She stepped right up to me, her fist striking out and connecting with my gut. I let out a surprised ooph and stumbled back a step. “I’m not running away from you, Preston Sawyer.”
“Okay,” I said on a small choke, straightening my body. Her fist connected with my stomach once again, surprisingly delivering a small amount of power. “Dammit, Lia, how many times are you going to hit me?”
“The first one was for you, and the second one was for Cole. Since he’s not here to take it, you get them both.” She stood there breathing quickly, her chest rising and falling with each inhale and exhale. She shook her head. “I can’t believe you didn’t ask me who I wanted to go out with. I would have chosen you, you idiot. It wouldn’t have even been a question.” She choked on one of her exhales and it came out as a sort of wheeze.
My heart squeezed with guilt and remorse. I’d known the night we made love—made Hudson—that she’d wanted me physically for a long time as much as I’d wanted her, but I hadn’t known it went back that far. Jesus. “I’m sorry. We were only seventeen, and it was a bad choice.”
“A bad choice?” she seethed. “A bad choice? You . . . you denied me you with that race. And I . . . I missed you for years because of it. For years, Preston.” The last words were whispered as more despair became etched into her expression.
“I’m sorry. I did the same thing to myself, Lia. I—”
She whirled on her heel again and took two steps away and then stopped, first exclaiming raggedly, “?Decidieron por me!” They decided for me! Apparently, because of her high emotions, for a moment she’d reverted to her mother tongue. “Cabrones,” she muttered. Bastards.
Lia in a temper. Well I’ll be damned.
I blinked, and then my eyebrows rose as her shoulders went back and she murmured to herself something about a fuss before she whirled back around. It was as if her first instinct was to run, and she was forcing herself not to, maybe even counseling herself about it. I stood in shocked intrigue, watching to see what she’d do next.
She walked up to me again and there were tears in her eyes now. My surprised interest faded to remorse, and my stomach clenched at the stark, agonizing pain on her face. “And you,” she took a sharp, sudden inhale, her shoulders rising and falling as she jabbed at my chest, “you all but ignored me for a year. I was pregnant with your baby. I was scared. I was so lonely, and I know you were grieving, I know you were trying to save the farm, but if you had just turned to me, even once. Just once,” she cried. “And you didn’t even sleep in the same room as me. I needed to be held by you. If you had given me nothing else but that, I could have held on.”
Tears coursed down her cheeks, and I felt an anguish so intense, it seemed as if I might be feeling it for the both of us. Or maybe I’d held my emotions at bay for so long, they were finally breaking free and surging powerfully to the forefront in the same way my passion for Annalia always seemed to express itself—suddenly and with little control.
I turned away from her and took several deep breaths before turning back. “I didn’t know how to turn to you, Lia. And you never came to me either. You put your things in the guest room the day you moved in, and I thought you wanted it that way. I thought you must hate me for the situation I’d put you in. You held yourself away just like you always did growing up, and I had no fucking idea what it meant.” And I hadn’t tried hard enough to figure it out. I’d let my grief and the farm keep me at an emotional distance—understandable at first, maybe, but in my heart of hearts I knew that I’d justified it with those reasons for longer than I should have.
“What it meant? It meant that I was trying not to add to what you were already struggling with. I didn’t want to be a burden.” She took a huge gulp of air, and I wanted to step forward, to go to her, but I held myself back, sensing that to do so would make her stop talking. Part of me didn’t want to hear what she was saying, but the other part knew I needed to. And even more so, she needed to say it. “And I stayed away from you growing up for the same reason.”
“You were never a burden, not to me and not to Cole.”
“Because I didn’t let myself be!”
I raked my hands through my hair again and then gripped it, letting out a frustrated breath. I dropped my arms and stared at her. “I’m sorry, Annalia. I . . .” I looked off behind her, unseeing, trying to gather my thoughts. “All my life my instinct was to protect you, and the one person I never protected you from was me. I . . . God, I’ve fucked this up so badly. I hurt you, and I hurt me and—” Another small grunt of frustration came up my throat, and I looked at her helplessly before turning and glancing behind me at the grove of trees where the shortcut was hidden.
Cole had been dishonest in both his winning and in the brother oath he’d sworn to. Yet, I’d been dishonest, too, by not telling Cole about my love for Lia. By keeping my word, but not honoring what was in my heart. By hiding my feelings and stuffing my emotions away inside myself. Would it have changed anything? Would Cole have stepped aside if he’d known? I didn’t know. He wasn’t here and I couldn’t ask him, and that pain would live inside me forever. But I also wanted to learn from it. I wanted to become a better man—for Lia, for our son, and for my brother, too, who was never going to have a chance to grow up and learn his own lessons.
I turned back to Lia and for a moment we stood staring at each other, the gulf of more than a dozen years stretching between us, all the silence, all our mistakes, all the circumstances that had always seemed to be stacked against us, when really it was just us hurting each other again and again. And still, despite all that, the burning love that time or distance or a hundred missteps wouldn’t extinguish. The stillness deep inside that whispered her name, sending it out like sound waves through my soul.
The mural from the restaurant where she worked flashed in my mind, the look on the man’s face that I had identified with not because I’d felt that way about Annalia, but because I still did.
I still did.
And God help me, I always would.
A bird cried out above, the trees rustled in the breeze, a leaf picked up by the wind danced past us, and there was only this moment, and I needed to make it matter.
“I love you,” I breathed, putting every ounce of my heart into the words. “I always have.”