Chapter 20 #2
“Timing?” She lets out a breathy laugh, then pins me with a sarcastic smile.
“Timing only matters when you’re trying to justify a mistake or cover something up.
Don’t talk to me about timing. You’ll be seventy-five, spitting red man into a rusty can on the front porch of the bunkhouse with a scowl on your face, still blaming everything on time. ”
She’s angry, and this time I don’t think it’s just because of my lack of communication skills. I think she knows exactly what I’m doing here and what’s behind me. After all, she designed it herself.
Her words are aimed at more than that, though. The way that summer ended. The three whole conversations we’ve had since. All the emotions and regrets we left unexplored.
“Don’t do that,” I say.
“Do what? Get frustrated when you give me anything but real answers? Real reasons? The truth?”
I narrow my eyes at her. “I’ve never lied to you.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t want to talk about the things you’ve never done.”
“You don’t want to,” I repeat quietly. “Alright.” For some reason, I don’t have it in me to hide the hurt anymore.
It bursts out of me like a broken dam. “Did you not want to block my number after moving seven hours away, too? Or how about continuing to avoid me months later, huh? No talk after things calmed down. No coming back to try and work things out. Not once. Just, poof. Gone.”
“Okay, so we’re going there.”
“Yeah,” I answer. “I guess we are.”
“You didn’t come to me and try to work things out, either,” she shoots back.
“Why was it my sole responsibility to make that happen? And anyway, you told me to go. You wanted me gone.” Heat crackles through her careful control, but she isn’t rushing away from it this time.
“You stood right in front of me, holding up vet school and my dad’s opinions in one hand, a future with you in the other, and then forced me to choose. You gave me an impossible ultimatum.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“But it’s the message I heard.”
Her voice spikes on the last word, echoing across the pasture.
A furious gust of wind whips down from the bluffs.
Off the top of a fencepost, a hawk takes off and shivers into the sky, wings beating hard.
I scrub a hand across my forehead, back and forth, until everything around quiets down enough to let me respond without crumbling at her feet.
“You said you wanted to drop out of vet school to stay close to me. What kind of man accepts that? You don’t love someone, really love them, and let them tank their career before it even starts.
Your dad was up my ass, too. Giving him a reason to be right about me, and letting you live the rest of your life with me in between y’all?
Can you—please, just—understand how tortured I felt about that? ”
She nods, even as her expression hardens slightly.
“I didn’t want you to leave me,” I go on, taking a deep breath.
“But fuck, I didn’t want you to wake up one day and hate me for staying, either.
I thought it was for your own good. You finished your degree.
That was your dream. Your relationship with your dad wasn’t all messed up because he couldn’t stand the guy you were with.
I care about your dreams and your family.
If I didn’t, I’d have said fuck it and kept you all to myself, everything else be damned. ”
She stares up at me, breath quickening. The wind tosses her hair into her face, and she shoves it back, her hand shaking just a little.
“Well, from now on, no one decides what’s good for me but my own damn self.
You’re right about my degree, and I’m glad I didn’t quit.
But my dad and I would have worked it out eventually.
I can’t wrap my head around the fact that there wasn’t a single alternative to breaking things off completely.
The easy road was sending me away with cut ties, and you took it. ”
I try not to think too hard. So far, the truth has come out decently smooth, and if I stop to overanalyze my words now, I’ll start stuttering until I can’t get a single sound out of my mouth at all.
“I wasn’t even convinced I deserved you,” I say, voice firm.
I’m begging her to hear me with the look in my eyes.
“Even if I did, I knew I couldn’t tie you down any more than I could wrangle a damn cloud, Hattie.
Of course, I fucked up and broke it off.
I’m an idiot for it, and I regret it every single day.
But knowing I was destroying your future by staying a part of your life seemed like a decent fucking reason at the time. ”
“At the time. It’s always time.” There’s a slow tilting of her head as she turns away from me and closes her eyes. Her voice lowers to a whisper. “You’re not an idiot.”
“I was. I’m sorry.” All I can do is study her profile as she looks out to the prairie. Strands of hair wisp lightly around her face as she stares off into the distance, a cold edge to her expression. “I’m sorry,” I repeat quieter this time.
“I know.” Something finally softens in the air around us, but she doesn’t turn back to face me yet. I take a step closer to her, but she shakes her head, so I keep my arms at my side. “I forgive you.”
“Fuck that.”
That finally pulls her attention away from the view of the land. She swallows and lifts the inner corners of her eyebrows while I take another step toward her. “What?”
“I don’t want to hear that. Like suddenly all’s forgiven, and this can finally be laid to rest.”
“None of this is sudden. It’s the opposite of sudden!”
She’s fired up again, but so am I, and nothing up to this point of our conversation has me more in a state of panic than this. “Whatever. Either way, I don’t want it.”
“Why?” She crosses her arms and steps toward me with a lifted chin. “Don’t be so damn bull-headed all the time! I’m trying to ease things in a more positive direction for once. This can’t just hang over our heads for the rest of our lives. We both deserve closure.”
“I don’t want fucking closure. I just want you.”
Her phone rings, blaring through the thick silence, and she flinches so hard that she bumps right into me. I hadn’t realized how close we were until now. She steps back and digs the heels of her palms into her eyes for a moment while my chest continues to heave.
Once she’s reached a calmer state, she pulls her phone from her pocket. After glancing at the screen, her shoulders drop, and she pinches the bridge of her nose.
“It’s the clinic,” she mumbles.
As inconvenient as it is, I don’t want her to ignore her job. “Then it’s important.”
She slowly lifts her face to look at me. Somehow, her eyes have lost their ferocity, and she holds my gaze long enough that the call goes to voicemail.
I try to fix my face into something that tells her I respect what she does. I hope she already knows that, though.
It isn’t until her phone starts ringing again that she shakes her head and swipes across the screen to answer it. I shove my hands in my pockets.
She’s on the line, answering with one or two words and a nod, for less than a minute before hanging up. Her head turns toward the barn. Saving that particular conversation for another day isn’t the worst thing, if I’m honest.
“They’re stacked with multiple emergencies,” she says, looking back at me. “I wasn’t even supposed to be on call tonight, but they need me to handle one. The guy is going to have to load up his horse and drive it all the way to the city if I’m not available.”
“Go. That’s too far a drive if it’s an emergency. It’ll be too late by the time he gets there.”
She nods, and I can see the exhaustion in her face. Even before we started fighting, she was tired.
“I’ll drive you,” I add.
“I don’t want to leave my truck here,” she says, shaking her head and rubbing the side of her neck.
“I could bring you back after—”
“It’s fine,” she cuts me off sharply. “I’ll be fine, Heston.
It’s been a very long, very emotional day for me.
Honestly, I need something to eat and an extremely stiff drink after this house call.
I need to . . .” Her sentence trails off, and she looks at her phone again before bending to give Lucky a big hug.
I take my hat off when she stands again and glances up at me.
“You can yell at me some more later if you want,” I offer.
My heart hammers when a small smile breaks out on her face. It disappears quickly, but I saw it. It was there.
She nods and slowly turns to walk away. Ten steps in, she glances over her shoulder, and I lean back on the truck bed.
The number of times I’ve watched her leave with no idea when I’ll see her again is entirely too high. I could start looking away when it happens, but the better option would be to stop letting her go.