Page 32 of Love Me Again

“I’m still your husband.” To say it out loud made it feel like the ache in his heart expanded exponentially. “Technically. Consider it an…I don’t know. Apology. Pre-divorce settlement. Christmas present. I’ll handle everything financially until the new year. You just enjoy the cabin, and my family and…” Me. Enjoy me. “It’ll give you time to plan out your next steps.”

She shook her head, her expression as desolate as he’d ever seen it. It took every ounce of strength he possessed not to cross the room and fold her into his arms.

“I don’t know my next steps.”

Boone had to clear his throat to speak through all the emotion that swamped him then. Hurt and regret and guilt and pain and loss. “So, take the time to figure them out.”

She lifted her chin, straightened those shoulders. Dark brown eyes looked at him, determined as ever. “It’s not going to be you.”

He didn’t argue with her, because despite all her attempts to appear strong and determined, she looked fragile. He didn’t argue with her, because she was probably right.

But he wanted her to be wrong. He wanted to find a way to make her wrong.

That was a very new feeling for him. To want to fight for something he wanted. Because Shane was right. He ran away from the things he cared about, the things that mattered. He ran away from safety and love and home and hope.

He ran away from all the things he didn’t know how to keep or deserve.

But Josie was always the one thing he believed in. The one thing that made him forget everything else. He’d always wanted to be worthy of her.

And he never seemed to be able to fully kill the hope that someday he could be.

CHAPTER 10

Josie couldn’t stay. Absolutely not. It was insanity to stay.

She told herself this resolutely and surely and calmly and determinedly all through breakfast with Boone and a very silent Ben and a very chatty Grandma Maisey.

She was just eating to get her strength up and hopefully nip the wine headache in the bud.

It is insanity to stay, she reminded herself, over and over again, as she hiked back to the cabin in the snow—at least she managed to do that alone. On a bright, blue-sky winter day with this beautiful ranch spread out around her.

Staying for a few weeks, waiting for his lawyer to return to town was a very pointless endeavor. Boone could just handle it in the new year and she could…

She could…

What else are you going to do?

She made it to the cabin. Cold and wet and strangely invigorated. She stopped and stared at the cute little building. Someone somewhere along the line had hung a Christmas wreath on the door.

Take the time to figure it out. Boone’s reasonable tone resonated in her head.

Boone reasonable was a foreign thing and she did not trust it. She was the voice of reason, always.

So maybe this is exactly what you need.

Time and space to figure out what was next. Molly had said he had family money, which meant he could certainly foot the bill for her shitty life for a few weeks. What was she going to accomplish this time of year anyway?

A new year. A plan. A new start. All things that needed time and the space to breathe and think without worry.

Maybe she deserved this little break.

But Boone would be here, and she didn’t trust it. She’d been here all of two days and he’d somehow gotten her to help with a horse, eat dinner with his family, spend the night in their house, befriend his sister essentially, because Josie liked Molly so much more than was fair.

He’d left her without a word except through lawyers twenty months ago, and he was acting like that twenty months was nothing. That so little had changed. That abandoning her without word for nearly two years was forgivable.

She’d looked up at him in that dining room last night and felt all the old feelings rush through her—love and trust and hope and safety…and yes, desire, quite unfortunately.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.