Page 55 of Rewrite Our Story

Mare clicks her tongue. “Don’t give things away if you expect to get them back.”

“It was an extreme circumstance,” I say under my breath.

Mare pins her full attention on me. She kicks at the ground, brushing what I think is Pippa’s boot along the floor. “Cade,” Mare says breathlessly. “That picture.”

My heart picks up speed at the same moment my stomach drops to my feet.

So she did see it.

I swallow slowly, trying my best not to look away from her angry but inquisitive eyes. “What about it?”

Mare uses petting Dolly as an excuse to collect her thoughts for a few moments. Eventually, she sighs. “Did you really have it? Every day?”

“Does my answer to that change anything?”

An annoyed breath fills the space between us as two creases form between her eyebrows. “Does it matter if it changes anything? I want to know how long you’ve had it.”

I shake my head at her, turning to go back to the tack room. If she wants me to bear everything to her, she’s going to have to give me something as well.

I’m not trying to fight with her. I am, however, tired of this push and pull between us. I’m exhausted by the back and forth. If things are going to be like this, I just want her to leave so I can go back to pretending my heart wasn’t missing from the moment she left Sutten.

“Cade! Don’t walk away from me!” Mare shouts. She must leave Dolly’s side, because her angry footsteps can be heard behind me as I make my way back toward the tack room.

I laugh sarcastically. “Don’t walk away fromyou? It’s funny that it bothers you considering you’ve always been the one to walk away from me.”

I hear her gasp. She follows me in, hot on my heels. She’s silent as I angrily pick up the tack the seasonal hires lazily left on the ground.

These saddles cost thousands of dollars and they’ve treated them like nothing.

“Let me help your memory—”

I angrily turn around, my body coming to a stop in front of hers. “Helpmymemory?” My laugh bounces off the walls of the small room. “My memory tells me it wasn’t me who pretended to forget the details of our history…that was all you, Goldie.”

Her arms cross over her chest defensively. “You told me to go.”

“You listened!”

Of course I told her to go. I don’t understand how she doesn’t realize that was really the only thing I could do at the time. If I’d asked her to stay, we would’ve ended up fighting—just like we are now. She would’ve hated me for keeping her from her dreams, for asking her to risk everything for me.

Mare’s eyes are wide and untamed as she looks me up and down. It’s like she doesn’t recognize the man standing in front of her.

I can understand. Most of the time, I can barely recognize the woman that returned to this town.

Sometimes she’s my Goldie, other times she’s someone completely different.

“You can’t hold a grudge against me for leaving when you’re the one who told me to go.”

My jaw tenses. I shouldn’t have to explain this to her. “I absolutely can hold a grudge. It’s not about you leaving. It’s about the fact you never came back.”

“I thought you’d want me to stay away!” she shouts. We’re lucky that everyone on the ranch is currently away and busy or we’d have a full audience for the fight happening between us.

“Why the fuck would I want you to stay away when I was in love with you?”

Her mouth falls open. “What?” she asks, her voice breaking.

I let out a dejected sigh, anger and sadness coursing through my veins. I shake my head. “You knew that.”

“No.” She shakes her head back and forth, her eyes misting over. “I didn’t know. I hoped. God, I wanted that more than anything. But I asked you if you loved me and you told me no. How can I trust you now?”

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