Her smile faded and her brows drew together, unmistakable hurt. She crossed the floor to stand beside him by the crib. She spoke to him but looked at her daughter.

“Of course you can still touch her. I don’t hate you, Casey. I just can’t be with you, how we were. You do understand why, don’t you?”

“Yeah, of course.” And better now than ever, after everything that had happened.

She sighed, shoulders looking heavy. Finally she straightened and met his eyes with those startling ones. “I promised myself when I found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes I had been. One of those mistakes was falling for the wrong guys, again and again. And believe me when I tell you, you’re wonderful. You’ve treated me better than any other guy I’ve been with, and you’re way nicer than any of them. Better in every way. But you’re still . . . The things you did, and that you were thinking of still doing. It’s illegal, and it’s dangerous. For you and for other people. I can’t let that kind of thing slide anymore.”

“I’m never taking another one of those jobs ever again,” he said.

She looked away, shaking her head. “I want to believe that. But even if I knew it was a hundred percent true . . .”

He nodded. “You don’t need to explain.” Never had he been so crystal clear on his own shortcomings, and how they must seem to an outsider. He’d had to fill Miah in some, to explain why he’d been poking around in the ruined barn to begin with when he’d found the lighter. It had curdled his guts to spill it all, knowing that the man had just lost his father to arson. Miah had taken it in stride, but Casey had felt dirty, deep down in his heart. Ashamed.

But it was too late for those feelings now, where Abilene was concerned. He’d had his chance to say the right things—to feel the right way about his own past—and he’d fucked it, thoroughly.

He half wished he was doomed to lose his mind, now and then. It seemed like the only thing that might spare him suffering the burden of this regret for the rest of his life.

Chapter 29

You don’t need to explain. Those words echoed in Abilene’s head as she got the baby into her sling and hefted her bag.

If only I could. She knew she couldn’t be with him. She’d known it with perfect clarity just a few days earlier, but her sense of the reasons was growing fuzzy. Catastrophes had a way of putting things in perspective, of making minor horrors seem less atrocious by comparison. She couldn’t be with him because . . . because . . .

Because he was selfish, and dangerous.

But what was selfish about risking his own skin, helping Miah hunt down the man who’d killed Don? He’d willingly told the authorities he’d snooped in a closed crime scene. He could’ve been investigated, maybe even gotten busted for all those jobs he’d pulled in Texas. He could have gotten killed going after Bean with Miah, had the man been carrying his own gun that morning. A selfish person wouldn’t have done either of those things.

A selfish man wouldn’t be helping a woman move, once he knew he had no chance of getting in her pants again.

And a selfish man wouldn’t have sunk his life savings—shadily earned or not—into a foundering business in a last-ditch attempt to preserve something authentic in a community soon to be beset by outsiders.

He had been selfish. There was no escaping that fact, yet since he’d come home he’d been anything but. Even that dumb-ass move, considering taking one last job . . . Even that, he’d wanted to do for her. She believed that. For all his faults, all his crimes, he wasn’t a liar, she thought, watching as he sandwiched the crib’s mattress between its sides, screwdriver tucked into his back pocket.

“Be careful.” She held her breath as they headed downstairs, worried he might trip and break his neck trying to carry it all at once, but they reached the ground floor without injury.

They found Miah alone in the den.

“Did Vince head out?” Casey asked him.

“Yeah. I told him to after he’d finished his beer. I need to get outside, check on how the hands are getting on with everything.” He eyed their loaded arms. “Need help?”

“Nah,” Casey said. “It’s only a couple trips.”

Miah got up all the same, no doubt eager for a distraction. “I can at least take her off your hands while you get the convoy organized,” he said, gesturing at the baby.

“Oh yeah. That would be helpful.” She set down her suitcase and got the sling off, and handed Mercy over. “Thanks. We’ll be quick.”

The two cars were loaded inside ten minutes, and Casey stayed outside, trying to get the Colt’s trunk to shut around the crib’s cumbersome corners. Abilene went back in to give the guest bathroom a final sweep, then downstairs, where Miah was settled back in the rocker with the baby propped against his chest.

“We’re fixing to head out . . . I’m sad I won’t be able to say good-bye to your mom,” she told him. “And tell her thanks for everything. All of you. I can’t say how much it’s meant.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. She waited patiently, and at length he looked her in the eye and said, “Sit for a sec.”

She perched on the couch arm. “Yes?”

“Casey said you guys are . . . Well, that you had been something, but now you’re not.”

She flushed, but nodded. “Yeah. That kinda sums it up.”

“That’s all I know about it, that and the fact that he said he f—that he messed something up,” Miah corrected.

“It’s not quite that. There were just some things in his past that I couldn’t get on board with.”

Miah nodded. “He sorta filled me in, too, after the fire. It’s fucked up—I won’t lie.” He shot the baby an apologetic look for the cuss. “Sorry. But anyway . . . I mean, maybe my opinions about it are skewed, given how shady my best friend is, but I hope that if you two were something special to each other, that you’ll be able to forgive him, sometime. That’s completely your choice, obviously, but I just wanted to say, he’s changed.”

She nodded, hoping that was true. He’d been a bad man before he’d come home, but he was trying to be better now. Maybe not quite nailing it, but trying.

“More changed than you could possibly know,” Miah went on. “I grew up with the kid, and sure, he’s changed a lot since he was twenty, but he’s also changed a ton in just the past few months. Since he met you.”

Unsure what to say, she simply held his gaze, wondering what was next.

Miah sighed. “I’m such a wreck just now, I’m probably not even making any sense. But just know that . . . that he’s different, because of you. The Casey who came back to Fortuity would never have bought that bar, or agreed to stick around for his mom, or done everything he has for you and the baby. Something’s changed in him, and while I can’t say exactly what did it, I have no doubt you’re part of it. He’s gone from self-serving to damn near selfless in the last six months. He’s far from perfect. We all are. But he really is trying.”

“I know. But it’s still a lot to process.”

“I’m not saying he’s right for you or anything, and I won’t pretend I know exactly why you had to end things. But if it was good, and it was real, and all you need is to forgive him . . . I don’t know what I’m saying, except that good things don’t come along every day. And sometimes the ones that do are worth working for. None of my business, obviously. But for the first time since I’ve known that man, he deserves some credit.”

She felt her throat tightening, tears brewing, and found her fingers reaching for her cross. She was half-surprised to find something there to clasp once more.

She nodded. “He does. He’s been amazing to me, and I don’t want him out of my life. Or hers,” she added, nodding to Mercy. “But he can’t be the one for me, I don’t think. It’s too much to explain, but it’s as much about me as it is about him. I’ve made the same mistakes, again and again and again in my life. And it’s time to quit making them.”