And he would be right back where he started.

Hollowed out.

“Yeah,” Logan said.

Ryder shook his head. “I’m not. I... I care about her.”

“You want her.”

That was the most disturbing of the things that he’d said. That was the truth of it. Because of course he loved her. He just didn’t consider that the same thing as being in love. But he cared for his entire family. Saying that there was no love involved would be stupid. He didn’t stay here and work this land, didn’t stay near everybody, because he felt neutral about them.

Wanting Sammy felt... Hell. He thought she was beautiful. Looking at her sometimes hurt. But him putting his hands on her... No. That was like cursing in a church. Treading on sacred ground in muddy boots.

He couldn’t touch her.

So you’ll let someone else do it?

He gritted his teeth and positioned another piece of wood for splitting.

“Hey,” Logan said. “Maybe I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong,” Ryder said.

Because being in love with somebody was domestic and sweet. Because it was a bright and shiny memory from his childhood. The way his parents had been with each other. The way they had complemented each other.

It certainly wasn’t the sharp, strange thing that he felt for Sammy. An overwhelming sense of needing to protect her. Of needing to...hang on to her.

He was everything that she avoided, and he knew it.

It was a relief in some ways that she tended to gravitate toward men that were so different than he was. Because it made his feelings for her clear early on.

Yeah, he supposed he could see where his feelings could have gone off in the direction that Logan was talking about. Yeah, if things were different. If life was different, if he was different, he could have easily fallen in love with all that bright, free-spirited beauty.

If he had been a different person with a different life. A man whose insides hadn’t been crushed, compressed until they’d gone hard like granite. Tested by loss and by the deep burden of responsibility that had been placed on him at the age of eighteen.

And the first time he had ever seen her, curled up in his barn, he thought she was beautiful. Luminous and bright and a beacon of something. Hope. A light on a hill.

And yeah, he’d thought about kissing her.

But then he had started to realize that something wasn’t right about the place she lived. That something in her life was broken. Some nights she would climb through his bedroom window and without a word, get into bed with him. And at first... At first he’d felt...tempted. To press a kiss to her head, to see where else it might go. But then he’d started to realize that she was afraid.

That when she curled up against his body she was trembling like a leaf.

And he’d known then that he could never...

That she would get in bed with him like that showed her trust in him. And he would never, ever do anything to break that trust. To violate it.