Page 111 of A Forever Kind of Rancher

She slid down the wall, clutching her purse to her breasts, tears rolling down her cheeks. Damn that stupid cowboy. And her stupid cab dilemma. The stupid phone mix-up. All those little things from that day that had turned into the biggest thing that had ever happened to her.

That had shaken everything in her, changed her irrevocably.

She was sitting in the hallway of a hotel she couldn’t afford, having failed at love, with a career that was crumbling. And it didn’t feel like the end of the world. It felt like the start of something big.

Something sad, with regard to losing Zack, but something big.

Her life was actually kind of a mess, for the first time in her memory. She stood up, took a deep, shaking breath. Her parents would not be proud of her behavior. Or where she was at in her job. But it wasn’t their life. It was her life. Her mess.

And she was going to embrace the heck out of it.

Chapter Nine

If he was hung over at the fundraiser tomorrow, Marsha was going to kill him. He didn’t really care. Except it was for charity, so maybe he should not make a total idiot of himself.

He sat down on the cement floor in the studio, whiskey bottle in hand, and tipped it back. Yeah, he was supposed to be showing these pieces for the Broken Hearts Foundation. Auctioning them off for the benefit of families who couldn’t afford medical expenses. For Tally. For children like her.

And here he was, drunk off his ass, or...on his ass, staring down a piece of art he couldn’t figure out, feeling like he’d been broken inside all over again.

How was that even possible? He was sure he hadn’t had a heart left to break. Or at least that the pieces that remained were too small to smash any further.

That was why he’d told her to go. It was why he’d had to have her leave, before he was tempted to reach out and take what she had on offer. When he full knew he had nothing to give back.

And yet, in spite of his best efforts he hadn’t escaped unscathed. And he knew she hadn’t.

But he was in hell. And any noise about him not being able to feel? Well, it was a lie, apparently. He hadn’t realized.

He pictured Grace as she’d looked when she’d walked out of the hotel room two nights ago. Pale, tears on her cheeks. He hated himself for making her look like that. Because even while he stood there, telling her he could never feel on that level again, he’d broken her.

He was such a bastard. Such a damn bastard.

He leaned back against the wall, his head hitting hard against the drywall. He barely felt it. It was cushioned by his drunkenness and the pain in his heart.

He looked at the iron figure in front of him. The unchanging, unbending, dead, iron figure that was...him.

That realization made him want to throw something across the room. He didn’t want self-actualization. He poured his grief into his work, he didn’t learn from it. He hardly believed in any of that stuff, it was just that he’d found when he didn’t create, he thought he’d explode from the emotion in him.

He’d never considered it therapy, but he could see now that it was.

And he imagined he was supposed to learn something from this dead piece of work that seemed to mean nothing. To give nothing.

He put his head against his knees, and squeezed his eyes shut. And all he saw was Grace. He hadn’t wanted for so long, he’d forgotten what it felt like. But right now he ached with it. And he was trapped.

Between gut-wrenching, blinding fear and a need that made his bones ache. Funny how everything in his life came down to the heart.

To a heart that was broken at birth and stopped beating long before it should have. To a heart that had been numb before Grace had come back in this life, and that was stuttering to life now, burning with each beat.

He staggered to his feet and went over to his worktable and dug through old materials. He had an idea. And he had no idea if it would fix his artwork, or fix him. Or if it was all just the alcohol making something dumb seem like something good.

But he had to try. Because there was one thing he did know, and that was that he couldn’t keep living like this. Because he wasn’t really living at all. He was existing. And until Grace, he hadn’t realized there was a difference.

She’d brought something deep and rich back into his life. Texture, sound and color. All things that scared the hell out of him. Because he’d adjusted to black and white. To cold iron and dead lifeless metal. Daring to want more seemed like a risk that wasn’t worth taking.

He should stick to this life. It was safer. He wouldn’t get hurt.

But it was dead. And inside, so was he.

“So then what’s the point?” he asked the empty room. He didn’t get an answer.

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