“Well,” he said, “I know for a fact that you’re lovable.” He looked right into her eyes, finding every angry fleck and defiant edge. “BecauseI’min love with you, Briar, and if you’re not lovable, what does that make me? A fool? Hopelessly romantic? An idiot?”
He shook his head. “If you’re not lovable, why do I love you?”
He reached up to swipe his hat off his head, then realized that he wasn’t wearing it. “I’m the biggest moron on the planet, thinking that you can change enough to want to be with me.”
“Tarr,” she said.
“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s fine.”
He looked at the pot of soup and at the stupid plastic spoon in his hand. “I’m gonna take a walk, and then I’ll come back and finish my floors. Thanks for the soup, Briar.”
He tossed the plastic spoon onto the countertop, where it clattered, mimicking the shattering sound of his heart as he turned on his heel and started for the front door. He unstrapped the knee pads as he went, and he stalked right past Wiggins, who lay in the spot of shade on his front porch that the setting sun had started to illuminate. For the first time in Tarr’s life, he didn’t reach down and pat the dog and tell him how wonderful and smart and handsome he was.
He simply left his house—this site that was supposed to be a place of comfort and refuge for him—and started walking down the dirt road that led toward the highway, an empty landscape in front of him, just like he now had a blank future waiting for him too.
thirty-nine
Briar stood on Tarr’s front porch and watched her dog trot down the street behind him. Wiggins caught up to her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend now?—easily and settled into an easy walk at the cowboy’s side.
Tarr didn’t move in an angry way, and he hadn’t gotten in his truck and driven away.
Briar looked down at the kneepads she’d collected as she’d followed Tarr outside. She breathed out, everything inside her that had tightened and gotten boxed up during her conversation with Tarr now deflating.
I’m in love with you, Briar.
Tears pricked her eyes, and Briar moved to the top step and slumped to a sitting position. She looked down the road where Tarr had gone, but she couldn’t see him anymore.
“What just happened?” she asked herself and the blue-blue sky surrounding her. She’d spent the afternoon making one of Tarr’s favorite soups, because he’d been working so hard to finish his house. He wanted to move into it desperately, and Briar had thought if she brought him dinner and just sat with him, he’d be able to keep working on the floor installation.
She should’ve known he’d question her about her decision not to try to make contact with her parents. That was what Tarr did, and Briar didn’t hate it. Sometimes, his questions helped her iron flat her own thoughts and feelings, and she’d been able to find her way through the maze of them to what she should do—or not do.
“I don’t want to be rejected by my own blood,” she whispered.
But being rejected by Tarr was far, far worse.
He has to come back here, she thought, and part of her wanted to get behind the wheel of her SUV and just start driving. It didn’t matter what direction she went in; she just needed to go.
She stayed put, because Briar didn’t want to run from Tarr. He did have to come back here, and Briar wanted to be there when he did.
She wouldn’t run, and Tarr had promised he wouldn’t abandon her. She checked the road again, her pulse increasing in volume in her ears. He had walked away, but she told herself that everyone deserved a few minutes—or an hour, whatever—to clear their head.
Tarr had given her so much time, in so many instances, to gather her thoughts, or defer a hard conversation she didn’t want to have. She could give him whatever he needed.
“He’s not a fool,” she said to his house. “He’s hardworking, and smart, and loyal.”
With her spoken words, a new door opened in Briar’s heart, then her soul. “Tarr is loyal.”
And not only to Tucker and Bobbie Jo, or his rodeo brothers, or the animals he cared for and trained.
Tarr had been nothing but loyal and true to Briar herself.
“I can trust him.” Her voice rang with truth, and tears rushed into Briar’s eyes and right down her face. She wasn’t sure if she’dbeen holding herself back from trusting Tarr, but she’d never realized or acknowledged that she did, in fact, trust the cowboy.
“A cowboy.” She scoffed, but she couldn’t look away from the dirt road where Tarr had last been. Yes, she trusted a cowboy, and a former bull rider at that.
“Miracles do happen,” she whispered, and she leaned over her knees and cradled her head in her arms as she closed her eyes. “Lord, I need more miracles, please.”
Even if she didn’t deserve them, she prayed that God would give her the words she needed to explain everything to Tarr. She prayed God could give him a forgiving heart. She begged the Lord to provide a way for her and Tarr to find their way back together.
