“Hopeless romantic,” he muttered now. Yes, that was what he’d become, because he believed that God could change people.That people could change themselves. That, for him, Briar could—and would—change.
But maybe she never would.
That doesn’t mean she’s not worth loving.
The words sat there, and Tarr let them filter through him letter by letter, and by the time he reached the meadow, he felt calmer than he had in a couple of weeks now. Still unhappy, but somehow calm about what had happened at his house earlier.
Tarr sat up from where he lay in the longer grasses growing along the tree line, his heartbeat pumping hard against his breastbone. Hoofbeats. He’d heard them, and it didn’t take him long to blink and see a pretty palomino walking toward him.
Briar rode in the saddle.
Tarr scrambled to his feet, his stomach dropping to the soles of his cowboy boots at the same time his hopes shot toward the moon.
Briar wore the same thing she’d had on at his house: jeans, a long-sleeved shirt the color of the sky, and her hair back in a ponytail. She didn’t have a pot of soup, or her dog with her, though Wiggins perked up from where he’d been curled into Tarr’s side.
He yawned, stretched into a play bow, and then trotted over to greet his master. Tarr stayed right where he stood, not quite sure what to make of this situation.
“Can I join you?” Briar asked when Party Girl—the horse she rode—neared Skunk. The two equines seemed to turn canine as they stretched their necks toward one another, as if to get a good sniff of the other.
Tarr couldn’t speak, so he simply gestured in a flap of his hand, as if to say,I don’t own this meadow.
Then he settled back onto the ground, laying flat on his back and looking up into the dusky sky, the way he’d been doing before the hoofbeats had alerted him of her presence. He heard her slide out of the saddle, murmur something to Wiggins, or maybe Party Girl and Skunk, and then the grass rustling as Briar walked through it.
She made no noise as she sat only a few feet from him, and Tarr actually closed his eyes. “I was coming back to the house,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “You left your keys and took my dog, so I knew you’d be back at some point.”
“Your dog came with me of his own volition,” Tarr said, just because he didn’t feel like bending to Briar in anything. “I didn’t ask him to come, and I certainly didn’ttakehim.”
“My mistake,” she whispered, and she sounded so broken that Tarr’s heart squeezed and instant guilt swept through him. “Tarr, I’m really sorry.”
“Me too,” he said. “It’s okay, Briar. Not everything works out the way we want it to, and it’s okay.”
She sniffled, but Tarr remained steadfastly on his back, his eyes now squinched closed. It wasn’t his job to make her feel better. Heck,she’dcaused this rift between them, and while Tarr hadn’t broken up with her, he didn’t see how they could stay together either.
“Just say it,” he said. “You like me,but. We could be so good together,but. It’s fine, Briar. I can handle it.”
“I’m not going to say that,” she said.
Tarr pushed himself up onto his elbow and found Briar sitting with her legs crossed, plucking at the grass in front of her. “Why’d you come out here then?”
“Your front steps are hard,” she said, lifting those gorgeous blue eyes to meet his gaze. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you out here by yourself, thinking…whatever you’re thinking about me.”
“I get to think what I want.”
“Yeah, I know.” She gave him a glare, then softened as she sighed. “I came out here to tell you I trust you implicitly.”
Tarr blinked, his mouth falling open for a moment as if he might say something, then realized he didn’t have a response to that.
“You’re the first person I’ve trusted in years,” she said. “And I know it’s not the same as ‘I love you,’ but for me, it’s pretty dang close.”
Tarr sat all the way up, his pulse now bobbing in the back of his throat, that stupid hope cascading through him like water rushing over cliffs. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t want to break up with you,” she said, back to plucking at the grass again. Wiggins lay over by the horses, who had really struck the jackpot in the snack department this evening.
“When I imagine my life in a year, or five years, or a decade, you’re there.” She lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug, almost like she couldn’t get it to go any higher. “You’re with me, and I’m with you, and we’re—” She swallowed. “We’re family, Tarr. Me and you.”
Tarr wanted that more than anything.
