Her red hair is even longer than it was in high school.
I’d been obsessed with her hair from the moment I saw her running across the snow just across the fence dividing our land. I’d been on the edge of the property with my older brothers that day and I don’t know why she was out there all alone, looking like a tiny force of nature, but she’d waved, and I’d waved, and the rest had been history.
We became inseparable.
I’d haul my legs over the ranch fence dividing our land and we’d meet at the huge oak tree that was on the edge of her family’s property. In the coldest months, my playmate wasn’t out there as much, but as soon as the temps were bearable, I’d play near the fence all day, every day, in hopes that I’d see that red hair running toward me in the distance.
It was easier to see her when she showed up at school. I think it was then that I started telling everyone that I’d marry Sofie Copewell one day and I said it up until the day she left me eight years ago.
I swallow down the unease that’s been in my throat since I first saw her today and clear my throat. I look at everything but her because her sleepy pale blue eyes and long red waves and that dusting of freckles have always done me in. And now, with her slightly curvier body and the way her beauty has only magnified, it’s like an alarm going off in my body, telling me to GET OUT NOW.
How could I still feel this way about someone who ripped my heart to shreds the summer after we graduated high school? I was just a kid, but I knew I wanted to be with Sofie Copewell for the rest of my life. I’d thought she wanted the same thing just as much as I did, but it was all a lie.
I memorized the note she left in my car and can see her pretty handwriting now as I stare blindly around the stables that she owns now that her father has passed away.
Theo,
I hope one day you’ll forgive me.
I have to go. If I stay here, I know I’ll never leave Landmark, and I just don’t think it’s the right place for me anymore.
I love you. So much. I always will.
But I think I have to see what else is out there. There’s a big world that I’ve never seen, and I know if I don’t go now, I never will.
Don’t look for me. Don’t wait for me.
Just please be happy. You’re the best person I know, and I will never forget you.
Love,
Sofie
And then she disappeared, and I haven’t seen her until today. I looked for her. God, did I look.
For years, I thought I saw her. I’d see a girl with red hair and think it was her and flashback to how Sofie looked at twelve and fifteen and eighteen…every age I’d known her, but it’d be a tourist coming through. Someone who really looked nothing like her at all. And then I wondered if I’d even know her if I saw her again—would she look so different that I wouldn’t recognize her? Every redhead made me stop and wonder if it was her.
Time has already done a number on some of the kids I went to school with, but seeing her now, I’d know her anywhere. She sounds different, but she looks the same, only even more breathtaking than before. Her features are sharper, more defined, her body both toned and curvier—I didn’t count on her becoming evenmore…in every way.
Maybe time does that.
Shaky, I turn, realizing there’s nothing more to say. Her horse is in stable condition and I’m the one who won’t be standing if I don’t get out of here.
“Theo?” she calls out.
I’m almost to the door, my truck just on the other side, when I look into the office to my left. A cot is in there with the quilt that Grinny gave her one Christmas. I remember it because Grinny made all her grandkids a handmade quilt when they turned sixteen, and when Sofie turned sixteen, she gave one to her too, telling her she was just as much her grandkid as the rest of us. Sofie had bawled and always slept with it after that.
When she left, her phone was on her bedside table, which gave me hope that she wasn’t really gone, but the blanket from Grinny was nowhere to be found, and that’s when I knew that it was over.
“It’s really good to see you, Theo,” she says.
“Yeah?” I say, my voice hoarse as I focus on her. I clear my throat. “What made you come back, Sofie?”
She licks her full lips and my dick swells annoyingly in my jeans, completely oblivious to the fact that I want nothing to do with this girl.
“My dad left me the property,” she says.
“Right, simple as that.” I nod, fury burning up my throat. “Any chance I could buy the land? You could be back on your way to that big world out there…”