Page 14 of Made for You
A question—impossible to ignore—managed to creep in: was any of it even worth it?
The friends who’d stopped calling after too many canceled plans. All the long, lonely nights. The empty bed. The loneliness I’d learned to carry like it was a part of me and not something I chose each and every day.
It was that thought that brought Gage Mercer crashing back into my mind. Not the way he touched me, though God, that wasunforgettable. But the way I’d felt with him, brief though our encounter had been.
Safe. Cherished. And above all, wanted.
My breath hitched as I remembered the sound of his voice in my ear, telling me how badly he needed to be inside of me. The quiet, commanding way he took me apart and put me back together again.
God, what I wouldn’t give to feel that again.
I’d almost saidyeswhen he asked me out the other day. The word had sat right there on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t afford to be distracted. Not now. Not with everything on the line. And Gage Mercer was the human embodiment of distraction.
I let out a bitter laugh, pressed my hands to my face, and groaned, long and low with frustration. I needed a break before I went crazy sitting here, alone.
I pushed up from my chair and crossed to the window, bracing my hands on the sill. Outside, the ski slope behind the resort was covered in feet of snow just waiting for our opening day, pine trees standing sentry in the bright lights illuminating the paths. The wind had picked up, stirring powder into low, drifting clouds that ghosted across the property and vanished into the trees. It was beautiful in a way that made me feel lonelier than ever.
I dropped my forehead to rest against the glass and exhaled slowly, a cloud of condensation forming on the glass, as I tried to shake off the sharp pressure building behind my eyes. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t have time to cry. But the ache sat heavy in my throat anyway, a reminder of just how close I was to the edge.
A few minutes later, I turned and made my way across my office, reaching for my coat and purse. I needed to get out of here.
By the timeI pulled into the snowy driveway of the rental farmhouse just off Bridger Creek Road a couple of hours later, the sun had long since dipped below the ridge, leaving the sky an inky black with pinpricks of starlight.
I sat there for a long minute with the engine running, my palms gripping the steering wheel, unsure if I had the energy to go inside and do it all over again tomorrow.
I hadn’t eaten since lunch, but the idea of food made my stomach churn. My inbox was probably overflowing again by now, but I didn’t have the strength to check.
A few weeks ago, I could still tell myself that I was doing something meaningful out here. That I had a vision. Now all I could feel was the stress weighing heavily on me and the panic in my limbs whenever I passed locals in town. No one ever looked at me funny, not really, but I still felt out of place. As if I was trying to fit in somewhere I didn’t belong, and everyone could see right through all my attempts otherwise.
Eventually, with a long, gusty sigh, I turned the car off, grabbed my bag, and made my way up the porch steps and into the house. I kicked off my sky-high heels and dropped my keys and bag in the foyer and made a beeline for the shower, where the water scalded my skin until the sting overpowered every other sense. I scrubbed my skin mercilessly, trying to wash away the stress of the day … of my life. Rid myself of the feeling that no matter how far I climbed, I was always one small step away from falling—no, beingshoved—back down the hill.
When the water started to run cold, I twisted the knobs and climbed over the lip of the old porcelain tub, drying myself off and then pulling on a thin cotton tee and a pair of soft sleeppants. I braided my damp hair into a thick plait and climbed under the covers.
Despite the long, hot shower, I was still too wired to sleep, but too drained to read. So I did the one thing I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do—I picked up my iPad and typed Gage’s full name into the search bar, telling myself it didn’t mean anything. That Googling a man I’d slept with once and turned down for dinner didn’t make me weak. It just made me … curious.
It wasn’t like I didn’t already know the basics of his family. What kind of business woman would I have been without doing my due diligence?
I knew the Mercer family’s history in this area. Knew all about the ranch they called home and how they’d made their money.
But Gage specifically? Who he was personally?
Thatwas the information I was looking for now.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have any social media accounts, at least none that were public. So I had to rely on what I could dig up from local news sources.
The first few results from theBridger Falls Sentinelwere mainly about his older brother, Jake. Articles focused on ranching life, cattle auctions, and the like. One article, though, featured a photo of Gage standing beside a man I recognized from the bar that night. His older brother, Colt, it turned out. In it, Gage was grinning at the camera, his dark hair sun-streaked and his forearms tanned and freckled.
My chest ached remembering how those arms had held me.
Another photo showed him at a summer fair, laughing with a cone of cotton candy in his hand, a brown Labrador retriever pressed up against his leg. The sight of him so happy and at ease in that environment made something twist in my stomach.
I stared at the screen longer than I meant to, my eyes taking in every pixel of the image, wanting to somehow step inside it.
I kept scrolling until I reached another article about his family’s legacy, a nod to their fourth-generation operation and some vague mentions of community service.
And then, buried halfway down the second page of search results, I found it: a two-year-old op-ed about a proposed high-end, luxury subdivision on the outskirts of Bridger Falls that abutted Three Pines Ranch. The out-of-town developer wanted to dam a tributary where brown trout were known to spawn, which would have impacted the fish’s population in the area’s larger rivers.
I clicked the link and began reading, eventually reaching a part about local opposition, where Gage was quoted prominently. “This valley doesn’t need more gated luxury communities,” he said. “What we need is to preserve the land our people have called home for generations,” he continued. “The folks pushing this don’t care about Bridger Falls. They only care about profits over people. That’s not who we are. That’s not what this place is about. If we’re not careful, we’re going to sell out everything that makes this place special. Once it’s gone, that’s it. We’ll have lost it forever.”
