My temper faded.
I was older now, and rational arguments always took the sting out of my anger, leaving me low and lacking and very aware of how much I still had to learn. I pretended to be a good person, but in reality, I wasn’t.
“Okay, Mom.” I nodded. “I’ll be nice.”
“Thank you, Jacob.”
I padded into the kitchen, nudging her out with a smile. “I’ll cook dinner. Go sit down and relax.”
“Okay.” Standing on tiptoes, she dared kiss my cheek, and I schooled my need to rock backward out of her reach. Her soft lips stung rather than filled me with comfort, and my eyes shot to the blown-up photograph of Dad, Mom, and me when I was five.
The ghost I lived with shook its head.
The fear I carried clutched me closer.
Tearing my gaze from the perfect family moment, I sliced into a mushroom and shoved aside what I truly wanted to say, to admit, to confess.
Hope might be lost, but…so was I.
Still.
I’d always been lost.
I’d most likely always be lost.
And one lost person definitely wasn’t qualified to help another.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hope
* * * * * *
MY EYESIGHT HADN’T changed.
My body was no different.
My heart exactly the same.
Yet as I stepped from security clearance, scanned the small crowd collecting loved ones, and noticed Jacob Ren Wild dressed in scruffy jeans, a black long-sleeve shirt, and a tanned, sweat-stained cowboy hat, I no longer felt like me.
My eyes saw differently.
My body reacted strangely.
My heart shed off its chrysalis and grew wings.
Wings that fluttered and tickled as I studied the man who’d replaced the boy I used to know.
Funny how I remembered what he looked like. Funny that I remembered his stubborn stares, surly sulks, and wary distress. But I hadn’t truly remembered.
I hadn’t truly seen.
Before, I’d seen him with a child’s eyes. Eyes wide with wonderment for a boy older than me. A boy I believed had the answers to death and dying. A boy who had the lifestyle I wanted but could never hope to earn.
Today, as I pulled to a stop in front of him and our gazes locked and the world fell away, I didn’t see him through the eyes of that little girl anymore. I saw him as a woman. I might still be young, and still hold romantic ideals with a soul full of loneliness, but I was awake, I was aware, I was knowing.
“Hello, Hope.”
His voice held a deeper, more jaded quality to it.
His skin was slightly weathered from working outdoors.
His body stronger, eyes darker, his face a landscape of roughness, judgment, and warning.
But in his cool, unnerving stare, I found something I didn’t know I’d lost. I earned something I’d misplaced. Retrieved something I’d walked away from.
He was the penny on the street you picked up for good luck. The four-leaf clover you tucked into the pages of a book for good fortune. The wish you made to the starry sky, believing there had to be more than this.
My suitcase was suddenly as heavy as the world. My fingers opened, releasing it.
And I did something.
Something unpermitted and uninvited but something I should’ve done many years ago.
Opening my arms, I crashed into him. My cheek pressed against his heart. My body to his body. I shivered at the scent of leather and horse and hay, nuzzling him, hugging his warm strength, digging nails into rigid muscles that flexed and flinched beneath my invasion.
For a second, time stopped.
The noisy airport faded. The anxious need to find something bigger than myself no longer hissed like static.
All that existed was us.
There.
Linked and joined and bound.
But then, it was over.
His fingers pried my elbows away, unwinding my arms and pushing me out of reach. His eyes blackened with torment. His jaw clenched with pain. And I understood that touch between us was something I needed, but something he would never tolerate.
All the boys in Scotland paled in comparison. Other kisses. Other dates. Other flirts. Nothing mattered; nothing was more real, more desirable, more unattainable than standing in front of Jacob Wild, begging him to notice me, all the while knowing he never would.
Letting me go, he gave me a harsh look, then ducked to collect my abandoned suitcase. His gaze travelled over me, from the top of my head to the toes of my new riding boots, and he swallowed.
Just once.
A swallow that spoke volumes to a girl who’d already made up her mind that pain was better than loneliness and she would do whatever it took to heal him.
* * * * *
I stared at the ceiling Jacob had no doubt stared at as a child. I stroked blue sheets he’d most likely slept in and listened to crickets and night silence that had serenaded him to sleep.
The drive to Cherry River had been a fairly silent one. Apart from the occasional question from me and the short answer from Jacob, we’d sat motionless as he drove us to the small town where he lived.