MARE STARES BACK at me with wide eyes as I tell her how Mom encouraged me to read her book despite my many arguments. “Did you read it?” she whispers.
I unfold the blanket I was holding and spread it out on the ground. Mare and I are both quiet as I lay it out in the middle of the marigolds.
Taking Mare’s hand, I pull her down until she rests against my chest. We used to lie together in this position all the time, staring up at the moon. It feels good to be doing it again, this time the sun shining down on us.
We aren’t hiding anything; we aren’t sneaking around, we’re just us.
“I read the book,” I confess. My fingers play with the hair that spills down her back.
“And?”
“And I think that Our Story seems a lot like our story.”
I think back to the night my mom handed me the book. I didn’t even make it past the dedication before having to take a break. The title and the dedication made everything click for me.
“What makes you say that?” she asks.
“To the one that got away,” I recite from memory. “I’ll always love you, even from a distance.”
Mare turns her body so she can meet my eyes. “That could be about anyone.”
“But it’s not about anyone.”
“No. It’s about you. It’s only ever been you.”
“Goldie, if you’d just told me I didn’t ruin it all. I would’ve…”
Mare runs her hands along my cheeks. She presses her palm against my stubble, letting it scratch against her skin. “I wrote the book thinking if I just told our story, every beautiful and heartbreaking moment, that by the end of the duet, I’d be putting our love story to rest, too. That if I could give them a happily ever after, if I could change the ending, that I’d get over you.”
“Did it work?”
“I haven’t written the ending yet.”
“Is it working?”
“I thought it was,” she confesses, tucking her hand underneath my T-shirt. Her hand is warm, and the way she trails it along the waistband of my jeans is doing things to me. “Before I came back, I was hoping it would work, but now I know that was hopeless.”
“I read the book in one night. I couldn’t stop, even at times when reading so many of our moments together felt too heavy. The sun had come up by the time I made it to the ending. If you could even call it an ending.”
“That’s the way we ended…or so I thought.”
The ending of the first book ended with an airport scene similar to the one shared between Mare and me. The hero told the heroine he didn’t love her, and the last words were the heroine wondering how she could ever love again.
“As soon as I read it, I wanted to change the ending.”
“What does that mean?”
“I went to Chicago the day that I finished the book. Mom booked me a plane ticket, even gave me her personal copy of Our Story with tons of tab things in it because she wanted you to sign it, and I flew to Chicago. I had nothing but a change of clothes thrown into a bag and the hope of winning you back.”
Mare looks at me, stunned. “You did what?”
“I went to Chicago. I went to win you back.”
Her eyes dart across my face as she tries to understand my words. “You were in Chicago?”
My eyes close for a minute, remembering the day so clearly. It was over a year ago now, but it’s still burned in my memory.
I remember it being shockingly warm as I stepped out of the airport. In my mind, Chicago was always cold and cloudy. It wasn’t cold or cloudy that day. The sun was beating down on my skin as I waited for my Uber to pick me up.
“Yeah,” I finally get out. “I came to tell you everything I should’ve said the day that you left Sutten.”
“But you never…”
Our surroundings are calm and still as we both get lost in the silence. I think back on the hopefulness I felt in my chest that day. The thought of finally having my girl back in my arms had me asking the Uber driver to speed to the address Mom had given me for Mare.
I remember anxiously tapping my thigh as that twenty minute car ride felt like two hours. Time moved slow as I waited to reunite with the woman who owned my heart.
“It was early in the morning. I had no idea what your schedule looked like, but I was hoping you’d be home. My driver dropped me off in front of this apartment complex. The building was so tall, and everything was so crowded,” I add, remembering how out of place I felt. I was used to wide open spaces and being on a first name basis with most of the people I saw day to day. It wasn’t like that in Chicago. People were bumping into you, people refused to make eye contact, and the only reason my driver knew my name was because he had to double check he was picking up the correct passenger.
“I don’t understand,” Mare says under her breath. Her palm lays flat against my chest, her chin resting on top of her hand. Her hair fans down her back, some of the long pieces trailing along the blanket with her small movements. “How could I not know you were there?”
Pain courses through me at remembering how quickly my excitement and hopefulness turned into regret and despair. “I was waiting outside the building. I thought about having the front desk call you and tell you I was there, but I was hesitant. I didn’t know if you’d believe them. So, I figured I’d wait and if you didn’t show up, then I’d think of something different.”
The mountain breeze picks up. The marigolds rustle against one another, swaying in the breeze as I tell Mare about the second time my heart broke for her—for us. “I was just about to ask the front desk to call you when you walked out. You looked so stunningly the same, but so painfully different. Seeing you again, it caught me off guard. I couldn’t move—couldn’t breathe—for a few moments. All I could do was stare at you and try to figure out if it was really you.”
She’d been so breathtaking in a fancy dark green dress with some sort of sweater over it. It wasn’t what I was used to seeing her in, but she was beautiful nonetheless.
“You looked busy, like you were running late to something,” I continue. My fingers find her cheeks, trailing across her sun-kissed cheekbones. “During the few moments it took me to work up the courage to talk to you, someone else came into view.”
I pause for a moment, remembering the exact moment I realized that I missed my chance to apologize and confess to her how I really felt. “This man came into view. He had a nice suit on, he looked older, and you smiled widely at him. It was a familiar kind of smile—one that broke my fucking heart. He asked you something, and you nodded. He reached out and fixed the collar of your sweater, and it was at that moment it hit me that while I was still clinging to my love for you, maybe you’d let your love for me go. Maybe you’d moved on.”
“I’ve never—”
“I don’t want to know who it was—what it was. I’m not telling you this to blame you for trying to find happiness, Goldie. Now that I’ve let the anger of losing you go, I’ve realized I can’t be upset with you for doing what I told you to do. But it still didn’t make it hurt any fucking less.”
“So you came all that way and never said anything?”
I nod. “I couldn’t do that to you. You looked happy. You were with someone who obviously fit in the life you’d created for yourself. I didn’t fit there, and it really hit me watching the two of you together. I wanted you back, but I still couldn’t give you everything. There was no way I could drop everything and move out there with you, and you’d just published that book and were killing it. It felt selfish of me to ask you to drop all of that and come back to Sutten with me.”
Mare sits up. “I think you saw Rudy, my agent.” She cradles her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them. Her chin rests on her knees as she stares at the marigolds. “Are you going to ask me to drop Chicago and move back to Sutten this time?”
I push off the blanket and position my body next to hers. Reaching out, I grab her hand and wrap her fingers in mine. “To be honest, Goldie, the only thing I care to ask you is if you’ll be mine forever. Where forever is spent doesn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. I want you—wherever that will be.”
“Rudy called this morning. I have to go back to Chicago to meet with my publishing house to sell them the new ending for the book.”
I let go of her hand only to trace the bare skin of her leg. My fingertip traces over the soft skin of her knee. “Do you plan on coming back?” I ask hoarsely. Before she can say something else, I add, “Or am I getting a second shot at seeing you in Chicago?”
My finger drifts higher up, caressing her inner thigh. Her eyes flutter shut at the touch—or maybe it’s from my words—either way, it doesn’t matter. We aren’t falling apart at the thought of a little distance between us. That’s what matters.
“I don’t know what to do next.”
“You know what I know?” I ask, tracing along the edge of her dress. It’d be so easy for me to let my hand drift underneath and feel her. We were interrupted this morning before anything could happen and I’m desperate to be inside her again.
“What?”
“I know that I’ll stop at nothing to figure this out. I’ll talk to my dad about the ranch once a little more time has passed since Mom. I’ll find new people to hire. Whatever it takes, Goldie. I’m not fucking up a second time. I’m not losing us again.”
“So I’ll go back to Chicago and you’ll stay here?”
Leaning forward, I press my lips to her shoulder. I slip my fingers underneath her dress, letting my hand drift slowly up her thigh. “If that’s what we have to do for right now, yes. You finish that book and do what you need to do in Chicago. I can’t fucking wait to read it.”
“Cade,” she moans as my lips hit the hollow of her throat. Her back arches. The sound makes me lose the last bit of control I had. Grabbing her hips, I pull her on top of me.
“Goldie,” I respond.
“What happened to long distance relationships never work?” To tease me, she grinds her hips up and down, grinding right over the denim covering my length. I smile, loving how she’s giving me shit for something I said long ago.
“I was wrong, baby. I’ll make anything work to keep you. To keep us.”
I cover her mouth with mine, needing to taste her. She eagerly slips her tongue in my mouth, taunting and teasing me with the slow rhythm of her hips.
‘But if you have to leave, I’m going to give you something to remember me by.”
