Hero for the Holidays (Four Corners Ranch #9)

Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

F IA HAD TO talk to her sisters and it couldn’t wait.

She was... She was still in a state of shock. Her entire body felt raw and hollowed out. She’d done her crying. At least for today. She’d managed to go and talk to Lila, and say all the things that she turned over inside of herself for all of these years. When she had imagined explaining to her child exactly why she had made the choice she did, those were the words. I wasn’t looking for you.

It was both healing and wounding to hear that.

But that, in her experience, was adoption.

Knowing that she had been able to give her baby a better life had made her feel good. She’d been so anxious about how she was going to care for a child, about what she was going to do, and once she’d made the decision to find a couple who really wanted her, and were ready, all of it had gone away. But there was still a part of herself that was missing. And that she carried. She hadn’t talked to other women about their experiences, because she had kept it a secret. She had decided that reading about experiences or trying to find out what other people thought on message boards online and things like that was probably a futile exercise.

The truth was, she had figured out a way to carry around the love that she felt for Lila without feeling sad all the time. At first, Lila’s birthday had been difficult. And at a certain point, it had been a day that she marked within herself in the morning when she woke up, but it didn’t create sadness.

The thought of it now did, though, because Lila had turned thirteen in foster care. Without her parents.

She had become a teenager in this weird space where she had no place to call home, and no one to call a caregiver in a permanent sense.

She and Landry should fix that.

She and Landry.

It really was unavoidable. They were linked now. Inextricably. There was quite literally no way out of this. She texted each of her sisters, and asked if they could meet her at the farmhouse. They all lived within minutes of the place. Gideon and Rory were the farthest afield, about fifteen minutes off the ranch and down the road.

But she signed the text off urgent , and they came. Quickly.

“What’s going on?” Quinn asked as soon as they were seated in the living room.

“I have... I have something to tell you. And I don’t know how any of you are going to react to it. I... I don’t how to say this.”

“The suspense is quite literally killing us,” said Alaina.

“It’s not literally killing you, Alaina,” said Rory. “Or you would be quieter.”

“Sorry. I hate that. I hate when people do that. I’m really not trying to preface this with a lot of words, but is just... Well, you always wanted to know what happened between me and Landry.”

“Oh my gosh,” said Quinn. “Did you bang him?”

“Fourteen years ago. Yes.”

“Holy shit,” said Alaina. “That’s... You were babies .”

Fia’s face felt hot and her throat was scratchy.

“There’s nothing to do here,” said Fia. “We made our own fun.” That was minimizing. They’d rescued each other. That was how she’d felt at the time. She’d felt so oppressed by her house back then. Like she was going to burst out of her skin, and there was no one to listen to her, no one to care. She’d had to listen to her mother’s woes, bear the brunt of her anger. She’d had to keep her father’s secrets.

Landry had felt like an escape from all that. They’d created their own world together. Even the anger had been exhilarating in a way. He’d been hers. She’d hoarded him like he was a shiny gem only she knew about. At home she’d worried about her parents, worried about her sisters. With him...they’d been the only thing.

And then it had become clear the real world could break in. Could collapse what they were.

That they were still teenagers. Still human. Still frail.

And the idea that she was going to be a mother. A mother . It had filled her with dread.

“So you’ve been mad at him this whole time because you guys had sex when you were teenagers?” Alaina asked.

“No. I have not,” she snapped. “Regrettably for Landry, not even his penis is that great.” She wished that she hadn’t said it that way. She regretted it deeply. It made her think about things that didn’t belong in this moment.

Landry King’s penis. Good. Lord.

No.

Restart.

“Okay,” said Quinn.

“It’s...” She had just faced her child down. Why was this so hard?

Well. Because it was going to take the way her sisters saw her and change it forever. Lila already knew that she was adopted. Landry already knew that she had given her baby up. Everyone that knew so far, had already known.

Her sisters thought of her as a certain person. She could already see the way that they were shaken by the revelation that she’d lost her virginity at fifteen. The rest of this was going to be...difficult.

So she just decided to jump in. To rip off the Band-Aid. Some other cliché. It just needed to be done. Needed to be said.

“I got pregnant. Because that’s the problem with being a kid having sex. You don’t always behave responsibly.”

“Fia,” said Alaina. “Oh my gosh.”

“I know. And... Do you remember when Mom and I had that fight, and then I left? I was gone for a long time.”

“Yeah.” Quinn frowned. “Mom downplayed it. She said you were just going to stay with a friend for a while. Did you fight about being pregnant?”

“No. She never knew.”

They’d fought. Fia had yelled at her for being a terrible mother who didn’t care about her children. Because she’d just felt failed. Profoundly. Seven months pregnant and terrified. She’d needed Landry because her mother wasn’t there for her, and then she’d felt like she’d had no one. Because Landry didn’t support her decision. Because her father was sneaking around with another woman, and Fia had known, and her mother had been stressed and suspicious.

And Fia had...

Well, she’d broken the world.

He doesn’t love you, you know? Because you’re such a bitch.

Don’t speak to me like that.

Why not? He’s cheating. You know that, don’t you? Maybe we’d all rather have her than you.

Her mother had grabbed her by the hair. I hope you never have children because you have no idea how hard it is. You’d be a terrible mother.

Good thing I never plan on being one.

“I couldn’t hide the pregnancy anymore, and the fight was a great...reason. I ran away. For two months. When I came back, I wouldn’t tell Mom where I was. But you know, she didn’t really care.”

All she knew about mother-daughter relationships were distant at best, sharp at worst. Her sisters had made peace with their mother in some capacity over the years. But Fia never had. Fia was the one who’d had to hold everything together when she’d imploded.

She could never forgive either of her parents for their behavior. They behaved more like toxic teenagers than she and Landry. And that was saying something.

Just remembering that reminded her how it had felt for the world to seem like it was crumbling beneath her feet.

“Fia, I can’t believe you went through that by yourself,” said Rory.

Quinn frowned. “Where was Landry?”

“That’s the kind of complicated thing. He and I had a difference of opinion about what to do. So I decided... I decided that I was going to follow through with what I felt was right. So that’s what happened between us. I ran away, I gave up our baby. He...he couldn’t forgive me and I couldn’t look at him. That’s the story.”

“Wow,” said Alaina. They all just stared at her. And the thing was, there was more, and it didn’t get easier to digest. But at least it got...hopeful. Was this hopeful? This incredible tragedy that had happened to this child?

It was like another impossible thing to sort through. Except it wasn’t a choice. Not for anybody. The adoption, as difficult as it had been, had been a choice. A real, well thought through choice. An accident was simply an accident. No one got to choose whether or not her parents were still here. The only choice that Lila and Fia had at this point was how they moved forward.

“Landry is adopting her. Our daughter.”

And that earned her three open-mouthed, shocked looks.

“Her parents died.” Her throat went tight. “I just found out. I just found out today. He has her. At his house.”

“Fia!” Rory shouted. “Oh my gosh. You have a child . And we have a niece.”

Yes,” said Fia. “And I don’t have any idea how this is going to look or how Landry and I are going to manage this, because we have no practice being civil to one another. Absolutely none at all. But we have to... We have to make this work. And she’s coming over tomorrow. And I want for you all to meet her. But I think I need...time. Tomorrow.”

One thing she knew, she would not let her feelings about him mess this up. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she’d be a bad mother.

But she wouldn’t be her mother.

“Of course,” said Quinn.

“Of course. Whatever you need. I... This is incredible,” said Alaina. She looked at her sister for a long moment. “When you realized I was pregnant, you told me that I could make whatever choice I needed to, and that you would understand.”

Fia looked down. “I meant it. Because I understood. I understood how difficult it was. To face down the prospect of being a single mother. I understood what it was like to feel overwhelmed by that. I... I just understood.”

“I appreciated it, Fia. More than you will ever know. Because that was how I knew that I made the right decision.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

“If I had been as young as you were, I know that I never could’ve done it.”

“Landry doesn’t agree with you.”

“Landry,” said Quinn, shaking her head. “You guys were really... Sneaking around and stuff?”

“Yes. We were.”

“And you hid it from us. From everybody .”

“It wasn’t hard to hide it from you.” Fia let out a breath. “No offense, but you were children.”

“So were you,” said Alaina.

“Well, not as much as you were,” said Fia. “I didn’t want you guys to know. First of all, I knew that I would get into huge trouble. Second of all, I...I didn’t want to be a bad example. I knew that what we were doing was...not wrong. But it was risky. I was just so... I was so in love with him. I...” Saying it even now made her feel like she couldn’t breathe. But admitting it didn’t make her feel ashamed. The truth was, it had been difficult to recount all this even inside her own mind because it was just so thorny. But Lila was with them now.

And one thing was certain, there had been no shortage of feelings between her and Landry when Lila had been conceived.

That was weird. To recast it that way.

It was definitely something she never let herself think about before. For obvious reasons.

“We weren’t dating really. It was more like...”

She let herself remember. Which was something she never did.

“H EY , F IA .”

“Don’t tell me you forgot your pencil again, Landry King, because I’m starting to not believe you.”

“You’re onto me. I just want to talk to you.”

She turned to look at him. Landry was the hottest boy she had ever seen. Every time she saw him her stomach tightened. Her hands went clammy. That she was managing to play it cool around him and trying to banter was no mean feat.

“You should help me study for the math test.”

“Ask someone else,” she said.

“There’s, like, two of us taking the math test.”

That was an exaggeration, but still.

Their one-room schoolhouse only had a few students in each grade. Even though Landry was nearly a year older than her, she was doing work on his level.

“You want to study?” she asked.

“Yeah. Tonight.”

“Where?”

“There’s a cabin. Kind of on the edge of King’s Crest. We can go there.”

She squinted. “How many other girls have you invited there?”

He shook his head. “None. I swear.”

S O SHE WENT . Because she would be a fool not to. And by the end of that first night, Landry had given her her first kiss.

The next time they studied, it had been a lot more kissing than reading. They had their first fight about a boy she talked to after school—who wasn’t even really a boy, he was one of the ranch hands, probably eighteen.

“T HAT GUY ’ S A CREEP . What’s he doing talking to you?”

“He was just talking.”

“He wants something from you. That’s how men are.”

“Oh, is it? Is that what you want? Something from me. Is that it?”

“No. I mean...yeah. But...”

“Fuck off.”

She stormed away, and wouldn’t answer his texts the whole weekend. And she cried because she missed him.

T HEY MADE UP , and after that, the kissing turned to more. It was like they were the only two people in the world.

She had never wanted to fall in love at fifteen. Her parents’ marriage was a mess. They were unhappy, and Fia knew it. And she just didn’t want to... She had never wanted to get married young. Hadn’t wanted to fall into that trap. Of being married and being unhappy. Because you had kids together, and there was nothing you could do about it.

But she was falling for him. Did fall.

She certainly hadn’t meant for them to have sex. But she didn’t want to say no.

She wanted to say yes. She didn’t want to wait. Because being with him felt like a window into something new. Something different. It felt hot and grown-up. It felt like something so far away from Four Corners and everything she’d ever known before. It wasn’t fumbling and awkwardness.

When they came together it was magic.

The other girls that she knew on the ranch, a couple years older than her, who had ever talked about sex made it sound awkward. Made it sound like they didn’t get a whole lot out of it.

But Fia did. Every time.

It was all she could think about. He was all she could think about.

They made love as often as possible. They fought all the time. He was jealous. And intense.

She supposed she wasn’t a lot better.

She yelled at him for an hour after she saw him talking to another girl at the grocery store. A girl who must have gone to high school down in Mapleton, because she was their age, but Fia didn’t really know her. Because he was just so handsome, and if she wanted him, every other girl must too. It had been flattering when he was jealous in return, because it must mean that he felt the same.

She knew now, as an adult, that was a bad way of looking at things.

She knew now, as an adult, that while it had felt like love then, it hadn’t been love. It had been hormones and immaturity. But at the time it had felt like everything. At the time, they let themselves get consumed by it. They forgot condoms more than they remembered them, and at first it felt like they were just going to be lucky.

And then they weren’t.

She looked at her sisters. “I broke my own heart. Landry was involved. But it was me.”

“I just can’t believe it,” said Rory. “All this time, we were encouraging you to go have a mad passionate love affair with the man, and you already had .”

“I mean, I kind of assumed that you guys had slept together,” said Quinn. “But I didn’t know you carried on a whole affair.”

“We were like toddlers playing with a box of knives. We had no idea how bad we could hurt ourselves with what we were doing. But it all felt real. It all felt like such a big deal.”

She’d been depressed before him. Waking up every day had felt hard with the ranch crumbling, her parents’ marriage crumbling. Then Landry King had kissed her, and suddenly she couldn’t wait for every new day.

“Well, our Landry-Fia saga isn’t going to work out the way we wanted,” said Quinn.

She frowned. “What?”

“You know we ship you.”

“You what ?” Fia asked.

“It’s what you call it when you want two people to get together. A relationship. Ship.”

“I know what it is . I am not a TV show character. You cannot ship me. I am a real person.”

“Hey,” Quinn said, “you and Landry didn’t play by the rules, and neither do we.”

“That’s not... That’s not remotely the same,” said Fia.

“Do you need us to stay tonight?” Quinn asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” said Rory.

“Me neither.”

She looked at all her sisters. And this was what she had been missing during that most horrible, vulnerable time in her life. She had been missing support.

And she knew she could have had it the whole time. She did.

“Thank you.”

Because she wasn’t going to turn it down now that she had it.

And as they rallied around her, calling their husbands and letting them know they wouldn’t be home, she felt a piece of herself that had been broken for a long, long time knit itself back together.