Page 86 of Rancher's Return

“Let’s get some coffee and go for a walk,” he said.

She lay back across the bed for a moment, stretching, and his heart lifted. Along with other things. She was so damned beautiful. He wanted her again.

But that was the problem. He had always wanted her. Wanting her was nothing new.

Having her, now that was an interesting turn of events.

He didn’t know how to have her, that was the thing. For now, for this couple of days, maybe. But he was a tangle of dysfunction in his soul. And...

He would never make the mistake of believing everything was going to be okay again when it just wasn’t going to be.

It just couldn’t be.

Because that wasn’t how life worked. You didn’t get infinite good things. He had tricked himself into believing that back when he had been young. Like his luck had changed, his fortune altering itself entirely, which meant he would get everything. He had gotten a family, why not falling in love? Yeah. Well. He knew better than that now.

He didn’t do wild, reckless hope.

It didn’t end well.

He didn’t want to know where his mother was. He didn’t want to know how this ended.

This was going to be complicated. Because he didn’t know how he was supposed to go back to not knowing how it felt to be inside of her. He had downplayed that last night, but he was good at downplaying how he felt.

Just detach. You know how to do that.

But he couldn’t seem to do it right now. Right now he felt too much; right now he felt everything.

“I’m cozy,” she said.

“You’ll live,” he said, reaching down and picking her up around the waist, bringing her naked body up against his. “I can warm you back up.”

“After the walk,” she said.

He saw something like fear dancing through her eyes, and he wondered if she was trying to sort out how all this was going to end too.

Not the most pleasant thought process. But hell. What did you do about that?

They both dressed and walked out of the house. He looked up and saw that the snow was still falling. The sound of the waves was crashing in the distance. It was surreal. But then, the whole thing was. Being here with her.

He took her hand, and the two of them walked down the path that led to the sand.

Their feet sank in deep, a couple inches of snow, a couple inches of sand. The snow faded away where the waves touched the shore, but back further, the gray sand was covered in bright white.

“What the hell does this mean?” he asked. He hadn’t realized he had asked it out loud. He hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t meant to marvel at it at all.

“What do you mean?”

“Well...” He cleared his throat. “It’s a thing Buck talks about a lot. Watching for signs. Listening to your gut. I don’t know. It sounds dumb and mystical when I say it. When he does it, it kinda makes sense. He says you have to always look around you. Figure out what the world is trying to tell you. I never did that, not when I was younger, because I was just trying to survive. I was just reacting. I wasn’t... You don’t pay attention to signs and wonders and all that shit when you’re just running from a monster on your heels all day every day. But Buck made me try to be more mindful. Pay attention. Snow on the beach. It’s weird. Unusual. And so wasthis,between us. I just wondered if it was something I needed to pay attention to.”

He thought about his mom. How last night was the first time he had thought of her in a while. The first time he’d talked about her. He wondered if this was a sign from her.

If that meant she was gone.

Or if he was supposed to look.

He had never really considered that he had something to give his mom. Not until Lily had said what she did. That perhaps knowing someone had loved her unconditionally all these years could make a difference to her.

Or maybe he was just supposed to be here with Lily. But he didn’t know to what end.

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