“Eli, please don’t do this. Not now, not... Please.”

“Sadie, I can’t afford any more distractions,” he said, the words scraping his throat raw. “And that’s all this was. All you are to me is a distraction.”

She stumbled backward and he felt like his heart lurched through his chest to follow her, leaving nothing but a bloody, vacant hole behind. This felt like he thought dying might. But he couldn’t take the words back now.

He wouldn’t.

It was the right thing to do. Other men could have wives and kids. Other men with other lives.

Not him. Never him.

“Well,” she said, her voice thick as she put distance between them. “Don’t let me distract you any longer.”

She turned and walked back in the direction of the B and B, which he only thought of as hers now. What a difference a few weeks made.

But he couldn’t afford the difference, and neither could any of the people who depended on him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SADIE DIDN’T SLEEP AT ALL. She spent the whole night out on her newly stained deck, a mug of coffee clutched tightly in her hand, tears rolling down her face as she slowly accepted what had happened. As she slowly accepted what she’d let herself do.

She loved Eli Garrett.

He was the first person she’d loved since she’d lost hope in her family a decade ago and run out of town.

He was the first person she’d been close to in as many years, if not more. If not ever.

She stayed on the deck, wrapped in her blanket and her misery, Toby snuggled in her lap, until pink started to bleed into the sky, extending up above the tree line.

Well, damn. There went her theory about the world stopping because she was devastated.

She deposited Toby gently onto the deck, then went into the house with him following behind her. She went upstairs, undressed and stepped into the shower, letting the hot water wash away the stiffness, the misery.

In the end, some of the stiffness got worked out, but the misery remained.

She brushed her teeth, which were fuzzy after an evening of nursing coffees, then made herself another in her single-serving brewer, bought especially so that her guests could have a fresh cup at any point in the day.

She let out a heavy sigh. Her guests. She’d had several people get in touch since the night before, inquiring about availability through her website. So soon there would be guests. She had a five-year contract.

She lowered her head, feeling very much like she was sinking into the mire. A mire she couldn’t just cut and run from.

And suddenly she felt claustrophobic. She wanted to claw her clothes off, claw her skin off, step out of her body and just run from all of it.

Get away and start fresh. Away from that man, away from the feelings he made her feel.

She looked around the B and B, at her attempt to build something permanent. To make something stable. She should have known it was never about her surroundings. It was about her. It always had been.

She couldn’t sign a five-year lease and expect it to make her different.

The simple truth was, she’d never been important enough for anyone to change for her. That was the painful heart of it. Her mother would rather spend her life being beaten by a man, the same man who beat her child, than leave him for the good of them both.

Her love for a husband who dealt out pain and misery was stronger than her love for Sadie. And that made it impossible to imagine anyone changing their life drastically for the sake of her love.

And Eli was proving that no one would.

This was why she always left. Because if she left first, if she never let anyone close, if she never asked anyone to know her and accept her anyway, she couldn’t get hurt.

But she’d come back to Copper Ridge. She’d given of herself. She’d fallen in love and dared to hope for it back.

And now she was broken. And she had no idea how long it would take to glue the pieces back together.

One thing was for sure. She couldn’t do it here.

“Toby,” she said, looking at her little gray friend, the only friend she really had, “I think it’s time for us to go.”

* * *

Eli paced the length of the living room, eyeing his brother, who was passed out on the couch. He was going to hate life a whole hell of a lot when Eli woke him up.

Which was going to be now, because Eli hated life, so Connor might as well join the living.

In hell.

“Wake up, Connor,” he said, clapping his hands and watching his brother go from blissfully conked out to awake and in a world of pain in an instant.

“Dammit all!” he said, then winced, his hand on his forehead. “Ow.”

“Yeah, I would think ow. You drank roughly the amount of alcohol it would take to cleanse all the wounds on a frontier battlefield.”

“Oh...shut up, Eli. Honestly.”

“We have things to do.”

“Like?” he asked. “Work? Because I think all my tools are gone.”

“You have animals that might want to get fed.”

“I don’t have hay,” Connor mumbled.

“So get off your ass and get some,” Eli said, feeling angry. At himself, mainly, but yelling at Connor was more convenient than dealing with that.

“What the hell is your issue this morning?” Connor asked, moving into a sitting position, running his hands over his beard.

“Maybe I’m tired of watching you wallow while I take care of you,” Eli said, resentment flaring up, rage burning hot in his chest.

He’d resigned himself to this last night.

To caring for other people and putting himself on hold. But this morning? This morning he’d woken up alone. And it hurt worse than he’d imagined it could. Thirty-two years of it. He should be used to it. But this morning his bed had felt so empty it had mimicked the damn hole in his chest.