Ropin' Her In by TB Mann

Author:TB Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-990671-08-1
Publisher: Heart Sisters Publishing Inc

13

Grace

I never wanted to experience the past twenty-four hours again. Ever. The fear. The worry. The fact that death hung over her. And even though none of those things are new in relation to Susie, until last night, it had never been so real. To see her collapse at my feet. To frantically search her body for signs of breathing, of her pulse… it tore at all those walls I’d built around me.

No. Tore wasn’t the correct word. Obliterated. That’s the word.

Knowing that I may have missed my chance, my opportunity to tell the person who meant the most to me in this world exactly what they meant to me, detonated inside me like a bomb. And with the explosion, all those carefully constructed mega walls were blown to smithereens.

Sure, the walls were there to protect me from ever getting hurt again, but the truth was more powerful than any lie could ever be. And my walls were built on lies. The only way to protect your heart was to build it to be strong.

To love.

Love exercised the heart muscle. It allowed it to grow and stretch like a weightlifter did when building muscle. Having a stronger muscle mass helped during injuries. It gave you something to fall back on while the body worked to repair itself from the trauma it sustained. The same could be said of the heart.

To love fiercely. To love often. That was the work that the heart needed. The strong base that kept you together when the world came crashing down around you.

So walling up my heart to protect it was not strength. It was cowardice. It was easy because to love, like anything worth having, was hard.

Not that any of it mattered in the end because despite my walls, I hadn’t been able to keep Susie out. She’d spent her time searching, knowing that I was worth it, to find all those carefully hidden cracks in the illusion. Because that was what the wall was… an illusion. One constructed to fool not only everyone on the outside, but also me. Until she’d collapsed, I’d never seen the illusion of my walls for what they were.

But now I knew. Now I had to decide if I wanted to enter into the realm of denial—to go on as if the illusion was real—or to face reality.

Her hand twitched in mine. We were alone in her room while she’d napped after a day full of testing. I used the opportunity of her nap to push Jonathon, Michael, and her father out, telling them that I’d watch over her while they went home and showered. It had taken a lot of convincing—I’d even called in the big guns by getting Dr. Muir to tell them the same thing—before they’d finally relented, leaving me alone with my sleeping bestie.

Her fingers squeezed mine again as her eyes cracked open in the dimly lit room. According to Jonathon, when Susie had woken up that morning, the sunlight streaming in had caused

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