Wasn’t it enough that this was his? Wasn’t that enoughgrowth and achievement for any one man? Did he have to keep healing? Did he have to keep changing himself?
He felt like he was bleeding inside. He hated it.
Hated all of this.
He parked his truck there in the center of the flat expanse of land, this place that was his now, that had been out of his reach for so long.
He got out of the truck and stood there, leaning against the grill. It was quiet. The sun just beginning to rise over the mountains. It was easy to imagine that part of him was still up there, looking down. A kid who wanted to be this version of himself. But he could also imagine that he was still up there with Marlowe. A grown man who didn’t end up the one down here.
The one who was alone. Who was committed to living life alone.
And why?
Because he just didn’t believe anyone could love him?
Because he hated the idea of loving somebody and never being able to have their love back.
At her, just saying it, just telling him that she loved him like it was easy…
It just mocked every single thing he had ever been through in his life.
He sighed, but it didn’t clear his lungs, he felt like there were razor blades in them.
And then he heard them. The sound of the hoofbeats, like thunder rolling across the plain, he stood there, still. And the sounds of the hooves got closer, closer, and closer.
Then the first horse came around the left side of the truck, the second came around the right, the entire herd splitting down the center and running past the truck, on either side of him, the wind from their momentum kicking up dust allaround him, the sight so beautiful it made his eyes sting with tears.
Here he was, no longer above it. Right in the middle of it.
But the mustangs were free.
He had always identified with them, but he could see now where he was not like them at all.
They were free.
And he was trapped.
That was why he was alone.
That was why he couldn’t…
He fell to his knees, breathing hard, the ground biting into his skin through his denim jeans.
Marlowe.
She loved him. Just like that. Just that easy. No. It didn’t make any sense to him. And it flew in the face of everything he had always believed. And try as he might, he couldn’t shift the landscape inside of him because she said she loved him.
He didn’t know how to receive things like that. She was right.
She was right about him, and that made him sure that he was going to die behind this wall, no matter how much he owned, no matter how much money he made, no matter how great the town thought he was.
He was doomed from birth to not understand this.
And only now that it was too late did he realize it was the only thing he had ever truly wanted.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Marlowe felt like she was in a daze. She also didn’t feel like it was really over.
