Page 40 of The Cost of Forgetting You

Perhaps it does, I muse.

He claps my knees. “You’re coming with me.”

“What?” My gaze shoots to Dad’s door. “I can’t. What if he wakes up and needs me?” What if he doesn’t want me and instead needs you? My pride is barely holding together as it is, but I’m not above begging Truett to stay. Anything to keep my dad from hurting like he was earlier.

He couldn’t figure out the shower. Truett told me once he’d helped Dad bathe, given him a fresh set of clothes, and left him to dress himself. Dad had gotten confused trying to remember how the faucet works, and if he needed to take off his socks or shorts first. When his clothes got soaked with blazing hot water, he started throwing things out of fear. “It’s no big deal,” Truett said, shrugging. But it was the biggest deal to me.

The corners of Truett’s gaze soften. He’s dressed casually, in jeans and a faded T-shirt. No hat this time. His hair looks so impossibly soft. I clench my fists against the pillow, trapping desire in my grasp.

“He took some melatonin to help him sleep. He’ll be out all night. Besides, we aren’t going far.” As if he senses the war that rages inside me, Truett reaches for one of my hands. His touch is gentle, palms calloused. I’m too tired to fight. Not tonight, after the day I’ve had. I let myself be pulled from the couch, guided to the door, and escorted out into the humid night. Crickets and frogs cry out to one another, filling my head with the cacophony of summer. My focus never leaves our woven hands.

“Where are we going?”

Truett releases me to straddle his four-wheeler. He leaves enough space between him and the handles that I know I’m meant to fill it, but I hesitate. Glance over my shoulder. Between my worry over Dad and the waking wet dreams about riding the lawn mower with Truett that have been popping into my head all week, I’m certain this is a terrible idea.

He pats the seat, smirking up at me. “Come on, Temptress. I don’t bite.”

“Hate it when you call me that,” I mutter. I do my best to mount the vehicle without sliding my ass against Truett’s hips. I’m only partially successful.

He shifts, and something hard presses against my ass. I swallow thickly, tilting my hips forward ever so slightly to relieve myself of that particular temptation.

“Do you really or are you just saying that to be contentious?”

I stiffen against my urge to shiver as his words tickle the back of my ear. “I didn’t realize you knew what that word meant.”

He starts the engine and steers us toward his house. “I’m not some dumb cowboy, despite what you may think.”

I’ve never thought that, I want to say. But we’re going faster now, veering left around the base of the hill behind his house. Warm summer air slices at my cheeks. Roars in my ears. If I spoke, I’m afraid my reply would be lost to the wind. So I keep it to myself, nestled in the hollow of my heart with everything I’ve never been able to confess to Truett.

We roll to a stop in front of a rusted iron gate at the edge of the open pasture. We’re in the farthest field from the house, the one they use as a feeder lot. Here at the perimeter, the shade trees huddle close, blocking out all but a few silvery streams of moonlight. He dismounts, approaches one side of the gate, and makes quick work of the chain link holding it in place. It swings open with a groan that a nearby steer echoes.

“Can you drive it on through?”

In another lifetime, this was second nature to me. But I find myself grateful for the cover of darkness when my first attempt at pulling forward results in a lurch that sends a blush straight to my cheeks.

“It’s okay; just try again. Slower this time.”

I do as he says, easing forward at a snail’s pace.

“Well, not that slow.”

A scowl he can’t see distorts my face. “Do you mind?”

He cocks his head. The moonlight turns his blond hair to silver, like a spider’s silk. “I like it when you’re testy.”

I ignore him, but something like a growl rumbles in my throat.

He closes off the gate as soon as I clear the opening. When he settles back into the space behind me and his arms come around mine to grab the handles, he huffs, “Don’t want any tagalongs.”

I glance back at him. “To where exactly?”

An eyebrow lifts. “I’m shocked you don’t remember this place.” Something like disappointment ripples across his features, but it could just be a trick of the light.

He nods toward a break in the trees ahead, and I follow his gaze as we pull forward.

The shaded path spits us out into a small meadow along the edge of the river that flows through his pasture. A sandy shoreline is framed by knee-height switchgrass. In the center of the meadow, the thick tendrils of a willow tree brush the ground, creating a whispered song all their own. Fireflies weave in and out of the branches. The bench Truett built in shop class freshman year sits at its base, weathered but otherwise unchanged.

Recognition washes over me. Here, upstream from the farm, we spent countless days splashing in the water. Climbing the eroded bank on the opposite side of the river and swinging out on a frayed rope that gave my mother a conniption. We’d lounge in the shade of the willow tree and do homework or talk about life.

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