He nodded, glancing around the stable yard, at the horses roaming nearby, at the trail beyond the fence. “My parents told me to find you.”
“Did they?”
“Yeah. Kicked me out of the reception and everything.”
I braced my hand on the fence. “And…did you want to?”
When Sawyer’s mouth opened, then closed, I realized the answer wasn’t going to be a simple yes or no.
“Okay, I lied. I didn’t want you gone,” he said, finally. “But that’s as far as I got.”
My fingers tightened around the rail. He was here. That was all that mattered right now.
“I told you I needed space, and I did. But then you said you were leaving, and that felt”—he shook his head—“wrong. It felt wrong.”
Sawyer looked down at the ground between us, scuffing the toe of one of his polished shoes through the dirt.
“And then I was standing there at the reception, surrounded by everyone and thinking, okay, this is what I asked for. You gave me exactly what I wanted, so congrats to me, but somehow it all just felt like absolute shit.”
“That’s not what I wanted.”
His eyes flicked up to mine. “No?”
“No.”
“See, that’s the problem,” he said as he began to pace. “I know that now. I know you weren’t trying to hurt me more, which is what makes it so damn hard to stay mad, and I want to be mad. I mean, Iwasmad. But then my brothers got involved, and my moms got involved, and that’s all bullshit because they kept saying annoyingly reasonable stuff that makes it hard to stay mad.”
Despite everything, the corner of my mouth twitched. “That sounds terrible.”
“It was. Fucking horrible.” He pointed at me. “And don’t youdaresmile. I’m still in the middle of averyserious monologue.”
I held my hands up in surrender so he could keep going, and he took in a deep breath and went back to wearing the ground thin between us. “They said you stayed because you wanted to, and after the hotel you kept choosing to be there, and I didn’t want that to matter because of the lie, but it does. It matters.”
“I did,” I said, holding his gaze. “I did choose to stay.”
“Then tell me why.”
The groom led Duchess a few steps away, giving us more privacy without making it too obvious. Duchess tossed her head once, like she expected the answer to be good enough for her too.
“I stayed because of you,” I said. “At first I was curious. And attracted to you, which is a given, but…you walked into the lounge terrified and still made jokes. Even when you were hurting, you still worried about whether I was comfortable. You’re always trying to make the people around you feel okay.”
Sawyer had stopped pacing, listening intently.
“I stayed because when you ramble, you think you’re just filling space, but you actually give yourself away in the middle of it. What you care about. What scares you. How hard you’re trying. And half the time I wanted you to keep going just so I could hear where your mind would go next.”
He dropped his eyes, but not before I saw the way that had reached him.
“I stayed because you look at your family like they’re the loudest, most exhausting people on earth, but also the safest place you know. Because you light up every time your moms are happy. Because you tease your brothers nonstop, but it’s only because you care about them so much.”
He was still looking at the ground, but a flush tinged his cheeks.
Good. He needed to hear this.
“I stayed because Peter tried to make you smaller, and you kept fighting to find yourself again. Because you knew how to handle horses and didn’t make me feel like an idiot when I didn’t. Because you wore your heart on your sleeve and acted offended when anyone noticed.”
“Okay,” Sawyer said, biting his lip. “That’s…a lot of specifics.”
“I have more.”