He was silent for a beat. His hands didn’t stop soothing, but she could feel the tension coil in his body. “Son of a bitch.”
“Wait. It gets worse,” she said, trying for some levity before getting serious again. “Someone sent me a photo of him with his assistant in a hotel room right before I was supposed to walk down the aisle, and then it was air-dropped to everyone in the church after I left. My mom and my sisters, my aunts, Tucker’s family. Everyone.”
She was quiet for a while, letting the emotions roll over her like waves.Still lake…
“I should have been furious with him. I wanted a family so badly. I wanted what I thought we should have. And for a split second, I thought I could just—” she swallowed hard—“pretend I didn’t see it. That I could go through with the wedding and that it wouldn’t matter in the end.”
He didn’t say anything, but she knew. She poked him in the ribs. “I know it was dumb.”
“Ow.” He rubbed the spot. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking too loud.” She smiled at him. “I knew I couldn’t stay. It just took me a minute, and that scared me because if I stayed, I’d be someone I didn’t want to be.”Ouch. That one was painful to say out loud, but Lily forced herself. New Lily didn’t shy away from the truth, even when it was uncomfortable. “I’ve pretended things were good for so long, I wasn’t even sure what that person looked like... or wanted.”
“Takes strength to see that,” Rush said, and she smiled. He might be the only one to see it that way.
“It didn’t feel like that at the time,” she said wryly. “I felt like a coward.”
Rush shook his head. “Running toward something better isn’t cowardly. That’s strength.”
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she admitted, feeling shy again.
Rush’s fingers found her chin and curved around it, lifting her face to meet his eyes. “No one does. But you should start with figuring out what it is you want.”
Lily stared at him. The thought was too big for the tiny cabin. It stretched across years of pushing down her own wants in favor of Tucker’s, years of going with the flow, making herself smaller to fit into the life she thought she was supposed to have.
Rush’s eyes held too much knowing, and she felt exposed for the first time all night. She jerked her head away to escape the weight of his gaze. She knew she had work to do, but not here. That would come later. After she was done being a liberated woman.
“What about you?” she asked instead. “I was running, but isn’t that what you’re doing by leaving?”
Rush’s brows drew down, and his expression slowly shuttered while she watched. “Maybe,” he said easily enough, but Lily sensed the energy shift in him.
No excuses from Rush Callahan. She respected that, even if it made her chest squeeze uncomfortably tight. She chewed on her lip, wondering how much she could say before those beautiful storm-gray eyes went cool and distant.
“Northfield will miss you.”I will too.She knew enough to keep that to herself. No casual hookup would ever admit she’d developed the tiniest crush in only a weekend. That would be too dumb.
But she did want to know him. Rush Callahan was a man with layers that she wanted to uncover. What they’d shared in bed was sexy—mind-blowingly sexy. She’d spend time replaying it later, but for now, she let herself have a moment of sadness that was all she’d know of this man.
Rush shrugged one well-rounded muscular shoulder, rolling onto his side and taking her with him. “You’ll get a new sheriff soon enough. It’s a good job.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Rush’s gaze flickered for a moment. “I can’t stay here,” he finally said. “Can’t keep listening to people talk about how I’m some kind of hero when I fucked up.”
She inhaled sharply. “Rush, you must know it’s not your fault,” she said. “You did all you could do?—”
“Lily,” he said flatly, “I sat in a therapist’s office for months, going over it over and over again. You know what I learned? Doesn’t matter how many people tell you it wasn’t your fault—you’re the one who has to live with the truth. And I do. Every day.”
Lily exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of his words settle between them. She could argue. She could tell him Northfield needed him, that he wasn’t the failure he clearly believed himself to be. Her natural instinct was to comfort him, but she sensed what little intimacy they had just shared would shatter. When it came down to it, she didn’t know what made Rush Callahan tick, and he didn’t want her to.
His mind was made up, and she wasn’t here to fix him. Just like he had respected her decisions, she would respect his. He had to walk his own path to forgiveness. She just hoped it was an easy one because if anyone deserved that, it was him. Rush Callahan was a good man, whether he saw it or not.
She settled under his arm, reached out, and let her fingers trace a slow path across the ridges of his abdomen, upacross the broad expanse of his chest. She exhaled, releasing her disappointment, and let herself sink into the moment fully.
“The snow stopped, angel,” Rush murmured. “Won’t be long before the plows come through.”
Lily swallowed down the sting of disappointment. Their time together was slipping away then. “Why do you call me that?”
“Call you what?”
