Heartless

“I’m not delusional enough to think that person exists, but I keep hoping for that anyway. And Willa isn’t the answer I was hoping for. Luke’s mom did a number on us. She continues to do a number on us—on me. My trust levels are at rock bottom.”

Cade’s reflections on his past with Talia introduce the novel’s explorations of The Impact of Trauma on Intimate Relationships. Cade is trying to reconcile himself to having Willa’s presence in his home for the summer, but his mind immediately shifts from her to Talia. The interplay of these two relationships in Cade’s mind conveys the heart of his internal conflict.

“I swallow hard when Luke pushes his soft little fingers between my own. I also swallow down the agitation I feel at the thought of someone—a mother, no less—not coming to visit a kid like this. The universe blessed me with two badass parents. Ones who would crawl through glass to get to me. I want to be that kind of mother one day. Fierce. Fearless. Sucking air in through my nostrils, I remind myself that it’s not my business. That I don’t know the full story. That maybe there’s a good reason for whatever’s going on with his mom.”

Willa’s relationship with Luke gradually changes her definition of family and contributes to The Search for Home and Belonging. In this passage, Willa’s thoughts drift as she contemplates Luke’s past, and as her analysis of Talia’s past actions causes her to define her own approach to family and motherhood, it is clear that Luke is already inspiring her to engage in more intense moments of self-reflection. Willa also makes comparisons between Luke’s family life and her own, revealing her empathetic nature. Furthermore, the passage’s final line foreshadows the maternal role that Willa will assume in Luke’s life in the coming months.

“She has temptation written all over her. But she doesn’t act like it, instead she shrugs and pulls her sunglasses off her face, pinning me with her emerald eyes. The kind of eyes that stop you in your tracks. If nothing else, Willa Grant is a stunner. Too young for me. Too unpredictable for me. But a stunner all the same.”

Cade’s instant attraction to Willa foreshadows their imminent sexual and romantic relationship. In this early moment, Cade is trying to suppress his feelings of attraction for Willa, but his detailed observations in this passage indicate how intensely he is drawn to her. By citing her perceived unpredictability and labeling her a “temptation,” he also reveals the depths of his own insecurities, foreshadowing his issues with the impact of trauma on intimate relationships.

“I know you are. You’re a good person. But when you trick me, it breaks my trust. And your dad is trusting me to keep you safe, and we need to respect his rules, at least sometimes. Because now we’ve broken his trust too. Does that make sense to you?”

Willa uses clear and direct language when she reprimands Luke. She is correcting him because he has played a prank and exhibited dishonesty, but although the lesson is a serious one, she employs a calm, gentle tone. By addressing Luke like he’s an intelligent adult, Willa forges a trusting relationship with him even as she admonishes his bad behavior. These lines of dialogue thus foreshadow Willa’s destined role as an important parental figure in Luke’s life.

“Cade gasps and stands up straight, turning his attention to me. There are tears in his eyes, and I’m sure he’s smiling—he has to be—but he has a fist held up over his mouth. He seems younger when he’s laughing. Lighter somehow. It makes me laugh too, and before I know it, we’re both standing there, regarding the clean, violated yard, having a chuckle together. And for once, Cade Eaton isn’t scowling at me.”

When Willa sees Cade laugh for the first time, she starts to perceive him differently. This scene marks a turning point in Cade’s character arc and in the evolution of Willa and Cade’s relationship. Willa is closely observing Cade’s body language and demeanor, which conveys her interest in getting to know him and in understanding his internal world better. She also notes that they are laughing together, and it is clear that Willa’s lighthearted manner is finally breaking through Cade’s brusque exterior.

“People don’t get it. Traveling around rodeoing was never an option for me. No one ever asked me if that’s what I’d like to do. Because I would have loved to do it. I am a good fucking cowboy. But duty called, and that duty was here at home. The ranch. Luke. Family. I was never granted the privilege of doing whatever I wanted, and being reminded of it smarts.”

With the frustrated tone of this passage, Cade reflects on his traumatic past and current challenges, lamenting the lack of opportunity to pursue a personal passion. His use of emphasis and fragmentation conveys his bitterness about certain aspects of his past and suggests an unbending, resentful tone. This moment also foreshadows Willa’s later offer to help Cade return to rodeoing by spending more time with Luke.

“‘Jesus,’ I mutter. Because I don’t think this man has ever strung so many words tougher and directed them at me. I don’t think he’s ever told me anything personal, and then he goes and unloads all that. And I soak it all up raptly, loving getting to know this man who’s been a mystery wrapped up in an enigma. Loving that he feels comfortable enough to share it all with me.”

Willa’s brief verbal response to Cade’s emotional revelations indicates how taken aback she is at his sudden decision to open up to her. While her response is outwardly curt, it also conveys a sense of empathy as she muses on Cade’s words and contemplates what his admissions suggest about his character and their relationship. However, she doesn’t take advantage of his openness by speaking over him or trying to interpret his experience for him. This moment therefore conveys Willa’s emotional and empathetic capacities.

“Her laugh is airy as she rises on her tiptoes to reach the top of the cupboard where I keep the coffee cups. My eyes are drawn to the way her calves flex, toned legs disappearing into a pair of baby blue short-shorts, her bare feet on my floor. There’s something intimate about having Willa in my space like this. And Luke isn’t even here to make a good reason for it.”

The images of Willa moving through Cade’s kitchen are representative of home, family, and belonging. Willa moves breezily from room to room, suggesting that she is comfortable in Cade’s home. The image of the coffee cups also implies a degree of familiarity and comfort. Furthermore, Cade’s narrative tone is calm and warm, which indicates that he feels affectionate toward Willa and is growing more open to the possibility of building a life with her.

“My stomach bottoms out, and I worry about what’s written on my face. My carefully practiced poker face is slipping, like she’s peeling it back, piece by piece. All the armor, all the protection. I’m not ready to be laid bare. Not by her. Not by anyone. Luke’s mom may not have been the right woman for me, but she was a woman for me. And I did my best to keep her happy. I tried to love her. And in my own way, I did. It wasn’t cinematic but I was faithful. I provided for her. I worked myself to the bone to build us a good life. And she left. It wasn’t enough.”

Cade experiences a visceral reaction as he spends time with Willa and struggles with the traumatic memories of his failed marriage to Talia. The short, terse phrases lend his thoughts an increasingly charged and desperate tone, especially as he relates the sense that all his hard work in his past relationship “wasn’t enough” and could not prevent his partner from abandoning him. His use of metaphor also conveys his complex emotional state, as when he compares his façade to armor. The erratic linguistic patterns of this passage ultimately suggest that Cade is struggling to control and categorize his feelings for Willa.

“It’s perfect. I smile to myself and then open my eyes, knowing the only place I want to be right now is out in the field with them—even if I am dead on my feet after working all day and dealing with small-town-mom drama. Within minutes, I’m stepping into the huge maze-like structure made of big round bales, the dark passageways between them almost too narrow for me to pass through.”

Spending time with Willa and Luke on the ranch grants Cade a feeling of home and belonging, as he describes the afternoon with his love interest and child as ideal. Being outdoors with them affords him a sense of freedom and ease despite the stress of his tiring day. Furthermore, the hay-bale maze acts as a metaphor for Cade’s complicated life. He often feels like he is trapped by a barrage of burdensome days, but in the present moment, he knows that he will find Willa and Luke on the other side of the obstacles that stand before him.

“Basically, he comes home and we silently cook together. We eat dinner, and he mostly talks to Luke, avoids looking at me, says, Thanks, and then gets to work putting Luke to bed. I assume he’s exhausted after that and passes out. Truthfully, I don’t know how he does it. It’s way too much for one person to handle all on their own. But if I cook dinner, he gets all crabby. If I clean, he gets crabby. Oh! When he told me to stop doing laundry the other day, he said that I’m just the nanny, not the maid. So who the hell knows? Then he left me a note on the dryer that said, Thank you for your help.”

Willa confides in Summer Hamilton about her relationship with Cade, expressing her frustration with Cade’s mixed signals. She speaks in an unbridled manner, and her descriptions of daily life at Cade’s house capture her attempts to understand Cade’s erratic attitude toward her efforts. The plain, outspoken tone of the passage illustrates the essential frankness of her personality, for she doesn’t try to disguise how she’s feeling or use ornate language. Instead, she employs colloquial diction to communicate openly with Summer, a friend whom she implicitly trusts.

“I soak them in. I think about her saying she loves him. I think about the moments he’s reached for her hand, the way he’s looked up at her—just a little uncertain that she’ll want his hand in hers. I think about the curve of his lips and the way his tiny shoulders drop on a sigh when she effortlessly wraps her fingers around his, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I stand here and think way too damn much as I stare at them curled into each other. I let myself imagine things that I have no business imagining. Things I’m not sure I could ever live up to.”

In this passage, Cade’s observant narrative stance and reflective narrative tone capture his emotional state of mind. As he watches Willa and Luke sleeping next to each other, he struggles to rein in his amorous thoughts, operating under the misguided notion that he has “no business imagining” a life of intimacy with Willa. However, the familial comfort between Willa and Luke in this scene foreshadows the life that Cade and Willa will eventually create together despite the perceived obstacles that stand between them.

“She says it like it’s a punch line to a joke, and I just don’t get why she’s this hard on herself. Why does she see herself as some sort of failure when all I see is a smart, funny, self-possessed young woman? One who made me beg her to stay.”

Cade’s internal monologue reveals his true feelings for Willa. This intimate moment between Cade and Willa also conveys The Transformative Power of Love. Although Willa refers to herself with a deeply ingrained sense of self-deprecation, Cade is able to see Willa’s intelligence, humor, and confidence, and his dislike of her disparaging self-criticism reveals the depths to which he cares about her well-being. Cade’s regard for Willa in this scene foreshadows the fact that his love and appreciation for her will change her self-regard over time.

“I was fine until he took care of me. Held my goddamn hair up and rubbed my back. I still refuse to accept that people normally do that for their employees. And the fact that he did has me overthinking things something fierce because, if I’m being honest, getting turned down is a new phenomenon for me. And I’m a little bit pissed about it. A little bit embarrassed. A little bit wounded because Cade is such a good man. I’d want more than just sex, and he doesn’t even want that. It’s a rough blow to what I’m realizing is my already fragile ego.”

Cade’s care for Willa gradually teaches her about the depths of the transformative power of love. However, because his physical actions do not match his stated intentions, Willa finds herself frustrated once again by his mixed signals. In this scene, Willa is reflecting on the ways in which Cade has devoted himself to her, and she struggles to make sense of how she feels about him as a result. Because these are her private thoughts, she employs conversational language and an unfiltered perspective on the situation, revealing the unmitigated truth of her thoughts on the subject.

“It doesn’t take a psychologist to know I’m the issue. My insecurities are the issue. If I couldn’t make a small-town woman—who was my age and desperately wanted me—happy, how the hell can I make a woman like Willa happy? When Talia left, it was a blow to my ego. I wish I could say I missed her, but it was more about the fact that she chose other men over me. That I lost somehow. That I didn’t measure up. My heart wasn’t in it, but I tried my ass off anyway. But with Willa, my heart is in it. I don’t want it to be, but it is.”

Cade compares and contrasts his relationship with Talia to his relationship with Willa in an attempt to understand his current flurry of emotions. By asking himself a series of unanswerable rhetorical questions, he ultimately wallows in his insecurities, compounding them instead of acknowledging the fact that his current relationship bears no resemblance to his failed marriage with Talia. At the same time, Cade’s internal monologue captures the ways in which his trauma continues to impact his intimate relationships.

“I’m going to talk. And you’re going to close your mouth and listen. Because if you’d let me finish what I was saying out there, you wouldn’t have spent a single moment in here thinking I don’t want to complicate things with you. I said I promised myself I wouldn’t complicate this with you. You’re young, you’re restless, and I’m truthfully too fucking jealous to do anything casual with you. […] I’ve watched you with my son. I’ve watched you, period. I’ve longed for you. I went crazy tonight thinking of you out with Lance. I know in my bones that I won’t want to let you go at the end of the summer, but I’ll take what I can get. Because you’re too fucking special to pass up. Fuck my promises, that’s what I was going to say.”

Cade uses direct and blunt language to address Willa in this scene, finally conveying the honest depths of his feelings for her. His aggressive and insistent tone captures his desperation to communicate his complex emotions to Willa so that she can understand his motives rather than misinterpreting his actions. His use of expletives and repetition underscores his urgency. He wants Willa to understand how her love has changed him, and this causes him to blurt out his thoughts and emotions in an unbridled manner.

“The thought that Willa is another of the best things in my life crops up, but it scares me. It feels too soon. She feels too young. It feels too…impossible.”

Cade’s tone is at once hopeful and doubting, for as soon as he acknowledges what Willa means to him, he negates his emotions by emphasizing the impossibility of being with her. The tonal shifts within this passage portray Cade’s internal conflict and ongoing emotional vacillations—especially when he is faced with the prospect of an intimate relationship.

“‘Can’t I just take you out on a romantic trail ride?’ My lips roll together as I regard him. ‘You can. But you haven’t spoken a word to me since we got out of your truck. You look like you’re trying to disintegrate the leather in your hands, and your mouth keeps popping open like you’re about to say something, but then you shake your head and slam it back shut so hard your teeth clank. And I can hear you grinding said teeth until you mouth pops back open again.’”

Willa’s descriptions of Cade’s body language and mannerisms convey the depths of her investment in his character. She is remarking upon the way that he has been moving and behaving, and from his actions, she has gained a wealth of insight into Cade’s state of mind. She is also articulating her thoughts to Cade in a manner that demonstrates her fearlessness in relationships and her desire to reach Cade no matter what he is going through.

“My hands stop moving because I feel like this might be a chance to tell him I want him to go full caveman and tell me I’m staying here with him and Luke. I’ve flitted around doing whatever I want for years with no real tether to anything except my best friend and my brother. I’ve enjoyed seeing his career take off, but none of that was for me.”

Willa’s private thoughts emphasize the intensity of the search for home and belonging that underlies her restlessness. She longs to give up her transient way of life and become a part of Cade and Luke’s lives for good. Ultimately, Willa’s experience with the Eatons has furthered the search for home and belonging and has opened her up to the transformative power of love.

“I was never sure I could love someone in the way everyone talks about it. My heart has taken too many shit-kickings over the years. My mom. Talia. What Talia meant for the course my life took. All the things I missed out on, which I hate to even mention because I have Luke. But I’d be a liar if I said I never thought about what I might have done differently had life dealt me a different hand. Maybe I’d be rodeoing. Or traveling all over North America, rolling in the cash that comes from selling top-of-the-line horses. Maybe I’d be training all day […] All those maybes. But as I watch Willa put little weighted clips on the tablecloth so nothing blows away, I know that not one of those maybes would have been right.”

Cade’s narration shifts into the hypothetical in order to express his regrets about his past trauma, and he once again acknowledges that his past losses have had a dramatic effect on the course of his life and the tenor of his personal choices. The passage uses the conditional and future tenses to capture Cade’s contemplative state of mind, and the scene’s stream-of-consciousness style allows his thoughts to flow from topic to topic, revealing the broader spread of his past decisions.

“‘But she’s had everything. Everything I didn’t even realize I wanted, and she took it all for granted and walked away. And now she’s here acting all entitled, and I’m so jealous that my teeth ache with it. I have never, never felt like this and I want it to stop.’ The last part comes out pleasing, like he can take away the ball of anxiety lodged in my chest.”

Willa’s unbridled mode of expression in this scene captures her deep investment in Cade and Luke, conveying her harried, angry state of mind. These lines of dialogue also invoke a tense narrative atmosphere, and the final line of the passage provides insight into Willa’s inner thoughts and fears, revealing her reasons for communicating these feelings to Cade—she longs for him to make sense of her unrest and alleviate her internal tension and anger over Talia’s mistreatment of her son and former husband.

“I don’t know if things will ever be the same between us once I say this out loud to him. How could he possibly be fine with this happening to him again? I know I need to tell him. I can feel the words building in my throat the closer we get to the ranch. The more he strokes my hand, the more flustered I get, and the guiltier I feel for sitting here wordlessly for the past fifteen minutes. We drive in silence, but I sense he knows something is up because I’m not my normal, chatty self. I can see him tossing nervous glances my way, like he’s totally out of his depth. But so am I.”

Willa’s verbal restraint in this scene inspires her anxious, elliptical thought patterns. Willa is lost in thought because she is worried about telling Cade that she is pregnant. Her self-consciousness also underscores her concern for Cade, as rather than being happy about her pregnancy, she finds herself worrying about the possibility of hurting him and subjecting him to a dynamic that is similar to the one he endured with Talia. The tense atmosphere of the scene also marks a pivotal turning point in Willa and Cade’s relationship.

“The sound of our coins plunking into the water below mingles with the sound of wind chimes on the back porch. Eyes shut, I wish for Willa. A life with her. A family with her. Gray hair and more laughter with her. When I open my eyes, Luke is staring at me with a thoughtful expression on his face.”

Cade and Luke’s wishes at the wishing well foreshadow Willa’s return at the novel’s end, imbuing the narrative with an understated element of magic and destiny. Cade is engaging in this childhood game with his son because he is trying to embody Willa’s positivity and hopefulness, and he ultimately hopes to bring her home to stay.