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I know you will, Sarah. You can have anything you want.

Our social workers ended up trying to group us like biological siblings, because they didn’t know what else to do with us. The goal was never to separate us, because of the mental duress that it caused.

And they didn’t.

Until my mom was given custody back. It was my nightmare. She took me away from him, from the one person I felt safe with. She brought me back into her chaos and self-destruction.

I didn’t love her. I didn’t want to be with her. I wanted to be with him.

That was all I wanted. All I cared about.

The way she punished me for that. For years.

The things that she called me.

I trusted him. With everything I was. And my mom acted like he was myboyfriend. Like that was the only kind of connection she could understand. I was twelve. She said that I was a whore for him, obviously, because of the way I laid around mourning the loss of him.

I wanted to yell at her. I wanted to tell her that she would never understand the feelings that I had for him.

Because she doesn’t understand love.

Love that can be bright and pure and wonderful. Unselfish.

But all the words got jammed up in my throat whenshe said that. I could never talk to her. I still don’t really know why she wanted custody back in the first place. She changed our last names – she said it was to hide from one of her exes.

It didn’t protect me from the one person I needed protection from.

All it did was hide me from the only one I wanted to find me.

Because I know he looked for me. I dreamed of him finding me, and then I found him. I’d been looking him up continually for years – he’s not a social media guy, which doesn’t surprise me. But then his name came up connected to the rodeo.

I’ve been holding that discovery close for two years. Knowing he was out there, feeling afraid to actuallyseehim. I was afraid he’d forgotten me. That our connection was more powerful in my head than for real. That it was all in the imagination of a sad, lonely little girl, and a famous, successful bull rider wouldn’t even remember me.

I was afraid of that. So afraid I didn’t go to him.

Until Chris got out of jail.

I tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that my name was different, that it would make it harder to find me.

Then he found me. And now he’s stalking me. Lingering outside the diner I work at. Doing little enough for the police to help me, and doing enough to make me feel terrified.

He came to town two weeks ago, and then I saw an ad for the rodeo. It didn’t feel coincidental. It felt like he’d come to save me again, and I need that.

I needhim.

Then he releases his hold on me, and I take a breath. I can’t believe it’s him.

He’s looking at me like I’m a ghost.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he says.

For the past ten years I’ve felt broken, like my heart shattered into tiny, unfixable pieces. I can feel them mending now.

“I…I knew you rode in the rodeo and then I saw you were coming into town and I needed to come see you.”

“You live here?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

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