Change of Hart (Wells Ranch, #3)(94)
I shoved my hand into my front pocket, eyes brimmed with tears as I dropped to my knee in front of her. My hands were so clammy I fumbled with opening the small jewelry box, pulling out my mother’s ring. “You’re my entire world. I would give up anything to have you—to have a family with you. If there’s even a tiny part of you that wants the things we talked about, a tiny part that loves me, please marry me.”
A sob racked her body. “That’s not fair.”
“Just like it’s not fair for you to make a life-changing decision without caring about my input.”
“I’m trying to do the right thing for myself…for both of us. I love you.” The words barely left her mouth before she was clasping a hand over it to stop a gut-wrenching cry.
“Then marry me.” I leaned forward, still on my knee, and grabbed her face so she was forced to look me in the eye. “Marry me, and I promise to make you so fucking happy. Please, Blair. Marry me.”
She was so quiet for a minute, I couldn’t help but get my hopes up. Until I reached to wipe the tears from her jawline, and she ducked her head away from me—cutting me off and wiping her own tears.
I choked out her name with the last breath left in my lungs. And when she didn’t respond, I sank back to sit on my heels and cried the hardest I had since the day my mom died.
Finally, after what very well could’ve been a century, she spoke back up. “I love you, but—”
“The word ‘but’ instantly means the first part of your sentence is bullshit.”
She flashed a derisive sneer in my direction. “Now you’re being a jerk.”
I threw my hands up. “A jerk for wanting to give you the life we’ve dreamt about together? For wanting to have a family?”
“A jerk for not realizing that maybe your dream isn’t the same as mine.”
“Since fucking when? That’s not true.”
It couldn’t be true. I knew Blair better than anyone else on Earth. She wouldn’t have said all those things just to make me happy. She wanted it. I was sure.
I rubbed my watering eyes with the back of my hand. “We’ve talked about this so many times, and not once did you make it sound like that wasn’t what you wanted.”
“I want to finish the program I busted my butt to get accepted into. I want to enjoy being young, figuring out who I am. What if I decide I love being in the city? Or I get a job offer somewhere else?”
“What if you decide you love living on the ranch and being a mom? You can go horseback riding every day. We can be together every night.”
She shut her eyes, squeezing tears from the slivered crack in her eyelids. “Denver, I can’t. A few years from now, maybe I’d feel differently. But I can’t right now. You’re asking for a life I’m not ready for. If this is what you want—a sweet little housewife and a bunch of kids—maybe you need to find a girl who’s ready to give that to you. It’s not going to be me, though.”
Bullshit. Every word spewing from her lips had to be complete bullshit. I refused to believe she actually felt this way because it felt a lot like…
“Blair, are you breaking up with me?”
She shook her head no, but the rest of her body language screamed yes—arms crossed, scowl painted across her tear-stained cheeks. Then she finally whispered, “I don’t know.”
I bit my lip hard to keep from screaming. “You can’t. Blair, I came here because I can’t live without you. I needed to talk to you. I needed—”
“You came here because you thought you could talk me out of a decision that affects my body, and has way more of an impact on my life than it does yours.”
“I guess because I thought this was impacting our life. The one we’ve been planning together.” I stared up at her as I sank further into the personal hell that was her bedroom floor, when all I wanted to do was crawl into her bed and hold her.
“I love you, but I can’t be who you want me to be, or do what you want me to do. I’m sorry. So sorry. I love you…and I hope one day you see this is for the best.” She gulped, wiping away the tears that clung to the twitching muscle in her jaw. “My appointment is on December third, if you want to come be supportive.”
“So that’s that? Fuck me, right?”
“I’m not doing this to hurt you. I would never. I just…can’t.”
On shaky legs—like a newborn horse—I stood and rubbed the pads of my fingers over my eyes. I leaned in and, to my surprise, she let me kiss her softly on the forehead.
The ring box fell from my hand to her bedspread, and I said, “You can keep this or sell it or have it melted and made into a necklace. Whatever you want. Mom wanted me to give it to you.”
She didn’t fight me leaving her room, or her dorm, or her building. She didn’t text or call. And despite how exhausted I was in every sense of the word, I drove the entire way home and then continued right past the ranch. Until I found a road I’d never been on before, and when the road turned into something resembling a trail for ATVs—with a cliff on one side—I didn’t even hesitate to continue.
Maybe it was dramatic and morbid and insane, but I didn’t care a whole lot in that moment if my truck went off the road and rolled two hundred feet to the bottom. Instead of dying, I found a place where I could scream and nobody would ever hear me.