He sighed. “I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t know what to do.” Panic spilled through his veins, and he muscled it into submission. “Do I choose the rodeo, or having a family? The rodeo is all I know. It’s my whole career. It’s most of my friends. Nobody’s going to pay me to be a family man.”
“You could choose a different career.”
“You mean like ranching?”
Cade laughed, a deep belly laugh. “Ranching is way too sedate for an adrenaline junkie like you. You’d never make it.”
“Thanks,” Liam said. “Good to know you think I can handle anything.”
“Oh, come on.” Cade shook his head. “You could handle anything. But you’d be bored out of your mind on the ranch. It’s too routine for you, and you know it.” He looked at the ceiling of the stables. “You remember that property we used to stay at when Dad would take us camping? The one that borders the national forest?”
Memories flashed into Liam’s mind, fast as a movie reel. Pushing a rowboat into the water at the break of dawn. Grilling hot dogs over a campfire. Picking blackberries from a bush and eating them by the handful. There had been a lot of good times there. “Yeah. What about it?”
“It’s for sale. Maybe there’s something you could do with that.”
Liam took this in. “I’ll think about it.” That property was a gem. He didn’t have the faintest clue what he would do with it if he owned it, but there had to be lots of options. “Thanks, Cade.” He went to the hooks for the tools and put the rake and the boots back in their places. “I’m going to head out.”
Cade gave him a quizzical look. “So soon? Did you really come here to help me muck out stables?”
“I’m out of firewood to chop for the moment.” Liam stepped over to a sink in the corner of the building and washed his hands. He swung them in the air to dry them, then gave his brother a snappy salute. “I’ll see you later.”
He was almost to the door when Cade called out to him. “Hey, Liam.”
“Yeah?” Liam turned to face his brother, who stayed in his spot in the stall. “Did you think of anything else?”
“I think you’d be a good father.”
The compliment hit Liam like a punch in the chest. Painful, yet…still pleasant. “You really think that? I thought you’d say the opposite, since I have a hard time staying put.”
“Oh, yeah. You’ll have to curb the wanderlust if you decide to go all-in. You can’t change your mind if you decide to stay and find out it’s too much.”
Angry heat singed Liam’s face. “Nice. You really think I’d do that? Change my mind? God, Liam. This is why it’s such a hard decision in the first place. I already made the decision to go back to my career. It’s only that Mina isn’t the kind of woman you just leave behind. Not if you get another chance with her, anyway.”
Cade grinned at him.
Liam gritted his teeth.
Naturally, his brother had done it. He’d tricked him into admitting his feelings. But admitting feelings didn’t give him a way to deal with them. He still had no idea. He and Mina had agreed that the arrangement would come with no strings attached. Up until he’d picked her up on the side of the road, she’d been doing a hell of a job avoiding him. The signs had been clear—Mina didn’t want him in her life. That hadn’t stopped him from thinking about her constantly.
“Enjoy the rest of your day,” he said to Cade, then turned his back and went out into the yard. The clouds split, letting a beam shine down on Liam’s face, and he raised a hand to shield his eyes.
“Do you know what the second-best thing I’ve ever done is?”
Liam wheeled back to face Cade, even though he didn’t want to. This was the most irritating thing his brother ever did—use these questions to coax out information Liam didn’t want to give. He’d rather keep all his feelings locked away, where they couldn’t derail his career or ruin his image of a fun-loving daredevil. “What?”
“Marrying Becca,” Cade called across the yard. The breeze picked up, carrying with it the scent of clean laundry from the vents in the farmhouse and the very last gasp of winter. “Do you know what the best thing is?”
“What?”
“Raising Joey.”
If Liam walked away from Mina now, he’d also be walking away from raising their baby together. If not together, then side-by-side. In the same town. With the same goal—a happy child. He looked at Cade, standing there so resolutely, and he knew he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t get to the end of his life carrying that kind of regret.
Luckily, he wasn’t at the end of his life yet. There was still time to change his mind—to change course. Even if it was hard. Even if it was scary.
Liam laughed under his breath. Scary? He’d done scary things before, and he’d do them again. All the fear in the world couldn’t stop him now.
“I gotta go, Cade,” he said. “Thanks for the talk.”
“Where are you going?” his brother called after him.
“To where I need to be.”
16
Mina opened her laptop and stared at the screen, wiping stray tears off her cheeks. It had been a week since the appointment. Nothing seemed right. Nothing was right. Not her emotions, which her doctor assured her were heightened because of an influx of new hormones. Not her thoughts, which raced back and forth and crashed into each other like runaway trains. She tipped her head back and took five deep breaths to clear her mind.
The only problem with clearing her mind was that Liam popped right back into it the moment she opened her eyes.
When she’d first decided to have a baby on her own, she’d
