Hero for the Holidays (Four Corners Ranch #9)

Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

F IA MADE ARRANGEMENTS for them to go over to McCloud’s Landing and choose a horse for Lila. Landry felt strangely nervous, and he couldn’t quite pinpoint why. Whether it was about trying to choose the best animal for his daughter, or about seeing Fia again. In which case it wasn’t nerves. It was something else entirely.

It was amazing how quickly he got back to his thoughts being consumed by that woman.

But he saw her face in his daughter every day. She was inextricably linked to the biggest thing in his life.

And she herself was quickly becoming something major in his day-to-day.

He didn’t talk on the phone. He had spent an hour on the phone with Fia earlier.

And then again later when they had discussed their plans for tonight.

Lila was with his family, and Denver was going to see her home when she was tired. But he didn’t think he would be that long at McCloud’s.

He pulled up to Fia’s house in his truck. The place really had never looked better. He stopped to admire the gorgeously manicured fenced-in gardens. A cornerstone of the farm store that the Sullivans ran.

There were flowers and fruits and vegetables. Cherry trees, apple.

He was musing on that when he walked up the front porch and knocked on the door.

“Have you ever thought about getting a greenhouse?”

She blinked. “Well. Yes. I have definitely looked at some beautiful old-fashioned-looking greenhouses online. Because who doesn’t want an orangery like a fancy Regency miss?”

“You could grow more things year-round. Citrus even. Avocados.”

“I could ,” said Fia. “But I’ve always felt like we needed to stick to local and seasonal.”

“It would still be local and seasonal if it was in your greenhouse.”

“Fair,” she said. “But I don’t go to your ranch and tell you that you should have bison. You have cows.”

“I do,” he said. “But maybe I would get a bison.”

“Then maybe I’ll get an avocado.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and he tried to ignore the swift kick in his chest he felt when her green eyes sparkled with humor.

“Come on. Let’s go. Gus is expecting us,” he said.

“Yep,” she said, closing the door behind her and heading down the steps with him. They got into his truck. And there was something about that that felt quintessentially old-school Fia and Landry.

Being in his truck with her. He felt compelled to make her laugh. He’d done that. Back then there had been a lot of laughing.

They hadn’t exactly talked very deeply about the things that were going on in their lives. They had been an escape for each other. In that sense, he had known that things weren’t great at her house, because he knew that he didn’t share what was going on at his own.

So he had accepted that what they were was a break. From the lives they didn’t want to be living. They chose each other. They chose those nights out in the cabin. Furtive escapes during the day in his truck.

It had felt like the real world. The real thing.

His house was just a place he had to go sleep.

Fia had been his home.

He turned his thoughts away from that particularly raw realization.

“Memories,” she said, sighing.

He was taken off guard by her absolutely unerring ability to speak his own thoughts out loud.

“How did you do that?”

“What?”

“Know exactly what I was thinking.”

She leaned forward in the seat. “I was thinking the same thing about you earlier today. You always say what I’m thinking.”

The truck went over a pothole in the road, and they pitched forward and back. “Maybe our thoughts are just both headed down the same road most of the time. Because what we’re living in is definitely a resurrection of a shared past.”

“Definitely,” she said softly.

“We just pretended it didn’t happen,” he said. “How did we do that? Now we talk about it every day. I think about it every day. From morning to night. Every day. I go over it. Us. Lila. The way that we hurt each other.”

“Me too,” she said. “I don’t know. Survival, I guess? The same way that my parents just left here and barely acted like they had kids at all?”

“Maybe that’s how you protect yourself when you know something is too messed up to untangle. Even if your parents came back, would you guys forgive them?”

“It depends. First of all, my mom and my dad aren’t the same thing. Second of all, I think me and my sisters all had different experiences with our parents. The younger girls really worshipped my dad. Especially Alaina and Quinn. Rory less so. But she was never so much the rancher. She was kind of the nerd. The bookish one. She spent a lot of time with Gideon and his family, because she didn’t even go to school here like the rest of us. She sort of had a life outside of this place, and I think part of me was envious of that. Sometimes I didn’t. And I also never could see my dad as an infallible figure. I was way too aware of the issues he and my mom had. Because she told me. I was the oldest. I was the sounding board. I never wanted to do that to Lila.” She looked over at him. “We were so dramatic sometimes. I never saw them in us back then. I couldn’t imagine that the connection my parents had shared at one time was probably sexual . Gross. Who wants to think that? I thought that you and I were unique. But... When I imagine what our relationship would have looked like once a child was in the middle of it...”

“You think that’s what we’d be like.”

“Exactly. So, if my parents came back, would I forgive them? No. Because I think that you should be able to trust her parents, and I’ve never been able to trust mine the way that a child should be able to trust their parents. I had to take care of them. I had to bear their burdens. I can give them space to be part of Lila’s life if they decide they want to make an effort, and if they’re good to her.” She sighed. “I don’t need to punish them. But at the same time I will never be able to have the relationship with them that a child should be able to have with their parents.”

“I get that.”

“Maybe my sisters feel differently. It’s okay if they do. Like you said. Being the youngest is different than being the oldest.”

“Yeah. I did not have the best understanding of who my father was. It took a long time. Denver and Daughtry were my idols, and they worked with him. They believed in his...mission, I guess. My dad seemed like a good guy to me. It seemed wrong that our mom left him. He painted himself as the victim and I believed it. Then I wondered why I felt bad after I spent time with him. And I wondered why I made so many mistakes and made him angry at me. Everything that he did I felt like was my fault. When I found out that you were pregnant, that was when I realized I wanted to be a different kind of dad. That was when I thought...”

“What?”

It was painful. To think. To feel. “I wanted it to save me. I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t him. Because when I tried to imagine the stuff he did to me being done to a child of mine, it made me so angry. It was when I realized that what happened was a kind of abuse. That the reason I didn’t want to be alive half the time was because of the way my dad treated me. And that no parent should ever make the child feel like that.”

The car was silent.

“I am... I’m really sorry I didn’t understand that,” said Fia.

“I barely understood it, Fia. Why should you?” He breathed out heavily. “You and I didn’t know how to talk. We knew how to fiercely defend our own feelings. Our own space. We didn’t know how to let each other in, not really.”

“I don’t think I know how to do that still,” she said. “I’ve been an island for a long ass time.”

She said it with a kind of bland humor that resonated with him. He laughed. “Yeah. I get that. My whole family is made of violence. So I get it. I mean, we’re close. We get together. We eat together. But we don’t talk about the past. In some ways it’s a lot like us. You and me. What we did back then. We just constructed a new reality to live in, and we don’t really go over the one we left behind. What’s the point?”

“And now we’re both having to do a whole lot of dealing with the past. No wonder we feel uncomfortable.”

He chuckled. And just then they pulled into McCloud’s Landing. He was kind of grateful for the reprieve. Because the conversation was nothing if not heavy.

Gus was out there waiting for them, along with Alaina and the baby. Fia smiled and took her niece into her arms, and Landry knew a moment of tense emotion.

Because it was a reminder of what they’d never had. It didn’t matter. Like they’d just talked about. The last thirteen years hadn’t been nothing. They hadn’t been a blank space. They’d grown, they’d changed. They had made Four Corners better, and they had made themselves better. And what was the point of any of it if they didn’t make the most of it now. If they didn’t let go of the regret to the best of their ability.

“Thanks a lot, Gus,” said Landry. “You’re really helping us put on an extravagant birthday. We’ve got a lot to make up for.”

Fia ducked her head and pressed her cheek against the baby’s head. He wondered if what he’d said had felt pointed. He honestly hadn’t meant it to be. But he supposed he had to earn her trust. Why should she believe that he wasn’t taking shots at her?

“I’ve got three horses for you to consider. They just came in from a rescue. All older. Very docile.”

They walked over to the stalls with Gus and spent the next few minutes meeting the new horses. There was a paint, a black quarter horse with white socks and a star on her forehead, and an Appaloosa with a bright blue eye. Normally that breed wouldn’t be his pick based on temperament, but she seemed like a total sweetheart.

Fia seemed drawn to her too.

She was pretty. Gray and speckled, unique looking.

“I think we’re both fans of Genevieve,” said Landry, stroking the horse down her nose.

“I think so,” said Fia.

It was the easiest agreement that the two of them had come to...maybe ever.

And that was a relief.

Because of all the things, they didn’t need to be having a fight over something they were trying to do that was good.

With the choice made, they said goodbye to Gus, who agreed to bring the horse over on the day of the birthday party. And it felt like something. Felt like doing something to heal some of the wounds. Some of the scars of the past.

He wanted to. Lord knew he did.

And not just with Lila. Not just with himself. Fia had needed him, and he hadn’t been there for her.

He made a promise to himself then and there that that would never be true again.

In some fashion, she was his, and always would be.

He would never treat Fia that lightly again.