Page 140 of We Redeemed the Rain

Bea made me want to try.

She was leaving soon with Jackie. Where would that leave us?

Every breath I drew pulled me toward her, her radiance as vital to my life as the oxygen.

Her warmth pressed against me, her head inmy lap…I could fill pages about the relief unraveling in my chest. Felt like a missing piece of my life was finally clicking into place. Making her dinner, caring for her, touching her hair…it was the perfect way to forget about my own problems.

She gave a cozy hum, snuggling in closer then spoke with her eyes closed. “What are you thinking about?”

“You.”

“What about me?”

“You…make me feel calmer. Since you got here, I haven’t had one panic attack. And I think it’s ‘cause of you.”

As wonderful as Bea was, I knew her presence wouldn’t magically take my panic attacks away. But maybe the universe was cutting me some slack. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for the reprieve.

The attacks, mild and severe, riddled my day-to-day existence. When I had a severe episode, I experienced a total collapse. Sometimes it was days, weeks even, before I’d feel normal and fully-functioning again. Maybe I would never fully understand why, but some days…I felt stuck in the past, stuck in the fear. And I couldn’t escape. Out of the blue, I’d be back at my Mom’s house. I wondered if those moments, those panic attacks or whatever they really were, would prevent me from ever having a normal, peaceful life.

“Do you have panic attacks a lot?”

“Not as much as I used to, but often enough to worry about ‘em.”

“Do you still go up to the hayloft?”

“Not much anymore.”

“Do you still write?”

“No.”

“Oh, that’s sad. What do you do when you’re having a bad day then?”

“Work, mainly.”

“You work yourself into the ground.”

She wasn’t wrong. I worked to avoid the attacks. And I worked to move past them.

I had no idea how I used to run Meadowbrook without Jesse. He’d come to expect my down days and took over when needed.

When I was younger, I used to crawl to a safe place to write myselfout of the slump. But without words, I didn’t have anywhere to take my heart. So I worked until my muscles burned, until my brain turned to sludge, and until the muscle deep in my chest numbed to the pain. I could go through the monotony of ranch life, with my feet in two different realities.

Kind of, anyway.

But I ached for some way to put the burden down instead of just pretending it didn’t exist. I yearned for a way to tackle it head on instead of running. I was so sick of running. Every moment of every day, I worried about exhaustion overtaking me. One day, I was going to put my weapons down, surrender, and never come back.

Pretty sure Cooper had already done just that.

Ready to change the topic, I picked up her wrist and took the rubber band off it. Wordlessly, I directed her to sit up and I pulled all her hair into the palm of my hand. I ran my fingers through then separated it into three pieces, starting a loose weave.

Bea’s shoulders pulsed with a tiny laugh. “Wait. Are you braiding it?”

I smiled. “Yep.”

“You know how to braid?”

I wrapped the outside strand to the middle over and over, slowly moving further from her head as I talked. “Every summer that Randi came to the ranch, she’d bring an entire fish tackle box-lookin’ thing full of every imaginable hair product. Clips, bands, freaking glitter. Not for her, mind you. For the horses. Back then we had ‘bout six or seven and every one of them would look like a craft project by the time she was done with ‘em.”

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