"What do you want?" I asked, and I couldn't keep the rough edge out of my voice.
"Things I shouldn't." Her hands were shaking now. "Things that complicate everything."
"Maybe complicated isn't always bad."
"It is when I'm still trying to figure out who I am without someone else defining me." She took a shaky breath. "I need to be able to stand on my own before I can, before anything else."
"I'm not trying to define you. I'm just trying to be here."
"But don't you see? That's the problem. You being here, you helping me, you looking at me the way you're looking at me right now, it makes me want to lean on you. And I can't. Not yet. Maybe not ever."
The "not ever" landed like a punch to the gut, but I forced myself to stay still.
"So what do you want me to do? Stay away?"
"I don't know." She pressed her palms to her eyes. "I don't know what I want except for everything to stop being so goddamn complicated."
I reached out without thinking and caught her wrist gently, pulling her hand away from her face. Her skin was warm under my palm, and I felt her pulse racing.
"Look at me," I said quietly.
She did, and the vulnerability in her eyes made my chest ache.
"I'll back off. I'll stop bringing you things you didn't ask for. I'll stop overstepping. But I can't stop caring about whether you're okay. I can't turn that off."
"I'm not asking you to turn it off," she said, hervoice barely above a whisper. "I'm asking you to give me space to figure this out on my own terms."
"Okay." I squeezed her wrist once, then made myself let go. "Okay."
But neither of us moved.
We stood there in the barn with dust motes floating in the air between us and the smell of hay and horses all around, and I could feel every inch of space that separated us like it was a physical thing.
"I should go," I said, but my voice lacked conviction.
"Yeah," she agreed, but she didn't step back.
"Tessa.”
"Don't," she said again, but this time it came out softer. "Don't say whatever you're about to say, because I don't think I can handle it right now."
"I was just going to say I'm sorry." My thumb brushed the inside of her wrist before I could stop myself. "For overstepping. For pushing. For making this harder than it already is."
"You're not.” She swallowed hard. "It's not just you. I'm the one who can't seem to…”
She didn't finish, but I understood what she meant. She couldn't seem to keep me at a distance, no matter how much she wanted to. I could see it in the way her body angled toward mine, in the way her breathing had gone shallow, in the way she was looking at my mouth like she was thinking about things that would definitely complicate everything.
"This is a bad idea," she whispered.
"Probably," I agreed.
"We're in the middle of a property dispute."
"We are."
"And I'm not ready for anything."
"I know."
