The Hero of Hope Springs - Maisey Yates Page 0,103

you,” he said.

In the moment the words left his mouth he knew that he meant them in every way.

That it had been true for a very long time. And it was even truer at this moment.

That he loved her as a friend, that he loved her as a wife, as the future mother of his child.

She smiled vaguely. “You know I love you, too.”

And he could hear, in the way she spoke that word, that she only meant it the one way. The way that they had said to each other pretty effortlessly over the past many years.

“No,” he said, picking up one of his own french fries. “I’m in love with you.”

“Oh,” she said and some of the joy seemed to go out of her french fry eating.

“That’s not so far away from where we’ve been, is it?”

“I don’t know. You know how I feel about...labeling things.”

“Yeah. But we kind of do have labels now. Husband and wife.”

She didn’t say anything. Instead, she took a sip of her milkshake and then started picking at the top of her hamburger.

“You don’t have to say it,” he said.

And he found that he really did mean that. He didn’t need her to say it. Not now. Someday, it would be nice. But as he looked at her, the chains that had been holding him in place seemed to fall away. And he experienced a kind of lightness that he didn’t think he was capable of feeling. And yeah, along with it came some terror. But it was more that he would have felt afraid of losing her no matter what he called it. He’d been afraid of losing her. Had been consumed by trying to find ways to not call what he felt for her what it was. Because he had been in love with Samantha Marshall from the beginning. She wasn’t just his sunshine; she was his heart. And it had been beating because of her all this time. She was the reason. His Sammy. His beautiful Sammy. And yeah, he wanted her to love him. The way that he did her.

But if she didn’t, that wasn’t a tragedy.

He’d lived through tragedy. And he had promised her that nothing would break them. He had promised that he would hold steady. He had promised. And he would.

Loving her could only ever be a gift.

She nodded. “Okay.”

This moment was familiar, too. Sitting in the diner. Eating hamburgers. But this moment wasn’t recognizing his feelings, giving names to them. He had avoided that for a long time. He didn’t know if it was common to have a revelation and a breakdown over a cheeseburger, but he sure as hell was. And he was too consumed by the implications of his own feelings to fully process that she was essentially saying she didn’t love him. But he couldn’t even get to that place. Not yet. Someday, maybe. But not yet.

“I’ve loved you for a long time,” he said, his voice rough. “I just want you to know that.”

Because he wanted to say it. Because he wanted to know it. Wanted to feel it. He had always felt like Sammy was his freedom. The embodiment of emotions and exuberance that he could never inhabit. But the truth of the matter was, she made him feel all those things. She was the key to it, and he had locked it away for all this time because he had been afraid to call it what it was. Because he had been afraid of what it meant. Of the fact that it would mean tying himself down like this. Of the fact that it would mean marriage and kids, or it would mean rejection and heartbreak, and he had already experienced loss that had been like a bullet to the chest and he still had the shrapnel there. He had known that he couldn’t take on any more. But it was Sammy, and he couldn’t not.

Because he had tied himself down. Lost himself to this ranch, to this life, in part so that he would always be entwined with her. He had made himself a mountain, a rock, a man who felt nothing so that he could handle all that he believed they could ever be.

This was freedom. And now that he knew what it was, it wasn’t half as terrifying as the alternative.

“Okay,” she said. He was tempted to be hurt by that, when he looked into her eyes and saw the kind of hollow fear that he