“I’m sorry I left, Shy.”
Her throat worked as she struggled to swallow. “You sticking around and being miserable wouldn’t have helped anything.”
“Solidarity. And maybe you wouldn’t have felt so alone.”
Shy’s gaze shifted out to the fields, to the mountains. “I am alone.”
Her words broke my heart. I moved in closer, but she scooted away. I stopped, holding up both hands. “You’re not.”
Shiloh’s jaw clenched; her chin lifting. “You have no idea what it’s like.”
“You’re right, I don’t. But I know that you have a lot of people who would like to be here for you if you’d let them.”
Her eyes blazed. “So you can all think I’m weaker and more broken? No, thanks.”
“No one thinks you’re weak.” She was one of the strongest people I knew. “You went through—”
“Stop!”
The horse let out a whinny at her shouted word.
“Just stop. You’re off the hook, okay?” She ducked between the rails of the fence and headed for the barn.
The little horse charged straight at me, kicking his feet in my direction.
“Shit.” I stumbled back a few steps. “I get it. I’m an ass.”
I looked to where Shiloh had disappeared into the barn. I thought about going after her, but for what? I was only hurting her more by pushing it. The wounds of everything that had happened had left scar tissue. The kind that pulled and made you walk with a limp. As much as I wanted to be the one to heal Shy as a way to make things right, I couldn’t. The only person I could heal was myself.
17
ADDIE
I jumped for approximately the fiftieth time that night as the alarm beeped. I wanted to slap myself—anything to shock my nerves back into their rightful place. I’d dropped a bowl of cake mix when Birdie came running into the kitchen. Let out a shriek when a squirrel scurried across the deck. And nearly had a heart attack when Hadley rang the doorbell to pick up the girls.
“It’s me,” Beckett called.
I heard something in his voice. A tension that had my focus on my problems slipping away. I stood and met him in the entryway.
He held up two plastic bags. “I got all my favorites for you to try.”
There was levity in Beckett’s tone, but it sounded forced, and I saw lines of strain around his eyes.
“What happened?”
His smile faltered a bit as he lowered the bags and started for the kitchen. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Always know when something’s wrong.”
I opened my mouth, ready with an easy lie, but then I closed it. I’d promised Beckett the truth—or at least an absence of lies—and I sensed that he needed the truth right now, even if it was ugly. “When you’re used to being on the lookout for the snap, you see more than the average person. Sense when a mood’s about to change.”
Beckett set the bags on the kitchen island and turned towards me. His jaw was clenched so tightly, a muscle in his cheek fluttered. “Was it just your dad?”
“Mostly.” Ian had taken his anger out on me more than once. I’d gotten a slap or two from men who worked for my dad. But nothing compared to what Allen Kemper could dish out.
Beckett’s hands gripped the edge of the counter, his knuckles turning white.