I stare at the rafters.
And the thought I had earlier about staying comes back—louder now,deafening,a whole brass band of a thought.
I can't breathe.
I don'tknowhow to stay. I don’t know how to be a person who wakes up in the same bed twice in a row with the same man looking at me like Garrett does.
And if I try (and I fail) I’ll take this big, beautiful, sweet man down with me when I go.
He deserves better than that.
He deservesso muchbetter than that.
I slide, millimeter by millimeter, out from under his arm.
I find my dress on the floor, and grab my bra and panties. My boots are by the door.
I dress in the dark, hands shaking.
At the door, I stop and listen to his breathing up in the loft.
Then I slip out into the night, trying to outrun my thoughts.
CHAPTER 6
GARRETT
My hand slides across the sheet to where her body should be and finds nothing but cold cotton, the quilt pulled up neatly, as if I imagined the whole damn night.
I lie there, palm down on the empty space, waiting for my brain to catch up. The ceiling fan ticks. A mourning dove starts up its sad little song out past the porch. And down the path an employee cabin door slaps shut.
She's gone.
I sit up slowly. The loft feels too quiet. Empty. Despite it being exactly this way for nine years.
I scrub both hands down my face and let out something that isn't quite a laugh.
Of course she left. A woman like her, in a life like mine? What did I think was going to happen? That she'd wake up, stretch out all pretty across my pillow, and tell me she was rearranging her entire existence around an aging blacksmith at a dude ranch?
Whatever.
I'm fine.
But now, after all this time beingfine, the word tastes like rust.
I make coffee and pour it into the mug Jim gave me at Christmas, the one with a longhorn on it that says COWBOY UP. I stand at my kitchen window and watch the steam until it dies.
The shower doesn't help. I walk down to the forge with my boots too loud on the gravel and my chest too tight under my shirt, and the sun keeps coming up like nothing happened.
The first piece I ruin is a set of curtain hooks.
The second is a fireplace poker I've been working on since Tuesday. I misjudge the heat and drive the hammer clean through a thin spot, splitting it like a twig.
I stare at it until the ringing in my ears has me seeing red.
Then I throw the hammer.
It hits the back wall with a crack, and I watch Roxy, the barn cat, streak across the concrete and out the big doors.