When they got back to the barn, she was ridden out. She got Micah settled and brought the other horses into the barn, swept it out, and walked around. She needed to keep busy. She pulled up a barn stool and read through the week-old newspaper someone had left behind.
She ran out of things to occupy herself. She had to go inside the house, but it was the last place she wanted to be.
Ben pulled up to his house a few minutes before ten. He thought about stopping at his parents’ place, but when he drove by all the lights were off, so he didn’t. He considered going back into town and swinging by The Goat, but it would be slow on a Sunday night this late in the ski season. Without a big crowd to distract him, being there would make him think of Liv. Everything did.
He went inside and slung his bag on the floor of the laundry room. He walked into his kitchen, and was disappointed, in it and the loneliness of his house.
Tomorrow his boys would be home, and he hoped their antics were enough to distract him. He was present with them, the same way his father had been with him. His boys were his world, the two most important humans on the planet to him. But now there was another human, a person, and he thought about her all the time.
His arms felt empty. He longed to hold her. He’d gotten used to being able to hold her whenever he wanted.
He went back into the laundry room and picked up his bag. He took it into his bedroom, threw it on the bed, and sat down next to it. He opened the zipper, pulling out the last thing he had packed. One of her scarves. He meant to tell her he took it before he left, but it slipped his mind. He wondered if she’d found his shirt, the one he left hanging on the knob on the back of her closet door. He’d left it for her on purpose.
He brought the scarf up to his nose and inhaled deeply. He loved her smell. He closed his eyes and imagined her with him. Scent was the most powerful of the senses when it came to remembering. He rested his head back on the pillow, holding her scarf close to him, and drifted to sleep.
Liv climbed into bed and slid under the sheets. They smelled of them, him and her together. She nestled into the pillow, breathing in the scent he left there.
She rolled to where her cell phone sat on the nightstand, and for the first time in almost a week, she checked the various social media sites. Nothing. She scrolled through photos he’d posted before, many from months ago. There were several of him playing the guitar. In some, he smiled straight at the camera. Those were her favorite.
She wondered if he made it home yet, or if he was still out on the road. She hadn’t heard from him since he left, but she hadn’t expected to. And she had no idea when she would again.
11
It had been three weeks since Ben left Liv’s house. They had now been apart longer than they’d been together. In his first few days home, he thought about calling or texting her at least once an hour. She answered when he sent her a text, but never sent one on her own, one that wasn’t in response to something he’d said. He called, she’d answer, and they’d talk. Sometimes when he called he got her voicemail. She’d call him back, but she never called him otherwise.
He kept her scarf tucked under his pillow, and now it smelled more of him than it did of her. He still missed her as much as he had the first day he’d been home.
The first week Ben kept busy with his boys. His mornings became about making breakfast, dropping them off at school, and coming home to try to get work done in the hours until he picked them up. At night, they worked on homework, ate dinner, and wrestled with bedtimes.
A week later, when it came time to take the boys to their mom’s, Ben wanted nothing more than to pack a bag, and head over the mountain to Liv’s. But he didn’t.
He spent the next few days thinking hard about whether his feelings for her were as strong as he believed them to be. Was it because she held herself back from him, did that only make him want her more? Was she a conquest he didn’t want to give up on until he won? Or was his need for her just a symptom of his loneliness?
He’d been so lonely after he’d gotten divorced that often he sought the comfort of any warm, feminine body. He hated to think that Liv was nothing more than someone to soothe that kind of ache. He didn’t think she was, he believed it was more than that. But if she wasn’t feeling what he was, how hard could he push? He needed to back off and give himself as much time to think as he was giving her.
In six weeks, he and the band would leave on tour. Next week all hell would break loose when the dates were announced. He had so much work to do between now and then, even if he wanted to go and see her, he wouldn’t be able to.
The band was scheduled to play the Paramount in Denver at the beginning of June, but she’d be in Europe with Renie by then. He couldn’t imagine not seeing her before she left, but he didn’t know what to do about it.
One of the other guys in the band took over their social media. The record company told them it should be less about Ben and more about CB Rice, so he’d stopped posting anything at all. He wondered if Liv had noticed.
Since Ben left, Liv had been hibernating. She avoided everyone to the point that even Paige stopped dropping by. She still called and texted, but Liv rarely responded with more than a one or two word answer.
Mark drove out to see if she needed anything. “Liv, there’s no music playing. I’ve never been here when you are, that there wasn’t music playing.”
“Silence is my music these days,” she answered.
When Liv reached the one month mark AB “after Ben” Paige showed up at the barn.
She walked in, and took Liv by the shoulders. “Enough! You either go and see him or let him come here, but this has to stop. You’re behaving as though you’re in mourning, and, Liv—he isn’t dead. This isn’t you. You need to snap out of it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, this is me. I am a very solitary person, Paige, I have been for years. I don’t have any experience with this kind of relationship.”
“Listen to me. Go and see him. Call him, right now, and go and see him.”
“I…can’t…”
“Why in the world not? Nothing is stopping you, other than your own stubbornness. He wants to see you.”