"Now you have, though. Now you've had Mystery Cowboy.
And he was better than Jared could ever be, and the sex was surely better than any he'd had with a random bar hookup.
Because it was better than just about any sex ever. It had to be."
"Okay. I'm sorry. Judgment put on pause. You broke up with him, and..?"
"I sold my condo. And I'm moving here."
"Well hell," Griffin said. "Why didn't you say that?"
"That's what I've been trying to say. But, breakup news.
Baby news. There was other news."
Griffin's whole bearing changed. "That's great, Mal. I'm thrilled to have you here. We are thrilled to have you here?"
"Yes," Iris said. "Especially now."
"I have... I'm taking over a clinic here. I'm... I'm thrilled."
"Well, I wish I would've had it ready, but you know we have a guest room. And we can get the cabin prepared for habitation as soon as possible."
"I don't need it," she said.
"You don't need it?"
"No. I've got a place to rent already." She could only hope it was a decent place. She'd gone back and forth with the rental management company, but the info had been sparse.
Rentals were thin on the ground in Gold Valley, it turned out.
"You didn't have to do that."
"I did. I mean, I sank most of the money from my condo into the birthing center. But, not all of it. And I wanted to have my own place. My own space." She looked up at Grif-fin. "I haven't lived on my own. Not for more than a month or so at a time. I... I've always been with someone. I've always been dependent in some way on someone."
"Jared was dependent on you," Griffin said.
Mallory closed her eyes. "You know, I would love to believe that. I mean, I would really love to just let myself feel that. To be angry with him, and with the fact that he sponged off of me financially for as long as he did. Because he did.
But it's not that simple, Griffin. I needed something from him. And I have to figure out what that was."
As soon as she said it, she realized it was true.
She wasn't stupid.
She had a good family.
But somehow she'd let one mistake, one horrible, traumatic event determine how she lived her life. She'd committed herself to a relationship that didn't grow and change with her. So she'd tied herself into knots until she was a shape she hadn't recognized.
And she had to find the shape of Mallory.
Without all the weird baggage she'd tangled herself up in back home. Without Jared and her parents and everything else.
"I have to figure out what's next," she said. "And I'm hurt. That's the thing that gets me the most. That I'm really hurt by all of it. Even though I feel like... The visit up here, it was the beginning of me really seeing him. He wasn't polite to any of you. He was so obnoxious about the town. We were staying in this gorgeous little bed-and-breakfast, and he hated it. Because he didn't want to have to get up early to eat the breakfast. It was like being with a teenage boy." She pushed her fingers through her hair—they stopped abruptly at a snarl because her curls would not be tamed— and started to pace the room.
"And I can see all that. I could see it then. I'm still hurt that he betrayed me. I still don't know what to make of my life now that he's not in it. Because he's not. He's really not.
I'm done. For good. But the fact that it..." She swallowed.
She didn't want to say it, because she felt like it was too easy to use these words, and she also felt like she didn't really lay claim to them, given all the pain that Griffin had been through. But it was really the only thing she had to describe it. "My heart is broken."
Her heart had been broken for fifteen years. And only Jared knew why. He hadn't done it. But he hadn't truly helped her heal.
"It's going to take time for me to figure out how to put it back together. How to put myself... Together. For the first time. As a grown woman." A woman who was free.
She thought again of her handsome cowboy with the electric eyes, and then made herself stop that right away.
This had nothing to do with him.
"I just need to stand on my own feet. I need to be strong.
For myself. Not for someone else."
Griffin made his way across the room and pulled her in for a hug.
"You're perfect, Mallory. You just need someone who will see that."
She felt uncomfortable with that. It made her eyes feel like they'd been scrubbed with a cactus.
She didn't know how to respond to that so she didn't.
She spent the day with her brother and Iris. Iris made bread. Griffin grilled steak. They talked and laughed and she felt so free. She could stay as long as she liked. She didn't have to worry about Jared being bored.
She didn't make her move to leave until around ten at night.
"Hey," Iris said, as she was about to go. "Do you have plans Sunday? If not, you should come to my family dinner."