she even reached the highway, her tears began. Soon she couldn’t even see to drive. She pulled over, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, feeling so helpless she could barely breathe.
I’m just one more pitiful stray you feel obligated to take in.
No. God, no. It was so much more than that. She’d told him the truth. She loved him. She loved him so much that just thinking about it practically knocked her to her knees. But now she had that same horrible feeling that invaded her dreams so many nights of her life, where she saw animals that were in agony, but there was nothing she could do to stop their pain.
Luke was right. She wanted his suffering to stop. But not out of some misguided need to save him. She wanted him to live again, to learn to love. To love her. She wanted to touch him, to hold him, to do something to drive those thoughts from his mind for good so they could figure out some kind of way forward. But now he was leaving, taking memories with him that were going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
And there was nothing she could do to stop him.
Luke stood in that repulsive house, breathing hard, every muscle tense and aching. Glancing out the window, he saw Shannon get into her truck and drive away. Despair overwhelmed him, and his legs felt weak and shaky. He needed to sit down, but this crappy furniture…he couldn’t bear to touch it. All he wanted to do was run.
He left the house, sidestepping the hole in the porch, the disgustingly shabby porch that had given way beneath his feet and eventually made him face this hell on earth. When he reached his truck, he turned back and looked at the unspeakable place he couldn’t even bear to stand in.
He wanted to set fire to it. He wanted to toss a match on what was left of the front porch and watch it go up in flames. He wanted to watch it burn until it was reduced to a pile of ashes that even the flimsiest breeze could sweep away. He wanted nothing left on this plot of land but scraggly, fire-damaged trees and blackened grass crackling in the breeze. He wished for it so hard he swore he could lift his head and smell the wood burning. But the fire wouldn’t stop there. The unprecedented lack of rain meant a single spark could ignite a fire that would consume the entire valley.
He got into his truck. It took him three stabs to get his key into the ignition. But instead of starting the engine, he folded his arms on the steering wheel and dropped his head against them.
She knows she knows she knows she knows…
That thought kept pounding inside his head. The things he’d kept to himself all these years, the horrific things he vowed he’d take to his grave…
So now Shannon knew exactly what he was, how damaged he felt because of his father, how the memory of it still stained every thought that passed through his mind. Since he’d left Rainbow Valley, every time a woman touched him, he had to divorce his mind from his body so it was just his flesh she was reaching for and not his soul, because what soul he had left was so ragged and broken it would have crumbled with a single touch.
Until now. Until Shannon.
I love you.
He played those words over and over in his mind, but he couldn’t make himself believe them. He knew what drove her, what hit her on an emotional level, what made her tick. It wasn’t love. It was pity. The same pity she felt for the damaged animals she took in. And even if it was love, he’d destroyed it now. He’d told her from what depths he’d come, and they were deeper than she ever could have imagined. He squeezed his eyes closed and pressed his palms to the sides of his head. Get over it get over it get over it…
God, how he wanted to. He wanted to smash every memory with a mental hammer over and over until the tiny fragments bore no resemblance to the reality he’d lived through.
He’d never be able to look Shannon in the eye again. At best, she’d look back at him with the kind of pity that had always turned his stomach. That was why he needed to go, why he needed to get