I’M CURSING under my breath from the state some of our tour guides left the tack room when I stop in my tracks.
I sense her movements before I see her.
The stable is supposed to be my territory. It should be the one fucking place on this ranch that I can avoid the woman that haunted my sleepless thoughts last night.
I guess I don’t get the luxury of avoiding Mare for long, because she’s standing a few feet away from me, her focus pinned on Dolly.
I’m thinking about backing up and retreating out of the stable to leave her to it. At least with that option, I’d be able to avoid her a little longer. I’m still pissed about last night. I feel like a fool. It was hard to completely lay everything out for her, admitting to her that I want her so fucking bad, and I got nothing in return.
I’d laid in bed last night thinking maybe she’d see that picture of her in my hat and she’d come see me. I was dumb as fuck to think she’d crawl into my bed, and I’d wake up to her warm body next to mine again.
I was so fucking wrong. She didn’t come see me.
She either didn’t bother to notice the photo or just didn’t give a fuck about it. I’m not sure which one of those choices I’d prefer.
Mare’s attention is fully on Dolly, allowing me a few moments to figure out what I want to do. The horse happily nuzzles into Mare’s palm. Mare laughs, looking at Dolly lovingly.
I can’t walk away, even when I know I should. Even when I’m still upset with her and with how things are between us.
“Took you long enough to pay her a visit.” My words catch Mare off guard. She jumps, her back straightening and going tight with the realization she isn’t alone.
Dolly lets out a loud sigh, as if she’s agreeing with my words. The horse was Mare’s world before she left us. I can sympathize with how it feels to suddenly be dropped by Mare.
“How do you know I haven’t already come to visit her?”
I stop a few feet away from her. “Have you?”
Rolling her eyes, she looks back at Dolly. Mare runs her hand down her neck, scratching behind the horse’s ears. “No. I haven’t.”
I silently watch her and the horse get reacquainted with one another. Every now and then Dolly whinnies in excitement to have her favorite person back. Dolly isn’t very picky about who she loves, but it was clear the horse always had a favorite—Mare.
“Looks like she missed you,” I note, watching Mare press her forehead into Dolly’s mane.
I missed you, I fight saying.
“Yeah. I should’ve visited,” Mare mutters under her breath. I don’t know if she means since she returned for the funeral, or if she just means in general.
I bite my tongue. It’s no use trying to tell her she should’ve absolutely been back sooner. Been there, done that.
“She still have a mind of her own on the trails?” Mare changes the subject, avoiding eye contact.
I want her to look at me. I want to finish our conversation from last night now that we’re both thinking with clear heads.
Mostly, I want to know what I can do to ease the tension between us.
Or maybe I need to accept the fact that nothing will ever be the same between us.
I give her a few moments to see if she’ll look at me. When she doesn’t, I sigh, knowing I’ll answer her anyway. “A huge mind of her own. The guests don’t ever get her. Even though most try to pick her.”
Mare lovingly scratches at Dolly’s neck. “Because she’s such a pretty girl.’
“She’s pretty until she takes you into a tree of fucking grasshoppers.”
Finally, she looks at me. It hurts more than I thought it would. “She did that? To you?”
I fix the hat on my head. “She sure as hell did. I went to bed for weeks having nightmares of grasshoppers all over me.”
Mare looks back to the horse. “What a good girl you are, Dolly.”
My eyebrows narrow. So that’s how it’s going to be.
Mare looks over her shoulder, pointing to my head. “Nice hat,” she says, her tone unreadable.
I cock my head to the side, wondering where she’s going with this. At least she’s not running. “My typical one hasn’t been returned to me.”
Mare clicks her tongue. “Don’t give things away if you expect to get them back.”
“It was an extreme circumstance,” I say under my breath.
Mare pins her full attention on me. She kicks at the ground, brushing what I think is Pippa’s boot along the floor. “Cade,” Mare says breathlessly. “That picture.”
My heart picks up speed at the same moment my stomach drops to my feet.
So she did see it.
I swallow slowly, trying my best not to look away from her angry but inquisitive eyes. “What about it?”
Mare uses petting Dolly as an excuse to collect her thoughts for a few moments. Eventually, she sighs. “Did you really have it? Every day?”
“Does my answer to that change anything?”
An annoyed breath fills the space between us as two creases form between her eyebrows. “Does it matter if it changes anything? I want to know how long you’ve had it.”
I shake my head at her, turning to go back to the tack room. If she wants me to bear everything to her, she’s going to have to give me something as well.
I’m not trying to fight with her. I am, however, tired of this push and pull between us. I’m exhausted by the back and forth. If things are going to be like this, I just want her to leave so I can go back to pretending my heart wasn’t missing from the moment she left Sutten.
“Cade! Don’t walk away from me!” Mare shouts. She must leave Dolly’s side, because her angry footsteps can be heard behind me as I make my way back toward the tack room.
I laugh sarcastically. “Don’t walk away from you? It’s funny that it bothers you considering you’ve always been the one to walk away from me.”
I hear her gasp. She follows me in, hot on my heels. She’s silent as I angrily pick up the tack the seasonal hires lazily left on the ground.
These saddles cost thousands of dollars and they’ve treated them like nothing.
“Let me help your memory—”
I angrily turn around, my body coming to a stop in front of hers. “Help my memory?” My laugh bounces off the walls of the small room. “My memory tells me it wasn’t me who pretended to forget the details of our history…that was all you, Goldie.”
Her arms cross over her chest defensively. “You told me to go.”
“You listened!”
Of course I told her to go. I don’t understand how she doesn’t realize that was really the only thing I could do at the time. If I’d asked her to stay, we would’ve ended up fighting—just like we are now. She would’ve hated me for keeping her from her dreams, for asking her to risk everything for me.
Mare’s eyes are wide and untamed as she looks me up and down. It’s like she doesn’t recognize the man standing in front of her.
I can understand. Most of the time, I can barely recognize the woman that returned to this town.
Sometimes she’s my Goldie, other times she’s someone completely different.
“You can’t hold a grudge against me for leaving when you’re the one who told me to go.”
My jaw tenses. I shouldn’t have to explain this to her. “I absolutely can hold a grudge. It’s not about you leaving. It’s about the fact you never came back.”
“I thought you’d want me to stay away!” she shouts. We’re lucky that everyone on the ranch is currently away and busy or we’d have a full audience for the fight happening between us.
“Why the fuck would I want you to stay away when I was in love with you?”
Her mouth falls open. “What?” she asks, her voice breaking.
I let out a dejected sigh, anger and sadness coursing through my veins. I shake my head. “You knew that.”
“No.” She shakes her head back and forth, her eyes misting over. “I didn’t know. I hoped. God, I wanted that more than anything. But I asked you if you loved me and you told me no. How can I trust you now?”
“You were my entire fucking world that summer. I wanted to spend every goddamn minute I could with you. How can you not trust me when I say I was madly in love with you?”
Her eyes go wide, her body jolts with my last words, as if I’ve stunned her. “After I left, I cried myself to sleep so many times, wondering where things went wrong. I obsessed over the idea of you being my world and I was nothing to you. You can’t tell me years later that you loved me.”
My nostrils flare. She’s not getting out of this easily. I should’ve told her then, but I was scared if she knew how I felt, she’d never leave. She’s older now. She’s capable of knowing what she wants out of life. Mare doesn’t get the same luxury of not knowing how I really felt—how I still feel.
“I can’t keep it a secret any longer.” I grab her arms, pulling her closer to my body. “I fell for you so hard and fast, it was almost like that love had always been there. I loved you, Goldie. I loved you so fucking much that it killed me to watch you leave.”
Her eyes get wide as her bottom lip begins to tremble. She almost looks horrified by my words. “No, no, no,” she chants. “There’s no way. I would’ve known.”
My fingers tighten around her skin. “I think you did.”
Mare shoves against my chest. “No! I didn’t. If I did, I wouldn’t have left.”
I pull her all the way against me. She pushes me away for a few moments before her body melts to mine. “You knew I loved you, Goldie. But you still fucking left. Worse, you knew and you never came back.”
Fire rages in her eyes. She can be angry with me all she fucking wants. I’m done beating around the bush. I want her to know everything I kept quiet because I thought it was best for her.
When her gaze drops to my lips, I do something completely fucking stupid.
I grab her by either side of her face and pull her lips to mine. The kiss is angry and untamed. Mare’s fists grab the fabric of my shirt as she yanks on it in an attempt to mold our bodies together.
We suck at using our words to communicate what we’re feeling.
But the kiss says it all.
Mare and I are unfinished business.
