He felt as though he’d ripped a perfectly good piece of fabric. At first, it was accidental, and then it was a thoughtless maneuver. By the time he noticed he’d torn through the relationship, it was too far beyond repair, and he could only give in to the urge to rip whatever they had left completely in two. No matter how much it hurt to lose what they had, he could only console himself by reminding himself it was already lost.
He slept fitfully, barely falling asleep long enough to dream, and the following morning he went out to work alone. This time, he resisted the urge to return to the main house to see Kyra. He’d finally realized she wasn’t buying the act. All he was doing was hurting her more by giving her any hope that his feelings were…well, exactly what they were. But he couldn’t act on them, and he wouldn’t lead her on anymore.
Just when he had begun to second-guess his decision to stay away from her, he saw Kyra marching across the field toward him. He stood puzzled, watching her approach.
When she got close enough to hear him, he asked, “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be working in the office?”
“I don’t think you really need me to do that,” she said. “I think you’ve given me office work to keep me at a distance. Anyway, you don’t seem to really like the way I do things. If I were anyone else, I think you would have fired me by now.”
He shook his head. “Not true.”
She held up a hand to silence him. “Please, don’t interrupt me. It was hard enough for me to build up the courage to say this.”
Adam leaned against the side of the barn and crossed his arms. He wanted to look like he didn’t really care, but the truth was his heart was pounding so hard that he was surprised it hadn’t punched right through his chest. What had she come here to say to him? Why was he so scared? Part of him suspected, and another part screamed, that he wasn’t ready for this. “Go on,” he said, though he wished he could stop her from saying what he knew she was about to tell him.
Kyra took a deep breath before continuing. “I think I should leave. Things have gotten way too weird between us, and I don’t think I’m even of use to you anymore. I suspect you’re keeping me on out of pity. You should hire someone better for the position. I know you’re going to tell me I’m wrong, but I won’t hear it.”
Adam clenched his teeth hard, racking his brain for the right thing to say. In the end, it didn’t come to him. “You’re wrong,” he said, which she had already predicted. “I couldn’t find anyone better than you if I tried. And I won’t.”
“All the same,” she said, staring down at the ground. “I don’t think you even enjoy my company anymore.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, desperate to read whatever was going on inside her head. “Is this because I didn’t eat dinner with you last night? I told you I was tired. Don’t take it personally. It wasn’t personal at all.”
“It’s not only that,” she said. “And I don’t believe you anyway. You’ve been different lately, and I think I know why. I won’t tell you what I think it is because I know you’ll deny it, and I won’t believe you.”
Everything was sinking, and Adam wanted nothing more than to stop it. But wouldn’t he be postponing the inevitable? Even if they could eventually form a perfect working relationship, she had a ticking clock in her womb. Eventually, the baby would be born, and everything would change again. She would have expectations that he couldn’t begin to live up to. She would want more than he was able to give, and he would be forced to break her heart. No, it was better that she was quitting now. As painful as it was, it would be less painful for both of them in the end.
“OK,” he finally said. “I understand. You don’t have to give me notice if you don’t want to. Just leave when you’re ready.” Before he had the chance to see her broken expression and take back his words, Adam pushed himself from the barn wall and trudged to the main house.
CHAPTER 16
KYRA
The last several days had been a special kind of torture for Kyra. She’d watched her own hope be destroyed and resurrected again and again. Once would have been enough. Destruction alone might have sent a clear message, but this roller coaster was something she couldn’t deal with right now, nor did she want to. She’d never been the kind of person who made the same mistakes repeatedly. No, she learned and changed her behavior.
Now she was determined not to make the mistake of getting close to Adam again. He would pull away every time something triggered his commitment phobia, or whatever it was he was dealing with. He’d proven that more than once. She wasn’t going to sit around and wait for him to prove it again.
She spent the rest of the morning clearing out the detached apartment and the spare room in the main house. Her car was almost completely packed when Adam came out carrying a large box. “You’ll want this,” he said.
What was it? When she looked more closely, she realized it was the swinging bench he had bought for her. “I can’t take that,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I have nowhere to put it,” she said.
“There’s room in your car.”
She tried to smile as she answered, “I mean in my apartment. I don’t have a yard or a big enough balcony. You keep it. Let the next person use it. You paid for it anyway.”
His face fell. “It was meant to be a gift.”
“I have the plant. That’ll be your gift to me. Keep the swing. I really don’t have space for it.” She didn’t tell him that she had planned to move in with her mother for the duration of her pregnancy. In reality, she didn’t want reminders of him cropping up in the life she knew she’d be living without him.
“OK,” he said. His voice was more dejected than she would have expected it to be, but she reminded herself not to let it get to her. Any regret he felt about her leaving would fade in time. And any relief he might have felt had she chosen to stay would have faded as well, along with his affection for her.
Once he turned to take the box back to his garage, she hopped into her car. There would be no goodbyes if she could help it; a clean break. She buckled seatbelts around herself and her plant, which was sitting in the passenger seat next to her, and she threw the car in reverse. There was a chance he had come back out of the garage to see her pull away, but she refused to look in the rearview mirror. She didn’t want to see him standing alone behind her.
She didn’t look behind her until she knew his ranch was long out of view. When she got to the base of the mountain, she finally shed a few tears, but she tried to swallow the feeling as quickly as it had arisen. Crying behind the wheel was never a good idea, so she held all her feelings down with everything she had until she finally pulled up in front of the little house she’d grown up in.
