Page 127 of Last Chance Cowboy
That meant that there was still hope. There was nothing he could do to fight against the loss of his family. They had just been gone. Just been lost to him, and there was no fixing that, no taking it back.
With this? He could figure out what he might be able to do. He could ask her what she wanted. He could offer her anything.
He would offer her any goddamn thing she wanted, as long as it meant that he could still love her.
He would tell her everything that he had planned for them. The ranch that he would build, the future they could have, and if she didn’t want it, he would respect it.
But he would love her all the same, because as much as it hurt, this love was a gift, and he knew it.
His heart was still beating.
And that was a gift.
But he didn’t want just to survive anymore. He didn’t want to live to be the old man on that lonely porch that the kids whispered about. He wanted to sit on that porch with Cara.
He wanted to watch their own grandkids play in that yard.
Watch the leaves turn gold.
Gold might not stay in the same place forever, but it always came back. Year after year. It was in the sunrise, the trees, the decorations at a prom for two.
Because even if the people you loved were gone, the love remained.
It felt so clear now. So real. He carried the love for his family with him through everything. Through war and the rodeo and now this, too.
It would always be what kept him going.
Now he could see what his life was for. Now he could see a future, not just surviving.
Living.
With her.
And while there was still breath in his body, that was the thing that he was going to fight for.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cara woke up at three in the morning. She looked at the clock and saw the red numbers glaring bright. She felt a rumble, and it was damp. She had been crying so much that she could feel that her eyes, her whole face, were swollen.
She grabbed her phone off the nightstand and checked to see if she had any texts. She had one from Marlowe, letting her know that the car was still in the parking lot because Cody had come to pick her up, and she had left her keys in it in case Cara needed them.
Cara smiled.
There was Marlowe, thinking of her, even though she flat-out didn’t deserve it.
She sat up in bed, wrapped the bathrobe more tightly around her shoulders. She was such a mess.
And there, in all that silence, something bled through for the first time.
You can just love somebody, and then the next day they can be gone.
She started to cry. Deep, wrenching sobs.
Because loving people had never kept her safe, and it had never kept them safe.
She was such a small, tragic coward because Zane had lost so much, so, so much, and he had been brave enough to say that he loved her, brave enough to ask for more, and she was… Just not.
She was afraid.
