Sable was insanely sensitive to vulnerabilities. It was what made her art so touching. Meaning she had to have sensed the wall he’d kept between them.
No wonder she’d left. No wonder she’d left again.
It must have hurt like hell to put herself out there, to lean on him, to trust him, to open herself up to him, and to have known that he wasn’t doing the same.
The bell above the door tinkled, then, “Is he ready to go?” Janie’s voice.
Rafe’s shoulders dropped. “You called my sister on me?”
“Thought she could roll you on home.”
“Hey, brother,” Janie said, scraping the stool noisily beside him. “You okay?”
About to say he was fine, instead he went with, “Nope. I’m not in any way fine.”
“Well, it shows. You look like hell. What happened?”
“Sable happened.” That was Bear.
Rafe raised his hands in question. “Really, man?”
Janie tugged on Rafe’s sleeve till he turned to her. Her face was distraught. And...and disappointed. As if she knew it was his fault.
Rafe shook his head. “Don’t hate her.”
“Hate her? How could we hate someone who loves the someone we love so very, very much? We love her to bits.”
“Good,” said Rafe. “She’s my one and only.”
Janie made a little mewling sound beside him. Rafe, big brother to the end, lifted a dead arm and hauled his sister in tight.
While Bear’s voice turned gruff as he said, “Hell, yeah, she is.”
“She has to know that, right?” Rafe asked the big guy. “I mean, if you guys know it, she does too?”
Bear shrugged. “Did you tell her so?”
Rafe opened his mouth to tell of a time he’d told Sable she was everything he’d ever wanted, but couldn’t think of one.
He’d shown her, in every way he knew how. Feeding her, holding her, protecting her, standing up for her, spending every available second with her, opening his home to her, letting her have control over the remote...sometimes.
She’d known how it felt to be loved by him.
But had he said the words? Ever?
No. Because he’d grown up knowing the sway of words. Powerful words. How they could not be taken back.
“Could it be possible she doesn’t know?”
Janie made another pathetic sound beside him. Rafe shot her a frown. Not helping.
While Bear said, “If not, only one way to make sure.”
Rafe pushed the stool back, only to discover he was not so good on his feet. The world swayed. The ground with it.
“Can you...?” Janie asked.
And there was Bear, an arm around his waist helping him out to Janie’s tiny little modern car with its aluminium frame and sorry excuse for an engine.
“When are you going to let me build you a real car?”
“Get in so I can drive you home, you stupid lump,” Janie said with a growl. “And you’ll see how real my perfectly lovely car is.”
The rest was a blur bar Janie and Bear rolling him into the sofa bed in Janie’s Airstream. Someone taking off his shoes. Opening one eye to find Janie, laughing and pushing Bear out of the door, telling him she could take it from there.
Then Bear’s deep voice at the door. “Will he be okay?”
“He survived losing her once, he can do it again.”
At which point his brain gave up and unconsciousness kindly took him under.
Sable hadn’t gone back to Rafe’s to pack. She’d snuck into Mercy’s house instead, needing to be near her mother. Even if her mother was as mothering as an ice cube. After crying till it gave her hiccups, she’d fallen asleep for most of the day, and had woken to find a blanket draped over her and a cup of cold tea on the desk in her room.
The next day she couldn’t have bought a ticket out of town if she’d tried, for it was the opening day of the Pumpkin Festival and every bus, car, bike and horse and cart within fifty kilometres was heading in, not out.
All slept out, Sable trudged into town when the sun had only just risen, her hands tucked deep into the pockets of her jacket—Rafe’s leather jacket, to be precise, as all her clothes were still in his loft.
There was enough light to see the entire town had been decorated in orange and purple streamers, orange and purple flowers. Even the street lights in the centre of Laurel Avenue flashed a permanent, thematic amber.
Every shop window boasted signs talking up pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice coffee, market stalls, live music, and re-enactments harking back to early days of the town when the gold rush and bushrangers were the talk of the day.
If she weren’t feeling so rotten, it might have seemed delightful. A marked improvement on the town parade and pumpkin-judging contest that were highlights of the festival a decade before. Right now, all that orange just gave her a headache.
Sable dragged her feet into Bear’s, the bell ringing cheerfully overhead. She breathed out in relief to find the place empty and sat at the counter.
“I wondered when you might show your face,” said Bear, eyes roving over her bed hair, her old jeans, her oversized Cure T-shirt—also Rafe’s. She’d decided she wasn’t giving that one back. A spoil of war.
Slowly, slowly, Sable’s head sank until it hit the counter with a thud. Even the scent of a freshly brewed strong hot coffee placed next to her barely registered.
“Like that, is it?” Bear asked.
Sable sat up and ran both hands over her face, tugging the skin over the bones before letting it spring back into place. “Very much so. What did you mean by, ‘I wondered when you might show your face’?”
“Mmm?”
“Bear,” Sable growled. PMS and heartbreak having sapped her of her civility.
“Rafe was in
