Gentling the Cowboy(42)

Eventually he covered one of her delicate hands with his own. “You are a good woman, Sarah. You deserve a man who can treat you better than I will.”

“I had a good man. We bored ourselves into a breakup.”

Tony chuckled lightly, further distancing himself from the tortured images of his dreams. “I never know what you’re going to say.”

Sarah kissed the base of his neck, then hugged him again. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” When he didn’t respond to her joke, Sarah said, “Everyone has scars, Tony. If yours were on your skin and not in your heart, would you hide them from me? Would you be ashamed?”

Tony rolled onto his back and pulled her to his side again, looking at the dark ceiling instead of her. “If they were as ugly, I might.”

While rubbing one hand on his chest, Sarah said, “I killed my younger brother.”

Tony’s arm tightened around her, knowing that although she believed that, a woman like her never would have.

She said, “We were at my family’s lake house. My parents were cooking. Charlie went to ask them a question. I was supposed to watch Phil, but I didn’t notice that he’d stopped making his sandcastle. I don’t remember which daydream to blame. They found his body a few hundred feet away. He’d drowned. Not a sound. Not a scream. Just there and then gone. He was only three.”

“How old were you?” Tony asked, feeling her pain entwine with his own.

“Eight. Old enough to know better.” Five words, but they were heavy with years of self-recrimination.

“Too young to be responsible,” Tony growled.

Sarah shrugged and shook within his embrace. “That’s what everyone said, but I know the truth. It was my fault. I was supposed to watch him.”

He hugged her to him. He sought the words that would ease her pain, but he had never found them—not even for himself.

“Whatever you did, Tony, has keeping it inside made you feel better? Or has it festered? I would give anything to go back and undo what I did that day, but I can’t. All I can do is face it and try to go on.”

“Go to sleep, Sarah.”

She leaned up and kissed his jaw. “Okay, but think about what I said.”

He did.

Long after she fell asleep again, he stared into the darkness and thought about what she had shared and why hearing it had touched him so deeply.





Chapter Twelve




Sarah woke up in Tony’s arms and froze. Her cheeks warmed as she remembered the drive to the cabin. Normally she would have said that most displays of affection were best kept private. She and Doug had shared quick public kisses at the beginning or end of a date, but they’d both agreed that more than that was inappropriate.

She and Tony had no such agreement.

In fact, it was a little unsettling to consider what she’d agreed to by coming with him to his cabin. All or nothing.

I agreed to “all” without reading the fine print. What if “all” exceeds my temporary throw-caution-to-the-wind-to-discover-the-real-me comfort zone? Desire sliced through her as she remembered how good it had felt to feel so out of control and safe at the same time.

She ran her hand over Tony’s chest and followed the trail of hair to his navel. She and Doug had always gotten dressed after sex, perhaps a habit left over from a lack of privacy in college. They’d never slept nude together.

Funny thing to be sad about. I hope he finds someone who shows him all the joys that neither of us thought to try. There was something wonderfully innocent about sleeping together in this natural state. No barriers. Trust in its most elemental form.

I do trust you, Tony. I don’t care what you did, I know you’re a good man. What happened to you? What can’t you forgive yourself for?

She cringed when she remembered how she’d blurted out what had happened to her younger brother. It was something none of her friends knew. No one in her family spoke of it after that summer. Family photos never included Phil, and there were times when she tried to conjure his face and couldn’t. That was when she felt the most guilt, when she could almost forget.

Denial, even when unanimously adopted, never cured—it only hid. And pain that is not faced festers, just as Tony’s had. I was living a lie. I needed to come here to see why I’m so unhappy. I don’t want the perfect life they crafted for me. I don’t want to forget it happened. I want to carry of photo of Phil in my pocket. I want to remember him on his birthdays. I want to apologize to him for not understanding how quickly a life can be lost.

All because I’m a daydreamer with stories in my head as vivid as reality sometimes. Characters who feel like friends. Worlds I build whether I write them down or not. Is that why I couldn’t write? Am I holding myself back because I blame my stories for Phil?