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“Both.”
It was a final word. One that didn’t invite any other questions, any other comments. One that spoke definitively about his feelings.
“Well. That must be hard too.”
He shrugged. “There’s nothing hard about it. It just is.”
“Well. If you say so.”
“I’m not making up stories. She left us. Left us with nothing. Maybe she had to, but I don’toweher anything. And as for him... I hate him.”
“What are you doing with it?” she asked.
She felt like she was holding her breath. Trying to find the right words. The right method of pushing. She didn’t want to push him away; she wanted to push him to her. She just wasn’t sure she had the right balance.
“What do you mean?”
“What are you doing with all that hate. Does it serve you? Does it give you anything? Does it bring you any kind of joy?”
“Hell no. It doesn’t do a damn thing for me. Except remind me. Remind me of what he was. And sometimes...sometimes I like to hang on to that. But you know, it’s a little redundant. Because I can just look at my face and see. No. The problem is... He succeeded in what he did to me. He killed something in me all right.”
“Gus...”
“No. It’s true. Do you know how long I spent in bandages? Recovering. Dealing with infections. It is an ugly thing to try and get well from. It messes with your head, and you have way too much time to think. And way more pain than could ever be felt all at once. So you just feel it all the time. For years to come. Because what else is there? What else is there but the pain, and the particular kind of isolation it gave you.”
His words were so honest, so full of pain. They transferred the pain to her. She could see it, that what his father had done to him had created a legacy of pain he’d carried with him every day since.
“I’m so sorry, Gus.”
“I know. The sorry doesn’t change it. Any more than my anger changes it. That’s just the thing. None of it changes a damn thing.”
“You read stories to your brothers. And you were there for them. You protected Lachlan from your father’s fists. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything to you. Maybe it feels futile to you, but I bet you changed an awful lot for them.”
“That’s the only hope I have,” he said. “If I have any at all.”
“And what about for us? Do you have any particular hope for the two of us?”
“I just like to do more good than I do bad,” he said.
The sun was golden and the air was perfect, but that list of joy that she’d felt earlier was muted now. Because he was so...
Scarred.
And it wasn’t the scars on his face that truly concerned her.
It was the ones on his soul. And it was the one place he seemed bound and determined to not let her reach.
So she brought her horse up beside his, and put her hands on his face. Because those scars, those physical ones, he let her touch those. And so she would. So she would.
“You don’t have to do anything. Just be you. That guy that rescues kittens. And everything will be just fine.”
She said it for herself as much as for him. And she tried—she really did try—to believe it.
And even as she did, the feelings in her heart seemed to swell to the point of bursting.
She cared about this man so much. And she honestly didn’t know if he cared about her...
Or if he still saw just a kitten that needed to be saved from drowning.
