Page 76 of Ethan

She thought about Ethan the whole way.

Give her a chance, he’d said.

She clenched her jaw and drove faster.

Naomi pulled into the yard, cut the engine, and sat there for a moment with both hands on the wheel.

She was so angry she could feel it in her back teeth.

Not just at her mother. At him.

She got out, walked toward the barn, and found him exactly where she expected to, at the rail outside the arena watching a horse. He turned when he heard her coming and whatever he saw on her face made him straighten.

“Hey. I didn’t know you’d gone out.”

“No.” She stopped in front of him. “You didn’t.”

He looked at her carefully. “What happened?”

“I went to see my mother.”

Something moved across his face. “Naomi—”

“She wanted money.” The words came out flat and hard. “That’s why she came. She thought my grandmother left me something substantial and she wanted her share.” She watched his expression. “There was no share. There was nothing. Just an old house I sold to start over, which apparently she doesn’t believe.”

Ethan was quiet.

“You told me to give her a chance,” Naomi said. “You told me I might regret it if I didn’t hear her out. You pushed me toward her when I already knew. I already knew, Ethan, and you made me doubt myself.”

“I didn’t mean to do that.”

“I know you didn’t.” Her voice cracked slightly and she hated it. “But you did. You have this wonderful family who wouldnever hurt you and you couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to open that door and so you pushed.” She shook her head. “You don’t get to do that.”

He opened his mouth.

“Don’t.” She held up her hand. “Not right now. I can’t right now.”

She turned and walked toward the apartment stairs.

He didn’t call after her. She told herself she was glad. She wasn’t.

Chapter Eleven

Ethan stood at the rail long after her footsteps had faded up the stairs.

Rowdy had entered the barn at some point during all of it and was now very deliberately not looking at him from the far end of the arena. Ethan appreciated that more than he could say.

He walked into the barn and kept walking until he got to Vulcan’s stall. He unlatched it, went inside, and stood with his hand on the horse’s neck and stared at the wall.

She was right.

That was the thing he kept coming back to. She’d known. She’d spent thirty-three years building walls around that particular wound for good reason. He’d come along with his intact family, his Sunday dinners, his complete inability to imagine a mother who didn’t want her child, and he’d told her to open the door anyway.

He thought he was helping. He’d been an idiot.

Vulcan shifted beneath his hand, and he absently stroked the horse’s neck and thought about her face when she’d said, ‘you made me doubt myself’. The way her voice had cracked on it and how much it had clearly cost her to let that show.

Ethan had done that. He heard the barn door and looked up. Rowdy appeared at the stall.