Page 7 of And Forever (The Riders and Rings Duology #2)

WILDER

EVERS RIDGE, MONTANA — EARLY MAY

A rrowroot Hills is a fantastic property.

It’s massive but still has all the hallmarks of being a family-owned, intimate ranch.

I can see why it’s such a successful attraction for visitors and employees.

Working for Mitch and Bex has been easy—especially when I consider how complicated it could have been given my history with their daughter.

Instead, Mitch has taken time to get to know me as he’s shown me around and detailed the expectations of my job.

He’s slowly added responsibilities, and is still who I report to every day, even though I know Charlotte is back.

Her avoidance isn’t hurtful; it just makes the inevitability all the more difficult to wait for.

It’s nearing sundown when I get to the cream-colored barn with the deep green shutters and roof.

It’s smaller than the other one and tucked off the back garden of the main house, away from the majority of the guest areas.

Today’s the first day I’ve been allowed to come here, most of my work taking place in the boarding stable or with the guest houses.

This is the family’s barn, and I feel like I’ve passed some kind of test as I pull open the doors .

There’s a flash of a familiar red to my left, and any questions I have about Charlotte’s dreams and desires are doused by the sight of Rooney. Before I think better of it, my feet move in his direction.

This was her reason for never wanting to be stuck here.

“Hey, handsome boy,” I coo as I approach.

Rooney’s chocolate eyes lock on me, the wariness in them immediate.

An irritated huff emits from his lips, so I halt my steps and wedge my hands into the pockets of my light jacket.

The horse shifts his weight from side to side, chuffs continuing to come from him. “Yeah, I deserve that.”

Damn perceptive horse.

I wait, engaged in a standoff, until he shuffles his feet and finally shakes his head and leans out over his stall door.

“If only getting your girl to forgive me was that easy,” I say sadly as I rub Rooney's soft nose, fingers tapping at a familiar polka dot before moving on. I let my hand wander down his neck, laughing a little when he turns into me so I can hit an old favorite spot. “Where is Charlie anyway, huh? If you’re here, she must be, too.” I get a little snort in reply.

I pull back to look him in the face. “Don’t lie to me.

I’ve been on-site nearly a week—I know she’s around here somewhere.

But I can’t say I blame her for not wanting to see me. ”

Rooney seems content to let me talk, and while it feels a little strange, it’s also a relief. Being here, surrounded by so much of Charlotte and not seeing her is killing me, so I continue, “I fucked up.”

I unlatch the stall door before picking up a brush discarded on a nearby ledge.

With the door closed behind me, I get to work.

If Rooney’s going to listen, I might as well groom him a little for the trouble.

As I begin at the top of his shoulder and work down the grain of his coat, I let the words break free from where I’ve tumbled them over and over again for years in my head.

“You know, my therapist would be proud of me for saying all of this to someone other than him. God knows he’s heard it enough times.” I give a hollow laugh.

Adam Knowles answered my desperate call three months after Charlotte left. I’d had to get a new phone by that point, my impulsive decision put my old one at the bottom of the pond.

I woke up one morning and didn’t feel anything.

Not physically, but in every other measure of sensation.

It wasn’t the numbness I had cocooned myself in after Travis died; the one that protected me from lashing out and being reckless with my safety.

Gone was the dullness and desensitized filter I washed every day with.

The disquiet that pulled at the corners of my consciousness and made my skin—my life— uncomfortable.

It was replaced by nothing. The scary kind.

The kind of nothing that came with a harsh gravity and finality.

The one that had me shaking with fear because I didn’t want to see the sun set that day.

I pulled up an emergency mental health crisis center online and hit the dial button before I could let the darkness creep in any further.

Since then, I’ve had a standing appointment at least once a month. It’s been a gradual release, a stretch to see how I’ve progressed. In the beginning, I was on the phone with Adam two to three times every week, and it was hell. But it helped.

“I kind of lost myself when I lost Travis,” I pick up my train of thought, the methodical strokes of brushing Rooney make it easier to keep going.

“Until Charlotte came along, I hadn’t really let many people into my life on a level where I could be hurt by their actions.

Curtis was a teacher, but I wasn’t the best student.

I learned what I needed about riding and rodeoing from him.

I just didn’t listen to everything else he tried to teach me.

I didn’t know how to embrace that fatherly energy— Daddy Issues, party of one —so I kept him at arm’s length.

” I’ve made it to Rooney’s hindquarters, so I walk up to his head and round him to start on the other side.

“But Travis didn’t ring those alarm bells the way Curtis did.

Travis was my best friend. He showed up with the same kind of reckless, restless energy I had, and he didn’t leave.

We may have started out being friends because it was convenient, but that’s not why we stayed friends. ”

I swallow thickly, getting to this part still makes my chest tight with the pain and loss, but it no longer hurts like it used to.

It’s bittersweet and important that I talk about my friend.

I clear my throat, my voice a little hoarser, but I push through.

“I think he knew I needed someone in my life who wasn’t going to leave.

And he never did. Sure, our lives and schedules took us apart physically, but Travis stayed in touch.

I think I had a text from him nearly every day, no matter what was going on, and that helped keep me from feeling so…

alone all the time.” I sniffle, just once.

Rooney turns his head to nudge at my back gently.

“When he died, I let my brain trick me into believing I was once again abandoned. Forgotten. I didn’t see Charlotte; I only saw my own pain. ”

Rooney gives a disapproving stomp of his hoof at that, and I let out a long exhale before leaning my forehead on his shoulder. It’s a quiet acknowledgment of my failings. I never blamed Charlotte, but I also couldn’t stop directing my anger at her.

“She never deserved how I treated her,” I breathe the confession into Rooney’s coat.

“I was callous and cruel when all she ever did was love me. I drove her away, and I can’t even blame her for leaving.

” I step back before toeing the hay on the floor, lost in thought.

“Can’t hold it against her for still not wanting to see me.

I knew this was her folks’ place when I took the job, and it would be a damn lie if I said getting the chance to be close to her wasn’t the reason I agreed to it. ”

I finish my last brush along Rooney’s variegated coat. It’s sleek and shiny, and I’m filled with joy at being around the horse again. I put away the brush before stepping back through the stall door and securing it. I lean my arms on top of it, smiling when Rooney stays next to me.

“I’ll tell her all of that one day. She might tell me to go to hell afterward, but she needs to know how fucking sorry I am.” It's a relief to finally say all of this out loud. Before I can go on, there’s the scurry of feet outside and a familiar female voice calling.

“No! Not the stable! Come back here!”

A tiny human comes barreling into the building in a blur, long black hair and tiny boots the only details I can make out as it giggles past the stalls.

I spin around and jump back when the blur swerves close, a shriek busting loose from it before it continues.

I can’t help but look at Rooney, as though the horse is going to hold the answers for the toddler’s behavior.

As expected, he has no insight, but it doesn’t matter because in the next moment, Charlotte stands in the doorway.

The sounds filling my ears switch off, silence flooding in.

The stable softens at the edges, fading as my vision tunnels, narrowing to focus on the face of the woman I love.

The woman I let go in the single worst mistake of my life.

She looks similar to the image my memory has supplied every day for nine-hundred-and-twelve days, including this morning, but there are subtle differences I immediately catalog.

I don’t bother to hide my perusal. I need to take in every curve from the familiar shapes of her toned legs, currently showing through the slit in a flowing, floral summer dress, to the newer flare at her hips.

I continue to drink in the sight of her: slightly fuller breasts that have my baser instincts dying to investigate how they compare with the ones from three years ago.

The length of her ebony hair is drastically shortened, the ends barely brushing her shoulders, and it’s pulled off her face in a utilitarian half pony.

There’s no flash of color or whimsy, the usual ribbons and bows absent.

But it’s her emerald eyes that have changed the most. The bright, jewel-like shine that glimmered with the best that life had to offer is gone.

In its place is a keen, assessing sharpness I realize is trained on the chaos erupting behind me.

The toddler is climbing the stack of hay bales along the back stable wall, awkward but sure footing and grunts of effort tell me it’s not the first occurrence of the child doing this.

Their long ebony hair falls past their shoulders, swept off their cherubic face by a white lace ribbon.

My breath hitches as my eyes flick between the child and Charlotte, whose eyes are wide as she looks between me and the child.

The realization rolls through me like a rumble of thunder, heavy and deep, just as the child settles atop the mountain of bales and squeals in delight.

“Mama! I did it!”

Victory lights the face of the little girl; a wide smile popping an adorable dimple in her left cheek and blue eyes dancing with excitement. The giggles continue as she wiggles a happy little dance from her perch.

Mama.

The word echoes in my ears as I turn to the child— Charlotte’s child, my mind emphasizes—the click of her boots behind me on the concrete of the alleyway.

The swoop in my stomach is the only sensation I can focus on, even as my knuckles turn white from where I grip Rooney’s stall door with too much force.

But maybe it’s necessary to keep myself upright.

I’m not sure my legs are working at the moment.

“Yes, you did, Squish,” Charlotte coos with admiration as she scoops the toddler onto her hip.

The little girl curls around her automatically, and the familiarity of the action nearly stops my heart.

I try to get my thoughts to catch up or organize themselves into something that makes sense.

Mother and daughter continue a whispered conversation as I pull facts through the haze filling my head.

Charlotte has a little girl.

She can’t be more than two, but I can’t know for sure.

Black hair and blue eyes.

“Time to say night-night, okay?” Charlotte’s prompt pulls me from the puzzle pieces connecting.

The little girl scrambles deftly out of her arms and crosses to the furthest stall door.

With a single knock, she calls to the occupant.

A gauzy Palomino pokes its head into the alleyway, dipping to the tiny caller.

“Night-night, Juni!” she chirps as her tiny hands hold the horse’s snout and she smacks a kiss on its nose.

The horse is entirely unbothered, as though this is a ritual it is well used to.

The unease in my gut softens as the child continues to the next stall, knocking and calling to each horse in turn.

I’m mesmerized and miss the moment Charlotte settles next to me.

“She’s done this every night since she could walk.”

I suck a sharp breath, familiar floral and sweet filling my nostrils.

Peaches and something distinctly Charlotte.

It has haunted my dreams and memories, but the smell of it now feels like coming home.

I have no right to think that way, but I can’t help how my body relaxes now that it is in her proximity.

But as much as I want to sink into this, reach out and hold her, or drop to my knees and beg for her forgiveness, I can’t.

“What’s her name?” I ask hesitantly, as if I have a right to know.

I never take my eyes from the little girl as she kisses the horses goodnight.

She tries to loop her arms around a recognizable black mare, and my heart lurches as she pets Vesper’s glossy coat.

The horse clearly favors her attention, bending lower and the child gives her an extra kiss.

“Winona,” Charlotte answers. The name feels thick, three syllables laced with lost time and longing. I swallow to clear the pain and embrace the possibility, the hope I haven’t even given words to. “I wanted to give her a name that reminded me of her daddy.”