Claiming The Rancher's Heir (Gold Valley Vineyards #2) - Maisey Yates Page 0,56

said? That he loved a woman who chose easy over him? That leaves scars. Are you going to leave Wren with those kinds of scars? Are you gonna leave yourself with them?”

“There’s no easy answer, is there? There’s no pain-proof way to do this.”

“No. Life is tough. Nobody gets out alive.”

Creed didn’t like that reasoning. At all. He also couldn’t argue with it.

Because that was just it. There were no guarantees.

He just had to be brave.

And with sudden, stark clarity, he saw Wren as she had been. Standing there open and vulnerable and naked. Beautiful, demanding that he love her. And he realized that he’d failed her. He’d been a coward. An absolute, complete coward.

She had been so brave, after the betrayals she had experienced in her life. And he was... He was hiding behind his own hurt. Using his pain to shield him from more pain.

But it wasn’t going to work. And in the end, it wasn’t worth it. How could he choose safety at the cost of what could be the greatest joy he would ever experience?

He was hit with a blinding flash of truth.

If you wanted to have everything life could offer, you also had to risk your heart.

Just like Wren had said.

She wanted only everything.

And nothing else would do.

He understood that now.

Everything was the only answer. Everything was the least he could offer.

“I have to go talk to her,” he said, his voice rough.

“Yeah,” Jackson replied. “You do.”

“I’ll return the favor when you’re in the same position.”

“I won’t be,” Jackson said, chuckling, the sound sharpened by an edge that surprised Creed. “I’m happy for you. It’s plain to anyone looking at you that you love her. And that you ought to be with her.”

“I hope so.”

She’d said she would wait. She’d said he could change his heart.

But he wondered. And he almost wouldn’t blame her if she wasn’t waiting. Because she had stripped herself bare, and he had offered her nothing.

He had rejected her.

“I just have to hope that she’ll still have me.”

Wren was wretched, and no amount of trying to ensure herself that standing in her truth, standing strong in what she needed, was making her feel any better.

Emerson was deeply sympathetic, having been through something similar with Holden. Cricket seemed like she didn’t know what to do with her.

And a surprising source of support and sympathy came from her mother.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” she said, “but I know what it’s like to have a broken heart.”

“You’re going through a divorce,” Wren said. “I don’t think it’s hard to believe.”

“Not your father. My heart broke slowly over the choices I made, but he didn’t break it. I was in love once. And I’m the one who walked away from it. It makes such a deep scar. I hope Creed realizes it before it’s too late. Because you can’t protect yourself by turning away from love. You just sign yourself up for a life of...less.”

“That’s why I left... I wanted him to love me. To find it in himself to admit that he does. Because if he can’t find it in himself to admit it, then the alternative would be something terribly sad.”

“It is,” her mother said. “Believe me. And it’s taken me years to get to a place I could have been in a long time ago if I had just done the work on myself back then. But instead I hid. I hid in a marriage that didn’t have love. I hid behind money. I hid here in this house, because it was what I chose. Status. Wealth.”

“Mom,” Wren said slowly. “Were you in love with Law Cooper?”

But she didn’t get a chance to hear the answer because Cricket came running into the room. “I told him to go away,” she said fiercely.

“What?”

“Your husband,” her sister said, her lip curled. “I told him to go away. But he’s still here.”

“Oh,” Wren said, springing out of her chair and bounding toward the door.

“Forget about him,” Cricket said. “He’s not worth it.”

“He is,” Wren said. “And when you’re in love you’ll understand.”

And there he was, standing in the entry of their grand home, looking out of place in his blue jeans, T-shirt and cowboy hat, his face bearing the marks of exhaustion, of sadness.

“You look like I feel,” Wren said, staring at him.

“I feel like hell,” he said. “It’s been...the worst week of my life.”

“Mine, too.”

“Wren,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I thought... I was so comfortable punishing myself for what happened with... Lucas.