“Just behind the seat...”

He reached back there and grabbed her duffel bag, and her guitar, slamming the door shut with his elbow.

“You don’t have to carry...”

“If I were you, I would give it a rest. You can stop telling me what I can and can’t do, and what I should and shouldn’t do, because people who run off into blizzards don’t get to make proclamations.”

He wasn’t wearing a coat. He had come after her in only that T-shirt, and she was so aware of how the wind was biting at him, but he just put his head down and kept walking forward.

It made her feel small, and strange. She was walking directly behind him, and she realized that she was using his body to help shield her from the wind.

And that was sort of a humbling realization. She couldn’t say she cared for it.

She was freezing, and she was wearing a coat. His arms were bare.

And this was the problem with Flint. There were these moments. Because this was exactly who she’d begun to believe that he was. The man that would shield her from everything. The man that would carry it all on his shoulders. And that was more, and different, than the sharp heartbreak she had been carrying around all this time. It was a deeper, more fully realized regret.

All that she didn’t have because of what she had wanted him to become.

Because she hadn’t been wrong about everything. Because that was the problem with a heartbreak anthem. It didn’t give credit to the good things. And it was the good things that made losing love sad.

It was the fact that he was the man who would chase her down in a snowstorm, block the wind and carry her bags, while he was wearing only a T-shirt.

There was good in him, that was the issue. When things were wonderful, they were just amazing. But when he shut down, it was like he was a blizzard all by himself.

She couldn’t reach him.

When he was cruel, it cut deep.

There was something in him that made him like this and she didn’t know what it was. Didn’t understand what had shaped him into this man who was so perfect in so many ways, until he wasn’t.

Of course, the fact that she didn’t know what his issues were was his fault. He could have shared with her. He could give her something. He could tell her more about himself. But he had never wanted to. He had told her what he couldn’t give, but he hadn’t told her why.

Maybe there was no why.

Except, she had one. Her reasons for not being able to trust were specific, and ample. And he’d added another layer to it. It was neat, explainable. Easily written into songs, and easily folded into stories.

Him? He hadn’t given her those pieces. But she knew enough about people to know they must be there. And to know that he wasn’t sharing for a very specific reason.

But she didn’t actually want to feel charitable toward him. And even though he had just saved her from a storm, he had also been the reason that she had run out into the storm. Because he hadn’t even bothered to not be a jackass to her.

He did ask you to stay.

Fine. He had. But it was much too little, too late, and it wasn’t when she had wanted him to ask her to stay.

The walk was icy and cold, and her boots were not equipped for the task. She slipped as she tried to get up the hill, and a squeak came out of her mouth, and he whipped around, dropping her duffel bag and grabbing her arm, keeping her from falling. She looked up at him, and their eyes met. And she was brought right back to that first time they’d met each other.

When she’d stumbled coming out of the gate.

And everything in her went still.

The terrible thing was looking up at him and knowing exactly what she’d seen in him. Knowing exactly what she’d been thinking. And knowing that if she had been put in that exact same position all over again, she would’ve made the same mistakes. Over and over again.

Because there was something about him. Something about him that was her own personal brand of favorite mistake.

It was horrifying.

“I’m fine,” she said, pulling herself out of his hold.

“Right.”

Words bubbled up inside of her. Ones she shouldn’t speak. But... They had been apart for two years, and there were endless wells of unspoken words between them.

Why should she give him the benefit of leaving it all unspoken anymore?

“It might make you happy to know I don’t need my mom to warn me about cowboys anymore. I have my own warnings.”

“Good. Listen to them,” he said. “Because God knew mine weren’t enough.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s not like I didn’t tell you.” He picked up the duffel bag.

“We were...whatever we were for how many months? You gave me warnings, but you never gave me reasons.”

“Why do I have the feeling that’s going into a song?”

“It already is,” she said.

“Wow. Quoting your own song lyrics at me. That’s something.”

She growled, and went ahead of him. She didn’t need him to shield her from the wind. She didn’t need him to shield her from anything. She didn’t need anything from him.

“You don’t know your way around here as well as I do,” he said.

“You don’t even know how many times I’ve been here,” she said.

Three. But she didn’t need to tell him that.

“Yeah. But I’ve actually been staying up here for the last couple of weeks,” he said. “Making sure the transition went smoothly. There are some changes that I’m going to make.”

“What are you...? What are you doing, anyway? You never expressed any interest in owning hotels.”

“Yeah. Well. My brother and his fiancée bought a hotel in Lone Rock. He’s more of a silent investor, but I found the whole thing really interesting. So I started looking around for properties. And this came up. I thought it was perfect. But I’m also looking at a hotel in downtown Portland. And considering something in Nashville.”

“Right. Why Nashville?”

He shrugged. “Music city. Exciting.”