Page 12 of Stranded on the Prairie
CHAPTER 7
Wyatt
Istalk towards the trail that will lead us back to the cabin, hardly able to so much as look back at her. Riley has to rush to keep up, her footsteps kicking up dirt with every movement.
"Wyatt, will you slow down?” she asks me, and, finally, I come to a halt at the edge of the forest.
"Did you promise my sister we would come back?” I growl at her. I know all I am doing is papering over the grief of the loss I’ve just experienced with whatever anger I can justify to myself, but I can’t help it. My head is spinning, seeing my family again after all that time, and I don’t need her making things worse for me.
"I – I just didn’t want her to-"
"You don’t get to make promises like that," I warn her. "Not when you don’t even intend on sticking around."
"What makes you think that?” she demands, as I take off into the woods once more. I keep my gaze set forward, my jaw set tight. I don’t want to have this conversation with her. Or with anyone. It doesn’t sit right with me, the pain that my sister is feeling, knowing that I can’t do much to make it right.
"You want to go back to your yoga and your iced tea," I remind her. "You said it yourself. You don’t want to be here for my sister, or for anyone-"
"You have no idea what I want!” she counters sharply, as she finally catches up with me. I can feel her glowering at me, a far cry from the sweetness she showed me when we were in town together, holding my hand, letting me know that I wasn’t alone.
I know I am being unfair but I can’t help myself. She’s the first person I’ve let close in a long time, and to know that she might just as quickly be ready to turn her back and leave...it doesn’t sit right with me.
"I know I don’t want you makin’ my little sister think she’s going to be seeing more of me," I retort. "I don’t belong in that world. Never have."
"Why not?” she pleads with me. "What is it about it that makes it so hard for you?”
I pause as we reach the last few yards that lead up to the cabin. Truth be told, it’s not exactly a conversation that I’ve had with myself since I left. I’ve been happy enough out here, making this life for myself, not thinking about what I ran from.
"Because they wanted me to marry and take on the next generation of our family," I reply. "My father, my mother, they-"
"They’re not around anymore," she reminds me. "They don’t get a say in what you do. Only you get that, right?”
I don’t reply. She takes a step towards me.
"Trust me, I know what it feels like to lose a parent," she murmurs. "I lost – I lost my mom before I came out here, a couple of years ago. But I had a support system to help me through it, I had my friends, my studio, my-"
"Your studio," I reply, shaking my head. "You think we’ve got something like that here? Where a woman can just...?”
I wave my hand at her, not even entirely sure what I am referring to.
"Can just what?” she shoots back. "Can actually help people? People like your sister, who are going through something bigger than they can wrap their heads around? She’s just lost her mother, Wyatt, you don’t know what that does to a girl. She needs help. So do you and Cade. And you’re likely not the only ones, you just..."
She stares at me, her voice imploring, trying in any way she can to reach me and convince me that there is more here than just her strange mindset overlapping dangerously with this world.
"You need help," she tells me, her voice cracking. "You all do. I’m not saying I can make it all right, but I can...I can help. I can show you some of the techniques I used to make it hurt a little less..."
"Who says I’m hurtin’ at all?”
The words are a lie, and out of my mouth before I can stop them. She steps forward gingerly, as though expecting me to brush her off the moment she gets close, and lifts her hand to my heart. She presses it against my chest, and the moment her fingers dig in to my skin, I can feel something give, as much as I want to deny it.
"I can tell you are, Wyatt," she murmurs. "I’m not saying that you have to go and live by all the standards that your family had for you. Whatever you walked away from, I trust that it’s right for you. I just..."
She shakes her head.
"You don’t have to go living your life acting like none of this hurts," she assures me. "And you still have family here – you realize how lucky you are to have your brother and sister so nearby?”
I flick my gaze back and forth between her eyes for a moment, and then head inside, busying myself with setting up afire. She follows me in, tenacious. Seems like I’m not going to get rid of her that easily...
"I didn’t ask you to come here and fix everything for me," I remind her, as I toss a few logs into the fireplace and crack a stone against a rough lighting paper to send sparks spraying over the dry wood.
