Her husband had been a good man, who people liked easily. Not long after they’d met, Annie and Dave had invited her and Zack over to their house for dinner. Bree doubted they did that sort of thing with all of their customers.
When they invited her to join them for dinner this time, part of her wanted to turn them down, but she didn’t, and she was glad of it.
She ended up staying over, and the next morning, she and Annie went riding—another thing she and Zack loved to do together.
The more days she spent alone, the better she felt. She still believed there was a reason she was supposed to meet Red—maybe she hadn’t been as ready to be alone as she thought when she first arrived at the ranch. Or maybe Red was a conduit back to the places she and Zack had been, or to the things they’d done together. Would she have been as brave, facing it alone, as she was, doing it with Red by her side?
What about Jace? That was the question he asked. Was she still feeling the same way about him? Even though she’d spent most of her time thinking about Zack, Jace was always there in the back of her mind. She dreamed about him as often as she dreamed of Zack, and when she closed her eyes and imagined someone’s arms arou
nd her, it was almost always Jace’s.
“I do,” she answered, after too much time had passed.
Jace had stopped breathing, waiting for her to answer.
“What about you?” she asked.
“Do you really need to ask?” he laughed.
“Yes, Jace. I do,” she didn’t laugh.
“It’s different for me, Bree. I’m not mourning someone. I guess, I am in a way, but it’s different. I’m estranged from my brother, and I need to fix it. Part of doing so is me coming to terms with who I am. But all of this, I could do with you by my side.”
“You could?”
“You make me want to be a better man, Bree. I can’t explain it, but you do. All my life I’ve worried more about being liked than being a good man. As long as everyone saw the fun, happy side of me, they’d never know the guilt and shame I carried around with me.”
Jace closed his eyes and imagined she was next to him. “You have this way of looking at me, and when you do, I feel as though you can see all the way through me. I can’t hide the guilt or shame from you. More, I don’t want to.”
“I don’t know what to say, Jace. I’m flattered that you feel that way; I love that you feel that way. But—”
“No, don’t say it.”
That made her laugh. “That’s usually what I say to you. But I can assure you, you don’t know what I’m going to say any more than I do with you. You’ve proven that to me over and over again.”
“You’re gonna say I need to do this for myself, not for you.”
“Well, damn, Jace Rice, I guess you did know what I was going to say.”
“I am, Bree. I’m doing this for me, not for you. You just make me want to do it. You understand the difference in what I’m saying, right?”
“I do.”
He told her about Tucker’s paintings, the ones he’d seen yesterday.
“I wish I’d seen them, Jace. I can’t believe how hard I tried not to. I could’ve…”
“It was better that you didn’t. I gotta admit, Lyric threw me for a loop, but it was better the way it happened. I was blindsided, but I think I needed to be.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I haven’t figured it out yet. What do you think I should do?”
“Ride over.”
Two hours after Lyric dropped him off at Billy’s, Jace had one of the boarded horses saddled up and was headed across the field to see his brother, Tucker.
8