Page 16 of Swift and Saddled

I watched as he removed the large slab of wood from the front door with a grunt, and desperately tried to ignore the butterflies in my stomach.

Honestly, the reaction I was having to him was cause for concern.

I didn’twantto react this way. My body didn’t typically respond to people like this—not even my ex-husband, although he didn’t want me either, so that could’ve been part of it. Still, this wasn’t normal for me, and I didn’t like it. It made my head fuzzy, and I needed that little asshole to be crystal fucking clear.

Wes turned back to me and I quickly looked away, avoiding eye contact as I moved into the house.

When I got inside, I looked around and felt the same feelings I’d felt outside, but there was one that was so unexpected that it made my heart jump into my throat.

Hope.

Chapter 8

Wes

I was an idiot.

But at least I was aware I was an idiot.

In this situation, though, I would’ve lost no matter which decision I made. I either could’ve let her fall, or I could’ve caught her. I would’ve felt bad for weeks if I’d let her fall, but I also felt bad now for touching her—even if it was to keep her from hitting the dirt—when she very obviously did not want to be touched.

My hands had reached for her before I even knew what they were doing. Then she was in my arms and my world stopped again.

Just like it did when she’d rolled her car window down today.

And just like it did last night.

I didn’t know how to deal with this. I’d been attracted to people before, had a few girlfriends, but not for years.

And honestly, I didn’t mind. At the risk of sounding like an asshole, I knew there were women in Meadowlark who wanted me—for either a fling or some sort of relationship.The older ladies in Meadowlark were always dying to set me up with their niece or their granddaughter, saying I needed to find a nice girl and settle down, and the Meadowlark gossip mill could never figure out why I hadn’t done that.

It was that word “nice” that frustrated me.

It wasn’t a bad word, but to me it didn’t feel like a good one. I’d always been called a “nice” guy. It didn’t matter the context—with friends, with women, with strangers—I was always “nice.”

Again, not bad, not good—just there.

Maybe that’s why the thought of a nice girl from this nice town didn’t feel like…enough for me.

But sometimes I wanted it to be.

The truth—at least part of it—was that I liked my life as is. I never felt that because I wasn’t in a relationship I was missing out or anything.

The other part of it was more personal. It was deep-rooted insecurity that came from having a brain that I sometimes felt like wasn’t my own.

I’d been diagnosed with major depressive disorder about five years ago. At this point, I’d learned to live with it, and I had a regimen—medication, therapy, physical activity—that worked for me, which meant that things didn’t get as dark as they used to. It’s why I liked to draw too. Drawing helped my brain be kinder to me.

Logically, I had the depression bull by the horns.

But depression wasn’t a logical disease. It was an unexpected cold front in the middle of July. It was impossible to predict, which meant that I spent much of my time worrying about when the other shoe was going to drop. Not if, butwhenI would sink into another dark hole and have to decide to claw my way out of it.

Even when I was happy, I was thinking about when I wouldn’t be.

Honestly, it was exhausting. It took up so much of my brain even though I recognized that there wasn’t very much I could do about it.

That’s what I meant when I said that my brain didn’t feel like my own sometimes. It felt like it belonged to my mental illness instead.

And, frankly, that sucked.

---