Sierra nodded regally, one allowing tip of her head.
‘You need help.’
‘I am perfectly fine,’ she argued.
‘Sierra—’
‘Just because I don’t want to marry you, doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me,’ she insisted stoically, tugging at her wool-lined jacket.
‘No. You’re right about that. But the fact that you can’t even acknowledge Her or what happened all this time lateris. You’ve barely ever talked about Her, or naming Her, or scattering Her ashes. Christ, do you even know that I still have Her in a fucking jar in my sock drawer?’ he asked bitterly. ‘And cutting me out of your life aside, riding … Sierra, the fact that you’re not riding anymore is the only proof you need.’
When the first tear fell over her lashes and began a solitary trek down her cheek, it took everything in him not to reach out and wipe it away. His hands burned to do it. But if he did, he would hold her, and if he held her, he would never let her go.
‘You need to talk to someone,’ he said, gently now. ‘Jesus, Sierra, you never even went to therapy after your parents died.’
‘I don’t need a therapist to tell me that I’m grieving, Benji,’ she said, enunciating each word. ‘Do you think I don’t know?’ she demanded, her voice rising. ‘Do you think I don’t feel it sucking the life out of me every day?’
‘It’s not so that they can tell you what’s wrong. It’s so they can help you work through it. There is a momentous difference. But your problem,’ he continued, needing to let it all out, ‘is that you’d rather be stuck here, in perfect control, without me. Because then you’d never have to live. You’d never have to risk. And you’d never have to lose.’
‘You’re assigning yourself way too big a role in my life, Benji.’
He laughed at that. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I know.’ He smiled bitterly at how goddamn civil the conversation was. ‘That’s why I’m going. I can’t keep killing what’s left of my heart for you, Sierra. I don’t …’ He trailed off as the immensity of what he was doing hit him. ‘I don’t have enough left to give,’ he rasped. ‘There’s already so little of me, and if I don’t leave now, I’m never going to move on. I can’t keep waiting for you, when you refuse to even take a few steps in my direction.’
Sierra had nothing to say to that, only stared at him with those big, brown eyes.
‘But one day, I’ll find someone who wants everything that I can promise her. And even though I’ll never love her like I love you, I’ll be happy.’
Probably.
Maybe.
Fuck it, it’s unlikely.
She exhaled a deep breath and then broke his heart when she sent him a wobbly smile. ‘I don’t doubt it, Benji. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you – to be happy.’
He stood before he said anything cruel or unnecessary. Because it was threatening – that anger he had always held back from her After. Benji opened the door before he exploded, or worse, dropped to his knees and begged. But right before he left, he asked, ‘Do you know how many times I’ve fallen off a horse in the thirty-five-odd years I’ve been riding?’
Sierra didn’t reply. She didn’t even look at him. Just sat straight in her chair, her eyes dry now, her long hair tied neatly back.
‘I don’t even remember. But four caused injuries,’ he said. ‘Two broken arms, a concussion, and a dislocated collar bone. And you never panicked. Fuck, once you even drove me to the hospital yourself, talking my fucking ear off so I wouldn’t focus on the pain in my arm. You might ask yourself why this time was so different.’ He tapped the doorframe once, and instead of saying ‘I love you’, he whispered, ‘Bye, Si.’
And then he left.
Benji went straight to the bunkhouse. He threw the few belongings he had into a huge duffel bag, uncaring that he rumpled his clothes or tangled the legs of his jeans. It was only when he came to packing his sock drawer and saw the urn that he stopped.
He collapsed onto his bed, a man defeated.
Carefully, he lifted the tiny vessel from its resting place, whispered, ‘Onto the next adventure, sweetheart?’
And when the grief came this time, he didn’t fight it. He had nobody to be strong for anymore. He put the urn down on his nightstand, always so careful, buried his head in his hands, and let it come.
The moment Benji closed the door behind him, Sierra started shaking uncontrollably. Unable to stop the violent tremors, unable to control her own body, she slid off her chair, hugged both arms around her knees, and sheltered right there on her office floor in broad daylight.
She didn’t cry. She was too overcome with shock – that she’d finally pushed him away – and regret – that their life together had been so tainted – and self-loathing – because she had hurt him one last time. All she hoped now was that he would use that hurt to learn how to hate her. Because it would help him move on.
She didn’t hurt. Broken bones hurt. This pain was spiritual, occurring at some level beyond the flesh. It was as if her soul were rendering again, this time halving Sierra-After and then quartering her and so on until there were so many fragments that the original became indecipherable even to her.
She thought she had been lost before, but she had been wrong. Because even on her worst day, she had always known that Benji was one call away. She had known that all she had to do was pick up the phone and ask him to come. And he would have. And even though she had never done it, there was comfort in knowing that one person in the world would know how to pull her from her own mind if she needed him to. Now, the reality of a future without him wasn’t just lonely and sad. It was absolutely terrifying.
