Chapter Eight

Willow felt like her legs couldn’t hold her up. She sagged against the doorframe, grasping it tightly to try to compensate for the weakness that was trying to drag her down. She gasped for breath as she forced herself to step back into the house and close the door behind her. Her steps were heavy and her mind spun as she made her way back into the living room and dropped down onto the sofa. Tears were already streaming down her cheeks though she didn’t remember when she started crying, and she felt the pain in her throat as emotion tore brutally from her.

What had just happened? The touch of Gannon’s hands and the taste of his lips had been the beginning of everything that she had been dreaming of since she had first met him, and she had given herself over to it, finally feeling as though she might be ready to allow someone else close to her. The fear that had been an ever-present element of her life since Gavin had walked away from her had finally started to chip away and she had been willing, for the first time in longer than she could remember, to extend trust to a man. She thought that he felt the same about her. She thought that she had seen something changing within him and the hesitation that he had shown dissipating, but then suddenly it was all over and he was running from her as though he never wanted to look at her again.

Willow couldn’t help but wonder if she had done something wrong. Perhaps it was Gavin that had driven Gannon away. She went too far talking about him and Gannon couldn’t handle it. She never should have told him so much or expressed so much of the emotion that she still felt about the situation. The truth was that the emotion she felt wasn’t a longing for Gavin or even for the life that they had once shared. She didn’t feel sad for what they had lost or what they would never have. The pain that she felt was for herself and the time that she had lost trying to salvage the remnants of the man she had once known as she watched him disappear within himself. It had been terrifying to see him altered so severely and so quickly. Over the course of just a few months he had gone from the man who she had known for many years and who she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with, to someone who she didn’t even recognize. She had felt a desperation to save him, to find whatever might be left of him and bring it back. Even long after the love that she had once felt for him had gone and she already knew within her that the life that they had planned on having wasn’t going to happen, she still had the drive to pull him back from the oblivion that she could see him racing toward. But it never happened. She was never able to rescue him. And now the lingering vestiges of him in her life had driven Gannon away.

It was difficult to imagine exactly what about her talking about Gavin had caused Gannon to leave her. Perhaps it was the fact that she was still thinking about him so much and Gannon thought that she wouldn’t have the room in her thoughts and heart to allow him in, even though she had long since cast Gavin out of her heart and wanted nothing more than to remove all thoughts of him from her mind and welcome Gannon in fully. Perhaps it was that she had lived with him, sharing her space, her time, and her life with him, and Gannon felt that that somehow diminished what she might be capable of feeling for him, as though every moment that she had spent with Gavin was at the sacrifice of the devotion that she could ever have for another, even though the time that she and Gavin had spent in this house was fraught with tension and torment, and there was not a single day that she could remember that was truly happy within these walls, leading her to hope desperately for joy to fill the space that she had had such hope for.

Perhaps it was simply that she had contemplated marrying him and Gannon was jealous and even hurt by the idea that she had once considered herself fully committed to this man, ready to link her life to his and share them into eternity, even though there had always been a glimmer of questioning in the back of her mind when she thought of marrying Gavin and a spark of relief in the concern when he didn’t return home that day. The thought that Gannon could have that strength of feelings for her already seemed almost ridiculous when she first considered it. They had known each other for such a short time and though they had been working toward getting to know each other and becoming closer with every passing day that they had spent together in the greenhouse, there was still so much that she didn’t know about him.

The more that she thought about it and allowed herself to truly experience the emotions that were going through her, though, the more she realized that she felt the same. If she knew that something was happening between Gannon and another woman, or that he had had the type of connection with another woman that she had had with Gavin, no matter how short a time that they had known each other, it would upset her. Letting this sink in only underscored how deeply she had come to care for him, and made it even more difficult for her to understand what would have caused him to be so upset that he would leave her that way.

Willow wanted so much to talk to Gannon, but she didn’t know what she would say to him. He was the one who ran from her, and she knew that that meant that he needed to be the one who came back to her. She had to give him time. There was no other option, though that was a more painful thought that she could ever have imagined.