Page 106 of The One Who Saw Her: Boone

"That's what this is," he said, quieter now, which was so much harder to bear than shouting. "You decided I needed saving and you went and did it your way and you didn't think I deserved to know."

"I did it before I'd promised to stay out of it," she said, her voice cracking. "I forgot about it."

"You forgot? How fucking convenient." He looked at her for a long moment, something hollow moving behind his eyes. "Vivi, I have spent my entire life with people deciding what's best for this ranch. What's best for me. People who thought they knew better." He swallowed hard. "I trusted you. I let you all the way in—into my home, my family, my life—" He stopped again, pressing his fist briefly to his mouth. "And the first chance you got, you did exactly what everyone else has always done, you made that call for me."

She felt the floor drop out from under her.

"I didn't mean it like that," she whispered.

"I know you didn't." And that was almost worse—the way he said it. He wasn’t angry anymore. He just sounded tired, and damn if that didn’t hurt more. "But meaning well isn't the same as doing right by someone."

The tears came before she could stop them, and she pressed a hand to her cheek. "I thought I was protecting you."

"I didn't ask you to protect me." His voice broke on it, just slightly, and that tiny fracture undid her completely. "I asked you to trust me."

“I do trust you.”

“Then why did you go behind my back and decide for me?”

“I didn’t anticipate it would end up like this and make it worse.”

“But it did. And that’s the problem.”

“What you mean is that I’m the problem.” When he didn’t answer, she lifted her head and could feel the sting behind her eyes forming. "I can't just stop being who I am. I can't shut off the part of me that wants to fix things for the people I love. That's not something I know how to do."

Boone looked at her for a long, hard moment. "Then maybe you need to decide if you can learn to."

That lodged itself in her chest like a splinter she couldn't reach.

The kitchen went very still, and a tight knot of fear crept up from the pit of her stomach. She closed her eyes for just a second to savor the memory of the men who had wanted her before—the ones who demanded she shrink the best parts of herself, the ones who wanted to reshape her life into their version of a woman. They flashed like a warning signal.

She had made a mistake, one she wished she could take back but he wasn’t asking her to apologize or trust him, he was asking her to become someone who didn't do the thing that was most essentially, irreducibly her—caring, fixing, throwing herself headlong into the people she loved. He wanted her to learn how not to do that.

To learn to be less.

She’d been here before. Not with anger like his, but with the ask underneath it. Change this. Give up that. Make herself a little smaller so someone else could be more comfortable. She’d done that enough in her life, and every time, she’d lost a little more of herself. She wasn’t doing it again.

Not even for someone she loved. Not even for him.

"I see," she said quietly.

The two words fell completely flat. All the tears suddenly gone, replaced by something much more frightening—a terrible, settling calm.

“I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I made things worse when I was trying to help.” She swallowed past the ache in her throat. “But I can’t be the person you want me to be, Boone. I can’t love someone and stand back when I think they need me. Maybe I should’ve asked. Maybe I should’ve trusted you to handle it. But if loving me means I have to stop being that person…” She shook her head. “I can’t.”

Something flashed across Boone's face, like he'd finally understood the ramifications of what he’d said and was watching the gap open between them.

CHAPTER 42

Boone had known loss before, but nothing had prepared him for the way his chest felt now, shattered and gutted. It was like he'd managed to lose the only things that mattered in a single damn day.

Boone swung his legs over the side of the bed, the wooden floor cold against his bare feet. Each step toward the bathroom felt heavier than the last, like he was wading through concrete. His rubbed his face, trying to wake up the part of him that wasn't already hollowed out from a night spent staring at the ceiling.

The sun hadn't fully risen, and the morning was silent except for the faint creak of the floorboards under his weight. He didn't know where to start—or if starting even mattered—but he knew he had to keep moving, because standing still only made the emptiness stretch wider.

He shuffled across the guest room above the barn, careful not to wake the horses or the early stirrings of the ranch. Down the steps, across the dirt yard. The cold morning air cut straight through the thin shirt on his back like it had an opinion about him.

He passed the bunkhouse, his chest tightening into a hard, airless knot, and with every step toward the main house he felt like he was dragging something behind him.