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“Because I think I love you, you idiot.”
EPILOGUE
Meadow – 1 minute
I was starting to worry he’d had a stroke.
I mean, yeah, the “L” word was often shocking to the average modern-day man.
Especially one who had just somewhat recently dumped you.
Rather brutally.
I guess we were in the ‘crazy chick’ territory now.
“Ooo-kay, um… I’m gonna go,” I told him, taking a step back. “And hope that the ground opens and swallows me up,” I added, backing up another step. “Or a bear gets me. Or a coyote pack. There are coyotes in the woods, right? Or maybe Red can peck me to death. Really, anything would be preferable to…”
“What did you just say?” Ranger asked, voice so low I almost couldn’t hear it.
“That Red could peck me to death.”
“Before that.”
“Um… bears? Or was it coyotes…”
“Meadow,” he growled.
I never would have thought I would miss a growl.
But, God, I missed him growling at me.
“Yeah, well,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I tried, okay? I really did. I went home. I broke down. I ate about fifty-thousand calories in each sitting. And then I tried. I went back to my job. I paid my bills. I even went back to my old coffee shop. I tried.”
“Okay,” he said, seeming to sense I needed something from him.
“And every moment of it felt wrong. My clothes, my food, my stupid single-serve coffee.”
“You weren’t there long enough to acclimate.”
“You don’t get to tell me if I tried hard enough,” I told him, chin lifting. Never, never before had confrontational words come so easily to me. I couldn’t claim it was comfortable to use them. The fact of the matter was, my hands were sweating. And, I mean, I didn’t have a mirror, so I couldn’t be one-hundred percent on this, but I kind of thought my upper lip might have been sweating too. My upper lip. “You don’t get to tell me I didn’t try hard enough. And you don’t get to tell me that it is my trauma that made me want to be here. And, lastly, you don’t get to tell me that what I am feeling isn’t what I am feeling.”
“Meadow, listen…”
“No.”
“What?” he asked, brows drawing together.
“I said no. I’m not going to listen to you. At least not if all you are going to do is tell me I’m wrong.”
“I’m not trying to tell you that you are wrong. I’m trying to tell you that maybe you need help. Actual help.”
I wish I could say that those words didn’t bother me, didn’t hurt. But they did. Of course they did. Because having your trauma thrown in your face sucked. Because someone thinking they knew better than you did how you were handling a situation sucked. Because someone you genuinely cared about telling you that you were messed up in the head – you guessed it – sucked.
But getting offended wasn’t going to help us get anywhere.
And I wasn’t stupid; this was my only shot; I had to be careful here.
“Why did you make me leave?”
Ranger sighed, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck.
“You want coffee?”
“I want my goat. And explanations.”
“Do you want them while you drink coffee?” he clarified, lips twitching.
I missed the twitch too.
It was strange.
He was right there, within touching distance, but the aching feeling in my chest felt stronger than ever before.
“Yes,” I told him, moving inside when he turned to walk toward the kitchen.
I leaned down, throwing my arms around Captain, talking close to his ear, not wanting Ranger to overheard. “I missed you so much. Now, where’s your brother?” I asked, voice louder as I got to my feet.
“By the fire.”
There was no denying it – I flew across the room, scooping up the sleeping Gadget, clutching him to my chest like a kidnapped baby brought home, planting kisses all over his soft head as he woke and bleated happily.
“Red has been taking out your absence on me,” Ranger informed me as I walked over to the table, sitting down, trying to prepare myself for this conversation, knowing it wasn’t going to be an easy one.
It took everything I had not to say You deserved it. Instead, I went with, “Did he catch you?”
“Most mornings,” he informed me, scooping the grinds into the press.
Somehow, I knew that we would not be having the conversation until the coffee mugs were in our hands.
“Did Molly have her baby yet?”
“Babies,” he told me, watching the pot on the stove. And all I could think about was how my mother used to say that a watched pot never boiled.
“Two or three?” I asked, excited, hoping I would get the chance to see them. Gadget was a pygmy goat. And therefore one of the cutest things on the planet. But Ginger was a Nubian. And from what I could tell from my Instagram search back in my apartment, Nubian goats were in the running for a first-place tie.
