The Cowboy's Faith. Danica Favorite

or something, but I can’t imagine that you would feel comforted by me. I haven’t been very nice to you, and I don’t exactly have warm feelings toward you.”

      Even as the admission came out, she knew there was one more thing she had to do. Not that she liked it much.

      “My sisters say I owe you an apology,” she said.

      “But you disagree.” There was no judgment in his voice, no anger. Just acceptance.

      She shrugged. “Obviously.”

      He nodded slowly as he yawned, then ran his hands over his face.

      “Sorry. I guess I was more tired than I thought.” He stood, then came next to her. “Listen. You don’t owe me anything. But we do have to get to a place where we can stop rehashing the fact that you’re angry with me for not telling you about Adriana and Brandon and move forward to a place of understanding. I know forgiveness is hard, and I’m not asking you to do it right away. But it has to happen at some point, even if only for your own peace of mind. You know the quote about unforgiveness being like drinking poison while waiting for the other person to die?”

      Factually, she knew all of this to be true. It wasn’t like she didn’t know that she was only hurting herself by not forgiving him. That God wanted her to forgive him. But there was so much injustice in the situation, and it didn’t seem right that no one had been held accountable to her for their actions.

      “I get that. I do, I promise.” He’d been nothing but nice to her. Even Leah, who had always been angry on her behalf, was warming to him because of how nice he was.

      “You just have to understand,” Nicole said. “I didn’t find out until I was on my way to the church to be married. The perfect man, the perfect friend, all at once, they were lost to me. And they died before I could even ask them why. Before I could confront them and tell them what a terrible thing it was that they did to me.”

      “So you took it out on me instead.”

      “It’s all I had.”

      Her confession was more cathartic than she’d thought it would be. But she still needed answers.

      “Even though we sort of agreed not to rehash this, in all the apologies you’ve given me, you’ve never told me why. Why didn’t you tell me about Adriana and Brandon?”

      He looked down at the ground, then back up at her. “I didn’t think it was my place. I talked to Adriana, and I tried convincing her to do the right thing. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think she meant to hurt you. I think that’s why she wouldn’t tell you.”

      He let out a long sigh, and for the first time, she recognized the torment on his face.

      “Your niece had recently died, and so shortly after your brother-in-law’s death. Adriana told me that she didn’t think you would be able to handle it. She asked me to trust her. That she would take care of things, but I needed to be patient. I didn’t know what that meant. But where I come from, you stay out of other people’s business. Trust me when I say that butting in has cost me a lot in my life.”

      She looked down at the ground, then back up at him.

      Because she’d always refused to meet him, or even talk to him about this, she’d never seen this look of regret on his face. Never heard the pain in his voice.

      All the times she’d hung up on him, refused to take his calls, raged against him, she’d missed seeing his level of brokenness. She’d never realized that as much as she had been hurting, he had been hurting, too.

      Suddenly, Fernando’s decision to keep Adriana’s secret didn’t seem so awful. Just really unfair that she had to be the victim.

      “I get it,” Nicole said. “You were caught in the middle. Between someone you loved and doing the right thing.”

      He nodded slowly. “Keeping secrets is a terrible burden, but so is knowing who and what to tell. My only hope is that in time, you can forgive me, forgive them, and move on with your life.”

      It should be easy for her to just say, “I forgive you,” but it wasn’t that simple. She could say the words, but she was a long way from feeling that peace in her heart.

      “I’m not there yet,” she said, hoping that honesty was the best policy here. Of all the things she’d wished since she’d found out about Brandon and Adriana, her greatest desire had been for people to just be honest with her. It seemed like everyone danced around the truth, afraid of hurting people. And maybe the truth did hurt sometimes, but it always came out, and it seemed to hurt far more having it hidden so long.

      “They make it sound easy in church, don’t they?” Fernando looked at her sympathetically, like it didn’t bother him to hear forgiveness wasn’t going to come easily. But considering she’d told him she’d hate him forever several times, he probably wasn’t expecting even this.

      She nodded. “Yeah. And even though Jesus tells us that we should forgive seventy times seven, I’m really struggling with just once. But it makes me feel good to know that you’re willing to be patient with the process.”

      Even that was a breakthrough for her, considering that until now, she hadn’t wanted to forgive him.

      He walked over to the dresser and picked up the sheets. “Thank you for bringing these. And thank you for letting me stay. If there were any hotels in town, I’d have stayed there.”

      “Nearest one is about thirty minutes down the road. But I wouldn’t let my worst enemy stay there.”

      He gave her a smile that made her tingle down to the very bottom of her toes. “Well, at least I have that going for me. You don’t like me, but I’m not your worst enemy.”

      The few times that she’d met Fernando when he was with his sister, she’d thought he had a nice sense of humor, a good smile, and was a lot of fun to be around. She’d liked him even then, and had, for a brief period, thought they were friends. But either she had been mistaken in her beliefs about him, or neither one of them understood what friendship really was.

      Still, it was weird, feeling this warming toward him. It wasn’t just the sympathy she’d felt for him upon coming to see him in the room; it was almost like attraction. But that was crazy. She couldn’t be, wouldn’t be, attracted to someone who’d done so much damage in her life.

      Fernando unfolded one of the sheets. “Can you take the other end and help me?”

      When she reached to take the end of the sheet out of his hands, her fingers brushed his, and she felt that same weird jolt she had earlier with the horse. She jumped slightly, and Fernando looked at her.

      “Static electricity,” she said. It had to be. There couldn’t be any other explanation.

      She turned to Fernando and smiled as she smoothed the sheet over her side of the bed. “So that nightmare. It seemed pretty bad. Do you have it often?”

      Fernando kept his attention on the bed. “Often enough. Nothing to worry about. Thank you for asking. Why don’t you tell me about the ranch, why you’re here, your plans for it?”

      * * *

      When Nicole launched into the story of inheriting a ranch from her former stepmother, Fernando breathed a sigh of relief. Though part of him appreciated Nicole’s compassion and the indication of her softening toward him, deep inside, he was shaking.

      They’d just gotten to a place where she was beginning to warm to the idea of forgiving him. How would that change when she knew about his past, which was what he’d been dreaming about?

      He was so tired of the inevitable rejection that came with his admission of having gone to prison. No one looked at him the same, and no matter what he said in his defense, people shut down at the word felon.

      He took a deep breath and focused on Nicole as she spoke. The light in her that he remembered from before her failed wedding had returned,