Buckled (Trails of Sin, #2)

by Pam Godwin

But my heart is. I left the battered, bleeding thing at Julep Ranch a year and a half ago, knowing I would never get it back.

True love isn’t about being inseparable. It’s being separated for over a year, and feeling even stronger, deeper in love. I love him.

The walk back is a harrowing test of bravery. I’m not a courageous person, but I am stubborn. That stubbornness keeps me moving.

feel him in the charged air, see his eyes burning in the violent limbs of light, and hear his roar in the rumble of thunder. Storms connect me to him, but whenever they pass, I go cold inside, my soul incomplete, my feelings numb.

I clutch my neck, trembling, drenched, but somehow still standing as eighteen months of pain release from my body. He never left. Never walked away. He never abandoned me.

The whole damn world should stop on its axis and take note, because no man alive knows how to love a woman like he does.

Even in death, I won’t let her go. She’s my serenity and my fire, my first and last breath.