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The words landed hard. "That's not fair."

"No," he said softly. "It's not."

I swallowed over a large lump in my throat. “Why are you…I don’t…”

"Mikayla, I've spent two years showing you I want you. I'm done trying to convince you that I'm worth believing. You made your choice. I’m respecting it."

He wasn't angry. That was the devastating part. He sounded resigned. Like he'd finally put down something too heavy to keep carrying.

My eyes burned. "So that’s it?"

He continued, his voice quiet. "Every time I got close, you pulled away. Every time I told you how I felt, you treated it like a joke. I kept thinking if I just gave you enough time, you'd believe me."

A tear slipped down my cheek. He saw it. His hand moved, almost reaching for me. Then stopped.

That nearly broke me.

"I love you, Mikayla."

My breath caught.

He looked away. "But loving you doesn't mean I have to keep begging you to let me."

I wanted to tell him I loved him. That I was scared because he mattered. That the idea of losing him terrified me more than anything.

But the words stayed trapped behind every wall I'd spent years building.

The silence that stretched between us grew uncomfortable, then downright unbearable.

He picked up his hammer. "I need to finish this before dark."

And for the first time in two years, Damon Lockhart turned his back on me.

I walked away crying. Not pretty crying. The kind that involved hiccups, tissues, and a deeply unattractive amount of snot.

Because Damon had been right. He'd done everything. He'd been patient. Steady. Honest. He'd offered me his heart over and over, and I'd treated it carelessly.

I'd wanted him to chase me because chasing meant I never had to risk anything. As long as Damon kept coming after me, I never had to admit how desperately I wanted to run toward him. But he wasn't chasing anymore. And I couldn't blame him.

I looked back, hoping he'd be watching me walk away.

He wasn't.

He was facing the fence, hammer in hand, doing what Damon Lockhart always did. Fixing something that was broken.

For two years, he'd been the brave one. He'd put his heart in my hands and trusted me not to break it. And I'd been so terrified of getting hurt that I hadn't noticed what I was doing to him.

All this time, I'd been waiting for Damon to prove he wouldn't leave. And now that he finally had, I realized I'd spent two years giving him every reason to.

35

A SIDE OF AUDITORY HALLUCINATIONS

Damon

There were a lot of things a man could fix with a hammer. A busted fence. A loose floorboard. The barn door that had been sticking since last winter.

Unfortunately, a broken heart wasn't one of them.