Chapter 26
As he’d expected, Sierra was in her office, sitting in front of her computer. Her fingers flew across the keyboard without pause, and when she didn’t stop typing to acknowledge him, or even glance his way, Benji felt that old dread fill his stomach and solidify.
He closed the door slowly, as if the little room would contain the floodwaters.
Because it was here.
Now.
He had known it would come, but he had thought he’d anchor down and hold on.
What a fool he’d been.
Sierra finished whatever she was typing, and only then did she look up at him, her every movement precise and controlled.
Her face was cool and expressionless. Even her eyes, eyes that had once danced with love and laughter and so much joy, were vacant.
He wasn’t sure she even realized it, but that morning was the first time she’d worn jeans and boots again in over a year, and for just a moment when he’d seen her, he’d thought: There she is.
But now, Benji didn’t try to reach out. He sat on the other side of her desk like an employee because he knew instinctively that she was pulling back from him.
He could feel the chill in the distance between them, and he understood that there would be no fight.
No anger or accusations. No begging. No reasoning.
Sierra was erasing the last weeks they’d shared as if they’d been nothing, just like she’d done when their daughter had died.
For the first time ever, Benji couldn’t summon the hope that had always kept him coming back.
He felt like a man stranded at sea, who had come to terms with his fate, and just when he had been content to fade away, he’d seen a ship pass by.
A man who’d waved and screamed until his throat had bled with the effort, only to realize that those aboard couldn’t see or hear him as they continued on their way, out of his reach, oblivious to his plight.
And he was tired.
He didn’t have anything left to give.
As much as letting her go tore him apart, Benji finally realized that he couldn’t keep giving and giving when he had so little left.
He couldn’t keep trying to help someone who had no interest in helping herself.
Just like his mom, Sierra was stuck in a cycle that only she could break.
He just never would have thought that something as stupid as a fall off a horse would have been what finally did them in.
He took Ava’s ring out of his pocket and placed the black, velvet box on the desk in front of her.
He had taken it from Mav before he’d left on his honeymoon, and kept it in the pocket close to his heart, hoarding hope every time he felt it there.
‘I can already see I’m not going to have a need for this. ’
It was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
Because in giving her the ring back without the expectation that she’d wear it, Benji was saying goodbye to the only future he’d ever wanted.
Since she’d first kissed him under the oak tree all those years ago, he had wanted to marry Sierra Hunt and make a family with her. And he’d given it almost two decades …
Her brown eyes widened, and Benji would have laughed if he hadn’t been so heartbroken. The fact that she was shocked was just another indicator that they were on fundamentally different paths. ‘Benji—’
‘Don’t.’ He could hear the cool placation in her tone. And he couldn’t take it. ‘Sierra, I love you. I always will. But tomorrow …’ He cleared his throat when emotion clogged it. ‘Tomorrow, I’m leaving.’ He took a breath, added, ‘And I’m not coming back this time.’
Her tone was icy and cool when she replied, ‘I think that would be for the best.’
‘But I have some things to say first.’
Sierra nodded regally, one allowing tip of her head.
‘You need help.’
‘I am perfectly fine,’ she argued.
‘Sierra—’
‘Just because I don’t want to marry you, doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me,’ she insisted stoically, tugging at her wool-lined jacket.
‘No. You’re right about that. But the fact that you can’t even acknowledge Her or what happened all this time later is.
You’ve barely ever talked about Her, or naming Her, or scattering Her ashes.
Christ, do you even know that I still have Her in a fucking jar in my sock drawer?
’ he asked bitterly. ‘And cutting me out of your life aside, riding … Sierra, the fact that you’re not riding anymore is the only proof you need. ’
When the first tear fell over her lashes and began a solitary trek down her cheek, it took everything in him not to reach out and wipe it away. His hands burned to do it. But if he did, he would hold her, and if he held her, he would never let her go.
‘You need to talk to someone,’ he said, gently now. ‘Jesus, Sierra, you never even went to therapy after your parents died.’
‘I don’t need a therapist to tell me that I’m grieving, Benji,’ she said, enunciating each word. ‘Do you think I don’t know?’ she demanded, her voice rising. ‘Do you think I don’t feel it sucking the life out of me every day?’
‘It’s not so that they can tell you what’s wrong.
It’s so they can help you work through it.
There is a momentous difference. But your problem,’ he continued, needing to let it all out, ‘is that you’d rather be stuck here, in perfect control, without me.
Because then you’d never have to live. You’d never have to risk. And you’d never have to lose.’
‘You’re assigning yourself way too big a role in my life, Benji.’
He laughed at that. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I know.’ He smiled bitterly at how goddamn civil the conversation was.
‘That’s why I’m going. I can’t keep killing what’s left of my heart for you, Sierra.
I don’t …’ He trailed off as the immensity of what he was doing hit him.
‘I don’t have enough left to give,’ he rasped.
‘There’s already so little of me, and if I don’t leave now, I’m never going to move on.
I can’t keep waiting for you, when you refuse to even take a few steps in my direction. ’
Sierra had nothing to say to that, only stared at him with those big, brown eyes.
‘But one day, I’ll find someone who wants everything that I can promise her. And even though I’ll never love her like I love you, I’ll be happy.’
Probably.
Maybe.
Fuck it, it’s unlikely.
She exhaled a deep breath and then broke his heart when she sent him a wobbly smile. ‘I don’t doubt it, Benji. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you – to be happy.’
He stood before he said anything cruel or unnecessary.
Because it was threatening – that anger he had always held back from her After.
Benji opened the door before he exploded, or worse, dropped to his knees and begged.
But right before he left, he asked, ‘Do you know how many times I’ve fallen off a horse in the thirty-five-odd years I’ve been riding? ’
Sierra didn’t reply. She didn’t even look at him. Just sat straight in her chair, her eyes dry now, her long hair tied neatly back.
‘I don’t even remember. But four caused injuries,’ he said.
‘Two broken arms, a concussion, and a dislocated collar bone. And you never panicked. Fuck, once you even drove me to the hospital yourself, talking my fucking ear off so I wouldn’t focus on the pain in my arm.
You might ask yourself why this time was so different.
’ He tapped the doorframe once, and instead of saying ‘I love you’, he whispered, ‘Bye, Si.’
And then he left.
Benji went straight to the bunkhouse. He threw the few belongings he had into a huge duffel bag, uncaring that he rumpled his clothes or tangled the legs of his jeans. It was only when he came to packing his sock drawer and saw the urn that he stopped.
He collapsed onto his bed, a man defeated.
Carefully, he lifted the tiny vessel from its resting place, whispered, ‘Onto the next adventure, sweetheart?’
And when the grief came this time, he didn’t fight it. He had nobody to be strong for anymore. He put the urn down on his nightstand, always so careful, buried his head in his hands, and let it come.
The moment Benji closed the door behind him, Sierra started shaking uncontrollably. Unable to stop the violent tremors, unable to control her own body, she slid off her chair, hugged both arms around her knees, and sheltered right there on her office floor in broad daylight.
She didn’t cry. She was too overcome with shock – that she’d finally pushed him away – and regret – that their life together had been so tainted – and self-loathing – because she had hurt him one last time.
All she hoped now was that he would use that hurt to learn how to hate her. Because it would help him move on.
She didn’t hurt. Broken bones hurt. This pain was spiritual, occurring at some level beyond the flesh. It was as if her soul were rendering again, this time halving Sierra-After and then quartering her and so on until there were so many fragments that the original became indecipherable even to her.
She thought she had been lost before, but she had been wrong.
Because even on her worst day, she had always known that Benji was one call away.
She had known that all she had to do was pick up the phone and ask him to come.
And he would have. And even though she had never done it, there was comfort in knowing that one person in the world would know how to pull her from her own mind if she needed him to.
Now, the reality of a future without him wasn’t just lonely and sad. It was absolutely terrifying.
Sierra wasn’t quite sure how she would survive it.
All she was sure of was that, irrespective of how much it hurt now, Benji would move on.
And he would be happy. Eventually, once he had grieved, he would notice one of the many women who always looked his way.
Maybe that was enough – to know that the person she loved most in the world would have a better chance at happiness without her?
Momentarily strengthened by the thought, she shakily pushed off the floor. She gingerly picked up her mom’s ring in its box on the opposite side of the desk and then calmly reclaimed her seat in her chair.
She’d had no idea that he’d asked Mav for it again. It hadn’t even crossed her mind. Because while Benji was always fighting to move forward, to move on, Sierra was stuck in a past that refused to let her go even though she knew that she needed to.
She popped the box open to look at the sapphire ring, and then just sat there for hours, remembering.