Page 25 of Since Day One

“Nothing new here, Princess.”

I pulled a hand from my pocket and caught a few flakes, watching them quickly melt against the palm of my hand. It was beautiful. As the snow began to fall thicker, it even stuck to some of my lashes and some of Gunnar’s.

“What’d you ask again?” I said, shaking myself out of the stupor that the sudden snowfall had pulled me into.

“If you had brought one of your cowboy hats.”

“Actually yes; I brought the first one Kurt ever gave me. It’s my favorite and pretty much the only one I wear if I can help it.”

He smiled and bumped his arm against my shoulder as we turned to walk toward the lodge. “Wear it tomorrow.”

“Have I earned the privilege to do so?”

He chuckled and winked. “You’ve come a long way, Princess.” We trudged in silence, taking our time as he watched me drag my toe through the snow. I’d maybe only seen snow once before in my lifetime besides this, and I was caught up in the icy beauty.

“The first snowfall is always my favorite. It seems much quieter and cleaner,” he softly said as I spun in a circle, letting the flakes settle against my face.

His hand suddenly brushed against the braid that swung across my back, and I paused as he swept some flakes out of my hair. His gaze lingered against mine, the gentle white of fresh snow highlighting the piercing amber and blues of his irises.

Lashes fluttering down over his eyes, he returned to watching the snow settle along the pasture, most of the horses and cattle huddling underneath the shelters that had been put up in the past week. Piles of hay lay thick inside them, giving them shelter and buffer from the storm.

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, catching another flake in my hand.

“Beautiful,” he muttered beside me as I smiled at the thick flakes settling against the ground and my skin.

I glanced up to him, catching him staring at me and startling him so that he looked straight out over the road across the bunkhouses. His shoulders tensed as he furrowed his brows and ran a hand over his scruff, something shifting the solemnity between us that was practically throwing me into his arms.

As he continued to study whatever caught his eye, tipping his head in confusion, I followed his gaze and locked onto the figure staggering through the snow toward us.

Not very tall, not large, but oddly shaped. A cackle sounded, much like that of a witch. It was muffled by the snow as the shadow emerged from the darkness, close enough to the porch to be illuminated by the lights from the lodge.

And I recognized who it was.

My eyes drifted to what she was holding in her hands, horror filling my heart as each breath became shortened.

“What are you doing Marissa?” I choked out, staring at the hat she was gripping tightly. My hat. The very hat Gunnar and I had been talking about maybe ten minutes ago before becoming lost in the quickly cascading winter storm.

“You’ve been ignoring us, Willow. Acting like you’re better than the rest of us,” she snarled, her words a little slurred.

“That’s not it at all,” I answered, stepping toward her, and she shot her right hand out from behind the hat, holding a sharp knife.

“You’ve forgotten your place. You grew up the same as I did, Willow. You are just as much of a cowgirl as I am.”

“What are you doing?” I cried, horrified.

“I found something of yours the other day and I’ve been trying to figure out how to bring you back to reality. Now that I know this is your favorite hat, this feels all the sweeter.” She raised it into the air, snow flying all around us. “And now I’m going to remind you that you’re just some wannabe. You don’t deserve this hat. Not after leaving your parents destitute.”

Marissa plunged the knife through the crown of my cowboy hat and sliced a hole through it.

“NO!” I shrieked and lunged forward at the same time that Gunnar launched himself at her. She stabbed over and over, tearing through the hat as much as she could before Gunnar’s hands wrapped around her wrists and jerked backward.

She yelped, dropping both the knife and hat. I collapsed onto my knees, frozen with shock, staring at the shredded felt lying around the weapon. “You don’t understand. You don’t understand,” I muttered to myself. Neither Gunnar nor Marissa were close enough to hear me as I tried not to break. Nothing had changed. Kurt had given me that hat three years after moving to Texas—three years of mucking out stalls and doing everything I could to learn before I was allowed to even sit on a horse. Three years of grunt work before he’d gifted me that hat and let me get on and ride my first horse. I’d worn it at every event, every show possible since. Even after I was sponsored and given nicer, newer hats, I always wore that one to the shows.

Marissa screamed at Gunnar, pulling me from my own bubble of misery. She attempted to lunge around him, but he stood in her way to keep her from me. The pain, the sorrow that rushed through me was slowly being replaced.

Replaced with anger and desperation.

The cold was turning my soul numb, plastering a vengeful band-aid of nothingness over the searing hot agony running ripe through my veins. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was nothing.

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