Page 34 of Perfect Cowboy

“Everyone else in town would have just left me here.”

“Well, I’m not everyone else. Why are you even at the cabin and not a hotel anyway? You have no business being somewhere so remote. You have no basic survival instincts or practical skills.”

“I had no choice.”

This isn’t the first time she’s said it, and while I shouldn’t care about what she’s been up to since she left or what drove her back here, I do.

There was a time when I thought our stories would play out in tandem. Young love happens so quickly and you make plans for a future you can’t quite comprehend. The world is bigger and harsher than teenage minds have experienced, and you naively think all you need is love.

But that’s wrong.

Love is only part of the equation.

You need commitment, you need respect, and you need communication.

Ashley has been living a separate life that I know nothing about. I never looked for her on social media or asked any mutual contacts about her. Once she left and refused to connect with me, it was the end.

If someone shows me that I don’t matter, then moving forward without them is my default. It’s not always easy, but it’s necessary.

Now that she’s standing in front of me again, possibilities play out in my mind’s eye. Did she have a serious boyfriend in Chicago? Why is she running? Where did she end up going to college? How does she earn a living? Does she still read six books a week?

I want to know – everything.

But more than that misguided desire to possess every detail about her again, I want to get back home where life makes sense and emotions don’t turn my stomach.

“I’ll unload some water jugs for you,” I say. “The stove and outlets in the kitchen are on the generator, so you can boil some water for cooking and bathing. Do you need anything else?”

I walk around the cabin opening doors and cupboards, eyeballing what she has and making a mental list of what else I need to leave for her.

“No,” she replies. “You’ve done more than enough. Thank you again.”

After retrieving my gloves, it’s three more trips to the truck and back before I’m comfortable that she has everything she needs to survive.

“Remember what I said about the fire,” I warn. “You can do without a lot when it’s necessary, but not heat or clean water. Okay?”

“Okay,” she whispers. “I won’t be able to sleep anyway, so I’ll make the fire my new mission in life.”

That makes two of us. I haven’t had a proper night’s rest since I first saw her back in town.

Memories and questions that should be long since suppressed have been haunting me. But having her back in my vicinity is really testing my limits.

“I’m going to head home now,” I say. “If you want to take down my phone number, you can. I’ll do my best to get back here if you absolutely need me, but it won’t be easy with the road conditions. You’d be better off calling 911. They’d probably get here faster.”

“Gavin, you can’t leave,” she cries, her voice laced with panic. “You’ll die.”

“Don’t worry about me, city girl,” I say, with a wink.

“Well, I am worried. Please don’t go. It’s crazy.”

“I’m good at driving in this weather.”

“You literally can’t see anything,” Ashley objects. “No one is good at driving blind.”

She isn’t wrong.

It’s a total whiteout, the roads are a disaster and only getting worse as time ticks on, and leaving this cabin is probably a suicide mission.

But so is being stuck here alone with her.

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