Free Stay by Julia Barrett, J. W. Manus, Winterheart Designs Page A

fear. He was afraid of her.
    Syd knew she should cry, a woman should cry when her man leaves her. She tried to will the tears to come, but her eyes remained dry and dusty and dull with pain. “Please, don’t go,” she repeated.
    “I don’t have a choice,” he said.
    “There’s always a choice.”
    He slid his hands through her hair, cupping the sides of her head. His voice was rough. The anguish she heard touched her soul. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I need time to figure it out. I need time away from you.”
    His words hit her like a slap across the face, and now the tears flowed. Lucas tried to kiss them away, but it was too late. He couldn’t take the words back. All the emotion she’d reined in for months poured out in one fell swoop. Syd fell against Lucas, her body wracked with sobs.
    He held onto her. She let him hold her. It didn’t matter anymore who or what he was. Lucas or Wolf, Syd didn’t care. He was leaving again. That was the only thing that mattered.
    When she quieted at last, he said, “What I mean is…” He brushed the tears from her cheeks. “I can’t sort this out when I’m this close to you, Syd. You overwhelm me. When I’m awake you’re with me. When I’m asleep, you invade my dreams. You live in here.” He thumped his chest. “And I can’t get you out.”
    She could only manage a whisper. “Do you want me out?”
    He gave her the barest hint of a smile. “No, never. But until I understand what I am, what happened to me, I can’t stay here. I can’t think clearly in your presence. A man can’t be two people at the same time. I need some space to wrap my brain around this.” He lifted her chin. “Syd, I’m a cowboy. I don’t believe in this crap. But…”
    “But you’re Wolf too,” she said.
    Lucas nodded. “I don’t want to be him. But I am. I don’t want to know things a man shouldn’t know. But I do.”
    Syd rested her head against his shoulder. She knew any argument was futile. What he was… He was impossible. She knew how long it had taken her to come to terms with it. “When will you leave?”
    “I’m packed. I’ve loaded up my horse,” he said. “I’m leaving now.”

    “What did you tell him?” Syd slammed the kitchen door behind her.
    “I told him the truth. Isn’t that what you wanted him to know, the truth?”
    She stomped right past the sheriff. “You had no right, Cass. No right.”
    “I had just as much right to tell him as you, maybe more.”
    Syd paced in front of the stove. “I should go after him. I need to bring him back.”
    Cass shook his head. He held out a glass of orange juice. “That’s the last thing you should do. Right now you need to shut up, sit down, and drink this or I’ll haul your ass into town and tell your doctor to force feed you.”
    Syd grabbed the glass from his hand, sloshing juice over the rim and onto her jacket. “He might not come back.”
    “I know.” Cass swung a chair around behind her. “Here, sit down before you fall down.” He gently pushed her back and when she sat he knelt in front of her. Cass took her hands in his. “Listen to me, kiddo. Sometimes you have to take a risk. And in this case, I don’t think you have a say. Lucas needed to know the truth, and now it’s up to him to find a way to live with it.”
    “Bu what if…?” Syd couldn’t finish her sentence.
    “Like I said, it’s a risk, but it’s a risk you have to take. If Lucas can’t come to terms with what he is, it’ll always be between you like some no man’s land, a demilitarized zone. Like a minefield waiting for one of you to take a wrong step. You don’t want that.”
    She looked up. “What if I want him any way I can get him?”
    Cass squeezed her hands. “Well, I guess that’s your task, to figure out how to live your life no matter what he decides.”

Stay

    ucas had time to think on the drive back to Nebraska, a hell of a lot more time than he wanted. All he could think about was leaving Syd