“Yes, but it’s not what it looks like.” I squeeze her arm. “Cat, please.”
All the color washes from her face as a stricken look crosses over her features. “I can’t. Not now. I need to be by myself.”
She rips her arm away, and I don’t try to stop her. She crashes down the stairs and yells to her family, “I’m going to Uncle Beau’s. Leave me alone.”
Then she slams out of the house, and as the heavy door clicks closed, I watch my love, my life, and my future die a swift, sudden death.
She’s gone.
She’ll come back, of course. This is her home.
But I’m no longer an included part of that picture.
Just as she was starting to see it, I ruined it, just like I ruin everything.
I didn’t outrun my past at all.
Cat
I turned off my phone, put my stuff in Uncle Beau’s spare room, and have been curled up on the couch watching bad romantic TV on the Hallmark channel—and crying intermittently. I wanted to drink to blot out the shitshow of the last couple of hours, but I couldn’t manage even the first sip of the whiskey I poured. Instinct told me alcohol would lead to a swell of emotions I don’t have the stomach to process.
As crazy as it sounds, I believe Caden has a story that will make sense of this mess. Maybe it’s a story that is even plausible, that will make sense to me.
He wants to rush in and explain it all away, to convince me that woman has nothing to do with us, and maybe he’s right.
Only his story doesn’t fucking matter to me right now.
His story—the details and who did and said what—makes no difference. What matters to me are two things he can’t change: One, he didn’t tell me he’d been engaged. And two, regardless of why, he left that woman in the middle of the night. He might feel justified, but he abandoned her. He disappeared instead of facing the situation, no matter how hard it was.
It makes me think of the day we visited his mom, how I had to force him to go.
If it hadn’t been for me, he’d have avoided the whole thing.
And I can’t escape the truth, no matter how much I want to.
This entire mess has made me see Caden for who he really is—a man who runs when things get hard. He’s been telling me all along. Warning me. But I ignored it, because like my momma before me, I wanted to believe it would be different with me, that everything had clicked into place for him the way it had for me and we’d change—for ourselves and for each other.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, I wasn’t vigilant, and I am once again paying the price for my stupidity. Now that my eyes are open, I can’t even pretend it doesn’t make sense.
The delusion fed in to all the things I secretly still hope for…and I see it all clearly now.
I’ve been spending my time trying to figure out what my dreams are, what I want my life to be—ignoring that deep down I already know.
All I really want is to belong, to invest in something that feels like it’s mine—to feel safe. Loved. Special.
It’s what I couldn’t articulate with my horse-breeding fantasy. The horses weren’t the real fantasy. They aren’t what I was after. Yes, I do love them, and Caden is right that I should get back in touch with that, but breeding horses was merely the package I assigned to something I couldn’t explain.
I want a connection to that time in my life when I felt at peace.
The Spencers doted on me. I didn’t have to compete with Wyatt and Jackson. They made me feel important. Riding horses made me happy and free, and when I’d come in from the stables Mrs. Spencer would give me a slice of warm apple pie and homemade whipped cream.
We’d sit at the table and talk. And when I spoke, I felt heard. I didn’t have to be talented like Jackson, or smart and strong like Wyatt. I could be me.
That was the dream.
Feeling whole.
When they died, it was a blow. And the horse they left me was the only thing I had left of the dream. Then my daddy sold it, and that was ripped away too. Things only got worse from there.