Page 100 of The Brave and the Reckless

My throat momentarily tightened at the mention of her name.

“No.” I’d wanted to. I’d opened her contact detailsmultiple times a day, only to lock my screen and shove the phone back in my pocket. I wanted to hear her voice and her laugh as she told me about her days, and for her to call mecowboy. I also owed her an apology, but even if she agreed to talk to me, it wouldn’t change the outcome. She’d always meant to leave after the summer. I had to live with the jagged edge that remained. So I swallowed everything I wanted to say to Esra and every detail I wanted to pry from Sanny, and asked, “Why?”

“I tried today, but she hung up on me.” He sighed and scratched the back of his neck. We hadn’t talked about his sister since the day I landed her in the hospital, after he’d informed me that his parents had booked her on a red-eye back to New York. “I think I messed up.”

“Yeah… I think we both did.”

“What did you do?” He sounded genuinely puzzled.

I raised my brows at him. He may not have known that we’d been together, but he had seen how I’d let her fall off the horse just like everyone else in the park that day.

“Because of the accident? Man, that wasn’t your fault.”

“We fought over her disappearing and partying all weekend, and the tension between us affected Tornado. I shouldn’t have let her sit on an agitated horse, Sanny. I should have helped her out of the saddle.” My throat tightened again and turned my voice hoarse. “I really fucked up. I’m so sorry.”

“Noah, with all due respect…” He whipped his flat hand over the back of my head. It was barely hard enough to cause me to nod.

“What was that for?” I groaned.

“Just trying to smack your brain back into place.” Helaughed and shook his head. Clearly this hadn’t been torturing him like it had me. “Accidents happen. It sucks that the outcome tends to be worse for her, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was just an accident. She could have just as easily slipped in the mud and still dislocated her shoulder.”

My gaze snapped past him to the stables, where we had lost our footing and dropped into the mud. She had panicked and prodded at me until I reassured her that I was fine. It just clicked now. Esra lived with the constant awareness that one bad fall could seriously injure her.

“Tell her that I’m sorry anyway, okay?” Even if he didn’t blame me for the accident, I’d still caused her serious pain. “I’m sorry she got hurt.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to me. I think I get it though.” He grimaced and rubbed a hand over his knuckles. “I called my dad yesterday.Icalledhim. My parents, who have called every single day all summer, haven’t actually reached out since Esra went back home.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. Made me realize that I let them treat me like an extension of the tight leash they keep on her.”

“They bubble-wrap her,” I echoed the words Esra had used to describe her upbringing.

“Yeah, kind of.” He slapped his hands against his knees. “Anyway, I have the rest of the shower curtain stuff in the car. They didn’t have oil-rubbed bronze, only Venetian bronze, but they look the same to me. The Home Depot guy said the color variation…”

His words faded into the background as we walked around his car and I grabbed the curved curtain-rodpieces from his trunk. They would come together in an oval to hang above the tub in the master bathroom. It was a cheaper option than getting a glass wall fitted under the slanted roof, and Esra had called itfarmhouse chic. In another life, I didn’t care that they were the wrong shade of dark brown. In this one, however, this wasn’t the color Esra had picked and put on the list of renovations, and it felt wrong.

Sanny would probably smack me over the head again if I asked him to return this. I didn’t even have an image of the right color in mind.

All I knew was that these were the incorrect bronze, and Esra was gone, and I didn’t have so much as a picture of us, and I couldn’t tell my best friend that my chest felt hollow without her here. And it was like we never even existed.

I glanced at the stables again, wishing I could walk over and let Tornado steady me. But the stalls were far from ready, so my horses were still in Bravetown’s care for now. Even the one comfort I’d always relied on was gone, and I only had myself to blame. Because I couldn’t stomach staying in Staff House B and waiting for someone else to move into Esra’s room, fillhercupboard with healthy foods, hang a towel onherhook in the bathroom. They couldn’t just replace her.

She hadn’t just left her job at Bravetown. She had left me.

And I wasn’t ready for my world to move on without her.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

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ESRA

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