It feels like I’ve emptied myself somewhere along the highway between Montana and Tennessee. Like I left Montana, bleeding out on a gravel driveway under a porch light, and arrived back in Nashville as hollow as when I left.
Though it feels different, I didn’t think it was possible to experience this kind of loss twice.
When I buried you, the grief was a landslide—sudden, violent, and unavoidable. I couldn’t breathe for weeks. Death is cruel, but it’s clean in its finality… at least it is when you finally come to grips with it. This isn’t clean. Knowing she’s still a possibility walking this world is crushing.
I loved you with everything I had. I didn’t hold back. Maybe that’s why losing you hollowed me out so completely. Andsomewhere in the wreckage of that, maybe I decided that giving all of myself was too dangerous.
And then I met Teagan... She doesn’t live or love cautiously. She does both as if she’s standing in an open field during a storm, daring the sky to do its worst. Being near her makes me want to be braver than I am. But, apparently, not brave enough…
What I’m realizing—too late, maybe—is that I haven’t been afraid of choosing between you and her. I’ve been afraid of choosing myself and owning every version of who I’ve been. Of saying, this is the man I am, even when the edges aren’t flattering.
I don’t know whether she’ll ever give me the chance to try again or even if I deserve it. But I do know loving her woke something up in me that grief had put to sleep. Giving me the courage to feel and teaching me to love again. And even in this pain, I’m grateful for that.
I hope, wherever you are, you understand that.
For what it’s worth, I loved her enough to walk away when she asked me to, just as I would have done for you. I just hope that’s not the last loving thing I ever get to do for her.
Love Always,
Easton
The ranch doesn’t pause just because my heart does. Morning comes the same way it always does, thin light slipping over the horizon as the cattle low impatiently for feed. The world is going to carry on, with or without me.
I move with it. Because that’s what I’ve always done.
I’m up before the sun, pulling on worn jeans and a thermal, and braiding my hair with mechanical precision. I don’t look at myself in the mirror longer than necessary.I can’t.With my red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes, I don’t even recognize myself anymore. I tell myself it’s just allergies from the bloom of spring. It’s easier than admitting I barely slept or that I cried myself to sleep again.
The bunkhouse sits empty—like it has since he left a week ago—when I pass it on the way to the barn. The night I told him to leave, he packed everything he owned and was gone before I managed to stop crying. If it weren’t for this constant ache in my heart, he wouldn’t have left a trace of himself behind.
Daisy lifts her head the second I step into her stall. “Hey, girl,” I murmur, pressing my forehead against hers and stroking the underside of her chin. She snorts softly, her warm breath blowing over me. “I know.”
I don’t even know what I’m agreeing with.
That I’m stubborn?
Hurting?
Let him leave?
I busy myself, brushing her down. The rhythm should soothe me; it usually does. There’s something grounding about the simplicity of tending to animals. And right now I enjoy the honesty of it.Daisy doesn’t come with a complicated past, covered in lies.I use the work to keep me from thinking about him, but every time I glance toward the barn doors, some part of me expects to see him leaning there, arms crossed, that soft smile pulling at his mouth.
But he isn’t. Hell, he hasn’t even tried to call me.
Dad and Deacon have kept quiet on the matter, neither of them saying a word about it or Easton since that night. Their silence feels deliberate, like they’ve collectively decided not to poke the bruise. Knox managed to hold his tongue for a few days—likely at their request—but he doesn’t have that kind of restraint.
Knox finds me mid-morning out by the south fence line, fixing a post after a steer hit it with enough force to nearly topple it yesterday. “You look like hell,” he says conversationally, stepping over the post on the ground.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“You eat?” he prods, his tone playful to hide the concern beneath it.
“Yes.”
“You sleep?”
“Knox!” I shriek, shooting him a look.
He furrows his brows and purses his lips. “That’s a no.”
