I feel exposed. Raw. I gave him a piece of myself last night that I had locked away. I told him things. About the marriage. About my fear.
And now he’s gone. Back to the ranch. Back to being the foreman.
I feel a hollow ache in my chest. I want him to stay. I want to curl up in his lap and let him hold me until the world makes sense.
But that’s not who we are. We are exes. We are pack. We are a disaster waiting to happen.
Ten minutes later, the door opens again.
Clara breezes in, looking frantic. She shuts the door behind her and rushes to the bed.
“Sedona!” She grabs my face. “Oh, my god. Are you okay? Billy said you were sleeping, but he looked like he’d been through a war. What happened? Did the meds work? How bad was it?”
“Bad enough that I couldn’t think. Bad enough that I was in agony.”
I look down at my hands. I pick at the label on the Gatorade bottle.
“He stayed,” I say quietly. “He took care of me. He… he helped me through it.”
“Helped you how?” Clara asks, then her eyes widen further. “Oh.Oh.”
“It wasn’t sex,” I say quickly. “Not exactly. He just… helped. With his hands. And his mouth.”
Clara lets out a breath. She fans herself. “Holy shit, Sedona. That is… that is intense.”
“I know.” I drop my head back. “I feel like I’m falling, Clara. I’ve been back for a couple of days, and it’s like no time has passed. I look at him, and I forget why I left. I forget the five years of silence.”
“You love him,” she says simply.
“I do. But I’m scared. I’m terrified that I’m falling in too deep, too fast. He said some things last night. About understanding why I left. But he didn’t say he forgave me. He didn’t say we were together. He just… helped. And then he went back to work.”
“He’s a man,” Clara says. “They compartmentalize. He probably needs to process it.”
“I don’t know if I can handle the back and forth,” I whisper. “One minute he’s cold, the next he’s… intimate. It’s making me dizzy.”
A loud noise interrupts us.
It’s a roar. A dull, angry rumble coming from outside.
Clara stands up. “What’s that?”
I frown. “Thunder?”
“No. It sounds like… voices.”
We both look toward the window.
“Stay here,” Clara says. She goes to the window and peels back the curtain.
Her face goes pale.
“Sedona. Get dressed.”
“Why? What is it?”
“It’s a circus,” she breathes. “There are news vans. Cameras. And the mayor is here.”
My stomach drops. “The mayor?”
