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She’d pushed him away. The best thing in her life right now — next to Jesus — and she couldn’t give him the assurance he was looking for. She just wasn’t in a space where she could commit.

“I’ll be back,” she whispered, hugging her knees tight again.

“Will you? Because if you were sure of that, I think you’d be responding differently.” Weston rose and looked down at her. “I don’t understand, Paisley. What did I do wrong this time?”

“Nothing. It’s not you. You’re perfect.”

Weston scoffed. “As if.”

“You’re perfect for me.” It cost her to say that. “My issues are mine, and I need to deal with them.”

“If you say so.”

Paisley stumbled upright, and Weston didn’t reach out to help her. She stood a few feet away. There was enough light from the light on the dock to see his face drawn closed once again.

Her heart hurt. How could she have done this to him? All she’d wanted for the past year to see her as she truly was, but the tables had flipped too quickly. He’d stepped aboard just in time to see the mess that was Paisley’s real self, not the carefully curated one everyone else at the ranch and the Colorado ski resort saw.

She’d convinced herself that she’d become that cheery optimist. That she’d left her previous self behind in welfare housing. Not as convincingly as Amelia had with all her focused study and the scholarships that had launched her into med school. Kait had stayed to hover over their mother while serving at an upscale restaurant. Turned out maybe Kait was the most sensible of them all.

Or Amelia. All Paisley knew was that it wasn’t her.

Footsteps crunched across the rocky shore.

Weston.

Oh, how she longed to call his name. To run to him and fling her arms around him. To kiss him back the way he’d obviously been hoping for.

Paisley watched as he climbed the slope toward the lodge, but he didn’t go in. His footsteps continued up the walkway where she couldn’t see him. She caught another glimpse as he strode under the streetlight at the base of Hummingbird Lane.

And then he was gone.

Anger suffused her. Why? Why was everything so hard? Why was true joy always just out of reach? Practice makes perfect was about as hopeless as fake it ’til you make it.

She wasn’t the happy-go-lucky activity coordinator everyone thought she was. It had only been a veneer.

Now Weston knew the truth, and he’d walked away. Fine, not without her giving him a good, hard shove, but he’d gone, all the same.

Would he tell everyone else? Not likely. He wasn’t that kind of guy.

But Paisley had been scrambling to keep everything together for so long that surely something was going to explode any second now and send all her plans into orbit. The universe would laugh.

Ugh. Did she really believe that?

The answer ought to be a resounding no. Jesus was bigger than her messes. She knew that. But right now, He seemed like ethereal mist compared to the realities of her family problems on top of her own issues.

She had to face Mom.

Chapter

Sixteen

“Grandfather?”

The old man blinked twice as though that’s what it would take to get Weston into focus. “Yes? What can I do for you?”

Weston had taken a chance that Walter Sullivan would be in the office early. Mom said she’d taken a tray in for him half an hour ago, and neither Tate nor Graham would be clocking in today, since it was the weekend.

Still, Weston hesitated. He managed to get the door shut and cross the space. Grandfather gestured him to a guest chair, and he took a seat, rolling his cowboy hat around in his hands.