Page 55 of Paper Horses

“I’m not going back to that time, and neither should you.”

“I’m not going back to it because I never left it.” The words were out in a rush I couldn't take back.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, her voice a raw whisper.

I closed the distance between us, towering over her. “It matters to me.”

“Just drop it, Hudson.”

She pushed past me, setting her coffee on the island.

“God, you’re such a bitch,” I snapped. “Cold and cruel. I don’t know what happened to make you this way, but that’s what you are. That’s what you were the day you left, and it hasn’t changed. No wonder you’re still alone. Up there in your fancy hotel, with your meaningless affairs and designer clothes. You deserve everything you have, Olivia.” I couldn't stop myself. The insults flowed from me, my frustration with her, with the situation, with the emotions she stirred in me fueling them. “I’m going to check on the horses.”

I stomped over to my boots, tugging them on and grabbing my hat and jacket. “When the rain stops, you can stay with Russ and Bridget until your brother fetches you. Tell him the deal is off. I’ll give him all the money back and sell the ranch to the neighbors. Dealing with you isn’t worth it.”

I pulled my coat on, my hand on the doorknob when I heard, “I didn’t want to leave you.”

I froze, my hand gripping the knob.

“I didn’t want to leave.” There it was again, but this time each syllable was a fractured breath so painful that I turned around to look at her. She seemed so broken, and no matter how angry I was at her, I only wanted to pull her into my arms and comfort her. It took all my will to stand there, to wait for the words I’d wanted to hear for fifteen years and the ones I suspected would change me forever.

Chapter 14

Liv

Words had never hurt so badly. I’d been called the same things before, but never had they cut into me like sharpened blades. To hear them from Hudson made them more brutal, piercing me and the calluses I’d built to protect me from the truth.

My plea, a desperate statement, fell from my mouth because I didn’t want to be that woman anymore. I didn’t want him to think of me that way and not understand why. To not know that I could be no other way and survive. His piercing gaze, chestnut, hard and expectant, locked on me when he turned.

It stirred something within me. A creature clawing for freedom, a banshee searching for her voice, a prisoner reaching for the key. The need for truth that had been building with every moment I was with Hudson was so close to bursting like an explosion of fireworks.

An enlightening that I hadn’t been myself since the day I’d left him. Had caged that girl away to return to being what my father demanded. Hudson had freed me, and I’d let that part of me go when I’d blocked him from my life, building barriers around her so my father wouldn’t discover her. Returned to being proper and perfect. Driven and nasty. Cold and calculating. Because that’s what my father wanted. And that’s who I needed to be to exact revenge on him, to make him pay for taking my mother away, for stealing my childhood and Gabe’s.

I had never looked back at that girl. The one who rode horses, laughed, smiled, looked at things with wide eyes and curiosity because a boy who loved those things about her loved her. I’d left her buried with the ache of losing that boy. Resorting to wine and bitchiness to cover the truth. That I was lonely and in pain.

Pressure burned my eyes, pressing against them until something broke free. A tear, lone and brazen, slid down my cheek. I hadn’t cried since I was a child, and its rogue escape left me defenseless.

“Talk,” Hudson said.

I wanted to be free again. To have someone lift this burden from me, to be rid of it. And so the truth spilled from me like a tidal wave smashing over the dam I had built. With each truth, from the first strike against Gabe to every insult, to the day of my mother’s funeral. The words flowed untethered, and with them the tears fell, soaking my face. When I reached the end, the day we took my father down, I stopped. My lips quivered, and my chin shook as my limbs trembled.

Penetrating orbs the color of freshly tilled earth remained on me, unwavering.

“You broke up with me for money and revenge?” His voice held hurt I didn’t expect but should have.

“No.” I shook my head adamantly, wanting him to understand and hating that he hadn’t, and maybe that was because I had never voiced the whole truth. Not even to Gabe.

“That’s sure as hell what it sounds like.” He turned back to the door and opened it.

The serrated edge of the knife that plunged into the furthest recesses of my heart sent a sob falling from me like a wounded animal.

“I did it for Gabe.”

His head dropped, but his hand remained on the doorknob. Admitting it caused the knife to sever what remained of the tethers I had stitched together to keep me strong as a child. They tore, sending blood and agony surging through me. My chest heaved as the fractured syllables came out.

“I couldn’t do anything for him. He was my baby brother, and I couldn’t protect him. He stood in front of me, taking the strikes that should have been mine to take, to keep me safe.” My voice rasped with emotion, tears choking me. “I couldn’t tell him no. This was the only thing I could do for him. The only sacrifice I could make and when I made the vow the day we stood in the rain, the dirt still fresh on Mama’s grave, I knew it would hurt, that I’d never recover but he had hurt for so long for me.” I sucked in a shaky breath. “It was my turn to hurt for him.”

The sound of the storm filled the silence that stretched like long limbs of a tree reaching to the sky. I was raw, exposed for the first time. The truth out in the open and revealing the real me. The one who had internalized every bruise her brother had taken, every drop of blood spilled, and there it had stayed, turning to a guilt that festered and destroyed as much as her father’s rancid words had. I had shaped it into a mask that showed the world a hardened, petty, self-absorbed woman who cared about nothing more than her nails and her morning lattes. Pushing people away, even Gabe, until nothing could touch me, nothing could tug the straps of that mask and reveal the truth.