"Look at me," I tell her.
She drops her hands. Looks up. Her face is red and devastating. She needs me to step away from her. To work with Hunter to do whatever it is she’s battling. Pushing her never works, I know that. If you push Harper, she runs.
So I say the one thing that might save us both.
"You need to let me go, Harper," I whisper.
And it fucking kills me inside. But she can’t love me the way I need her to. I can’t give her what she needs. I won’t be the reason she falls apart.
Her face crumbles.
"You've had your hand around my heart for six years. And you're squeezing it so tight I can't breathe. I can't sleep. I can't ride, I can't work, I can't look at another woman without feeling like I'm cheating on a ghost." I swallow. "And you won't be with me. You won't let me go. You're keeping me in this place where I can't move on, and I can't come home, and I just…"
My voice splinters. Everything I was holding onto is slipping through my fingers.
"I can't do it anymore, sweetheart. It's killing me. And I can’t watch it kill you, too. So you do what you need to do here, I’ll stay outta your way. And then you can leave again."
I reach for her face. My thumb traces the line of her jaw. She closes her eyes and leans into my hand. The feeling of her skin is so overwhelming that I have to lock my knees to stay standing.
"I love you," I tell her. "I've loved you since I was sixteen. I'll love you until they put me in the ground. But I can't keep bleeding for something you won't let me have. I stopped living the day you left me, Harper. But that has to stop."
I pull my hand away, and her eyes open.
And the look on her face will haunt me for the rest of my life. Because I know that look. I've seen it on men cornered in the bullpen with no way out. I've seen it on animals trapped by fire. It's not the look of someone who doesn't love me.
It's the look of someone who loves me so much it's become a cage.
"Either come back to me," I say. "Properly. Fully. No more secrets. Or let me go. Because this in-between is not love, Harper. It's a slow death. And I’m not sure I can keep dying for you."
I pick up my hat from the ground. Put it on and walk to Seven. Untie him. Swing up into the saddle.
She's still standing at the edge of the ridge. Small against the sky. Stars behind her and the wind in her hair.
"Are you coming?" I ask.
A pause. Long enough that I think she might tell me everything and let me in. Long enough that I think she might run to me or run from me.
"Yeah," she says quietly. "I'm coming."
She mounts Penny. We ride back to the ranch, side by side, the horses finding the trail by memory.
She doesn't speak. I don't either.
But somewhere on that ride, I hear her crying. And every sound is a blade between my ribs because I put them there. I pushed. I asked.
Maybe loving me is killing her just as heavy as I’m dying.
Maybe what we had wasn’t love; we just didn’t know anything different at the time.
Because love shouldn’t hurt this fuckin’ bad.
I want to reach across the gap and take her hand. I want to pull her off Penny and onto Seven and hold her against my chest and ride home together the way we used to, her arms around my waist, her cheek pressed between my shoulder blades, the two of us becoming one person in the saddle.
I don't.
Because she asked me not to push. And I'm a lot of things, but I don't break promises. Not to her. Not ever.
***
