Page 11 of A Reckless Memory

How nice was it to have someone taking care of you at your lowest? I ignored the beat of longing and looked at my phone. The screen was dark once again. I reached out and tapped it. It flared on, and I steeled myself. He knew it was me. He knew I was fucking with him, and he thought I was pathetic after all these years.

He’d be right. Last night though, I’d had loads of justification.

Taking in a steady breath, I calmed myself. I had nothing to worry about. He thought he was replying to Christie from AKA Horse Rescue. I pulled up his message.

My jaw dropped open. “Oh...”

Sutton leaned toward me, an inch away from falling out of bed. “You’re killing me, Aggie. What’d he say?”

“He took the job.”

We stared at each other. I broke contact and reread his reply. Was it really him? Did I hit up another disgraced horse trainer named Ansen Barron to work at my brand-new horse rescue for ridiculously low pay?

“What do I do?” I whispered. I could tell him it was a joke. But if I opened my side business like I’d been secretly dreaming of for years, I’d need help. There were five horses that had a temporary home and very little care they desperately needed. I could afford the vet bills, meds, and farrier fees, but I didn’t have the time. I’d missed a week for the funeral as it was.

Could I help them all by myself? And fix fence? Load the barn full of hay for the approaching winter? Make all the vet, horse chiropractor, and farrier appointments? Train them? Then show them to prospective owners when they were ready to sell?

Would I be able to work with Ansen, to contain the hurt and anger seeing him would bring up?

Would he even stay? He was in a bad place, awful if he accepted my job offer, but working with me might not be worth it for him.

The damn burn around my heart flared up. I should reply, tell him I hired someone else, and forget it. Forget him like I’d been failing to do since I last saw him.

Sutton’s gaze was serious. She’d become my closest friend and knew me better than anyone. Studying my face, I knew she read me as easily as all the messages we’d exchanged over the years. “You have a decision to make.”

Three

Ansen

Was Crocus Valley that damn close to Coal Haven, North Dakota?

I blew out a breath. I was stopped on an off-ramp, peering at the directions on my GPS. I closed my eyes. Goddammit. Why didn’t I look into the location earlier?

Because I needed a damn job. Because I couldn’t get hired anywhere else. Because my name had been smeared worse than shit on a barn door.

A job offer right in my inbox, full of misspellings, from a company that hadn’t come up in a search wouldn’t have been my first choice—or my twentieth—but I couldn’t afford to be picky. Literally.

Was my brother behind this? He lived in Coal Haven with his picture-perfect family. After years of pretending how we’d grown up wasn’t good enough, that Dad and I weren’t good enough, he was settled into the same life we’d been raised in for a few glorious years, only much farther north and around all the family Dad had once walked away from.

I poked at the GPS screen in my pickup. Was there any way around Coal Haven and the brother I was avoiding? I’d managed to stay out of North Dakota my entire life.

I found an alternate route and pulled back onto the interstate. A call notification blocked out the GPS information. Dad’s name scrolled across the screen. Since he was at the age where I wasn’t sure he was calling to chat or tell me he was dying, I answered. My feelings about my dad and brother were complicated, not cold. “Hey.”

“Ansen.” His low growl sparked a pang of homesickness. After fifteen years, I shouldn’t be homesick. Dad didn’t even live in the same place as when I rode out of Texas. A fact I’d once dreamed of remedying. “Are you on the road again?”

Somehow the man sensed when I was changing locations. If he’d heard about the brouhaha—and he likely had since he’d called more often in the last six months—he didn’t mention it. “No, just heading to the store. What’s up?”

“Nothing. Just calling to check in. How’s everything going?”

I glanced around at the gently rolling hills the interstate cut through. They were a mix of green and brown this time of year. I passed fields filled with dried sunflower heads or golden ones full of hay bales. In between were pastures dotted with black, brown, or white cows—mixed Angus, Simmental, and Charolais cattle. Useless knowledge.

Dad’s question should’ve been, How long are we going to pretend your life isn’t a steaming pile of fresh shit?

A little longer would be nice, but after months of being shut out of everything I loved in my life, I was tired. “I’m looking for a new job.”

“Yeah... Heard ’bout all that.”

“Don’t believe it all.” Only some of it. I didn’t want to know which part he wouldn’t question.

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