Chapter 12
Benji knew, perhaps better than anybody, that grief wasn’t linear.
It was erratic and ruthless, one day completely dormant, the next explosive and all consuming, those up-down emotional battles leaving a person exhausted.
And because he knew that, he had expected that Sierra would pretend that the night before hadn’t happened.
He’d prepared himself to face her cool anger once more.
So, when she pulled up in a golf cart and climbed out dressed in a snazzy navy-blue pencil skirt, white blouse, blazer, and a pair of her old Ariat Western boots, he could only stop and watch her warily.
She shouldn’t have looked like sex on legs in the mismatched outfit, she shouldn’t have made his heart hammer furiously after all this time, and she shouldn’t have looked over at him and smiled – but she did.
She raised one hand in a small wave as she approached. ‘Hi.’
‘Hey …’ Wow. Smooth, dude, he berated himself. And because his hands itched to reach for her, he hefted the saddle he was carrying higher, gripped it tighter. ‘You come down to see Ty?’
Sierra glanced behind him towards the big barn. ‘Maybe in a bit. I … ah, said I’d watched Skye run, see if I could give her any tips.’
He could barely focus on that new progress in light of her casual friendliness. ‘That’s great, Si,’ he replied cautiously.
‘I was hoping to run into you actually.’
He braced. ‘Oh?’
‘Yeah.’ She tucked her fingers into the tiny pockets of her blazer. ‘I wanted to thank you for last night. It … It was a difficult day. For both of us. And I didn’t handle it well. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t apologize,’ he said. ‘Not for that. I’m glad I was there for you.’
She met his eyes, and in hers, Benji saw all those unspoken things.
Like how it had felt to be together again, to hold one another with no expectation of sex.
Or how they had spoken of Her for the first time, and maybe more importantly, survived it and come out closer than they had been yesterday morning.
She looked over his shoulder, breaking the intense spell they had both been under. ‘Well … Thanks, Benji.’
‘Anytime. You know that, right?’ When she didn’t reply, he didn’t let her get away with it. ‘Sierra,’ he said, demanding her attention, and when she forced those dark eyes to his, he repeated, ‘You know that – right?’
‘I do.’ She gave him a wobbly smile, managed, ‘But I don’t want to need you, Benji. It’s too hard.’
‘I don’t want to need you either,’ he admitted. But he always would, and there was no point trying to deny it.
She laughed without humour. ‘We’re a mess.’
‘We are,’ he ceded. ‘But we’re allowed to be.’
‘Yeah,’ she rasped.
She removed her hands from her pockets to yank her blazer closed.
Benji gently lowered the saddle he was holding to the ground so that he could shrug out of his jacket.
Seeing what he intended, Sierra hurried to say, ‘You don’t have to do that. I’m good.’
Benji closed the distance between them and wordlessly held his jacket open in front of her. He didn’t move. ‘Don’t be stubborn.’
‘What about you?’ she asked, but she slipped one arm through the right sleeve of the jacket.
Benji helped her with the other arm, using it as an excuse to be close to her, and once the jacket was draped over her, he tugged it closed, zipped it up himself just so that he could take a few seconds to inhale her perfume. ‘Seeing you here again, Si … It lights a fire in me.’
She raised one eyebrow mockingly. ‘Feelings can’t keep you warm, Benji.’
His blood still stirred. And it wasn’t just hot. It was an inferno. Testing her, testing them both, he leaned close, bringing his lips to her ear. ‘Wanna bet?’
She huffed out an amused breath. ‘No dice.’
He stepped back, picked the saddle up off the ground. ‘I have a sunset trail ride starting at four; otherwise I’d stick around and help.’
Sierra cast a distracted glance towards the arena where Skye had already set up the barrels. ‘I think I’ll be okay.’
Benji nodded slowly, unsure of the new ground they walked.
The overnight change in her made him wary.
He wanted to welcome it, wanted to take advantage of it, but that part of him that she’d hurt over the past year was too well tested.
He had never been so desperate and so afraid at the same time, but it was the desperation that had him asking, ‘Do you think we can take a night sometime? Talk?’
It was a risk, one he was fully aware of. One terrible day followed by one good night together didn’t mean that everything could just go back to the way it was Before.
Perhaps reading his mind, Sierra said, ‘I don’t think that would be wise.
’ She hunched into his jacket, and when she spoke again her voice was so quiet, so sad.
‘I don’t want to keep hurting you. And I know that those feelings don’t just go away …
But there’s too much history between us.
’ And then she tore him down again, this time with, ‘I think you should try to move on, you know. Find someone who can give you more.’ She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
‘I want you to be happy again, Benji, and that’s not going to happen if you’re waiting for me.
’ Sierra blinked rapidly and turned her face away from him. ‘I’m gonna be stuck here a while.’
She was the only person who could crush him with nothing but her words. ‘Okay,’ he managed. And it was a lie. Nothing was okay. Not when she was standing there, so sad and alone, needing everything he wanted to give but still refusing to accept it. ‘Friends?’
‘No.’ She took a pointed step back. ‘We could never be friends,’ she stated, and Benji couldn’t even argue. It was true. ‘You know that. We’d try, and it might work for a little bit, but eventually we’d sleep together, and it would complicate everything again.’
‘So, I leave as soon as Mav’s back on his feet,’ he said, and try as he might, he couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his tone. Not now. Not after last night. ‘That work for you?’ He started walking away without waiting for a reply.
‘Benji—’
‘No.’ At the end of his patience, he spun on her when she followed, walked her back two steps, keeping the saddle between them again to stop him from reaching for her, or perhaps shaking some sense into her. ‘Don’t placate me, Sierra. I asked, you said no. Let’s leave it at that.’
‘I don’t know what you want from me.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Benji, you can’t—’
‘Everything,’ he talked over her. ‘I want everything from you, Sierra. I want my ring on your finger and yours on mine. I want the wedding and the honeymoon. I want babies. A bunch of them.’
‘Don’t,’ Sierra rasped.
When her eyes glossed, he bit off a curse. ‘If you don’t want that, if you feel nothing for me anymore, tell me. Tell me now.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Yes, it is.’ And even as she eviscerated him, Benji’s heart soared because she couldn’t lie to him.
And he knew she still loved him too. ‘You can be scared, Sierra. You can tell me you’re not ready.
You can tell me you might never be ready, and I can accept that.
But don’t fucking push me into a future with some other woman. ’
‘I don’t want to hold you back anymore.’
‘You don’t hold me back,’ he said, exasperated. ‘I am meant to be wherever you are. Christ, that’s the entire point. It’s not walking away when shit gets tough. It’s sticking. It’s staying. I don’t know what else I can fucking do to show you that!’
She didn’t shout back like Sierra-Before would have. She just calmly asked, ‘What if I never get there, Benji?’
She looked so lost, so sad. And it killed him. He knew her, and he could see that she believed that and that she truly thought she was doing what was best for him.
‘What if I’m never normal again?’ Sierra demanded. ‘And then one day you look back, and you regret not finding someone else, not having a family? What if you end up hating me anyway?’
For Benji, the answer was easy. ‘I could never hate you. I’d still be happy. Because I would have you. You. And you are enough.’ His old insecurities rose, reminding him of all the ways they were different. ‘And if I’m not, if you want someone else—’
‘Don’t say that,’ she insisted, her voice raised for the first time, but only in frustration. ‘I haven’t even looked at another man since …’ She trailed off abruptly, her embarrassment clear.
‘Is that true?’ It shouldn’t have made a difference; he would have felt the same way about her irrespective of how many men she’d been with. But there was a stupid, primal part of him that liked knowing he was the only man to have been with her.
‘You know it is,’ Sierra said pertly. ‘My sex life hasn’t exactly been a priority over the past year.’
He heard her emphasis on ‘My’ and knew that she was goading him. ‘Neither has mine. Is that what you want to hear?’
‘No. I don’t care who you fuck.’
‘Bullshit,’ Benji said again. But because he could feel his anger taking hold, he finished the conversation with, ‘I haven’t fucked anyone else since the day I dropped you at the airport to go back to school.’
And then he walked away before he said something he regretted.
Sierra watched him go. Half of her wanted to follow him and have it out. The other half of her wanted to let him simmer in his own bad mood, just as she had to. She honestly wasn’t even sure what the fight had been about.
Maybe that wasn’t entirely true.
But she had meant what she’d said: he shouldn’t wait for her. She would never be the woman he’d once loved. That woman had been brave and confident and fun. She had loved and fought for what she’d wanted with her whole heart.
That woman had died along with her baby.
All she had to do was make Benji realize that before he wasted any more time on her.
‘You’re early!’