The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass - Maisey Yates Page 0,54
didn’t make sense for the man to have more than one pair of shoes. He only did one thing. He never went anywhere.
He was ridiculous.
Everything was tidied, and Griffin still hadn’t appeared. She didn’t want him to anyway.
She didn’t.
Except, she found herself stepping out of the cabin, standing on the porch. She crossed her arms, and looked out at the weather. She hugged herself, rubbing her hands up and down, trying to ease her goose bumps. But she found it didn’t work.
The drops were coming so thick and fast she couldn’t see farther than a couple of feet. And then, through the sheet of water, she saw movement. A stark silhouette in the gloom. No jacket, a black hat, water pouring down over the brim. His head was lowered, at least as far as she could tell as he got closer, and when he looked up, he stopped.
“Hi,” she said.
“Didn’t figure you would still be here.”
“But you knew I would be here.”
“It’s your day,” he said.
“Yes, it is. I’ll get out of your hair.”
She started down the steps, and he reached out, his hand going to her arm. “Iris. There are things I don’t like talking about. Things about my past. It just seems... It seems stupid to bring it up. Because I came here to get away from it. It’s not the kind of thing you can get away from. But it’s the kind of thing you can... Everyone knew. Everyone in my life knew. And every time they looked at me. It was all they thought of.”
“What?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. “I... I lost my wife. A few years back.”
It took her a moment to process that, but when she did...
Grief pierced Iris’s heart like an arrow. His wife.
His wife.
“Oh. Oh. I...”
“That’s the problem. I’ve been there, and I’ve done all that. I’ve got nothing left. I’ve got nothing left in me at all. I haven’t been with a woman since... And yeah, I want you. But I can’t care about anyone. There’s a reason I’m here. There’s a reason that I’m not part of the rest of the world.”
“I don’t... I don’t know what to say.” She took a step closer to him, and the rain was pouring down on her now too.
“No one ever does.”
She nodded slowly. “I know that. I know how foolish people can be when it comes to grief. How they can hurt you without trying. Without realizing. They turn away from you because it’s too hard.” She put her hand on his face, his skin cool on the surface from the rainwater, but warm underneath. “I’m sorry.”
His pain was naked. Raw. She understood why people had looked away from her all those times, all those years ago. But she had lived in a house of grief, of pain. She knew what it meant. She knew what it was. And she knew how isolating it could be. He didn’t share this with anyone else. Thus he was in a house by himself. Cut off completely from any potential support.
She wanted to give him a lifeline. The kind that no one else had, at least, so it seemed. She wanted to... She wanted to do something. She wanted to fix it, but she knew that was impossible.
Because these were the kinds of things you didn’t fix.
They were wounds. And they stayed there. You could walk around with them, just fine. But nobody could ever take the loss away.
He’d been in love. And he had lost that.
He was just so powerful, so stoic and imposing. So hard, that the idea the world would have dealt him such a cruel blow seemed especially wrong. She didn’t know why. Why it seemed worse because he was larger-than-life. Why it seemed particularly cruel.
“I’m just sorry,” she said.
Because there was nothing more to say. She was sorry. Or rather, she was filled with sorrow. For him. For the pain he’d been through, the pain he was still going through.
She’d known. Looking around this cabin she’d seen a life scarred by pain.
“I don’t need pity.”
“Sure you do. Everybody could use a little bit of pity.” The rain nearly drowned out her voice.
But she spoke anyway. “Do you know what the hardest thing was? When we lost our parents.” She swallowed hard. “It was when everybody else forgot. But we hadn’t. Other people felt bad for us. And their lives changed for a while. But ours changed forever. There was no fixing it. There was no...reclaiming it. We had