Braving The Storm: An Age Gap, Cowboy Romance (Crimson Ridge Book 2)
Braving The Storm: Chapter 39

Antoine and Cris have made it their business to reinforce just how important it is I play their game. This house echoes with nothing but soulless wealth and the footsteps of vapid, power-hungry people who drift in and out occasionally with my husband, but for the most part, I’m back to my meaningless existence.

The only solace I can seem to replace is that I’m protecting Storm, even if it’s tearing my heart into a thousand fragmented pieces in order to do so.

If misery had a face, she would be painted in my likeness.

Missing him is my constant companion. It lingers on my heels like a morose shadow, clinging to me as I randomly replace tears rolling down my cheeks while pouring a coffee into the white Bone China mug I want to smash against the matching polished white countertop.

I wake up with damp cheeks and have to bury my face in the pillow as I scream until my throat gives way and my body turns limp.

There has to be a way out of this nightmare, but right at this moment, my well of inspiration has run dry. I’m defeated and the only course of action I can take for the foreseeable future is to rot in this place.

Appeasing my sister and my insipid husband while protecting the man I love with every fiber of my soul. That’s what the seconds, minutes, and hours of what it means to be Briar Lane amount to.

Somewhere, somehow, a spark still glows inside my chest, reminding me that there must be a way out of this. The only problem is that the longer I spend suffocating and slowly drowning in this fishbowl, the fainter that glow becomes.

I worry about the day I wake up and it’s extinguished itself completely.

What then?

What happens when that tidal wave of inky black comes to claim me and drag me to that place where I just give up?

As I curl my knees against my chest, sitting on the ground beside my bed, I hear his rumbling chuckle. I feel his fingers graze the side of my face, touching me with a tenderness I’ve never experienced before. Not for any particular reason, other than reaching out to grace me with an affectionate brush of my skin. Just because he wants to.

I glance down when the soft vibration in my hand nudges me like a dog seeking out a pat.

Another message has arrived.

The sight of which sends the faintest, tenderest flutter of a delicate wing hidden away inside my stomach.

Antoine allowed me to keep my phone; I’m sure he knows if I have access to it—or, more accurately, still have access to Storm—the one-sided contact is more painful than any punishment my own husband could inflict on me.

These messages are both the only thing keeping me sane and the worst kind of torture rolled into one. Each new arrival has me scrambling to open it, inhaling each word like those miniature characters on screen are my own personal oxygen mask, and staring at the steadily increasing string of unanswered texts that I could practically recite line by line, word for word.

He checks on me.

Talks to me as if I’m sitting right there on the bench seat of his truck as he drives with one wrist hooked lazily over the wheel.

Not like I’m the heartless bitch who vanished, leaving only a note on the kitchen bench. Two words that broke me to sign indelibly onto paper through streams of tears.

I’m sorry.

He deserved so much more than that, yet it was all my torn, fractured heart had to give in that moment. The only way I knew to prevent him from attempting to follow me.

The wonderful man he is, Storm sends me photos of the cabin, the horses, and all the simplicities of life in the mountains that I miss with a cavernous ache inside my chest.

Last night’s messages almost cracked my determination to be strong and not give Antoine any reason to go public with his bullshit and twisted untruths. My resolve almost shattered as I lay in bed watching the dots bouncing on the screen, waiting as he took an infuriatingly long time to write his thoughts. They’d stop, pausing, while my heart sank, believing that this time he’d finally given up trying to communicate mid-message.

Except, when the vibration finally came through, and the bubble popped up on screen, fat tears began to roll freely as I read over his sweet words.

As I lay there last night, sinking into the gloom and fending off the dark thoughts threatening to come back to take over, he kept talking to me. Almost as if he could sense I was floundering there, curled on my side, my sanity splintering, losing my damn mind with loneliness and hopeless heartbreak.

Biting back the surge of emotion, I turn my attention to the newest messages that have arrived while I’ve been huddled here on the floor.

Blowing out a long, unsteady breath, with fat tears brimming over, I swipe out of the message thread before I throw all caution to the wind and break down and beg him to come rescue me.

This isn’t Storm’s mess to fix.

I don’t doubt for a second he’d come if I asked him to. What I couldn’t live with is the knowledge that I’d knowingly put him back in the worst, sickening kind of spotlight. Antoine might look like he’s polished and refined, but he’s brutally calculating. The man would ensure not only that there was fresh clickbait fodder spread to the media like a virus every week, but he’d pay the most immoral, unscrupulous vultures to camp outside our little slice of paradise in the mountains.

He would hound Storm until life became unbearable, and it would be all because of me.

So, I do what any self-respecting woman with heartbreak roaming through her veins would do. I spend time pouring over his videos, his rodeo montages, and I give myself the opportunity to be with him, even if it’s just a glimpse of a frenzied eight-second bull ride.

After drinking my fill, I quickly visit the Devil’s Peak Farriers Instagram, fully expecting there to be nothing new on the page, and brace myself to ignore the litany of thirsty comments left on any photo or video Storm makes an appearance in.

However, there’s a brand new post, and my heart immediately triples its rhythm upon first glance.

The sight I recognize is a close-up photo of the kitchen. No one would know where he’s taken this photo unless you had been to the cabin, and my eyes bounce around the image, noting the tiniest details.

The cupboard door that always hung crooked has been fixed, now proudly sitting straight on its hinges, and on the front panel are three brush strokes of paint in different shades of charcoal.

I’m utterly confused as to why he’s posted this photo, and immediately tap into the caption. Hope is determinedly flapping its wings, yet I’m biting the inside of my cheek almost raw with nervous anticipation that it might leave me feeling forlorn if I discover through a fucking post on Instagram that he’s playing house with someone new.

My eyes snag on the simple words paired with the photo of paint samples and the cabin’s kitchenette I wish I was standing in right now.

“Painted with the color on the right because they all look the same to me, but I’m guessing it’s what you would pick. I stood in the middle of the hardware store today with a different color in my hand, and then all I could hear was your voice telling me it’d look stupid, and that it would clash with the art you bought that day. So… hopefully you don’t hate it?”

It reads like a diary entry, but I know it’s for me.

This man is not only taking care of me by talking to me, checking on me, but he’s also taking care of our cabin.

I’m so fucking in love with him, it aches.

My hands shake and my cheeks are damp from where my eyes won’t stop leaking, and I very nearly don’t notice that there’s another photo to swipe through to, sitting hidden behind one showing the kitchen cupboards.

That’s when it punches a hole in my damn chest and captures the residue of my soul. Stealing it straight back to Crimson Ridge.

There’s no additional caption, just the image.

A water glass sits on the wooden table, in the center of frame in front of the window overlooking the forest outside.

It’s filled with a small bunch of freshly cut spring blooms.

With that one photo, my Storm just reached through the phone screen and helped me drag myself out of the spiraling depths.

I’m going to replace a way to get back to him, even if I have no idea how to do so, there is no way I can give up now.

I’ve got to figure this out on my own, and hope to god he’s still waiting for me by the time I escape this hell.