Page 109 of Paper Horses

“Olivia Marie Icinda.”

My sight snapped to him, seeing the irritation in the hues of his irises.

“Don’t lose this chance. You deserve to be happy.”

“I don’t know what I deserve anymore.” Words whispered, but with enough weight that they sounded like a bellow.

His expression fell, and he stepped around the desk. “Everything. You deserve everything.”

“I have everything,” I argued.

“You have things, but nothing that you really need. Trust me, Liv. I know what it’s like to be lonely and hurting.”

I searched his eyes, knowing that of all the people in this world, he understood me the most. Understood what it had taken to close my heart off because he had done the same. Living in numbness, in darkness for so long that it became a second skin.

“I have you.”

A hint of a smile reached his eyes. “I know, and you always will, but you need more, and I think you have that in Hudson. You looked happy, you sounded happy, and I haven’t seen you that way since the last time you were with him.”

I didn’t answer him, bending to type my password in.

“Liv.”

“What, Gabe? What do you want me to say? That you forced me into a position with my ex-boyfriend and now…”

“Were you happy?” he asked when I trailed off.

I didn’t answer right away, but he gave me the space.

“Yes.” The sound was a high-pitched breath.

“Then why are you here and not in Montana?”

My lip trembled, my wall shattering like rubble caught in a wave, and I bit my cheek to restitch the pieces before they were too far gone.

“Because I don’t know who I am anymore,” I whispered, raising my eyes to his. Fractured hues met them, swirling with emotion, but the distance stood, an awkward interloper that kept us in place. “I don’t want to be my father’s daughter, but she’s all I know.”

“We are who we are, Liv. Who he shaped us to be, but we don’t have to always be him. With Tori, I’m someone I was when Mama would sneak me into the kitchen and let me shape the gnocchi while you helped her with the gravy. When we were free to be ourselves and laughter was there. She’s my person, and Hudson was your person before everything went to hell. Before I made you swear a vow that I had no right to.”

“You had every right to.”

“Not when it cost us so much.”

I swallowed back the throb of pain in my chest. “I would have done whatever you needed to make you happy, Gabe.”

He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “And you did, but the cost was too high.”

Lowering his head, he palmed his neck and stared at the floor. “If Hudson makes you happy, let him. Let him free that side that used to run on the beach and chase seagulls with me as Mama called after us, the girl who snuck into my room on her first fall break and shared a bag of chips with me while she told me all about the horses she was riding and the boy she met. All with a smile that I hadn’t seen since we were kids.”

He lifted his head, and the love stretched between us, reaching for something tangible to grip but slipping because we wouldn’t acknowledge it, not here.

“How did you change?” I asked, remembering the man who had buried himself in scotch and shut himself away from the world.

“I didn’t. I let Tori in, and once there, she reached a hand out for the man who I’d buried behind my walls and freed him. But she didn’t change me, Liv. I’m still the man I’ve always been. She just brings out the parts of me the abuse and the coldness shadowed.”

“I don’t know if that girl exists in me anymore.”

He tilted his head, his brows creasing. “No? I think she does, and Hudson offered his hand, but she’s too afraid to take it.”