Chapter 25 Broken Harmony
Evan was a man, and he was supposed to step right into her trap when she set it for him. However, he had been burned enough times and he had learned a thing or two about loaded questions. He could play right into a mental sparring match, he could ignore it, or he could unload with the truth and make himself vulnerable. “Because I like picnics,” he replied, rolling out from under her so that he could start packing the stuff into the basket.
She was miffed by the fact that he wasn’t so easy to outwit. He was intelligent and wary of being manipulated. She believed that his feelings for her were deep, but she didn’t know for sure. If she were to leave Cameron and come to him, she wanted to know that it was a sure thing. She had to get him to talk. Maybe he would argue with her, and she would get the truth out of him. “That was kind of rude,” she said, trying to pick a fight.
“Huh?” Evan played the dumb card. “What was rude?”
“Rolling out from under my head and getting up when I had asked you a question.”
“I answered your question.”
“You don’t want the day to end because you like picnics,” she repeated. “That was a dodge, and we both know it. What is the truth?”
“The truth? You want the truth?” Evan grinned as he remembered the line from the movie.
She knew what made him smile, but she had a role to play, and she couldn’t crack even under the pressure of his witty charm. “Yes, Evan, I want the truth.” She tried to make herself sound angry. She stood with her hands on her hips trying stare him down as he ignored her, folded the blanket and took up the basket.
“No.” He tried to take her hand to start back across the pasture toward the house. She refused to let him have it. He said nothing, just looked at her with a sad accusation. He turned on his heel and started toward the house.
Though her anger had begun as an act, his actions sent her temper soring. She was actually angry at herself because she was the one who had really ruined an otherwise perfect day, but it was much more convenient to attack him. She wanted, needed, him to tell her what to do, and he wasn’t playing along.
He opened the gate and held it as he waited for her to catch up. When she passed through, she avoided his eyes. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was going to do, so she slowed a bit, dragging her boots in the gravel. He walked past her, set the basket and blanket down on the deck, went to the truck, and opened the passenger’s side door for her. She slipped in and stayed on her own side. He got behind the wheel and backed out of the driveway.
On the way back to the motel, she realized that she didn’t want the day to end the way it was going to end, but she didn’t know how to stop the momentum of what had already begun to roll forward on its own. As a concession, she slid over to the middle of the seat beside him and put her hand on his knee. He put his hand on her hand and held it there. They drove to the motel in silence.
“I really had a nice time,” he said as he parked the truck in front of room 134. He slid out and extended his hand to her to help her out of the truck. It wasn’t that she couldn’t do it herself, but it was the sort of thing that came to him instinctively.
“Thank you,” she said. “I had a really nice time too.” She was no longer angry, but instead very disappointed in herself. “I jus…” she began.
He interrupted her by laying a finger across her lips. “No more,” he said, shaking his head. He smiled at her. His eyes had a shadow of sadness in them.
She buried her head in his chest, and he held her in the silence of the setting sun. When he released her, he walked her to her door. She reached for her key automatically. She had it out and into the lock, smiling as she thought about the fact that it was an actual key and not a key card. As she opened the door, she took his hand to pull him in behind her. She wanted him, wanted to make love to him like she had never wanted to make love before, never letting him go, but she came up short. He had not followed her.
“No, Alex,” he said. His eyes were sad, but firm in their resolve. “You gotta figure this out on your own.”
“Bu…” she started to protest, but cut it off. She had some very intense feelings flowing through her that she wanted to carry out, but her protest was cut short when she saw him shaking his head. She buried herself in his arms again, but he stood rigid, and the embrace was forced. When she looked up at him, he was staring straight ahead at the wall, trying to remain focused. She could tell that he was struggling with having to do the right thing when everything else in him was begging to give in to her.
“See ya later,” he said finally. He broke the embrace, turned on his heel, and went straight to his truck without looking back. When he was seated behind the steering wheel, he was facing her. He glanced up for a moment as the engine turned over to start the truck, and their eyes met, then he turned to look over his shoulder and backed out.
She watched his truck pull away and heard the sound of the large diesel pipes as he accelerated away from her. Was he running away? She thought about what she had told her about fear in horses and humans. Was he afraid? Was that why he had avoided talking, was that why he had refused her advances? He didn’t seem to be afraid. He seemed to be very strong, but perhaps there was some pain hidden behind that strength.
She slipped into a hot bath to try to relax, but it was only a short time before she realized that she really didn’t want a hot bath. She got out of the tub and put on her pajamas, stacked up the pillows behind her back and started flipping through the channels on the TV, but was soon bored with that as well.
Her sleepless night stretched on into the early morning hours. She was fighting with what had been, what was, and what could be. Her life, her attitude, her thinking, and her feelings had changed so rapidly that they were a jumbled-up mess, and she struggled to make sense of it all. She had no idea who she was or what she wanted anymore. Things had been so simple and easy in her old life, but that was before she had discovered that there was more to life than what she knew, before she had heard the primeval call of the mountains, of freedom, felt the wind in her face; the gentle rocking motion of a horse under her. The memory of that motion eventually lulled her to sleep.