“No,” he said, agreeing to that easily. Because he had never felt like he was raising Sammy. He had felt like the barbarian standing at the gate. Keeping the monsters at bay. Ready to die for her. Ready to kill for her. His sunshine.

Currently, his iceberg.

“Since when have I ever given the impression that I was desperate to have what other people consider a normal life? I’m not.”

“Sammy, you know that I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s not about your sister. It’s about my whole day. This whole town. My whole life. I really believed someday my mom and I could be fixed. But we can’t be. I’m not sitting around waiting for my family to heal. I took a good long look at it today and saw how broken it was. I... I can be a good mom, Ryder. I can. I can give a kid what my mom didn’t give to me.”

She said it with such deep, emotional determination that he felt a sliver of guilt lodge itself in his chest. “Of course you’d be a good mom, Sammy.” The words scraped his throat raw. “And I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just trying to understand you.”

“I didn’t ask for your understanding.”

“But you did want to talk to me. You wanted to tell me. Did you think that you were going to tell me you want to have a baby and you weren’t going to get any kind of advice back? What in our past history has given you the impression that I was not going to weigh in?”

And that was when he realized. That was what she wanted. She wanted a fight. She had wanted something to get all righteous and het up about. A dragon to slay, because Sammy knew how to be an underdog. And he played right into that. But she was better at games, played either with herself or other people, at building cases and setting stages. He just sort of...knew how to endure. Two very different skill sets.

“I tell you what,” he said. “Let’s go home and sleep tonight off. If you still want to talk about it tomorrow, we’ll talk about it.”

He could sense that his measured tone was only tightening the screws on her irritation. But he didn’t much care. Because he knew Sammy well enough to know that even if this bothered her, she wasn’t going to outright show it. Because that would mean letting on that she knew that he was on to her, and she wasn’t going to do that.

“Fine,” she said. “We can talk tomorrow. But nothing is going to change.”

“All right,” he said.

He could feel her bristling with indignation, because she didn’t like to be dismissed, but dismissing her was the best thing for both of them right now.

They turned and started to walk back toward the saloon, but Sammy paused, treating him to one last look that still held a glint of the ice she had treated him to moments ago.