Chapter Sixteen #2
“But you’ve trained dogs before,” he prompted. “Lots of times, right? Maybe not for money—”
“I’ve never trained dogs before.” She stared at him, not blinking, and that’s when he realized this was a Big Thing she was confessing to. “Not for money, not ever.”
Confusion and wariness replaced the buoyant bliss that had been swimming through his gut. “I don’t understand. How can you not be a dog trainer? The dogs follow your commands and Hunter isn’t scared of them anymore—”
“They knew how to do a lot of that stuff before I got here,” she muttered as his heart plunged to the ground as if tied to an anchor. “I think your grandpa must have worked with them. I did teach them some things, though.”
Zero stared at her, desperate to arrange the puzzle pieces she was handing him, but they didn’t fit into any of the blank holes in his head. “Like what?”
“How to lie still when Hunter pets them,” she returned and shook her head miserably.
“I learned how to train dogs from my dad, but I left home when I was seventeen and never looked back. My dad and I had a…falling out, I guess you’d say, and I picked something the opposite of dog training to do.
Art history. It was the only program they had with a guaranteed scholarship at the university. ”
“I’m just…” Zero pinched the bridge of his nose. His brain hurt from trying to make sense of everything she was telling him. “So you’re an art history student, and you’ve never trained dogs before. Is this the part where you tell me how great everything turned out anyway?”
“Not exactly.” She laughed without a shred of amusement. “I’ve been trying to train the dogs to work the cattle, but I don’t know if I really and truly can. I’m working on it. It’s just not going as well as I’d like. Or you would like. I feel like I’m taking your money under false pretenses.”
Everything tilted and slid toward a precarious edge he hadn’t even realized was there. A few minutes ago, he’d been thrilled with how easy everything with Delilah flowed, and now he didn’t feel like he knew her at all. Or what state his goals with the ranch might be in.
One thing he knew for sure—he’d screwed up. Taken his eyes off the prize, forgotten what was really important, and it was not indulging his burning need to fan the flames between Delilah and him.
He’d let his family down. Hugely.
“This is a lot to process,” he huffed out hoarsely. “When exactly were you going to tell me all of this?”
“Well, now, I guess. I tried to tell you this at Miller’s, but you cut me off. You said we could talk about it later. It’s later.”
Something broke open inside him, spilling out his reservations about her from the beginning, the niggle in his gut that said something was off. Which he’d ignored. Just like he’d ignored what she’d been trying to tell him when he’d poured out his heart at that picnic table.
Instead, he’d kissed her and thrown all of his responsibility to his family out the window. This was what he got for forgetting he didn’t have the right to be happy.
He could own his role in this quickly unwinding scene. It was the only thing he could control. “So this is my fault.”
The dead calm in his tone, the absolute lack of emotion, frightened Delilah all at once. This was how he’d earned the name Zero. This man commanded the very atmosphere because the temperature dropped in an instant, giving her frostbite.
“No! That’s not what I’m saying,” she cried.
Everything wonderful between them had disintegrated so fast.
Twin icepicks stabbed at her skull through each temple as she tried to navigate both her confession and his reaction.
This was not what she’d anticipated when she told him this stuff, this shutting off of the energy that had always been between them.
She’d had no idea how much she’d miss it, now that he’d thrown up a frozen wall between them.
No less than she deserved. She should have insisted on telling him everything at Miller’s, but she’d let herself be lulled into a false sense of security. Let the voices in her head convince her it would be fine when, clearly, it was not fine.
“Zero, please.” She dragged air into her burning lungs.
“This is my fault. One hundred percent. What I’m trying to say is that I never meant for things to go this far.
I really thought I could do what you asked me to.
I still think I can, but I needed you to know the truth about where I’m starting from. And then there’s Hunter…”
Oh, man, she hadn’t even told him the worst part yet. She groaned and put her head in her hands.
“What about Hunter?” he returned immediately.
“You don’t have to say it like that, like I’ve done something to hurt him.”
“Haven’t you?” She could hear the undertone of censure, but only because she’d really strained to sense something from him other than pure nothingness. “He really likes you and looks up to you. He told me the other day he wants to become a dog trainer like you. Little does he know.”
Yeah, that was some irony. Pieces of glass raked across her heart as she internalized Hunter wanted to work with dogs.
She’d given him that confidence. But it didn’t seem like that would count enough to make what she’d done right.
Not in her tally book anyway, and certainly not in Zero’s, either, given the blankness of his expression.
Scrambling now, she blurted out, “I care about Hunter and helping him deal with his father’s death. That’s why I started training Elizabeth Swann to be an emotional support dog.”
Okay, that could have been presented better, maybe by leading up to it instead of blathering it out in one big clump.
“You…trained Elizabeth Swann to be a…what? An emotional support dog? What are you telling me?”