Page 192 of Things Left Unsaid

My past.

My present.

My future.

Fen neighs his displeasure when my knees dig into his sides, and though I automatically correct my seat, it’s like something life-changing occurred.

Something that has me reeling.

There’s always been this blank space in my life.

And it’s shaped like her.

“Did Callan uncover how Fen got loose?”

“No. But we’re changing where we put him out to pasture.”

My answer was unintentionally brisk because my mind isn’t on the ranch or that hit-and-run or anything other than?—

“What are you thinking?”

I’m jerked back to myself with the question. It’s curious, not concerned.

So I look at her and I admit, “That there are no words to describe how much I missed you.”

Zee

His statement might as well make the hard-packed soil beneath Jas’s hooves quake.

But it also settles a decade-old hurt that’s been like a tear in my soul.

How easily I was forgotten.

How easily he blamed me.

How easily he moved on.

I tug on Jas’s reins to bring her to a halt, not wanting to think about how she gently stops as if she’s an extension of me.

Maybe it’s because I’m on horseback, grounded in a way that I haven’t been in years that I ask, “Why should I forgive you?”

Another time, another place, I’d never have said that.

But Jas gives me strength.

This conversation, and the one he had with Cody, as well as what our kisses, plural, represent provide me with fuel.

“You shouldn’t,” is his answer, but he leans over and his hand snags ahold of mine.

His fingers are callused. Rough from hard work. He’s no backseat manager like his father, content to sit in his office and let others run the ranch.

I’ve seen him with the horses out front, breaking the older foals in. I’ve seen him head onto the range with his staff. My window gives me too good a view of him at work.

Colton Korhonen plays at nothing.

That meansthisisn’t a play either.

I slide my fingers through his, knotting them together, squeezing his knuckles. That’s when hope starts to form like a slowly building storm that’s gaining ground, steadily building into a tornado—I can’t help but feel I’ll be blown away if I don’t hunker down with him.

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