Page 80 of Cowboy Stole My Heart
He looked at Nate, saw the unflinching look on his face. “Hold up, she was…”
Sam swallowed as Nate’s words trailed off. “She had an abortion without telling me. I was all excited about becoming a dad, and she’d already terminated it, pretended like she’d lost the baby until my lawyer pressed for information and she laughed at the mediation and told us she’d gotten rid of it. Like it didn’t mean a fucking thing to her.”
This time when Nate’s hand closed over his shoulder, he didn’t move.
“I’m sorry,” Nate said.
“Yeah, well, so am I.” Sam breathed deep, knowing he’d done the right thing in finally sharing what had happened instead of holding it deep inside and letting it fester. “It hurt like hell back then and it still does now. I’ll never forget her laughing like it wasnothing.”
“Come on, let’s get a beer.”
Sam walked alongside Nate and when they finally reached his place, he settled into an outside chair and waited for Nate to bring out their drinks. He knew Faith was out and he was grateful for some time to process before having to pretend like everything was fine.
“You want to know what I think?” Nate asked, passing him a beer and settling across from him, legs stretched out in front of him.
“I get the feeling you’re gonna tell me anyway,” Sam muttered, taking a long pull of the ice-cold beer.
“If you can’t see that Mia is different from Kelly, then you’ve got rocks for brains. What that girl did was low, but I don’t believe Mia is cut from the same cloth, not for a second.”
Sam laughed. “I bare my soul to you and you straight out tell meI’vegot rocks for brains?”
Nate shrugged. “You need to let it go, or you’re going to end up a miserable old bastard still holding on to the past when everyone else moved on.”
“Easy for you to say.” But Nate had a point. He knew he needed to let go, but it wasn’t something he found easy. “It’s like I’ve tried so hard to be the opposite man my father was, and I’ve ended up in the same position, with a woman screwing me over and turning me into a bitter bastard.”
“You’re nothing like your father.” Nate’s voice was deep, his eyes glowering. “Don’t you dare say that.”
Sam leaned back, sipping his beer, staring at his boots. “So what do you suggest?”
“I suggest you stay here and get good and drunk tonight, lick your wounds and think about how miserable you are,” Nate said with a smile. “Then you pick yourself up and have a good hard think about what you’ve walked away from. It’s better to plead for forgiveness and you know it.”
Sam nodded. It wasn’t that Nate was wrong, Sam just wasn’t convinced he was capable of moving on, of ever licking his wounds enough that they’d heal.
They sat longer, moving on to another beer as the sunstarted to disappear. As the bang of a car door signaled that Faith and the girls hard arrived home, Nate stood, but not before pausing and looking down at him, a curious look on his face.
“What did she do to scare you off anyway? Was it that bad?”
Sam took a long, slow sip of beer. “She told me she loved me.”
Nate shook his head. “You fucking idiot. Change of plan: stop drinking and get your ass over to her place, now.”
Sam ducked to avoid the play-fight fist coming in his direction, watching Nate jog off to meet his girls. Maybe he was right, but it was easy for him to say. But Sam was the one who’d seen the look in Mia’s eyes, heard the soft words as they’d passed her lips. And they’d been the scariest goddamn words he’d ever heard in his life.
***
Sam parked his vehicle near the stable block at the Ford ranch, where he had every day when he’d been working there. Out of habit he glanced down to where Tex was usually kept, but he didn’t see the stallion. Depending on how things went with Mia, he might ask if he could head down and see him.
He walked past the stables and down the path toward Mia’s place, wondering what the hell he was even doing. Was Nate right? Was he stupid to turn his back on someone like her and not at least try to move past what had happened? Or had he been right that he didn’t have enough to give her, that he’d never be able to trust her and commit to her after what he’d been through? Maybe he’d left it too long to plead forgiveness anyway, she might have already moved on.
He’d been staring at his feet as he walked but he looked up then, smiling when he saw the familiar glass house ahead of him, feeling a pull toward it that he’d tried to ignore for too long. The thought of seeing Mia again, of trying to open up to her and explain himself, it terrified him, but he owed it to himself and her to try.
“You’ve got a goddamn nerve.”
Sam stopped walking and found himself face to face with Mia’s brother.
“Tanner,” he said, nodding and looking past him, wondering where Mia was.
“I’m gonna give you five minutes to get off this property before I shoot you for trespassing,” Tanner snarled, his fists bunched at his sides, face like thunder.
