“What does that mean?” Was he dumping her, or what?
His raised his mournful eyes, and she saw a sadness that she didn’t think was hers. It was his. “I can’t leave the land, and it’s not fair to ask you to give up indoor plumbing.”
Her mouth opened and shut without her approval. So that was it. She’d just assumed he’d move in with her—that he’d want to move in with her and live in a real house and have a real life with her. But no. He wasn’t going anywhere.
It felt like he’d tied a lead sinker to her heart and made a long cast out to the middle of the river. He was right, of course. It was one thing to go from the Mitchell Mansion to a studio cabin, but it was a whole other thing to go from a cabin to a tent on a permanent basis. “So what do you want to do?”
A little bit of hope crept into his eyes. “We could do what we just said. A night or two during the week, camping on nice weekends. It’s not perfect...” He kissed her forehead. “But I can’t let you go.”
Her heart sank even farther. She’d had no idea that those words were so open to interpretation, but clearly they were. She’d interpreted them to mean something damn close to I love you. This was the problem with not speaking the local language. The interpretations were always open. “And you can’t stay.”
He nodded as he smoothed a curl away from her face. His mouth was saying one thing, his body something completely different. Maybe that was her problem. She’d been listening to the wrong part.
“I’ll understand if that’s not enough for you. But you’ll always have a piece of me.”
One piece. What the hell was she supposed to do? Love him when he was here, miss him when he was gone? Damn it. Damn it all. She was going to miss him no matter what. And if she couldn’t do that, couldn’t live half in his world and half in hers, then she wouldn’t get to love him at all.
One piece. She wouldn’t be able to avoid him. Every time he popped up at the clinic, she knew she would fall apart all over again, all because she wouldn’t settle for one piece.
She took a deep breath, hoping to clear her head and instead just breathing in his smell—the smell of horse and man and river and sun, all blended into a perfect musk—until she knew she couldn’t live without any part of him. Even if she couldn’t have all of him. “Will you stay the whole night? When you come?” Because if she woke up with him, she could pretend that there was something normal about all of this. If he wouldn’t be there when she woke up, then she couldn’t. She couldn’t just be a booty call.
His arms tightened a little more, until she thought he would squeeze her right back into bits again. “I want to wake up with you, Madeline. You’re beautiful when you sleep. Just beautiful. And I’ll even make you breakfast, as long as the coffee makes itself.”
That was it—that was as good as it was going to get. Not perfect, but good enough. She smiled, just a little, and he smiled back. And maybe, just maybe, by the time February rolled around, he’d change his mind. “There’ll always be a mattress here for you.”
His smile got wider. She could still see the sadness at the edge of his eyes, but it was tempered now. He almost looked normal as he said, “Would you go to a funeral with me?” like he was asking for a second date.
It wasn’t going to be perfect. After setting up when he’d come get her for Albert’s funeral and extracting a promise that he’d swing by the clinic before then, just so she could see him, she kissed him goodbye, watched her cowboy ride into the sunset, and went in to open a can of soup for dinner.
It wasn’t going to be perfect. But then life never was.
Chapter Fourteen
So it wasn’t perfect. Madeline had never needed anyone the way she began to need Rebel, and it took her more time to get used to the sensation of longing than she was comfortable with. She went to sleep most nights craving his arms around her waist, his breath on her cheek. She woke up most mornings missing the sight of him parading around the cabin in her pink towel. When he came into the clinic, she had to fight the urge to haul him into the supply closet and kiss the hell out of him. Definitely not perfect.
But that didn’t make it bad. After a few weeks, they settled into an easy routine. When he came for her Friday nights, she practically swooned at the sight of him riding up in the summer sun, leading Tanka for her. With every weekend she spent camping, she got more comfortable with no fans, no automatic coffee and no hot showers. She still missed an enclosed toilet, though, but for two days at a time, she was willing to trade that for long trail rides and campfires. When she came home on Wednesday nights, he’d be sitting in her recliner on the porch, waiting for her. God, how she loved the sight of him there, waiting for her. They’d make dinner together and then spend the night wrapped in each other. She loved him with everything she had. And all the while, she counted the days until the first snow fell.