that I can keep that belongs to that other life. But I don’t go there. I don’t actually do anything. I realized that when I was picking up supplies for this place. That it’s been a long damned time since I’ve actually thought of someone else. Even giving to the equestrian center is thinking about me.”
“Well, I’ve done all kinds of giving over the last many years of my life. When people don’t need you anymore it’s...” She looked up at him, a stark horror filling her eyes. “It’s hard when you have a lot in you, and people don’t need you to give to them anymore.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. It is. I had all that in me...”
He thought back to what he’d said to her that night. About how he wasn’t a husband and a father anymore. About how the feelings didn’t go away. And suddenly that felt all mixed-up inside of him. What he was, and what he wasn’t. What he’d done was shut himself off. Was cut off an essential piece of him. He’d been a caregiver. That’s what he’d been. He’d failed, and that had... Well, it had stopped him from doing any of it at all. And this simple act made him feel connected on a deeper level, to who he’d been, and who he was now.
It was bittersweet, in that way. But he’d been living in a world of bitter. So a little bit of sweet underneath seemed like... Well, a fresh-baked cookie after years of canned chili, quite frankly.
“Is there a... Back to this building?”
“Yeah,” she said. “A little gravel lot behind.”
“I’m going to pull my truck around. I have a feeling that the next project is going to have to be set about there.”
“What did you do?”
“You’ll see. Want to go for a very short ride in my truck?”
She went out, and started to scurry from the passenger door to the bed of the truck, but he jerked the door open. “Get in. Don’t ruin the surprise.”
He drove around the block, to the back of the building, to the barren lot behind.
“Am I allowed to get out of the truck?”
“Not quite yet.” He looked at her for a long moment, at the expectant expression on her face. Those greenish eyes, full lips. And he leaned in and kissed her. She whimpered, and his body went instantly hard.
He regretted, in that moment, leaving her last night without taking her to bed.
He’d been about to. But he’d stopped. Because he’d gone out to the bar with her, and he’d met her family. Because he had wanted to do some things to fix her bakery as much as he’d wanted to strip her naked, and he’d... He just felt like he needed to build in more moments with her where they had clothes on. And maybe that was part of this real-life learning situation.
But whatever it was, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Iris was special. She was special, and he wanted to be sure that he let her know it. She didn’t feel it, he knew that. He remembered as much from that very first long conversation they’d had. That she felt for whatever reason her sisters were special, in a way that she wasn’t. He liked her sisters. But they weren’t her. Nobody was.
Iris was the woman who had come up the mountain and not flinched in the face of his anger, which he knew he wore like a shield over his grief. She was determined, and strong. She had taken her own trauma and turned outward, rather than inward like he had.
She was innocent and sensual, honest. He had never in all his life met anyone quite like her. And he didn’t think he would have appreciated her before.
Not before. But now, he was a man who had experienced a particular kind of hell. Who had been through something that few people would ever understand.
But Iris was a breed of flower grown in the rockiest of soil. Unique and blooming bright in spite of the adversity that she’d faced. And it was exactly what called to him now.
There was another person that could possibly walk out of the darkness with him.
He’d pushed his family away. Had felt like they didn’t understand. They loved him, but they didn’t know how to sit with his pain.
His friends hadn’t been helpful at all. They had simply wanted him to go back.
He couldn’t go back. Iris knew that without him having to tell