Page 8

CALDER

I was standing in front of my cabin, taking in the morning air.

It somehow felt fresher than ever before, clearer, cleaner.

My chest was tight with something, like I needed to be unburdened.

I knew that it wasn’t regret because I hadn’t regretted anything with Shane, not a single moment of it.

Still, there was something building inside me, something that needed to be confronted.

After Shane and I were together last night, a flood of memories had come through once I was back at my cabin.

I suddenly remembered my apartment in Bozeman, all the art on the wall that looked like images of a place just like Stratton Ranch.

I remembered the pinball machine I’d spent way too much money on, my favorite pair of work boots, the pair I needed to throw out ASAP.

I even remembered my truck, with its cracked windshield, something I’d been meaning to get fixed for the last few weeks.

I’d just been so busy with work that it’d slipped my mind, a to-do list item that kept getting pushed down the list.

And then, I remembered Vanessa. The woman in the photo.

Memories of her came through loud and clear.

We were toxic for each other, the perfect mix of excitement and explosive arguments.

There were memories of us fighting outside her favorite bar, fighting outside my favorite bar, fighting outside nearly every establishment that would have us.

The fights were followed by making it up to each other with expensive gifts, expensive trips, trying to put a band-aid over the latest injury we’d caused.

The pattern was always the same, with her accusing me of holding something back from her, never being my true self.

I’d accused her of finding reasons to push me away, to leave because of things she’d only imagined.

But now I knew that Vanessa hadn’t imagined anything.

She was right. I had been holding something back from her, because I’d been holding something back from myself, too.

All that was left was to tell her the truth.

I found Shane in the afternoon, fixing a loose fence post farther out in the pasture. I quietly snuck up behind him before tightly wrapping my arms around him. “Guess who?”

Shane grinned. “Oh, my God. You make me feel like we’re in high school.”

“That reminds me. Do you already have a date to prom?” I smirked. “Because I think it’d be pretty cool to show up in matching tuxedos.”

“Ha. Ha,” Shane said, right before I turned him around to kiss him, deeply.

I placed my hands on his waist, still holding him against me.

Shane melted in my grip, something in him seeming to shake loose, getting more comfortable with my touch.

A few seconds later, though, I could tell his defenses were right back up.

He broke off our kiss, taking a step or two away from me, for good measure.

“So, yesterday in the barn…,” he started, his eyes avoiding mine.

“Yeah?”

“You’re sure it wasn’t a mistake?”

“Shane—”

“How’s your memory?” Shane nodded at my head. “Anything else come back to you?”

“Nothing that changes anything between us,” I replied. “I remembered more of what my life was like before, sort of in a wave.”

“And… you remembered more about the girl in the photo?”

“Her name’s Vanessa. And yes, I remembered more about her. Mostly how unhappy we made each other. We were like fire and ice. All the fun was in the smoke, the chaos.”

“But you were off and on?”

“Right. And?”

“You kept going back,” he murmured. “There must’ve been something about her that made you want to stay.”

“And something about her that made me want to leave.” I took a step closer to him, closing some of the distance between us. “Where’s all this coming from, Shane?”

“I just don’t want it to be a mistake,” he quietly admitted. “I’m not—I don’t open myself up to people that often, Calder. Sure, I’ve had nights with people, here and there, but nothing like that. Nothing like us…”

Shane suddenly shook his head. “Never mind. Forget I said anything. I’m just being stupid. That’s all.”

I gingerly grabbed both of Shane’s hands in mine, putting them together and bringing them up to my mouth. I softly kissed his skin, my eyes locked on his. “You’re not being stupid. And nothing between us was a mistake.”

“Come on. We have a post to fix.” Shane moved his hands away from me, but I still caught the smile on his face, the expression lingering.

“Who’s that?”

Shane and I were headed back to my cabin, when we noticed a white SUV pulling up on the gravel. We slowly approached the vehicle, and I tried to get a good view of whoever was in the driver’s seat. A woman stepped out of the car, her thin, sleek heels seeming so out of place on the ranch?—

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

It only took my brain a few seconds to connect the dots, images of our fights quickly playing like a projector in my mind.

Vanessa.

She was beautiful, a high fashion model dressed in designer clothes and dripping with expensive jewelry.

She walked like she owned the world, and for all I knew she did, my memories still cloudy around her family background or how we met.

Everything about her seemed perfect, but in a curated way, like everything had been decided by committee.

She seemed like an impossibility, something put together, something too good to be true.

Was anything about her real?

Had anything about us been real?

“Calder?” Vanessa’s eyes went wide. “Calder? Calder!”

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe.

Vanessa took all the initiative, briskly walking towards me. By the time she was standing in front of me, her arms were already wide open. “Calder! Oh, my God!”

I didn’t reach for her. Still, she reached for me, taking me in her embrace. “Calder! I was so worried about you!”

She quickly pulled away from me, fire in her eyes. “What the hell is wrong with you? You can’t just disappear on me like that. Do you know how hard it was to track you down? I had to hire someone to figure out where you could’ve gone off to?—”

“I didn’t remember anything.”

“What?”

“I didn’t disappear on you,” I clarified. “I just didn’t remember anything. Doctor said it might’ve been a concussion. My short-term memory was affected.”

“Oh.” She calmed down for a moment. “Wait. Shit. Do you remember me? Do you remember us?”

“I remember you, Vanessa. Not everything. But I know we were together?—”

“Yeah, you better remember me,” she joked, wiping a tear out of the corner of her eye. “We’ve been through so much together, Calder. I was so worried it was all over, just like that.”

“But it was over, wasn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The last time we talked, it was just to argue,” I continued. “I can’t remember anything other than that. Just another one of our fights.”

“So?” Vanessa laughed it off. “That’s just our love language, Calder. Some people have gifts, acts of service. We have shouting at each other until one of us backs down.”

She placed her hands on my shoulders. “But none of that matters, right? Because when we’re together, it’s like we’re in a world of our own. People just don’t understand us.”

People just don’t understand us.

My heart ached at her words, knowing they weren’t true. At least, not anymore. There was someone who understood me, someone who made me feel the exact opposite of what Vanessa made me feel; someone safe and calm.

“Vanessa, I?—”

“On the way home, do you want to stop at that greasy spoon place you like in town? With that super snarky waitress.” Vanessa rolled her eyes. “I’d rather get some sushi, but I know how much you like your mom-and-pop type places.”

“I don’t—I’m not?—”

“You’re not coming back with me?”

I was spiraling in real time, my thoughts fuzzy and so far away. I spared a look behind me, expecting to see Shane still standing there. But Shane was halfway across the pasture, standing and staring. His eyes moved from Vanessa to me, his face blank.

And then, he started to walk even further away from us.

“I just need time,” I murmured. “Vanessa, I still don’t have all my memories back. This place has been good for me. I just need to finish getting better?—”

“Fine. We can shack up here until you’re feeling better.” She nodded. “Do you have your own cabin, at least? I can’t handle a roommate situation right now.”

“I… yeah.” I started to head towards my cabin, still not processing a single thing. Vanessa was at my side, her hand reaching for mine.

Fuck.

This was wrong. All of it.

My chest went tight as I tried and failed to come up with the right thing to say, my mouth and mind tangled up in an impossible mess.

Vanessa had agreed to take the bed, while I slept on the couch.

She didn’t seem happy with the arrangement, but I reminded her that I didn’t fully remember us yet.

Sharing a bed would’ve been unfamiliar to me, not to mention uncomfortable and awkward.

We’d spent the better part of the night chatting about the sort of food I’d been eating on the ranch, how absurdly rich the Strattons were, how bored Vanessa would be if she actually lived in a place like this.

All of the conversation felt so shallow, so hollow.

I wondered if this was how I’d always felt with Vanessa and had just been pretending like I didn’t.

It was obvious why a part of me wanted her on my arm, especially with how beautiful she was.

Vanessa was the perfect shield against any difficult conversations, any concerns about anything deeper.

She simply wasn’t interested in discussing it, and if she was, it was always on her terms.

And the few times she’d tried to get more out of me, I’d pushed her away.

That night when I finally fell asleep, I had the same dream of Shane, my cowboy waiting for me at the end of a trail.

I raced towards him again, desperate to talk to him.

He rode away from me without looking back, the distance between us only growing wider.

The trail turned into the forest, the forest turned into the desert, the desert turned into a frozen tundra.

I was chasing Shane through it all, until we were back where we started, the trail ahead of us.

“Shane? Please, wait. I just want to talk to you—” But as soon as I said it, he was gone again, images of forest greenery opening up ahead. I wanted to chase him but suddenly I was too tired, everything felt like it was closing in around me.

I’m going to lose him.

I felt it in my bones.

I was going to lose Shane Stratton forever.

And it was all my fault.