Page 78 of Rancher's Return

She made a decision then and there. She didn’t have any pride left to salvage, so she might as well go all in. Because the truth was she was held back by all of this. Exceedingly. Ridiculously. She was.

And she was stuck here with him. If she had this venue, this moment, to vent her spleen without anybody else being around to hear it, then why shouldn’t she take it? Why shouldn’t she say it all?

The spell was broken. This silent vow to never speak of what had passed between them.

And it hung between them all the same.

So why not? Why not keep going?

“We’ve never been fine,” she said.

“Sure we have been,” he said, his eyes cool. “We’ve been just fine this whole time. We’ve never had to have a come-to-Jesus, we’ve never had to shout about it. We’ve been fine since the morning we caught our parents sleeping together and lectured them the way they did us and moved right on into being family. Just fine.”

“That’s a lie,” she said. “And you know it. What we are is a mess of memory. And we won’t even let ourselves have the memories. Because we’re both just... In a stalemate. And I’m tired of it. I don’t feel normal around you. I never have. It’s been five years, and nothing feels normal. It doesn’t feel okay. I’m not over it.”

Suddenly, his unreadable eyes flashed with fire. It was like a veil had been torn away, and she could see him. She could really see him. Fury and all.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with that? You’re the one who broke up with me, remember? I don’t have shit to do with this awkwardness. I don’t have anything to do with this,” he said, moving his hand between them. “You didn’t ask me what I wanted. You told me how it was going to be, and now you’re angry? You think that somehow I’ve created the situation?”

“No,” she sputtered. “But I... You just always acted like nothing happened. You always acted like you were fine.”

“Oh, does that bother you, Lily? Did you want to break my heart? Would that have made things better for you? Easier? If you could have felt like you had power in the situation, would you be happier?”

“Of course not. I wanted things to be okay between us. I wanted to stop the relationship before we got in too deep. Before it was impossible for us to come back from it.”

Yet it had been too late.

That was the thunderous, ridiculous realization she had right then. Because they had been in love. She had spent all this time gaslighting herself into believing they hadn’t been. That they couldn’t possibly. Because they were too young. That it hadn’t been real. That they needed to go to college. That what they’d felt was a common thing. A useful connection that would be forgotten about in due time.

And instead, he was her defining heartbreak.

She thought of him that way sometimes, but not seriously. Her teenage heartbreak. How silly. How small. Except it had never been silly or small. It had left a crack inside of her that had never healed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I realize now that what I thought was wrong. I just thought we could...end it, and then it wouldn’t really be heartbreak. That we could end it, and then everything would be fine, because we were kids and we would get over it. But I’m not over it. I’m not. It isn’t that I need you to have a broken heart about it, Colton, it’s that I need to admit that I do. It’s that I have never gotten over this. It’s that I went to college and met other people, and I didn’t feel interested in them at all. It’s that I never even let anyone else kiss me. Because I couldn’t handle it. It’s because... I’m still a virgin, because I can’t get over this, and I can’t deal with it, because I’ve been lying to myself about what it is. It’s because I never called it what it really was. It was love. And I broke my own heart. So what am I supposed to do with that?”

She was breathing hard, and she felt humiliated. Small. Maybe this was why small talk was so hard between them. They had nothing small to say to each other. But apparently there were a lot of big things.

“Don’t tell me this shit,” he said.

“Why not?”

He moved closer to her. “Because I can’t know that you haven’t touched another man. That you haven’t kissed one, let alone had sex. I can’t know that.”

“Why not?” She pressed. She didn’t care about Beth right then. Because what did Beth have to do with them? What could she possibly be next to the enormity of this? What could anything possibly be next to this?

Why had Lily been so quick to push aside her own feelings when she had been in the middle of this?

She couldn’t answer that question right now, because the only thing was that heat rising up inside of her. The fire and determination to do something with the yawning ache inside of her.

She needed it. She needed him.

It was the only thing.

The only cure. The only possible answer.

“I can’t know it,” he said. “Because I’m going to end up taking it as a reason to do what I wanted to do for a long time.”

“What is that?”

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