Harlequin Desire January 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 by Maisey Yates (inspirational books .TXT) 📗

“To what? Coparenting? Sharing custody? Will we trade our kid back and forth in the parking lot of the grocery store?”

He didn’t like anything about the future she painted with those words. He didn’t like any of this. What he wanted to do was grab her and pull her up against him, pick her up in his arms and carry her upstairs and make her his.

He wanted to keep her.

And she would stay.

For the child.

And he would still be that obligation he’d always been.

He gritted his teeth, shoved that aside. “Whatever you need.”

“Except a husband.”

“It’s better.”

“Well, if you say so. But if I were you, I don’t know that I’d lay a bet on it. Since you’d only lose. Because you know what, I got the better hand.” She stopped and looked at him, her expression almost pitying. “The thing is, Jackson. You keep thinking that you know exactly how this is going to play out. You keep thinking that you know better than me. Even from the beginning. When I won, you felt like you had another plan, and so you didn’t really lose. But you did, though, didn’t you? I got my way. So if I were you, I would maybe try to figure out what all I know that you don’t.”

And then Cricket left.

Turned and left him there, driving off in her great truck down the hill, taking some piece of him with her. But she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand that this was how it had to be. Because in her mind she could will all these things into fitting together, and he knew better. He’d spent his life as an obligation.

But now he was standing there, feeling like he’d cut his own heart out of his chest, and he knew he was a liar.

He couldn’t love her…

He already did.

And he was every bit the coward she had accused him of being.

* * *

Cricket didn’t go back to the ranch. She couldn’t. Instead, she went to Emerson’s. And it didn’t take long for Wren to show up. At this point, there was no protecting Jackson from the wrath of her brothers-in-law. And Cricket didn’t intend to try. She was too angry at him. He was being…ridiculous.

He didn’t have a damn good reason for any of this.

Cricket had never sulked so hard in her life. But she was doing her best to work a groove into her sister’s overstuffed, white fluffy beanbag chair with the weight of her indignant sighs.

“So, when do we get the whole story?” Emerson asked.

It all came pouring out of Cricket, from her lifelong crush to their love affair, to the half brother thing, and all the way to what had just happened at his place.

“Well,” Wren said. “Creed is going to kill him.”

“I know,” Cricket said. “It’s why I went to Emerson first. Because I didn’t really want him to die. I’m feeling more flexible on that subject right at the moment.”

“So he said he can’t love you?”

“Yes. He did. And you know what, if I believed it… then maybe I would think he was doing the right thing. But I don’t believe it. I do think he can love me. I really do. I think he might love me already. And I think he’s being afraid.”

“Well,” Wren said, “love makes fools out of men. Trust me.”

“Even Creed?”

“Oh, Creed was the worst,” Wren said.

“No,” Emerson said, “I think Holden was the worst. I told him that I loved him and he lost his mind.”

“Yeah, Creed was not exactly receptive to me loving him either.”

“Oh,” Cricket said, frowning.

“What?” Wren asked.

“I didn’t exactly tell him that I loved him.”

“Really?” Emerson asked. “But you do, right? I mean, you have for years.”

“I… Yes. But I…wanted to see what he would say, and I didn’t want to…”

“Cricket,” Wren said gently. “I’d like to kill him. With my bare hands. If he didn’t think that he could give you something real he never should’ve touched you.”

“No. I told him it was okay. He was honest with me. He was upfront. He was. He never lied to me. It’s just… I thought I could be with him and then move on. I thought I could be with him and then make it part of a phase that I moved past. But I couldn’t. I was lying to myself. He was never a phase. He was always fate.”

“Then you need to tell him.”

“He humiliated me.”

“Yeah. And…sometimes we have to be fools for love.”

“I don’t like that at all.”

“I don’t either,” Wren said. “But I love my husband. And I would debase myself for him a thousand times to keep him. But he doesn’t make me. Maybe the real problem is that Jackson needs to know how you feel. The Coopers are… They’re hard men. And I don’t know all of Jackson’s issues. But I do know what it looks like when a Cooper runs scared.”

“So what? I don’t wait for him to come to me? I don’t…wait for him to say it first?”

“You can. But I think you have a good head on your shoulders, Cricket. And you always have,” Emerson said. “You know who you are. And it would be great if relationships could be fifty-fifty, but they can’t be. Everybody has to give everything they’ve got all the time, and sometimes you’re going to have to be the one carrying your partner. No, it should never look like Mom and Dad’s marriage. Where one of them dies emotionally, without any kind of love or support. But sometimes you have to be the first one who’s willing to break. The first one who’s willing to be vulnerable. And it might be tough, but it’s best. Because otherwise you end up in a stalemate forever, and nobody wins.”

“Maybe it’s just a bad hand. All around.”

“No. Don’t say that. Look, he’s a good man, and you’re a good woman. And I don’t believe for a minute that the two of you can’t find a way to make something