Page 75 of A Marriage Pact for the Cowboy

2014. They were through high school now. Was Amelia still obsessed with Maxwell? Was she remembering their marriage pact and dreaming about it?

Eryn fumbled the next diary, and it dropped open. She clenched her eyes shut as she closed it then tore it. She needed her eyes open to feed the fire, though.

This was getting easier, year by year. With every destroyed diary, the backpack in her lap grew lighter. Her heart grew lighter.

Eryn was unlikely to conjure up memories of her twin’s devotion and love for her, but they weren’t in those books, anyway.

They might be.

No. They weren’t.

Eryn tossed the last three into the fire without ripping them first. She needed them gone. Absolutely, irrevocably gone.

Now, they were.

The panic subsided, but where had the tears come from? “I’m sorry, Amelia,” she whispered. “I forgive you.”

Bryce snorted and stalked from the room, his boot heels clacking across the floor until the lodge doors closed behind him.

She’d survived burning the journals while Bryce watched.

And she had a new girlfriend — Paisley Teele — who had her back like no one ever had before. She reached to hug her. “Thank you.”

Chapter

Twenty-Four

She wasn’t at the lodge. She wasn’t at the duplex. Where could she be? The stable? Maxwell snapped his fingers. That was likely.

Yeah, he could text or phone her, but the way things were between them, she might not answer, and that was unacceptable.

He pointed his truck up Pegasus Lane and pulled to a stop beside the stable doors. The round pen was empty. No Echo. No Eryn. He jumped out of his truck and strode to the doors.

Inside the horse barn, he paused a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. Listened, but the only sounds that came to his ears were swishing tails and shifting feet.

He made his way toward Echo’s stall and the makeshift office nook, then stopped in his tracks when he caught sight of Eryn with her arms wrapped around the filly’s neck, her long blond hair curtaining her face.

Was that a sniffle? Man, she was crying.

A knife twisted in Maxwell’s gut. Janessa had been right. He’d been too focused on his own stuff to think about how he was affecting Eryn. Yeah, he’d been a little hurt by her dad’s interrogation and Eryn seemingly ignoring him at breakfast yesterday, but had his response been any better?

No. No, it had not.

“Eryn?” He kept his voice soft so as not to startle her.

Her head whipped around, her eyes large. “Maxwell?”

“I thought I might find you here. Do you have a few minutes?”

She closed her eyes and squeezed Echo’s neck as though she were gathering strength. Finally, she managed, “Okay,” as though she’d accepted being led to the gallows.

Eryn was killing him. “Hey. Come here.” He held his arms out to her.

She bit her lip and let go of the filly but kept her distance. “Just tell me what you need to say.”

Did she think he’d changed his mind about their relationship? Far from it. He tugged one of her hands free and pulled her gently down the alleyway and out the doors into the early November sunshine. A set of bleachers nearby offered seating for the gymkhanas Paisley and Weston arranged for kids to test their horsemanship prowess.

Still holding Eryn’s hand, Maxwell settled on the second level. She pulled free and sat down nearby. But not close. He turned to study her.

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