After
She couldn’t sleep. She paced around the room, and then for some reason, opened the door. She crept down the hall. It was silent. The building was huge. She didn’t even know where he was sleeping. And the odds were, it wasn’t anywhere near her.
It was strange to be in such a big place like this with nobody in it.
Nobody but him. And somehow she felt his presence looming large as if they were staying in a tiny house.
She huffed. And continued down the stairs, into the lobby. The lights were off.
She looked around, up at the tall, arched ceiling with beams extending across it. The dim chandelier. And then she continued on toward the large windows that faced out over what she knew was a beautiful view in the daylight.
She could hardly see anything, it was so dark. But she could make out the swirling of snowflakes coming down.
She touched the window, and felt that it was freezing cold.
They had never been in snow together. They had spent the summer together. A summer that had been full of heat and longing.
A summer full of lies that she had told herself. But the truth was, he’d never lied to her.
She’d broken her own heart.
Even after two years she couldn’t quite figure out how to make it beat normally again.
She sat down on the couch by the window, holding her notebook in her lap. And she started to write.
A prayer, really, more than a song. For what she wished could have been. For who she wished he could be, and who she wished she could be for him.
Somebody, someday would be enough to tear down the walls in his heart. She was only sorry that it wasn’t her.
A tear slipped down her cheek. She had really thought that she was done crying over Flint Carson.
She’d thought that it had scabbed over.
That she had come to a place of reconciliation with it.
But he was here. And the problem was finding out that her feelings weren’t anywhere near as different now from then as she would like them to be.
She closed her eyes, and she let herself remember. Because maybe that would jolt her back to reality. Maybe that would remind her.
It was so easy to remember that summer. To remember the beginning. To remember the end.
Chapter 8
Before
The house was beautiful. They had driven separately, so that they could go their separate ways after, because it made the most sense, after all. They still weren’t claiming to be a couple or anything like that. They were friends who kissed a lot.
And she was still trying to sort through her feelings for him. Or rather, trying desperately to come up with something to call him that wasn’t as terrifying as the word that seemed to echo inside of her whenever she thought of him.
She’d brought her guitar, and she was looking forward to spending a little bit of time working on her music. They’d reached pretty much a dead end with her demo, but she knew that was just how it went. They had gotten a couple of completely unknown internet radio stations to play her songs, but nothing big. And definitely no interest from labels.
She wasn’t used to being on the coast. She got out of her truck and looked around: there were big, tall pines surrounding the house, and it was up on the edge of a sheer rock face, overlooking the great, pounding sea. The roar of it was intense, beautiful.
The front door to the house opened, and Flint stepped outside. Barefoot. She didn’t know why that was notable. Only that it was. It felt intimate. She was wearing her boots. The ones he had bought her. She hadn’t been able to help herself. But at least she hadn’t let him buy her a new truck. She just fixed the old one. That was reasonable.
“Glad you’re here.”
She smiled. “Me too.”
Her room was on the second floor, and had a breathtaking view of the ocean. It was also not his room. Which was fair. Because she had told him that she wasn’t having sex with him. So of course he’d given her a separate room.
But she was starting to feel like holding on to her virginity was more of a habit than anything she actually wanted.
She wanted him.
And it was so difficult to figure out how much of that was weakness or giving in to something, or being just like all the people who didn’t know better. When she was supposed to know better.
Know better than what?
He was a good man. He’d been nothing but a good man to her. He hadn’t pressured her into anything. Quite the opposite. He was being so respectful it was... It wasn’t like anything she’d ever been warned about; that was for sure. Her mother had told her that men only wanted one thing. But Flint seemed to want to talk to her, buy her cacti and boots and kiss her. Let her stay in a beautiful beach house. Share meals with her. Share drinks with her. Flint seemed to want a lot of things from her. And he gave a lot of things to her.
There was no map for this. Not in her experience. And maybe not in her mother’s experience either. It was okay that her mother would be wary. Upset about this. There were reasons she hadn’t told her mother that she was here. Reasons that she had never mentioned Flint to Darlene Martin.
But she had never known a man like Flint. Tansey never had before either. She couldn’t compare him to dire warnings that had nothing to do with him. He wasn’t just a cowboy. He was Flint Carson.
And he was everything.
But he couldn’t be what she stood on, what she leaned against. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be everything for right now.
