I winced. “Shit. Okay, you just made me a liar. What else have you got?”
“You still love her.”
My eyes closed as my wince went deeper.
“And she still loves you.”
My hands curled around the arms of the chair, bracing myself against the pain coursing through my body. “Uncle. I cried uncle. I’ve had enough.”
“You’re living in fairy land if you think I’m letting you off that easy, Walker.”
Great. Garth Black had joined the army of people bringing Rowen up at every opportunity. I moved to get up, but Garth moved faster. He shoved me back down and towered over me.
“You’re going to listen to what I have to say whether you like it or not, Jess. That’s not negotiable. And if you want to kick the shit out of me and run over me with your daddy’s truck right after, then bring it on . . . but you’re going to hear me out first.” Garth lowered his face right in front of mine. “Understood?”
“If I agree, will you get your ugly mug out of my face?”
“Yes, but only if you take back the ugly part.” Garth butted his nose into mine.
“Fine. Get your dastardly mug out of my face.”
Garth shook his head and moved away. “You should have been a doctor or something as smart as you are. What the hell are you doing working a ranch when you’ve got words like ‘dastardly’ in your vocabulary?”
“I like it,” I replied, thankful Garth had stopped hovering over me with his beer breath.
“But do you love it?”
I thought about that for a while. Ranching was what I knew. It was in my veins. I liked it, for sure, but it was tough to say if I’d classify it into the love category. “I don’t know. I can’t say I love it, but it’s what I know. It’s what I’m good at.”
“And what can you say you do love?” Garth asked, shifting in his seat. Probably because he’d said the L word. He wasn’t big on mentioning that one.
“I think you know since her name just popped out of your mouth a minute ago.”
“So what are you doing here, doing something you like, might sorta love, when something you know you love is a few states away?”
I reached for the bad beer. Given where our conversation was going, I’d need a beer, and bad beer was better than no beer. “You know why. I messed up, Garth.”
“So you messed up.” I lifted both eyebrows. Garth rolled his eyes. “Big time. So you messed up big time. We all do. It’s time you start practicing what you preach and forgive yourself. If any guy deserves a second chance, it’s you, Jess.”
“Practice what I preach? What the hell preaching have I done that you’ve ever paid attention to?” I wanted to buy what Garth was saying, but messing up big time and what had happened to me the past couple months were two totally different things. I hadn’t just messed up big time. I’d taken a vacation in the darkest side of humanity and lived to tell the tale.
I’d lived to tell it, but I’d lost so much.
“You’re always talking about taking what you want from life. Having the chance to make a different life for yourself each day. Not letting your past define you. Not pushing people away in an attempt to protect yourself. All that shit you tell everyone else but are obviously too chicken shit to tell yourself.”
I was gripping the arms of the lounger again. “First of all, Black, what I’m doing, what I’ve chosen to do by letting Rowen get on with her life without me, is not the chicken shit thing to do. It’s exactly the opposite. If I was a chicken shit, I’d do the selfish thing and beg her back into my life again. A chicken shit wouldn’t wake up every morning wanting to send his fist through the mirror so he wouldn’t have to look at himself and remember what he’d done. A chicken shit wouldn’t let the girl he loved go knowing another man will soon fill his spot. A chicken shit wouldn’t take the hard path when there’s an easy one. So don’t talk to me about being a chicken shit.” I was practically trembling from the anger bubbling inside of me.
“Are you done yet?” Garth asked, looking completely unfazed.
“I’m just getting warmed up.”
“That was a rhetorical question. I don’t really care if you’re done yet or not because I’ve got a hell of a lot more to say before you have the floor.”
“A rhetorical question?” I said, taking another drink of beer. It actually made me pucker with each sip; that’s how bad it was.
“Yeah, you know, a question that doesn’t require an answer.”
I threw my head back against the chair. “Dear god, Black, yes, I know what a rhetorical question is.”
“Good for you. Now why don’t you get up out of that chair, head to Seattle, and tell Rowen what an idiot you’ve been and how you’ll spend the rest of your life making it up to her?”
“I can’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I just can’t.”
“Jesus, Jess. Man up, grow a pair, and give me a straight answer.”
I worked my jaw, fighting to get out the answer. “I have to protect her.”
“Protect her? Protect her from what?’
“From myself.”
Garth shook his head. “You’re staying away from her because you’re trying to protect Rowen Sterling from Jesse Walker? Do I have that right?”
“You’ve got that right.”
Garth snorted. “Well, either that’s the biggest line of bullshit I’ve ever heard, or you need to explain yourself a little better.”
I could have gotten up and left. I would have if I didn’t know that Garth wouldn’t let me go without a fight. I’d been in my fair share of fights with Garth Black, and while the scales were pretty level, it was something I tried to avoid. “Sometimes the only way we can protect the ones we love is to protect them from ourselves.”
“Yeah, but most of the time doing that just makes both of you want to put a bullet to your head.”
I scowled into the dark night. “I’m not kidding, Garth.”
“Neither am I.”
“Fine, let’s say for the sake of argument that I am able to get past my hang up of trying to protect Rowen and I do call her up and apologize and tell her I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to her. You think she’s just going to forgive, forget, and get back to loving me right where she left off?” Saying it out loud was more painful than a silent stream of thoughts flowing through my head. More definite or something.
“What I know of Rowen, yeah, she would figure out a way to move on from it all. She figured out a way to do it with her life, right? Seems like she could figure out a way to do it with yours too.” Garth took the last swig of his beer and slid the empty bottle back into the case.
“Garth, I’m starting to believe you don’t have the full picture of what happened. Did you even hear the rumors? Because, for once, they’re not an exaggeration. Hell, you were the one who had to pack me home on your horse after I lost it. I messed up. I lost it. I fucked up.” That conversation was heading south fast, but I couldn’t take another sip of that beer. It was only making a bad situation worse.
“I don’t know much about these kinds of things,” Garth started, his voice a few notes quieter. “But it seems like you don’t fall out of love with someone because of their fuck ups. It seems like if you really love someone, you love them in spite of their fuck ups.”
Those words hit me like a punch to the stomach. Actually, they hit me like each word was a punch to the stomach, every one hitting me that much harder. What Garth said hit me not because I’d never heard it before, but because I’d believed exactly that. To know if I really loved someone, the test was not in loving them during the good times, but during the bad times.
That was the way I loved Rowen, and that was the way I knew she’d at one time loved me.
“You think I’ve still got a chance?” It was a fool’s hope, but I didn’t mind being a fool if that’s what it took to get a little hope back in my life.
Garth leaned toward me, a twisted smile moving into place. “There’s only one way to find out.”