Jessica Keller - His Unexpected Return

“Hey.” Wade tightened his hold on her. “I’m here.”

“Cassidy told me.” Shannon pushed back a little so she could look up at him. Her light blues pinned on his face. “This whole time, where have you been? How could you do this to us?”

He didn’t think telling her he had been a jerk would satisfy her. He hadn’t called or written and had allowed everyone to draw false conclusions. Worse, he had stayed away, knowing—counting on the fact—that they would wrongly assume he was dead.

“I’ve been in the Gulf,” he said softly. Though he knew that wasn’t the answer she most wanted.

She stepped back, finally breaking all contact with him. Shannon fisted her hands. “I am beyond angry with you. At you. I don’t think I’ve ever been so furious with someone in my whole life. What you did to us... What you let us believe—” Her voice hitched.

“I’m so sorry, Shannon. You have no idea how sorry I am.”

More than he had ever thought.

Wade shoved his hands into his pockets, willing to take whatever she had to say. What he had done easily earned him a lifelong tongue-lashing. And knowing his sister, she had plenty of zingers stored up to pile on him.

“But, Wade?” She waited for him to meet her eyes again. “I love you. I think you need to hear that more than anything else I have to say right now.” She rocked on her feet. “Between losing Dad, Mom’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Boone and his family moving clear across the country and what the tornado did to our ranch...” She used her hand to shield the sun from her eyes as she scanned the evidence of the storm’s damage throughout their property. “Our family’s been through a lot recently.”

Shannon sighed. “Rhett and I were fighting when the tornado hit.” She looked over at Rhett and they exchanged tender smiles. “And for a few hours there, I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. All that time, I kept thinking my last memory of him, my last moments with him, would have been me tossing a heap of cruel words at him.” She laid a hand on her stomach as if the thought made her physically sick. “I don’t ever, ever want to feel that way again.”

“That had to have been scary.”

Shannon nodded. “I learned my lesson though. Which is good timing for you because if you had shown up out of the blue two months ago, before we lived through the tornado and before we lost Dad, well, let’s just say this reunion would have gone down a lot differently.”

Wade had no doubt.

He had expected much worse.

Rhett excused himself to meet up with Macy as Shannon filled Wade in on some of the plans they had to improve the ranch once the rebuilds from the storm were completed. A part of Wade wanted to go inside and see his mom, but more than anything he was exhausted from the last few hours of seeing people and trying to explain himself. Today he had learned he had a daughter. He had discovered that his old girlfriend was still going to be a part of his life—something he hadn’t prepared for. Then there was an appointment in Houston later in the week to meet a team of specialists, which weighed on him too. He had thought he could lean on his family for support but now he didn’t feel right expecting that of them, burdening them with what was going on in his life. Not after Shannon had just said life had been so hard recently.

It was a lot to process and he was emotionally wrung dry from it all.

If Wade was being honest, he was becoming more than a little overwhelmed by all he had to catch up on. Lives had happened. People had changed. He had changed too.

Despite those things, Wade knew he belonged at Red Dog Ranch with his family.

He rubbed his palms against his jeans.

He would make this work. He could be the brother and son they had always wanted, instead of the one who had disappointed them. They had urged him to grow up and be responsible, to make the family proud...and maybe he could now. He hoped he could. Because he knew he couldn’t erase the pain of the past but if they would let him, Wade wanted to chart the course for a better tomorrow.

“Today’s a bad day for Mom.” Bad days, Shannon explained, were days when their mom was struggling with living in the past and was more agitated and less understanding. Because of that, Rhett and Shannon hadn’t informed their mom about Wade’s return when Piper skipped inside to tell them. As much as he wanted to see her, it would probably be for the best if Wade allowed himself the night to recharge and spent time with his mom in the morning.

So he stayed on the porch and listened to Shannon talk about building a covered riding arena, hydroseeding, plans to clear brush for another pasture and a new trail they were considering paving.

The sun was beginning to set when Wade noticed Cassidy near a grassy enclosure housing a donkey and a little white horse. Wade watched her hug the donkey’s neck and run her fingers over the tiny horse’s back. She rested her head against the fence rung for a long time. What was she thinking about? If it was about his return... No, he couldn’t allow himself to hope when it came to Cassidy. He had burned that bridge. He might as well have burned it, collected the ashes and then spread the ashes all over the world—never able to piece them back together or repair them.

In leaving Cassidy, Wade had destroyed the only good thing he had going in his life at the time. No doubt it was a mistake he would regret and pay for the rest of his life.

“You aren’t listening to me anymore, are you?” Shannon’s question pierced his focus.

“Sorry.” Wade shifted to look at his sister.

She rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing new. Not when it comes to Cassidy. I wasn’t sure you would still get that look about you.” She moved her hand in a tight circle, gesturing toward his face. “When it came to her. But you still do.” Shannon’s eyes narrowed. “I figured you would have fallen in love two or three more times in the last five years and forgotten all about her.”

Wade shook his head. He had loved Cassidy and no other woman. Not that it mattered. Even if there had been someone else, having just sprung the fact that he was alive on his family, finding out he had a child and dealing with decisions about his health, Wade was in no shape to entertain the thought of a relationship with any woman at the moment.

He probably never would be.

Shannon’s eyebrows rose. She was clearly still waiting for him to say something.

“It’s not like that. There’s no one. Not Cassidy, not anyone. I didn’t even know she would be here. My only focus right now is getting right with my family.” And beating his thyroid cancer, but he wasn’t about to unload that news.

“You’re honestly going to look me in the eye and tell me you don’t care about her?” Shannon snorted. “Five years doesn’t change the fact that I could always read you, you know that, right?”

Wade ran his hand over his hair. He laced his fingers behind his neck and squeezed his palms into the skin there. “I have to talk to her.”

“About that.” Shannon snagged his arm. “When news came that you were most likely dead, it devastated her.” Shannon jutted her chin toward Cassidy. “But even after that, she held on to hope. We all did, but Cassidy most of all. Dad poured money into hiring search teams. Four teams in five months and they came up with nothing. Around the seven-month mark when Dad finally announced that we needed to honor your memory and hold a service for you, the stress of it sent her into early labor.”

Wade’s gaze went back to Cassidy. He swallowed hard.

He had stayed away to help her. He still believed that. But he had also made things worse, at least for a time.

“But she’s okay now, right?” Wade dropped his hands to his knees. “She enjoys what she does. I mean, she has a good life here, right?”