Page 114 of The Goat Next Door

I sit down at my kitchen island, pulling my knees up to my chest, staring into the quiet, dark farmhouse and as the last of the light completely fades from the valley I feel painfully naïve.

I keep trying to find the moment I should have known better. The sentence I misheard. The touch I translated into something it was never meant to mean. As if heartbreak is just a puzzle that can be solved backwards.

I feel like the kind of heroine people yell at in books. The girl who mistakes intensity for permanence. Who thinks if a man touches her gently enough, it must mean he plans to stay.

I always rolled my eyes at women in books who fell too fast. Who built entire futures out of lingering looks and almost-kisses.

Turns out it’s very easy to become that woman when someone spends weeks touching you like you’re already precious to them.

Heartbreak, apparently, is a lot less poetic than I expected.

No violins. No dramatic rain. Just an ordinary evening where your hand still reaches for a phone that has nothing new to say. A tiny, humiliating moment that reminds you how quickly another person can become a habit.

30

Brooks

“Status check:

Chief Lawson unavailable for non-emergency contact.”

— Internal Station Record

The paperwork on my desk has been blurring into a white haze for the last three hours. My temples are throbbing, but the physical pain is nothing compared to the dead, heavy ache sitting dead center in my chest.

I’m an idiot. I know I’m an idiot.

I lean my head back against the vinyl headrest of my office chair, closing my eyes, but that only makes it worse.

The second my eyelids close, I am back there. I see the exact moment the light went out in Ember’s eyes. I see her bright, beautiful, stubborn smile fracture and collapse, leaving her looking completely bare.

Completely hurt.

By me.

The memory makes me want to put my fist through the drywall.

I want her. Fuck, I want her so much it feels like a physical restriction in my throat.

I’ve spent so long pretending she was just an annoying, chaotic neighbor with terrible taste in porch paint, but the truth is, she’s the first thing that’s made me feel alive since… well, ever.

I don’t just like her. If I’m being entirely honest with myself in the quiet of this empty office, I’m probably already half in love with her.

But love isn’t a solitary calculation when you have a five-year-old girl counting on you to come home every night.

Sophie is my entire universe.

What happens to my little girl if I don’t pull myself out from under the burning timber? What happens to her if I let myself get so distracted, so wrapped up in the intoxicating, brilliant whirlwind that is Ember, that I miss a warning sign?

And it isn’t just about me. It’s about Ember, too.

She’s young, she’s brilliant, and she radiates a type of pure, unburdened freedom that I haven’t possessed in a decade.

She doesn’t deserve the suffocating weight of my life.

She deserves someone whose biggest emergency is forgetting an anniversary. Not someone who kisses her goodbye wondering if it’ll be the last time. Not someone whose truck pulls out of the driveway with lights and sirens while she pretends not to count the minutes until it comes back.

Loving me would come with instructions nobody should have to learn.