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ALL IS BRIGHT
Heath liked sitting next to Lena and he couldn’t stand it. She was too gorgeous, with curves in all the right places, with smooth skin and firm muscles that made him want to run his calloused hands all over her. She should be sad—he could see flashes of pain in her eyes sometimes, when she poked fun at herself—but somehow she was still light. She could completely crack up over suitcases and act amazed over his talent and exclaim over a bird she’d never heard before, or the possibility of a ramshackle farm. Whatever had happened to her, she hadn’t been sunk by it.
She was everything he wanted and couldn’t have—and being with her felteasy. He’d forgotten what it was like, being beside someone, not saying anything butfeelingeverything. Like there were a million little points of connection between them even though they weren’t touching, weren’t speaking. An energy that was so alive it didn’t need words. Which was either convenient, given how little he liked talking, or ludicrous.
He’d only just met Christmas Girl and here he was, wanting her in ways he had no business considering. He was meant to be alone. She’d only just been dumped by the man she’d moved across the world to be with. But she filled all his senses—at least, in the moments when he let his guard down. For the first time, on the rock, the hum of tension that had been buzzing through him since the moment she’d knocked on his door had quieted. He wasn’t totally relaxed—couldn’t be with her so close there was palpable heat radiating between them— but he wasn’t on edge, either. That was enough. That was as much as he deserved. A moment of calm.
He was staring at the play of sunlight dancing over the rippling current when she broke the silence. “I had panic attacks for a while. They were awful. Made me feel weak, like I couldn’t even trust myself anymore.”
Her voice was soft and easy, but the tense hum he lived with ratcheted back up, his every muscle was vibrating and taut. He didn’t want to talk about his panic attacks, had said as much as he intended on the subject. If she felt the blade slam down between them, severing all the filaments of connection, she didn’t let on.
She waited, as if he might respond. He wasn’t going to.
“Mine were because of an accident I had. On the track. I was galloping a horse I ride—rode— all the time, Panda, and my stirrup leather broke. I was fighting to keep my balance and yelling for the outrider to come help me, but Panda just lost it.” Lena stopped, a wry smile curving her lips. “She’s not a horse known for being chill. She scraped me along the rail, then threw me off. Would’ve been fine, all in a day’s work, you know? But after I fell, I got stepped on. Punctured my lung. Bruised my spleen. Broke a few fingers.” She held up her left hand, and for the first time he noticed the pinky and ring fingers were crooked.
“Sounds pretty bad.”
“In the middle of it all, I thought I was going to die. But it wasn’t so bad as what some people survive.” She turned to him. It was a generic thing to say, a truism, but damn if her words combined with her steady gaze didn’t make something crack inside him. “I healed, got better, came back to work. Only I couldn’t get through the main gate. Just…” Her hand went to her heart. “I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was having a heart attack.”
“The gate was your trigger?”
“The gate. The creaking sound a saddle sometimes makes. If a horse moves a certain way and the saddle shifts, it feels like my leg is dropping out from under me, even when it’s not. Little things.”
“You still ride horses, though, don’t you?”
She nodded. “Yeah. One of the other gallop girls—Carissa—found me like that, talked me down. Gave me exercises to do. Once I could breathe, she gave me permission to go home, to quit and never come back. When I wouldn’t, she met me at the gate every morning. For months. That’s how she got to be my bestie. She’s who I was messaging before.”
It was like she’d found his tender most spot and jammed an ice pick into it. He didn’t have anyone who would do that for him anymore.
He couldn’t do this—wasn’t ready to open his life up to someone else, didn’t want to revisit all the stuff he’d locked away, all the triggers he’d tried cataloguing and then stopped being able to keep track of altogether. He’d made his life small to keep the panic attacks at bay, but he’d made it into what he could, and it had all been fine. Then Lena showed up and somehow made him want things he’d told himself he didn’t need.
She was waiting for him to say something, he could feel that much. She’d opened up to him, was inviting him to do the same. Only he couldn’t put any of those feelings into words. Even if he could, he didn’t want to. He shouldn’t. She’d said she trusted him—twice now—but if she really knew him, she wouldn’t.
“We should get going. I’ve got work to do.” Without glancing her way to see her reaction, he shoved off the rock and let himself sink under the cool water.
* * *
She was goneand he was an idiot.
Since getting back from the rock pool, Heath had managed to avoid Lena the whole day, but as dusk settled, he’d decided to grow a pair and quit hiding in his workshop. When he’d gone inside the cottage, he’d found the lounge room silent, the dog gone, and the space where Lena’s car had been parked empty. She’d left and he hadn’t even known. It hit him like a gut punch.
Not so much that she’d left without a goodbye, but that she’d disappeared out of his life as quickly as she appeared. It was exactly the kind of thought he wasn’t supposed to have. He was supposed to be glad she was gone and his life could go back to normal.
But he wasn’t.
He’d been trying for normal since the minute they’d gotten back from their swim. It was why he’d begged off, without even going inside, telling Lena he had work to do and not bothering to tell her to make herself at home. Instead, he’d bolted for his workshop and tried to forget all about her and her uncomfortable topics of conversation.
He’d failed.
Usually when he was in his workshop, the rest of the world fell away and five hours could pass before he realised he was hungry or it had gotten dark. That was the whole reason he’d started woodworking and kept at it. All afternoon though, instead of being in the creative flow, every task he set for himself felt mechanical, forced, his thoughts scattered and intrusive. The Morgans wouldn’t notice the difference in his work—he took pride in his craftsmanship, whether he was building a nightstand or a herd of rocking horses or a cutting board—but the release he usually got from building something beautiful and functional and real never came.
He’d needed a release.
Now he was alone. Like normal. Only it didn’t feel right at all.
He was just pulling the steak off the barbeque when gravel crunched under tyres. He startled so hard he dropped the meat back on the rack and almost burned himself in the process. His heart punched against his ribs as he went around the side of the house and he didn’t know if it was because he wasn’t expecting anyone or because he was hoping for it to be a particular someone.
It was a white sedan.
