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And maybe it was, but I couldn’t think about it like that. I hadn’t meant to kill him, after all. I was protecting myself. It had to be done. What happened was just self-defense, and wouldn’t anyone else have done the same thing?
I was so tired. It felt like my heart weighed a hundred pounds, and it was exhausting just carrying it around. I had been so hurt for so long, it felt like I was born in pain.
None of this was my fault. Someone else started this, I was just finishing it. If things had been different, none of this would have happened.
I wished I could stop dreaming about it, though.
This revenge has been a long time coming, and one day soon, people will know my pain. People will feel what I’d felt for years.
And when they knew the truth, I would finally be free.
If only I could have slept.
* * *
“He’s beautiful.” Chloe leaned her forearms on the top bar of the stall door. Her gaze was locked on the brand-new foal lying in the straw beside his mother.
The quiet was all encompassing. In the middle of the night, the silence was somehow...comforting. Especially since she and Liam were alone in the dimly lit darkness.
She’d been in the stable for hours, helping where she could and so emotionally caught up in the mare’s labor, she couldn’t have left if someone had ordered her to. Chloe had watched Liam’s patience and kindness to the big animal. He’d spent most of the day kneeling in the straw beside the horse, stroking her long, sleek neck when she was distressed and whispering words of comfort, encouragement.
It didn’t matter that the mare couldn’t possibly understand his words; she knew his gentle touch and the soft tone he used with her. And Chloe had been more deeply touched by it all than she’d ever been by anything else. Liam had simply dropped into her heart and carved out a place for himself.
What that meant she’d worry about later.
“He is a beauty,” Liam agreed, mimicking her position at the stall door.
His arm brushed hers, and her stomach dipped and spun. She had to wonder if she would always respond to him like this. She certainly hoped so.
They hadn’t had to call the vet after all, and Chloe had been so proud of the mare she had wanted to applaud. Instead, she’d cried when the foal was born and took its first wobbly steps on spindly legs.
“It’s silly, but I don’t want to leave,” she admitted, resting her chin on her crossed arms.
“Not so silly,” he said. “I know what you mean.”
She turned her head to look up at him. “You get to see this all the time, don’t you?”
“I guess so, yeah.” He pushed the brim of his ever-present hat back. “But it never gets old.”
There was a faint smile on his lips as he watched the new arrival, and Chloe felt as though they were sharing a really special moment. Other men she’d known wouldn’t have been interested in the birth of a foal.
Liam was different. In so many ways. He touched her heart as completely as he touched her body. He was stubborn and proud and completely devoted to building the dream he’d been planning for years. And she could understand that, since she was doing the same. In spite of what she’d told him only a few days ago, that she wasn’t looking for permanent, Chloe couldn’t help but feel that things were changing.
She only wished she knew what to do about that.
Shaking that thought off, she asked abruptly, “Do you have a name for him?”
He gave her a long look. “Not yet. Sterling doesn’t really get into naming the animals.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe a man could be that disinterested in his own ranch. “So why don’t you do the honors this time?”
Touched and pleased, Chloe smiled. “Really?” She looked back at the tiny black horse with the small white blaze on his forehead. “Okay, how about Shadow?”
Liam thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Shadow. That’s good. I like it.”
Chloe let out a happy sigh and turned her gaze back to the new baby. “Welcome to the world, Shadow,” she whispered.
The foal dipped his head under his mother’s belly to nurse and Liam chuckled, the sound soft and warm in the darkness. “Looks like he doesn’t much care what we call him.”
