“Oh, I’m the idiot? I think telling them would’ve been a damn mistake.”
“Why?” Lark asks, her hands landing hard on my chest. “Why would it be a mistake? We’re not anything, right? Who cares if everyone knows we’re fucking and that’s it? We’re just a simple transactional relationship. According to you, we’re nothing, and I can never be more than just this.”
Those words slice through my chest, anger spilling out as I stare at her. “Does this feel like nothing?”
If it was nothing, it wouldn’t feel as though I’m being torn apart.
“No, it doesn’t, but I’m not a child. I’m able to fight my own battles. You taking the blame, letting my family think you did it…how is that okay? I was ready to tell them about us.”
She says that, but it doesn’t make sense.
“Weren’t you the one freaking out about someone seeing us a few days ago?”
Her green eyes flash. Exactly.
“Weren’t you the one who told me how your family would never forgive you? So you may not want my protection, but you have it. I won’t let you bear the brunt of their anger.”
“Why do you care? Why do you give a single fuck what my family says to me?”
“Why do you think?” I ask, my words exploding from my chest, coming out more hostile than I intended.
“I don’t know!”
“Yes, you do!”
“Say it, then! Tell me why, Tristan,” Lark demands.
“I fucking love you! That’s why!”
As soon as I say it, I feel a heavy weight on my chest. Fuck. I can’t love her. I refuse to love anyone. I turn from her, runningmy hand through my hair as I try to collect myself. My heart is pounding, and I try to think of how to fix it.
I could lie to her.
I could tell her I didn’t mean it.
I have to do it.
“Lark,” I say her name, but she’s just staring at me. She’s searching for something, and then, instead of joy or happiness that should come from someone professing their love, sadness fills her eyes, and a tear rolls down her cheek.
“But it’s not enough, is it?”
She’s giving me the out that I am so desperate for. Yet taking it feels like a part of me is dying.
“It’s enough for this. It’s enough of a reason to let me protect you from your family.”
“Because you don’t want to love me, do you?” The heartbreak in her voice causes my own to ache.
We both know the answer to that. “I told you I couldn’t.”
Lark looks out at the ridge, wipes at her cheeks, and turns to me. “I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“This. Us. I can’t because I love you, Tristan. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop myself. I fell in love with you on this ridge, beneath the stars as we stared off to the west of a forever that could never be ours. I thought”—she laughs once—“well, what I thought is irrelevant. I want to be loved, enough that you’d tell the world to fuck off if they had issues with us. I want to have a man who will fight for me, for us, for love. Someone who won’t worry about the future, because the present is worth all the fear.”
I wish it were that simple, but it’s not. People love, they die, and families are left to pick up the pieces of their lives.
Lark walks to her horse, clearly done with this conversation. But I’m not. She grabs the saddle and climbs up.
