“My family always does a big Christmas thing,” he said finally. “And I pretend that I like it. But I don’t. I pretend that I like it, because you have to do that with your family. You have to do that for your family. Especially when... You know, I feel like they’ve all moved on without me. Like they’ve all reached some kind of healing that I just can’t find. Some of my brothers have lagged behind a little bit. But now three of them are getting married.” He laughed. “Well. Not all of them. My brother Buck... Something happened a long time ago, and he left. There was an accident and he... He wasn’t the same after. I know that eats at my parents. Because even though he didn’t die, they lost another child. He was never himself, and then he went away. He’s the only one that didn’t stay. The only one that didn’t stay on the ranch, the only one that didn’t stay in the rodeo. I’m angry at him, you know. I’m angry at him for leaving. For not doing what I do.”

“And what’s that?”

“I don’t feel any of it either. I don’t feel healed. I don’t feel happy to be there. I can’t handle the emotions of it. I can’t handle the way my mom wants to talk about my sister and share memories. I can’t handle sitting around and telling stories, like there could ever be happy memories of somebody that you’ll just miss for the rest of your life. But I do it. And if I want to rage, I do it on the inside. Because I did what I had to do to deal with myself so that I could be there for my family. So honestly, fuck him.”

He watched a series of complicated emotions flit across Tansey’s face. And of course, he saw pity among them.

“I never wanted you to feel sorry for me,” he said.

“Only a jerk wouldn’t feel sorry for you. Are you sorry for me that my dad left?”

“Well, yeah...”

“I’m sorry for you. Because this is hard, and terrible. Because it’s more than anyone should have had to deal with. Because it’s difficult and sad. Because...”

“What?”

“Because it’s not fair. All the things that happened to us that break our hearts before we can ever make choices. You don’t choose your family. And I had a terrible father. You have a great family, but it still came with tragedy, and I... I just don’t think it’s fair.”

“No. It’s not.” An idea turned over in his head. “But you know, I was going to take the opportunity to decorate the hotel while it was empty.”

“You were going to decorate.”

He shrugged. “I told you. That’s the thing I’m good at doing. And I figured I would do it myself. Get the Christmas decorations up before the guests start coming to spend their holidays here. There’s a lot of people planning to spend Christmas Day right here. We got a big Christmas dinner and...there’s a big tree out on the back porch that I haven’t brought in yet, and decorations ready to go in one of the back offices.”

“Let’s do it,” she said. “Let’s decorate.”

“You want to decorate?”

She nodded. “We had a tiny tinsel tree in the mobile home, and then... We don’t really do Christmas every year. Because sometimes I’m busy, and we’re not always in the same place. We always call. But if I’m by myself, there’s no reason to put up decorations and...”

“Well. If you’re interested.”

And he didn’t say what he knew. That they were both maybe trying to make the night last longer. Because who knew what would happen come morning. When trees could be moved and roads could be plowed, and the temperatures would get above freezing and everything would start melting.

Yeah, he didn’t know what would happen after that.

Chapter 11

She waited, wrapped in just the robe again, while Flint went and got boxes of ornaments from where they’d been stored back in the manager’s office.

He was shirtless, and in her mind, she knew this would always be Christmas. This man, wearing nothing but jeans low riding on his lean hips, carrying big boxes of decorations.

And it made her a little bit sad, because it was another thing that would belong to Flint Carson forever.

You have to figure that out.

She did. Because she hadn’t slept with him again to break her own heart again. She had wanted to say goodbye.

Not because anything he’d told her about himself horrified her. No. He wasn’t the monster that he thought he was, and she knew that. It was simply that she also knew who she was.

And they had tried this before.

And now she needed to listen when he told her who he was.

And what he wanted.

She pushed off the sadness, and watched as he went toward the back of the major lobby area, throwing open the doors at the back.

They had the whole place lit up, and she wondered if anyone could see that, at 2:00 a.m., this giant building was a beacon of light on the hill. If anyone could see the outline of his body as he stood there, backlit in the doorway. Snowflakes whipped in around him, and she just sat and stared.

“What are you doing?”

“Christmas tree,” he said. “It is a huge ass tree.”

He had already placed a stand at the center of the room, and he disappeared a moment later, and then came back. The tree was huge. It must weigh hundreds of pounds, and he had it hefted over his shoulders, like one of those guys at the gym that did all the major weight lifting like it was just a fun thing people did on a Saturday morning.

“You need help?”

“Oh come on,” he said, a grin curving his lips.

So she just sat there, and watched as he positioned the tree in the stand. It was massive.

But she didn’t really care about the tree. Mostly, she was watching him. How beautiful he was. How perfect.

There was just no other man that made her feel this way. No other man that captured every facet of her attention. But she didn’t think there was a more beautiful man in the entire world. How could there be? And she sat there, living in the feeling she’d had when they had walked up from her truck. When she had let those broad shoulders—so perfectly defined and glorious, revealed to her now—shield her from the wind.

And she realized, it was the man he was.

Not the man he could be.

Because she listened to him talk about his family.

It wasn’t that he didn’t do that, all the time. Shoulder other people’s burdens, protect them.

He used his strength all the time, every family gathering, every Christmas. He denied himself, and his own comfort, for the people he cared for.

The issue was, he just didn’t have the capacity to extend it to her too.

It was a painful realization, but one she could accept. How could she not accept the fact that he gave everything to a family that loved him so much?

Family was supposed to be who you did that for.

Her father had never done it for her, and look at the way it had broken things.

His older brother was gone, and that, she knew, put more pressure on him. It was why he was angry.

Because he was already at capacity.