Page 27 of Small Town Hero
She started to get down off the horse, and he practically lifted her with that one hand, keeping her steady until her boots made contact with the ground.
“Oh,” she said. She didn’t mean to say that. Because it betrayed her. Betrayed the way she felt. The way her heart was galloping in her chest, going this way and that way like an erratic pinball.
He dropped her hand and didn’t say anything as he went back to his horse and procured the food that he’d put in the saddlebags.
“I’ll just get a blanket laid out,” he said.
A blanket, folded neatly in the other side of the saddlebag, came out next, and he spread it over the ground.
It was a little bit rocky, but she made herself comfortable.
He handed her a sandwich, and a can of soda. She took both gratefully.
He was careful not to touch his fingers to hers this time.
She wondered if he’d felt it. That electric connection.
But what did it matter? She was going to leave, and he couldn’t.
She thought of those graves he had mentioned earlier. His family.
He was the only one left. He had to stay here. She understood that. His connection to them was deep, and even though their deaths were tragic, in some ways, she envied him.
How could she not? Because he did love his family. And they had loved him. It sounded as if his dad had had a difficult time showing it, but there was also a steadiness to him that had never been present in her own father.
“You’re thinking awfully loudly,” he commented.
“Nothing. I mean, nothing important. I’m just glad that you brought me out here today. I appreciate it.”
“Yeah. You like horses?”
She nodded. “I do. That was one thing . . . Growing up we did have some horses on the ranch. And I loved riding them. I pretty much taught myself how to do it. No one cared enough to make sure I knew how. But it was . . . That was the happiest time. When it was just me on the back of the horse, riding like hell across the ranch. I felt free. I felt like anything was possible. If I’m mad at myself about anything, it’s that I didn’t take that spirit with me.
Yeah, I am resilient. But the truth is, I don’t think I tried hard enough to get out of here.
I wasted a lot of time. I don’t know what I wanted.
For this place to feel right? For it to all click.
For my dad to stop drinking, for my mom to come home.
For someone in the grocery store to smile at me.
I guess I just didn’t want it all to be for nothing.
All these years. I wanted to have that moment, me on the back of the horse on the land here, and I wanted my life to feel like that.
It never did. And that’s why . . . After the whole thing with my last job, I just decided I needed to get out of here.
Because I’m never going to get a fair shake if I don’t. ”
“This is your home.”
Her eyes met his, and the words felt far too . . . everything. Because when he said that, she didn’t think of the land, she thought of him. And she had this terrible, awful feeling that he was the person she’d been waiting for. The reason.
She pushed that notion aside, because she couldn’t afford thinking like that.
“I guess. But why here and not somewhere else? My family’s not buried here.
And even when they are, I don’t think I’ll go visit.
That land my dad owns . . . It’s just going to get taken by the bank.
It’s not going to pass to me. The only thing I’ll ever inherit is debt.
I wish there was a legacy for me to be hanging on to, but there’s not.
There just isn’t. I guess I’m more of an optimist than I ever wanted to believe. Because something kept me here.”
“Something,” he said.
His eyes were serious now, and she felt herself being drawn to him. She wanted . . . she wanted to be a different person. She wanted to be a different person in a different time. She wanted to be able to want things that she couldn’t want. She wanted to be worthy of him.
And horrifyingly, she felt tears beginning to well up, and she didn’t cry. Not ever. It wasn’t who she was. She hadn’t cried in . . . hell, years. Because there was no point in displays of emotion like that. What was the point?
So instead, she scrambled away from him, and made her way over to the edge of the drop-off.
She wrapped her arms around herself and looked at the view below.
“It is a beautiful place,” she said, a little bit too loudly, something, anything to distract them both from what had just happened. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”
She looked behind her, and he was standing there, so close. And he was looking at her. Not at the view.
“Life isn’t fair,” she said. “And I don’t waste a whole lot of time being mad about that. But it just . . . it isn’t. It isn’t fair.”
“True enough.”
“It sucks,” she said.
He laughed. “Yeah. It does.”
“I’m going to leave,” she said. “Because this place isn’t home. Even if . . . You’re a much nicer person than I thought you were. Maybe the nicest that anyone has ever been to me.”
“What’s going . . .”
“Nothing. Thanks for this afternoon. Really. And the pink gloves. Thank you. That’s all. I’m just a little bit overwhelmed.”
“Yeah.”
And then she ran past him, got on her horse, and galloped like hell.