The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass by Maisey Yates

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

AFTERTHAT, HE essentially moved in with Iris. It was weird to be down in town, where he could actually have an internet connection, and where his phone worked all the time. He decided to go ahead and get his old computer out, and engage a little bit more with the business, which his business manager was thrilled with.

The other person surprised by his sudden availability was Mallory.

“Hey,” he said, answering on the second ring one day.

“You... You have service.”

“I do.”

“What’s going on?”

“Well, I’m still about the homestead sometimes, but I... I moved.”

“You moved.”

“I’m with someone, Mal. Her name is Iris.”

“Iris. Really?”

“Yeah.”

He proceeded to tell her the whole story of Iris, how they’d met and how he was trying this, in spite of the fact that it was pretty intense.

“I can’t believe it. I mean, honestly, Griffin, I can’t. I was so sure...” Her voice caught. “I was really sure that we were going to lose you. I was afraid.”

“Yeah, well, you might have. If it wasn’t for her.”

“Well, I want to meet her.”

“You should come up here. You and Mom and Dad.”

“And Jared?”

“Are you back with him?” The disgust infusing his voice hadn’t even taken thought or effort. No prep required. Just knee-jerk dislike taking the wheel.

“I’m never not with him,” she said, suddenly defensive.

Amazing how his name came up the minute things were a little bit defused.

“Well, he seems to think that sometimes you’re not with him, which means he gets to behave as if he’s single.”

There was a biting pause. “It’s complicated.”

“I take it to mean he’s back crashing on your couch, though.”

“Not on my couch. But yes. He’s back at my place. At our place, Griffin. You haven’t been home in five years, you don’t really...you don’t know how it is.”

“Fantastic.” He chose to ignore that. “But I want you to know, I have a pretty big property, and hiding a body on it would be easy.”

“You know, a couple of months ago I would’ve been seriously concerned you might have meant that. But it sounds to me like you have something to lose now.”

What a strange turn of phrase. Something to lose.

It was true. He did.

And he could see that just a little while ago that might have stricken fear into his heart, that he loved something enough now he stood to lose more.

But it was weird to him that he wasn’t afraid.

He was... He was happy. Because life was better when you had something to lose.

He’d been a man with nothing. A man who wanted nothing, who loved nothing, and it was hell. It was hell. He would much rather be vulnerable.

“Come up and see us, though,” he said.

“Us,” Mallory said. “Seriously, Griffin. I’m so happy for you. You’re my hero. I hope you know that. I hope you know how much I miss you.”

And suddenly right then a lot of things seemed possible. Even going back to California. For a visit. Gold Valley was his home now, and he was resolved in that. But he could see taking Iris back there, introducing her to his parents. Bringing her over for dinner. And the idea didn’t draw comparisons between the time he’d done it before, and wanting to do it now. His and Iris’s relationship was its own. That much was clear.

He went downstairs, prepared to go up and put a couple hours working on the house, and when he walked into the dining room, Iris jumped up. “Do you need anything?”

“No,” he said, frowning.

She’d cooked him breakfast this morning, a huge spread, way more than what he was used to, she certainly didn’t need to be offering him anything else.

“I’m headed up to the house. If you need anything from the store before I get back...”

“I shouldn’t. Anyway, even if I did I have plenty of time to grab something for dinner. Will you be back for dinner?”

“Yeah. I aim to. Six o’clock?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Good. Hey, I invited my sister and my parents to come up and visit. I’d really like for them to meet you.”

Iris shifted uncomfortably, her face turning pink. “Really?”

“Yes. Really. You’re important to me.”

She blinked, and he could sense her discomfort. He didn’t know why that bothered her, any more than he understood why she’d gone into a kind of manic service mode since he’d moved in. But then, he realized this was new for her. Sharing space with another person in the way that they were. It had been a long time for him too. And he couldn’t say it was anything like he’d experienced before, because Iris wasn’t anything like he’d experienced before.

He got in his truck and headed up the mountain, headed to the building site. To the house.

The house.

He stood there for a long while, surveying the place and thinking, the revelation he’d had up there the last time he’d come turning over in his head.

And then...

Then he started thinking about the talk he’d had with Ryder. About what he’d said to him.

I can’t give you any guarantees...

Why not? That was the thing.

Why not?

The realization hit him in the chest like a brick, and it hurt. It hurt like hell.

Because the last thing he’d ever wanted in all the world was to find another woman that he wanted to marry. Was to navigate falling in love and...

He thought back to when he’d seen Iris holding her niece.

It was so painful. That image. Because it should make him turn away. It should make them feel some kind of deep, unending trauma. And instead, it filled him with longing. And for so many years the image of a woman holding a little girl had been a futile kind of longing. A longing for a child he no longer had. For a wife he no longer had.

But now when he saw that, he thought of possibility. He thought of a potential future. A wife he could have. A child they could make together, not just an avatar for the one that he’d lost.

And it wasn’t about simply replacing them. No. Not ever.

Because they...

Mel and Emma were part of him.

That was the simple truth.

He had thought of them as gone, and had thought of himself as no longer a husband and father. But he had known that love, and he carried it in him. He knew a father’s love. It was still part of who he was, of everything he was, everything he did. And he was... He wasn’t honoring their life by choosing not to carry that love forward.

If he kept it to himself, hid it all away, then their memory went along with it.

It was a waste. That’s what it was. And it always would be in its way. There was no way around it. You couldn’t resurrect the dead.

But there were better ways to honor their memory than what he’d been doing.

Building the shrine to a life he could no longer have. To people who would never live in it.

He was...

What if he could marry Iris?

What if he could love her?

Oh that hurt, it hurt like a bullet, at the center of his heart.

The risk in that. To love again...

Lovingsomebody again.

He’d been ready to accept that he cared. Love was a whole other thing.

But it wasn’t a decision. That was the thing. It just wasn’t. It was a reality. She’d come storming into his life, and with it, she brought his heart back into the world. He told her he couldn’t feel those things anymore, and when he’d said it, it had been true.

But she created in him something new, something miraculous, something he hadn’t thought possible. An alchemy of hope that joined together with desire and created love on a level he never thought he could experience.

This was new. It wasn’t recapturing something old. No.

It wasn’t an easy realization. It wasn’t an easy thing to want. There had been a time, when he’d been a young man with his entire life set out before him. Every dream he could’ve possibly conceived of like brilliant, pristine diamonds lying on the surface of the ground. There to be picked up, to be marveled at.

But now he’d had them, and he’d lost them. And finding dreams now, was getting down on his hands and knees and digging through the rocky soil with his bare hands. Coming up with bloody knuckles and bruised and battered fingers.

Now, mining for dreams was to know the cost of them.

He had wanted a wife, and he had wanted children because it was a natural thing. The order of the world.

And then, he thought he had that, and never again. But he’d thought of it back then in terms of replacing.

Now he saw it for what it was. To take a heart that had been so scarred, so bruised and cut, flayed open, and ask it to love again, was not the same. To ask it to dream again.

And the fact was, it had gotten there all on its own. Or rather, Iris had served up hope on a plate of cookies, and had made him realize all the more that there could be.

Had started his heart longing again far before his brain had caught up. Far before he’d started to realize.

He’d let everything good burn away in that fire. And that wasn’t tribute to anyone.

He’d had diamonds, and he hadn’t taken the remaining diamond dust forward.

He wouldn’t move on. He realized that now. Because he was forever changed. Forever altered. But love, he thought then, was a lot like fire. It could destroy. It could hurt so very badly. It could be a nightmare of endless proportions. But you needed it to survive. Needed it to breathe. To make a life.

Not just survival.

And he couldn’t say that he felt unburdened by the realization of all of this. No, he was bloody knuckled, bruised and battered.

But the man he’d become loved Iris Daniels. He wanted to do the work that needed to be done to be what she needed.

Because he didn’t have a monopoly on hurt. On loss. On need too.

Because being a partner didn’t mean taking all the comfort on offer for yourself. No, it surely didn’t. It meant being a partner. It meant figuring out how to be whole enough to offer as much as he took.

What an interesting thing, to fall in love as this man. Who wasn’t young or idealistic, or simply assuming everything would work out.

He’d had everything. And he’d lost it.

He’d come out the other side as someone entirely different. Someone who wanted peace and quiet. Who never wanted to have another shallow business conversation again for as long as he lived. Who didn’t particularly want to put on a suit and go to a party. Who enjoyed a slower pace. Who wanted to build flower boxes, and houses with his bare hands.

He looked around this place, that house, that shrine he’d been building to grief, and his stomach hollowed out.

Mel didn’t need this house. But he did. And somewhere along the lines in the last couple of weeks, his intent in building it had shifted.

Maybe part of him had been working toward this the entire time.

He was building a life.

A life that he could share with Iris. And suddenly, the stars above him seemed like diamond dust. Bright and hopeful and beautiful. He was overwhelmed then, by a deep sense of peace. They were with him. Part of him.

Shining above him.

Losing them had left a hole in his heart. But loving them... Loving them gave him some of the best parts of who he was now. A gift, one that he could scarce say he deserved. No, he didn’t deserve it at all. But his nonetheless. To squander, or use.

And he was determined now that he would use it.

He was determined now to love.

THETHINGTHATsurprised Iris the most in the first few days since the grand opening was that Elliott appeared. She hadn’t expected that. She really and truly hadn’t expected to see the man who had acted like she was basically invisible the last time she’d seen him at the Gold Valley Saloon, come to patronize her bakery.

But then, she was the only bakery in town, so it might have more to do with her cakes than with her specifically.

“Iris,” he said.

“Hi,” she said. “Can I... Help you?”

“I haven’t had the opportunity to try any of your baked goods. And I remember a few months ago we talked about them. Remember, we shared some recipes.”

Yes, she remembered. She remembered that Rose had introduced them, and they had ended up talking about bread, and they had exchanged recipes and Iris had believed, really and truly believed, that he was interested in her. And it was the first time any man had actually seemed like he might be, so she had felt immensely flattered.

“Yeah, I vaguely remember something to that effect. I saw you the other night, I wasn’t sure if you saw me.”

“I did,” he said, the words coming out slightly rusty.

“Oh. Well. You didn’t really... Greet me.”

“Sorry. I was surprised. Is he... That man... Are you... With him?”

Was she with him? Well, he had made some pretty bold declarations about wanting to pursue a future, and wanting to be with her. And he had moved in. He made love with her ferociously every night. She was always exhausted when she fell into bed after a long day at the bakery, but then... Griffin was in her bed, and there was something magical about it. And she didn’t want to turn away from him. Couldn’t even if she had wanted to. Because he was magical, and amazing, and he created feelings in her body that only he could.

Because there was something as wonderful as there was unsettling about him. And being with him.

“Yes,” she said.

“I see. It seems like I kind of missed the boat with the Daniels women.”

Even now, he was lumping her in with her sister? She couldn’t even parse what he said enough to realize that he was expressing regret over not being with her. It didn’t matter. She was second pick. Second pick to Rose. It was worse than not being picked at all. To know that he was working his way down the list, and she was beneath... Just like she had always been. Why was that how it was for her?

She was so happy to have Griffin in her house. And she had committed to keeping him in her life, but the fact of the matter was, he hadn’t said that he loved her. He cared. He wanted to see where it went. But he was in love with his wife.

He had loved her first and best, and he always would.

And you help him. And you know how happy that makes people...

Her entire life she had felt like she was playing second fiddle to someone else. To sisters who were brighter and more intense. Sisters who had required more attention. A special kind of love, while she had been trustworthy, so she had had to be a caregiver. Even when she was a little girl. So she hadn’t gotten all the attention. And then it was too late. It was too late, and her parents had been gone and she had to fill the void. She had to fill the void, because they weren’t there and there was no other choice.

And if she didn’t take care of them, who would?

But who was going to take care of her?

Griffin takes care of you.

That felt uncomfortable. It felt sharp and painful, and she didn’t want to think about it. It was better to focus on what he needed from her.

Because if he didn’t love her she was going to have to do a whole lot to keep him there.

She knew how that went.

To matter, you needed to be doing something that mattered.

She hadn’t mattered to Elliott. She didn’t want to matter to Elliott. It was clarifying, standing there, wrestling with these hurts, these doubts, these thoughts. It was clarifying, because through this whole thing she had convinced herself she had feelings for Elliott when she really didn’t, and she had found that somewhat... Disturbing. That she had been so willing to settle. For somebody who didn’t light her on fire, or even start a smoldering in her soul, just because he had given her some measure of attention. Or, she had believed that he did.

Knowing that she had been somewhere on his list validated that he had, in fact, been flirting with her. Maybe even hedging his bets.

But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t the thing that got her. The thing that got her was the realization that the real pain that had come from this was being chosen second. Was that he had loved Rose, and hadn’t seen her.

Because that played a much bigger role in her life than she had realized before. It had brushed up against the edges of her consciousness, yes, and she could remember having that discussion with Griffin. About how her sisters were beautiful and special in a way that she wasn’t.

But she hadn’t realized...

She hadn’t realized that it stung in quite this way.

And until she married it to the situation with Griffin and his wife, she really hadn’t quite understood how deep of a wound it was.

Maybe there’s something wrong with you. Maybe that’s just it. Maybe you are just a backup. Second-rate. Second pick.

Some people are.

You’re strong.

Griffin’s words echoed inside of her.

You’re strong.

He had said that early on, he had seen something in her that she hadn’t before seen in herself.

But strong might just mean strong enough to endure this particular kind of life as a Clydesdale. Steady, working. Taking care. Not a Thoroughbred, who existed to simply be out there in the field, tossing its mane and being beautiful.

Something useful.

Utilitarian.

And what woman didn’t dream of being utilitarian?

“I don’t think that’s the only reason you missed out,” she said. “A word of advice, talk to women about something other than water filtration. And maybe don’t use one to get to her sister.”

“I...” he sputtered. “I’m very secure and stable.”

“So is a table. You have to be more than that. Be a little better than that. And don’t tell me how nice you are. Because you know what, you’re not that nice. You made me feel like garbage. And you made my sister feel bad. And the whole time, she blamed herself, and I kind of blamed her too. But the fact of the matter is, you led us both to believe something else was happening. And I think you did it because you knew that that’s what Rose wanted. I don’t think you were at all surprised that Rose didn’t like you. I just think you thought you could put on a good show with me and make her see you differently. But Rose likes cowboys. And you know what? So do I.”

Then she grinned broadly, and produced a pink frosted sugar cookie. “Have a cookie. And a very nice day.”

He actually did take the cookie, which surprised her, and lowered him even more in her estimation, because if he was really angry, he’d have thrown it back at her. And just then, she realized, that for all her bad feelings, she did basically have two men who wanted her. And whatever Elliott’s motives were, there was that.

It was intriguing, and different for Iris.

Griffin was an adventure.

And she didn’t know where he was leading. She needed to get back to that place. Where she saw him as an experience. It was just hard. Now that he’d met her family. Now that he’d moved in. Now that he’d expressed a commitment to her, that went somewhere beyond just sleeping together, but stopped short of everything.

You said you didn’t want everything.

Sex was complicated.

What she wanted to do was call Pansy and yell at her. Because Pansy had been all for a fling, as if it was possible. And honestly, her younger sister had no evidence that it was. Because the idiot girl had married the only man she’d ever slept with. In fact, both of her sisters had done that, and their encouragement toward an affair with Griffin rang hollow for that reason.

And you knew it at the time.

And you did it anyway.

She reached into the bakery case and took out a Mountain Climber. Griffin’s cookie. Because God knew she needed some sugar. And some caffeine. She wasn’t in a bad space. She was in a good space. And she was having a little bit of relationship drama. But internally. Externally there was no drama at all. Externally, Griffin was incredible. She wanted to do things for him. She wanted to make him happy. She wanted to make sure that he was happy in this place with her. It was important.

But inside... Yeah, things felt a little bit less stable.

But that wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t...

She blinked rapidly, suddenly feeling teary, and on the heels of her surge of positive feelings, it was weird and unexpected.

Was this just how it felt to be... Involved with someone quite this intensely? Maybe.

She was starting to think that it was overrated.

She thought back to when her deepest hope had been to have a feeling so intense it surpassed the sadness that she felt the day she lost her parents. And she felt that with Griffin. Many times over. She’d realized during sex there was an intensity, that was like a handful of broken glass and a handful of glitter and grind them together until she was cut up and sparkling, that it wasn’t necessarily going to be all good.

She had accepted it there. In bed.

It was harder to accept outside of it. Harder to accept that sometimes she was just going to be sitting in her bakery, which was a personal triumph, and feel... A driving sense of urgency to be with him. To be away from him. To hold on to him forever. To push him away, before he hurt her.

All those things competing at once.

But she was in a room filled with cookies. So she would have one.

And she would focus only on the taste of that cookie.

Because right about now, it was the only thing she could handle.

And so she thanked God for baked goods. Without which, she would have lost her sanity a long time ago.