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Something about his kindness… his gentleness… allowed my guard to come down. Without a second thought, the tears began to flow down my cheeks.
“I just… I hurt all the time,” I cried quietly. “And I don’t understand why he’d do that to me if he loved me. If he even
cared
about me.”
Ryan pulled his chair right up next to mine and hugged me. I buried my face in his chest and just let myself go, my entire body wracked with sobs. We must have sat like that for five minutes, him just holding me, letting me get it out, just letting me
be.
Finally I had cried myself out. I pulled away, embarrassed. “I’m sorry… your food’s going to be cold…”
“I don’t care about that. I care about
you.
”
I looked up at him, and suddenly I felt horrible. I knew why he was doing all this, and I felt guilty that I couldn’t return his feelings.
“Ryan…” I said softly.
He smiled at me, like he knew exactly what I was thinking – and that I was a bit silly for thinking it.
It was weird. I’d never been with anybody who
got
me that way before – that clearly, that easily. That completely. Like he could read my mind.
“Kaitlyn, I know what the score is. I’m not asking for anything but your friendship, and that’s
all
I’ll ever ask for, okay? So quit worrying about whatever you’re worrying about, and just take care of yourself and heal, alright?”
I sighed deep and long. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“As long as you stay my friend, there’s no way you possibly can. So just let me be a friend to you, and don’t worry about anything else, okay?”
God.
Two different men in my life… two entirely
different levels of character and integrity.
For the second time in the last week, I wished that I hadn’t met Derek first.
“…okay,” I relented.
“And we have to get you out of those ‘fancy’ clothes and into something a little more country,” he said, affecting a country twang on ‘fancy’ and ‘country.’
I was taking a sip of coffee when he said it. I laughed and ended up snorting a little out my nose.
“Oh, you’re country already,” he teased. “No manners at all.”
I threw a wadded-up napkin at him. Then we returned to our breakfast and a lot of easy conversation that had nothing to do with rock bands, or touring, or unfaithful lead singers.
20
The day passed quickly. After we cleaned the dishes, Ryan took me out to the barn to see the horses. I am
not
a horse chick, just so you know. Never even wanted a pony growing up. But I enjoyed watching Ryan with them. He was so familiar and relaxed, feeding them each a carrot as a treat. He offered to let me try it, but I was too afraid of those giant chompers taking off a couple knuckles.
“Maybe we can take them out riding later,” he said as he rubbed the mane of Bessie, a sweet little chestnut mare.
“Um…”
“You’ve never ridden before?”
“No.”
“I’ll teach you. There’s nothing to it. Bessie’s gentle, it’ll be easy.”
“…if you say so…”
Then we left the barn and walked over to one of the other wooden structures, which turned to be a garage, just like I thought. Ryan unlocked the door on a gigantic blue Ford F-150 truck and helped me up into the oversized cab.
“What the hell?” I exclaimed.
“What?”
“This is big enough to fit a small village in!”
“I’m the local rock star,” he joked. “It’s my duty to ferry around small villages.”
We drove off the ranch and over the rutted dirt and gravel roads. In another thirty minutes we were in Deadwood, where we found a clothing store off the main strip. I paraded in and out of the dressing room in a series of jeans and plain cotton tops.
I didn’t wear the Daisy Dukes jean shorts out, though. They showed off my ass just a little too well. For the same reason, I didn’t wear the V-neck white t-shirts I had picked off the rack. They exposed a little too much cleavage… and I was worried about what I might see in Ryan’s eyes.
But I
did
add them all to the ‘maybe’ pile.
