Page 126 of Last Chance Cowboy
She didn’t know why she felt this way. Why she felt so terrified, other than the reasons that she had given, but she felt like there was something else, and she couldn’t fully get a handle on it.
She was hyperventilating, though, felt like she was beingstrangled by the wet, stiff fabric on this dress that had made her feel like a princess moments ago, and now made her feel like a prisoner.
“Come on, I’ll get you up to my room. And I’ll get you some bathrobes from housekeeping.”
“I know Zane reserved us a room.”
She sounded miserable. She felt miserable.
“Yes. He did. But if he comes, I will simply tell him that it is guest confidentiality that I can’t say where you are. Obviously, he paid for a room, he gets to check into it.”
“I don’t want to hide from him. I just… I can’t give him what he wants.”
“He didn’t ask you for anything, you said it yourself.”
“But… he will want something. He will. That’s just how it works.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of the cost of loving people. They tend to want things. But they give a lot too.”
Marlowe ushered her out of the office and to the elevator. She stopped by housekeeping, grabbed a big, fluffy robe, and sent Cara down the hall with the key. She’d said she was going home to Cody, so she wouldn’t be using the apartment tonight.
Cara unlocked the door and walked in, everything squishy and wet and miserable.
She unzipped her dress, her cold skin relieved, as she walked into the bathroom and turned the shower on.
She stepped out of that dress and laid the robe out on the bathroom counter.
Then she sat on the closed toilet while she waited for the water to warm up, her face in her hands.
What was she doing? This was why she had thought that she needed training wheels before she tried to learn how to ride a real bike.
Because she had gone and gotten herself into a situationthat she wasn’t equipped to deal with. She had gone and gotten herself into a situation that was way too big for her to handle.
As she stepped underneath the warm shower spray, she let her tears blend in with the water, with the lingering rain.
If any of it was a blessing, she couldn’t feel it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Zane walked back into his cabin, his heart thundering against his ribs, feeling like a bag of broken glass. Sharp and shattered and bloody.
He didn’t know what he had expected, telling her that he loved her, and what he had wanted. What he had really wanted was to be completely all right with whatever her answer was. What he wanted was for it to be enough that he loved her, that he could feel that, and he wanted to be able to selflessly just marinate in that, and want nothing in return. But suddenly, he wanted it all. After a life of not having anything, he wanted everything. Because if there could be prom, if there could be love, why couldn’t there be marriage, and children, and forever?
God, he hadn’t believed in forever since he was a little boy.
He knew that it wasn’t guaranteed, not even now, but blessings would come, the rain would come, whether they deserved it or not, he just knew it. He was full to bursting with this new feeling, with this deep, crystal-clear belief, and she had said no.
And he loved her so damned much that he was going torespect that. He wasn’t even going to chase her down, not tonight, because he respected her so much, but it hurt. It really, really hurt, and he didn’t know that he could hurt like this.
Maybe that was a gift too.
To know that he could still care so much that he could still feel this pain.
He was alive.
Right now, this moment, walking into his empty cabin, missing her like this, it reminded him of that day. The day that he had walked in, and found out his whole family was gone. But it wasn’t that day. Because his heart, bloody and broken as it was, was still beating.
And so was hers.
