Page 74 of Beat of Love
“You’ve always settled for the good ones, you know that? The clean-cut, polite, mama’s-boy types. Like Sully and Rich. But none of ’em stuck. Maybe it’s not that they were wrong — it’s that they weren’t your kind of right. Maybe, deep down, you’ve been holdin’ out all this time for the bad boy you met all those years ago.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she muttered half-heartedly.
“Is it?”
Brandy glanced down at the iPad. Rafferty’s hand moved slowly down Elsa’s neck as the mare rested her head on his shoulder.
“He never sleeps,” she added in a whisper, her chest tightening. “He looks like a man being hunted by his own memories.”
Jackie’s voice softened. “That’s because he probably is.”
“I know.” How she wanted to have him share his burden. Let her carry his load for a while. But he refused.
“Brandy-Lyn.” Jackie’s voice sharpened. “You need to be careful. You’re not just falling for a man — you’re falling for a man still trying to figure out if he’s someone worth loving. And if you really want him . . . you’re gonna have to wait him out. Let him do the work. Let him heal.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then it wasn’t meant to be,” Jackie said simply. “But you’ll walk away knowing you didn’t try to fix him, didn’t bend yourself into knots to earn love he wasn’t able to give.”
Like I did with Mom. The thought surfaced before she could stop it — sharp-edged and bitter.
And look where that had gotten her? A childhood spent chasing scraps of affection, endless years of asking herself what was so wrong with her, why she was never enough.
She didn’t want that with Rafferty. “I know.” She closed her eyes, nodding even though Jackie couldn’t see it. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. And on that note …” Jackie drawled. “It’s way past midnight. I need my beauty sleep. So do you. And for goodness’ sake, no more spying on your emotionally unavailable bad boy with the morally ambiguous past.”
Brandy said goodnight and hung up, her gaze returning to the iPad screen. Her finger hovered over the close button.
Rafferty stood at the gate now. He looked directly at the camera.
And shook his head at her.
Part Two
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;
the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
— Kahlil Gibran
19
Out of the rubble
Rafferty stood just inside the office door, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, eyes making a slow sweep. The spacious room was quiet. No diplomas on the wall. No books arranged by color. Just a worn leather couch, a couple of matching armchairs, and a man in his fifties who looked more like a college professor than a shrink seated in one of them.
“Rafferty,” the man said, rising and extending a hand. “Trent Sykes.”
He knew the good doctor had pulled his file from rehab. Knew about the jungle, the torture, the drugs, the forced injections, the half-dead shell of a man Essie had stumbled across. The man knew too much already.
But not everything.
Not the worst of it.
Not what had led to the jungle. And what he’d done to survive.
Still, he understood that if he wanted to claw his way out from the rubble of his life, if he wanted a shot at something real, he had to take the next step.
