Page 23 of Coiled Tight

Right?

My eyes kept smarting with unshed tears. I wanted to rub at them, but I didn’t want to draw more attention to the fact.

“What?” I gritted out eventually because apparentlystanding still—mostly still; fidgeting couldn’t be helped—wasn’t enough of a prompt for Saúl to start talking.

“I’m not firing you,” he said slowly. “Unless you want to go because I violated your privacy, and if that’s the case, I’m really sorry, but you don’tneedto leave. Everyone’s going to kill me if you do leave, actually, so… Stay?”

“Why?”

What was I asking? Why did heviolate my privacy,as he said? Or why was everyone going to kill him? I had no idea.

Saúl smacked his lips together. He was the kind of person who was very loud about all his movements. Or maybe it had just been grilled into him because of his work with horses. I didn’t know.

There were clearly many things I didn’t know, and very little I could do about them.

Little.

Heh.

If I wasn’t under so much emotional turmoil, I’d roll my eyes. This was getting ridiculous.

“You’re the best vet we’ve had here in years. Surely you know everyone loves you.”

“They don’t.”

They shouldn’t. Kara definitely didn’t, and the people here… Well, they shouldn’t, either. It was a road that only led to disappointment.

“They do.”

I shook my head right away. I realized he couldn’t read my mind and say that I wasn’t so much refuting his claim as the rightness of it. Too bad I couldn’t just make him see.

“Why did you come in?”

“I texted you, and then I knocked, but you didn’t answer.” I looked up this time, and Saúl looked sheepish as he ran a hand through his hair. “The ranch hands have been on my case all day to get you to have a beer with them. If I madeanother excuse for you, they were going to kill me, and I’m a terrible liar.”

That only sparked more questions. “Um. Why were you making excuses for me?”

Saúl sighed. “Because you’re anxious around them, especially when they get loud and in your space, and they’re only ten times worse at those two things when they have a few beers on them.”

Oh.

That was…

I didn’t know how I felt about it. It was thoughtful, but also…

I glanced away. “I can take care of myself.”

Despite what everyone else said and thought, and every time I’d proved the opposite either by myself or in front of others.

“Okay,” Saúl acquiesced easily. “What can I do to make you stay?”

I laughed. Hysterical laughter seemed to be the name of the game with me. Hey, this time it ended up in tears. I clearly had a repertoire.

“Just leave me alone.”

I hated being alone. I especially hated being alone when there were big emotions to sort through, and when I was feeling vulnerable and Little and not in the right headspace, but he wasn’t my Daddy, and I was still not getting over the shame that came with whatever had gone down in the past hour.

There was more cursing—this time I could tell for sure it was Spanish—but it was softer, and then the door shut behind him.