Page 73 of Nashville Cowboy
I may never have children.
How can I love my job, love my friends and family, and hate my life?
While everyone went back inside the lodge to dance some more, Eve wandered away for a quiet moment. Maybe if she was alone, she could stop these shallow breaths. She could tamp down the anger that had suddenly resurfaced.
That bastard took my life.
I’ll never be myself again.
In the next thought, she realized that if that were the case, she’d let him win. Her life had been saved for no good reason other than possibly the health and well-being of Stone Ridge’s large animals. And that wasn’t good enough. Her work wasn’tenough. She wanted to be free again to laugh, scream, and make love without reservation. To be held by Jackson all night long with nothing but flesh between them. To feel loved and precious.
She might still be technically young, but she felt old. Washed out. Nothing left to give. She walked until she took a seat on a bench tucked beneath an oak tree nearby. Her breaths were coming short and shallow. All the effort hadn’t worked. She fought a rising tide that would surely pull her under. She wrapped her arms around her waist and bent her head. A panic attack like this one hadn’t happened to her in at least a year. She had to think calm, happy thoughts. Her happy place.
Then she looked up and Jackson was standing in front of the bench. If he’d called out to her, she hadn’t heard him. His face changed from a curious cocked head, dimples flashing, to a deep crease between his eyebrows.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
Rather than answer she bent at the waist, her breaths coming shorter. “I’m…okay.”
“You’re not,” he said sitting beside her, tugging her into his arms. “Tell me what happened. How can I fix this?”
Lord help him, hestillwanted to fix everything. And that, more than anything, was what finally snapped her in half.
“No! You can’t fix this,” she wailed. “Don’t you get it? It’s too late for me.”
Every thread of emotion she’d held back since she’d decided that she wouldn’t waste any more anger rose to the surface and Eve sobbed and wailed about the unfairness of it all. She cried over how one snap decision could lead to so many painful outcomes. She cried because as long as that man was alive, she might never feel safe. She sobbed for the woman she used to be. For all the time she’d wasted.
“I want to be the woman you fell in love with. I want to be whole again, but I can’t. That Eve is gone.”
She sobbed, and cried, and Jackson just held her without saying anything at all. His hands glided up and down her spine in a comforting motion and he made soothing sounds. After a while, the panic ebbed, and as always, she felt completely drained. Exhausted.
“I’m s-sorry.”
He wiped away her tears with his thumb. “Don’t do that. Don’t be sorry. You have to know there’s nowhere I’d rather be than right here with you.”
“B-but I’m guessing you wish I hadn’t wet your shirt.”
“Big deal.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “I’ll get another one.”
“I haven’t had a p-panic attack like this for a year.”
“Then you were due.” He stood and offered his hand. “Let me get you home now and put you to bed.”
She rose and took his hand. “Is the party still going on?”
He took her hand, leading her to his truck. “When I left to find you, Hank had pulled Brenda out on the dance floor. Mima was dancing with Sadie’s father. Sadie and Linc may be gone, but the family will close the house down. No point in renting the lodge and the DJ till ten if everyone leaves early.”
“The Carvers do know how to throw a party.”
Jackson smiled. “This time, let’s leavethemto figure out their way home.”
Chapter 25
Jackson pulled out onto the road, then took Eve’s hand in his and brushed a kiss across her fingers. He did his best to concentrate on the road before him and ignore the whole-body ache he’d experienced while listening to Eve’s hitched breaths and sobs. She’d had a complete meltdown, probably a long time coming. He told himself she’d needed this moment to let go, to let go of all her emotions and fears along with all that anger she’d claimed to have conquered. She’d simply buried it somewhere deep inside.
But anger and pain were funny things. He ought to know. They seemed to reoccur now and again, just when a person thought they’d conquered them and forgiven someone or something. Sometimes, it was a process, but other times, anger and pain became a way of life. For him, it had taken simply seeing Eve again to eventually let his anger and pain go. But Eve might always have to deal with the repercussion of her attack, and his heart splintered over that. She was right that he’d wanted to make this better from the moment he’d heard, and he couldn’t. It wasn’t that easy.
But she was also wrong. She could be the woman she’d been again, if she was willing to take a risk. In the end it didn’t matter to him because he loved this new Eve, too. He loved her, whoever she chose to be, because she had the same heart. The same soul. He’d take her any way he could get her. Whole again, or in pieces. And if he found her in pieces, he’d put her back together again no matter how many times it took.
