 40 of Festive Faking
My heart began pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t let the accent fool you, son. I know the name Aspen said on the phone a few weeks back was Mike. Same as I know you’re the man falling for her.”
I buried my face in my glass of scotch in an attempt to stall as my mind raced with how to handle the fact that Aspen’s dad hadseen through our act. But beyond that, he’d seen right through me.
Sensing my reluctance to respond, Jett kept talking, which was shocking because I could count on one hand the number of words he’d spoken to me before setting foot on this deck. “Never thought about having kids before I met Daisy. My ma wasn’t kidding when she said I was tryin’ to get myself killed when I was younger. I was an adrenaline junkie. It gave me a high hoppin’ on the back of a horse that had no interest in a rider and letting it try to knock my ass into the dirt. Sometimes I made it look easy, and other times . . .” His voice trailed off. “Truth be told, my pop died when I was sixteen, and I learned firsthand that life’s too short. So, I decided I’d rather go out doing something I loved than grow old and live with regrets.”
Finally having a moment to regain my bearings, I gestured to the land he owned that stretched past where we could see on the horizon. “What made you decide to switch to the business side?”
Jett pulled in a deep breath through his nose before letting it rush out past his lips. “The last time I got bucked off, it was pretty bad. Landed wrong, snapping my collarbone.” His fingers traced over the spot, and he winced at the memory of the pain. “But that wasn’t the worst part. I wasn’t quick enough to move out of the way, and the bronc stomped right on my chest. Broken ribs punctured my lung.”
I grimaced; the recounting of his career-ending injury was gruesome.
“Would you believe it if I told you the last thing I asked before they wheeled me off to surgery was when I could ride again?” He scoffed. “They say your brain isn’t quite fully developed before you’re twenty-five, and looking back on the fool I was, I believe it.”
“I mean, it sounds like you loved it,” I remarked.
“Not more than my wife,” Jett huffed. “She was there when I woke up, and in that dingy country hospital room is where she told me I was going to be a father. We’d been married a few years but hadn’t exactly been tryin’, so I was shocked to high hell, but at the same time, it was enough to scare me straight. I had too many people countin’ on me, and I couldn’t afford to be reckless with my life anymore.”
“Aspen told me you spent a few years living as a family in the cabin,” I confessed.
He hummed. “As soon as I was released and on the mend, I made promises I prayed I’d be able to keep to banks that probably knew better than to extend a loan to a guy whose only job history was competing in rodeos. But I was too desperate to let myself fail. Daisy, God bless her, was just so happy to have me safe that she agreed to move into that cabin—which needed a ton of work back then—while pregnant to support my new dream. I’m ashamed to admit there were more than a few months when her paycheck as a schoolteacher went into repayin’ the loan when I fell short.”
I tipped my glass to him. “You made sacrifices and worked hard to take care of your family. Not every man can say that, and you have my respect.”
“I’m proud of what I’ve built, but my greatest achievements in this life are my children. The day Aspen was born . . .” Jett let out a heavy exhale. “It was almost as if I took my first breath right alongside her. Everything was different from that moment on. I was forever changed.”
The man was pouring his heart out to me, but I found myself chuckling. “Guess that’s her superpower. Changing a man’s entire life by bursting into it.”
Leaning forward, Jett rested his forearms atop his knees. “I’ll ask you again since I didn’t get an answer the first time: When did it become real for you?”
Swallowing, I admitted, “The attraction was there on day one. The respect for her talent followed shortly after. But it wasn’t until we came here, and it hit me there might come a day when I’d be forced to say goodbye to her forever, that I realized I didn’t want that to happen.”
He nodded, seemingly pleased with my answer. “Tripp is like his mama. They wear their heart on their sleeve. But Aspen? She’s like me. Her stubbornness is a shield; it protects her from getting hurt. Unfortunately, she was witness to her best friend finding the kind of love only found in fairy tales, and it undermined her whole belief system when it didn’t pan out. I’d liken her to a mistreated horse; the memory of past pain—even though it was only by association—runs deep, and she’s scared to trust.
“It’s no secret she has a tendency to pick the kind of guy who isn’t right for her. I know she’s not doing it on purpose, but I think, on some level, her brain chooses them because it’s safe. If she’s with someone who can never truly love her, they can’t hurt her.”
Surprisingly, that made a hell of a lot of sense.
I could tell she was conflicted. She’d share something deep with me, then close off and run away not long after. The only reason she hadn’t done so after the shower incident last night was because I decided to be vulnerable and had asked her to stay. Maybe that had been the key all along, because keeping quiet about how I felt had her second-guessing every interaction.
I’d been saying I was going to do it for days, but it was finally time to lay my cards on the table and let Aspen decide where we went from there.
Jett must’ve seen the decision written on my face because his lips tipped up. “You ready to shoot your shot, son?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
He gave me a nod of approval before reaching into his jacket pocket and tossing me his keys. “You can take my car tonight. It’s good luck.”
I would take all the help I could get.
Chapter 16
Mac
The vibe inside theWatering Hole matched the rest of the town. It had a rustic, country feel with its all-wood interior—the floor matched the walls and tables—and the live music was a nice touch.
Aspen’s friend, Harper, spotted us the minute we walked through the door, pushing through the crowd to greet us. Following behind was a man, maybe a few years younger than me from what I could tell, with his cowboy hat casting a shadow over his face. Harper introduced him as her husband, Colt, primarily for my benefit since Aspen knew every one of Rust Canyon’s six hundred inhabitants by name.
