Page 3 of Finding Limits

“They can’t be dead. God wouldn’t allow it. He needs them.” I don’t know what she’s talkin’ about but when I automatically go to comfort her she steps back and knocks into one of the chairs behind her. It startles her and when she screams I hold up both my hands to assure her that I won’t touch her.

“Calm down. It’s just a chair. You're safe here,” I tell her. Jimmer wasn’t bull-shitting. This girl really is messed up.

“You can’t leave me.” She shakes her head frantically. “You can’t leave me out here all alone.” Her eyes fill up with tears and I feel her pain as if it’s my own.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll stay.” I move slowly, managing to get a little closer.

“Promise?” she whispers as those tears spill from the corners of her eyes and roll down her cheeks. She’s so pretty and it makes the urge to wipe them away hard to hold back.

“I promise. I’ll stay right here. I’m not gonna let anythin’ happen to you, Everleigh. And no one’s comin’ for ya. There ain’t no one left to come.”

Present Day

Iwake up with a start when I hear her screams. Screams that sound as if she’s being split open and pulled inside out. It puts a pain in my own chest when I’m reminded that there's nothing I can do to make it better.

It’s been six months since Everleigh came here, six months of me sleeping on this damn couch and six months of me listening to her relive all those horrors of her past without being able to comfort her.

I throw off my blanket and get up from the couch, heading toward her door then sliding down it onto my ass and resting my head back against it.

“Everleigh. You're dreamin’, darlin’,” I call out, hoping that she’ll hear me. I can’t go in there when she's in this kinda state. I learned that lesson on the first night I spent here with her. She damn nearly clawed the skin off my flesh when I tried to wake her. Not that it bothered me, I’d take her scratches every night of the week if it meant I got to hold her. They ain’t what keep me on the other side of this door during her terrors. It’s the fear that I saw in her eyes, and knowing that during that split second, she thought I was her monster. I never wanna see that again.

“Everleigh! You ain’t there no more,” I yell out again, needing her to hear me. I can’t stand the thought of her being back at that place and reliving whatever she’s been through, over and over. I wanna smash through the door and scoop her up tight in my arms, and the frustration of being unable to builds up inside me and makes me wanna hurt somebody.

All this anger and pain is confirmation of what I’ve been trying to avoid since she came here. The last thing I want to admit is that I’ve grown a fondness for the pretty, broken girl that Jimmer sent here to heal. She may not have made much progress, and she still barely speaks a word, but every morning she gives me a smile over the breakfast table that sets me up for the day I got ahead of me.

Life for me has changed a helluva lot since she came here. I pretend that I’m okay since we lost Dalton a few months ago, but I ain’t. I see his face every time I close my eyes. I think of all the things I had left to teach him and I beat myself up constantly for the way I let him down. That boy had a heart too kind for this world, and it was that heart that got him killed.

The ranch is too busy for me to lose myself, especially now that Garrett has become Fork River’s new mayor. And as much as I’d like to lock myself away in this cabin with Everleigh and pretend the rest of the world don’t exist, I force myself each day to push on. It’s what Dalton would do.

I’m wise enough to know that it’s not healthy for me to feel this way about the girl. She’s far too young for me, and although her progress is slow, it’s bound to happen one day. Then, just like a baby bird, she's gonna wanna fly from the safety of this nest. It’s something I try to remind myself of every time I look at her. But right now, she’s here, and I can’t help but appreciate everything about her, even all those broken pieces that may never get fixed.

“The Lord shall punish,” she starts to chant, and I look up at the ceiling and sigh. I stopped trying to picture what the fuckers in that cult might have done to her. All it does is make me rage, and rage is not what Everleigh needs around her. She needs calm, she needs peace, and I want so badly to be the one who gives her all that.

“Everleigh, you ain’t there no more, darlin’,” I call out over her cries, swallowing the large lump that’s wedged in my throat. “Follow my voice, wake yaself up for me.” That pain just keeps on splitting me open, making it harder and harder for me to stay on this side of the door.

The screaming abruptly stops, and all that can be heard are desperate breaths that tell me she’s coming out of it. “That’s right, you leave all that behind, and come back to me,” I coax her back to a world where she’s safe.

“Mitch.” Hearing my name whisper from her lips makes me smile to myself.

“I’m right here, darlin’, right here,” I assure her, keeping that smile on my face as I imagine her nestling her head back into her pillow and taking comfort in the fact she knows I’m just the other side of this door.

“Thank you.” Her voice comes out so weak I barely hear it but I still feel it’s warmth in my chest

“Anytime,” I manage, before closing my eyes and letting myself fall back to sleep.

“Mornin’.” I lift up my hat when Everleigh comes outta the bedroom. She stops and stares at me in both shock and horror when she realizes that I’m cooking breakfast.

“I should?—”

“You sit yaself down. You’ve done breakfast every mornin’ since ya been here. I figured it’s my turn.” I pull out a chair for her and ignore how uneasy she looks about the entire situation. I’ve spent the past six months allowing her to do things her way. She keeps this place immaculately clean, she prepares every meal we eat, and she does all the laundry. I’m guessing it’s what the women, back where she came from, were expected to do, and I decided last night that this girl ain’t ever gonna heal if she don’t get pushed outta her comfort zone.

She sits with her back straight and a nervous look on her face as her eyes watch me plate up the turkey rashers and scrambled eggs that I’ve made us.

“Here, I’ll bet it don’t taste as good as yours, but it’s nice to have breakfast made for ya, ain’t it?” I’ve learned that over the past six months, too. Her breakfasts sure beat the shit that gets rustled up in the bunkhouse.

“Tha…Thank you.” She forces a smile at me as I place a plate in front of her, then I take the space opposite her with my own.

I watch on as she links her fingers and bows her head, and after she’s whispered her prayers she looks up at me and smiles awkwardly. I never join her in her prayers, I lost faith in the man upstairs when he took my nephew from me, and I’m sure she thinks I’m going to Hell for it.

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