Shebelievedthat bullshit.
“You’re not a screw-up.”
She lifted an eyebrow but didn’t take her gaze from the painting.
“I’m serious. You’re a handful, yeah, but you’re not some hopeless screw-up. If people can’t see that, it’s on them. Ain’t your job to make everyone happy.”
“I couldn’t make you happy,” she whispered.
Thatdrew him back, made him stare at her as he tried to sort out just what the hell she meant by that.
“What?” he asked when he couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“I couldn’t make you happy. You were sick of my behavior, too.”
“As I recall,Ididn’t leaveyou.So whatever you’re trying to pull here, you can’t rewrite history.”
“I left because you’re too good of a guy—you weren’t going to on your own. I don’t think I could handle seeing you getting sick of me. Sometimes it’s easier to just let things fall apart instead of trying to hold it together when it won’t work. It’s like trying to hold on to an angry cat—it’ll just end up hurting you in the end.”
Bradley frowned as he stared at her, at the shining of her eyes that said she held back tears.
Fuck.Was this really why it had all ended? Because Kat had been so sure he’d get rid of her and had wanted to strike first?
Well, that sounded a hell of a lot like her, didn’t it? Quick to run, to hide what she really thought, to make dumb ass assumptions instead of just talking to him.
“Well, I’m sorry.”
Kat blew out a slow, long breath, her shoulders slumping. “It’s okay. I know I’m a lot. It’s not your fault you don’t want to deal with—”
He silenced her by flicking her temple, an action that made her set her paintbrush down and turn a murderous glare on him.
“I’m not sorry that I was getting sick of you, because I wasn’t. I’m sorry I wasn’t paying enough attention to realize the stupid shit you had rattling around in your head. I should have seen it, should have set you straight instead of letting you run off thinking what you were thinking. That’s on me, Kat, and I’m sorry.”
She froze as she stared at him, as if she wasn’t sure what to say.
Then again,neitherof them had been that great at expressing themselves. Kat was forever hiding what she really thought or felt beneath countless layers of pranks and insults and jokes, and Bradley just straight up buried his feelings like any red-blooded American rancher would.
She slid her tongue over her bottom lip, leaving a sheen behind that made Bradley’s mind go in an entirely different direction.
“Maybe we were both wrong,” she said softly. “Sometimes it just seems easier to leave before getting left, you know?”
“Is that why you push people so hard? So you have an excuse about why they’re gone?”
“Maybe.” She pressed her lips together and stared back at the painting. “I love to do these. Sometimes I can’t sleep because I have some picture in my head. I have a storage unit full of paintings that I’ve never shown anyone.”
“Why not?”
“Because these arereal.They’re me. If people laugh at my cartoons, who cares? They’re cute and they’re silly—they’re what everyone sees me as. The fun, airheaded troublemaker. My paintings though, those are real, they’re the me I don’t let people see. If others saw them and hated them…”
Bradley nodded, the reasoning clear. If people rejected the cute stuff, Kat could shrug that off. They weren’t important to her. These paintings were, though, and having people reject that was like rejecting her.
So the cartoons were just another way to hide who she was, to keep herself safe by not showing her truth to anyone. Her antics, it all made so much more sense.
Why hadn’t he ever bothered to really ask her before? Or maybe he had and neither of them had been at a place where they could talk about it honestly.Maybe they’d both needed that time to grow.
“All I can tell you, Kat, is that you’re talented. You can’t let the world dictate how you’re going to act all the time, can’t let them have that power over you. It’ll crush you.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But at least I’d be crushed as whatever people see me as and not asme.”