I wished that I could wave a magic wand and make all the bills go away. What little money I had leftover from my student loans after tuition, books, and uniform scrubs went to paying my rent back in Watauga. If I had to give it up, I would, but for the time being I would stay positive. Soon enough I’d be back to studying in my cramped single-bedroom apartment in the mountains.
After helping mother to bed for a nap, I changed into my riding clothes. It would be nice to get away from people for a while. I needed to get outside and into the fresh air while it was still warm and the leaves had yet to fall. My leg felt strong enough to ride and the persistent ache had almost completely vanished. It was time to pay a long-overdue visit to Zip and Ruby.
Both horses were so glad to see me that I could hardly stop either of them from nuzzling their fuzzy, whiskery faces against my neck or biting at the rolled-up sleeves on my plaid shirt to try and get me to keep petting them. Since Ruby seemed to prefer grazing in the meadow over riding, I let her out and wiped down one of the brown leather saddles hanging under the loft and took Zip out for a ride instead.
His slick black coat glistened in the late afternoon sun as he turned this way and that, anxious to go. Zip was always my favorite; steady, reliable in the way he moved, and he could run so fast over the smooth, flat plain of the meadow that you had to hold on to the harness with both hands for fear of sliding off the back of the saddle.
I took him along the outskirts of the meadow at a light trot to warm him up, right along the border of our farm and the Johnson’s apple orchard. He always loved it around this time of year because occasionally he could find a plump, ripe one that had rolled far enough under the fence to snatch up. Without slowing down, Zip would sweep his big head down and scoop up an apple and eat it on the go. When it was time to run, though, running was all he focused on.
“Let’s go,” I called out and tapped the heel of my boots against his hindquarters. The effect was almost instant. Zip jolted forward, ignoring all the apples that might have fallen, and raced down the borderline at full speed, tearing apart the ground with his hooves. I flattened myself against him, feeling the wind race over my back and in my hair, blowing with it all the troubled thoughts that clouded my mind.
When we reached the end of the meadow, I pulled easy on the rein and he obeyed by turning left and hugging the next fence to come back around. Just as I reached the top of the meadow and prepared to take another fast ride back down, I caught the sight of a familiar gray and white truck pulling up into the small lot beside the stables. The door opened, reflecting the sunlight like a signal in the window, and Hale hopped out.
“Whoa,” I whispered to Zip, and gave the reins a tug. The horse still wanted to go, hungry to race down the meadow again, but he stopped in place at my command and began rooting through the tall grass with his nose.
“I didn’t know your Daddy kept that horse after you left,” Hale said over the sound of his boots crunching in the gravel. As he came nearer he continued, “Look how big he’s gotten. This fella could be a race horse if you wanted.” When Hale reached the split rail fence he stuck one hand through, giving Zip a few long strokes down the side of his neck.
“We don’t,” I answered flatly. “What do you want, Hale?”
He tipped the cowboy hat he was wearing and peered up at me with emerald eyes. “Just being friendly, s’all. I had to come up here to check out the heaters and the generator for the horse stable, and I saw you ridin’.”
“Don’t think you’re fooling anybody, Hale. I know why you’re here, and it isn’t to get in the good graces of my father.”
“What else am I supposed to do, Kat? I tried to tell you I was sorry, but you wouldn’t listen. Do you know why I couldn’t pick you up that day? Do you even care?”
My expression remained stony, but inside my pulse was racing. Here comes the excuse. What will it be this time?
Hale slapped the pair of gloves he was holding against the fence and looked away painfully, down towards the other end of the meadow. “Naw, you don’t care, look at you. Ain’t never known you to be so cold.”
“What do you expect?” I felt my voice grow louder. “Cold is how I’ve been treated by you ever since I left for school. Hell, even before that. But I let you string me along, didn’t I? Little Katty Atwater, Mr. Hale Ellis’s long-suffering girlfriend, that lets him treat her like mud.”
“It won’t like that, and you know it.”
“It wasn’t? What about the time you ditched me at June’s place, saying how you were all sick, only to find out later you were out on a date with that…that slut from Durham?”
“Kat, we didn’t do nothin’, and you know it. Me and you had only started goin’ out when that happened, anyway.”
“Yeah, for a year,” I shot back. “You always put me in second place, whether it was going out drinking with your friends or spending all your time working on that stupid truck. You hardly ever came to visit me in school, and acted like I didn’t exist when I’d come home for a visit.”
Hale shook his head and gave me an angry stare. The vibrant green in his eyes shone with a fire I’d never seen before. “Kat, you-“
“I was there all alone, Hale. That whole time, I never knew what you were up to, but now I do. Word travels fast in a small town.”
“I wasn’t up to nothing. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, girl.”
I tried to laugh, but the tears that had started running down my cheeks made it impossible. “I know…Cindy told me…”
Hale sighed and pushed himself back away from the fence, holding out his hands in surrender. The spark I’d seen in his eyes grew even brighter once he heard her name. “Whatever she said is a…a damned lie.”
“And I’m just supposed to believe you after all your lying. Is that it? It doesn’t work like that, Hale.”
“She was just tryin’ to rile you up, is all. You gonna believe her over me?”
I twisted the leather rein in my hand and said, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
Zip neighed softly and tamped one hoof. He was getting restless and he’d barely had a chance to stretch his legs.
“Kat, I just want to make things right between us.”
“I already said I didn’t want to see you again, yet here you are, trying to cozy up to me like nothing ever happened,” I said, arching myself forward on the saddle, which Zip took as his cue to get moving again. “Well, it ain’t gonna work!”
Any further pleas on Hale’s part were lost to the beating sound of hooves. Faster than I’d ever felt him run; Zip sprinted across the open expanse at the middle of the meadow and bounded high over the crossbar gate on the opposite side of the field. He kept going, the wind coming off the coast blowing in his mane, and we followed it, down into the narrow rows of sweet-smelling trees in the orchard, as if he were sensing my anger and hopelessness and wanting to outrun my emotions.
I wanted to get lost there, to go in and hide and never come back out again. It reminded me of Shane, and the place he’d described from his childhood home. A forest of never ending trees, with no one else around for miles, and trails covered by a layer of soft leaves to walk on from an uncountable number of autumn days.
By the time my senses came back to me and I could open my eyes again, Zip had shed his wild instinct to run and was meandering along a babbling stream. There it was shallow enough to cross, but the horse simply followed along the cold, smooth stones. He took me farther away from my troubles; Hale, and mother’s slowly worsening health, and everything else. They pressed down upon my soul with a weight almost as heavy as the jagged metal which held me inside the wrecked bus.
Emerging from the woods, I looked out towards the orange flare of sunset coming down across clear water. I recognized where I was immediately; Stokes Pond. All was quiet and the water was flat and still. Not less than fifty feet away, jutting up out of the pond and cattail reeds like a monument of man untouched by time, was the old pier I’d fishe
d from and escaped to in my younger days. There wasn’t another soul around for miles.
Without a word of command from me, Zip took us up the sandy, sloping shoreline and stopped in front of the pier. I left the horse there and walked up to the stained wooden planks, which looked the same as they had so many years ago. This was my place. My place to think.
I slid off my boots and socks and relished the trapped heat and the hardness of the wooden planks beneath my feet. It was like going back to a time with no worries, when the only thing I had to concern myself with was wondering how to stretch out the hours in the day to make them last longer.
At the end of the pier I sat down and touched my toes to the water, sending out a faint set of ripples that would spread out and disappear before they could come back to me. The pond was cool and pleasant, and from my vantage I could watch the sun sink. Down it would go, seeming to submerge in the cool water and extinguish itself.
I sat for over an hour, letting the slowly fading sun touch me with its warmth. My mind tried to work out all the troubles that lingered and those that lay ahead. I was so wrapped within myself that I didn’t notice the soft sounds of footsteps until they echoed off the pier behind me.
“I can see why you said this was your favorite place,” said a gentle voice that brought me back to the present. When I turned, I saw him standing there and wearing the same confident grin that had captured my attention from the moment I met him. “It’s absolutely beautiful out here.”
Shane.
Eight
Had I fallen asleep and begun to dream? I almost pinched myself to find out when I took in a great breath, felt the cool water between my toes, and realized this was all real. When Shane stepped forward onto the pier and encircled the silver chain and locket around my neck, I held my breath.
“Back home again, right where it belongs,” he said. “Just like you, I see.”
“S-shane?”
“It’s nice to see you again, Kat.”
“You brought back my locket?” I looked up into his radiant, forceful eyes and began crying all over again, but this time, the tears were tears of joy and relief. “I thought I’d never see it, or you – again. What happened? Where were you?”
I quickly pulled my feet out of the water and stood before him on the pier. That was when I noticed the wide scar that extended down one side of his neck and under his shirt. The smooth, tanned flesh there had been seared by fire. Shane noticed and quickly pulled up his collar to hide the injury.
He took a slight step backwards and said, “Chapel Hill. After they transported me there by helicopter, that is. I was discharged about a week ago and I came here for the case, which got delayed on account of the accident, and so that I could bring that back to you.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said, sobbing and barely able to say anything at all, and wrapped my arms tightly around him. He looked a little taken aback by the embrace but gladly accepted it. “You saved my life, Shane.”
“You would have done the same for me if you could, no question in my mind.”
“I watched the news but they never said your name. Then they stopped reporting on it. I was so worried that you didn’t make it, after…what happened.”
“No way. How could I check out without coming here to see this place…and you?”
I laughed into his chest while he held me, caressing my back with his hand in small circles. There I found the vague hint of his cologne, the same intoxicating scent that I remembered on the day we met, and the drab little Watauga bus station with the handsome stranger coming to sit down beside me filled my mind. He really was here, wasn’t he? I could feel him breathe, and hear his voice in my ears. Finally sure that he wasn’t a figment of my imagination, I sniffled and released him to dry my eyes.
“How did you find me, anyway? I kind of doubt Stokes Pond is something you can find on a GPS,” I said.
“You might be surprised. But no, I made a few calls. Turns out there aren’t a lot of Atwaters in Kirkland. When I drove up to the address I’d been given, your father told me you might be out riding. I was just about to give up and come back tomorrow when I saw this big guy-” Shane thumbed towards Zip, who had climbed to the top of the footpath in search of grass to eat, and must have just been visible from the dirt road, “-and I stumbled upon you, and the pier you told me about on the bus.”
I opened the locket and ran a finger over the picture inside. It was thankfully undamaged. The bloodstains I could faintly remember being wiped across the back were gone and the silver seemed to gleam with a renewed brilliance.
“Oh, I took the liberty of having that cleaned and polished for you,” Shane said. “It looked like it could use it.”
“You’re amazing. Thank you, Shane…for everything.” With a snap, I closed the locket and let it hang heavily by the chain. In the distance, the last rays of the sun were drowning in the still reflections of the pond.
“You don’t have to thank me, Kat. Just doing what’s right.”
We were standing so close. It felt wrong not to be holding onto him. I could tell by the way he was shuffling his feet that he felt uncomfortable in the same way.
“It’ll be dark soon. You should come up to the house. Have dinner and meet my family,” I offered.
“I really wish I could,” he said, and toed a loose plank with his shoe. “The rest of my team is waiting in Wilmington right now for me, though. Tomorrow is a huge day and I’m already running late getting prepared for it.”
“Oh.” I felt my smile fade a bit, and then he touched my arm.
“Hey, I’m serious, Kat. I really do want to. You remember what I asked you on the bus? Right before?”
I nodded. “I never did answer you, did I?”
Shane looked down and then back up at me, returning with that wonderful smirk I was beginning to know all over again. This time, his cheeks were glowing red instead of mine. “No, I…uh, I suppose you didn’t, Miss Atwater.”
“Ask me again, Shane. Ask me right now.”
He turned his head towards the water and then back to me. “Would you like to-”
“I’d love to.”
“Well all right then,” he said, hardly able to contain his smile as he bit down hard on his lower lip to hide it. His fingers vanished from my arm and he clapped his hands together. “I’ll be by tomorrow night, say around six? I ought to be done by then.”
“Ok.” My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. Not even with Hale had I ever felt anything even close to that.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, and walked away, back up the path. Before he disappeared over the hill, he called out, “Make sure to wear your dancing shoes.” Then, just as seamlessly as he’d appeared, he was gone.
I hurried back to the stables with Zip as fast as I could and got him and Ruby back in their pens. Fantastic visions of my first date with Shane swirled around in my head. Just as the day squeezed out the last bit of light and the full, white moon began to rise, I reached the front yard, running at a full sprint. If there was any pain left in my leg, I didn’t feel it.
I hit the screen door with a thunderous bang and kept on going - directly between Momma, who nearly jumped up out of her shoes while manning the ancient stove and a steaming pot full of collard greens, and Abby, who was showing off the new cover she’d bought for her phone at the mall. Up the stairs I went, taking them two at a time.
“Mary Katherine Atwater! Nearly scared the life out of me, girl!” Momma shouted from behind, but I was already in my room. I collapsed back onto the bed, beaming with delight, and kissed the old locket before clutching it to my chest. My feet were still kicking in the air off the edge of the mattress and I could hardly contain myself. It felt like being sixteen again, only better, because now I had a date with the man of my dreams!
To heck with Hale Ellis and anyone else that didn’t like it.
Then, remembering that most of my clothes were either still hanging in my closet at
the apartment back in Watauga or lost in the accident, I had a brief rush of panic. What on Earth would I wear?
I flung open the door to my closet and looked at the old clothing I’d left before leaving home four years ago. Most of it was ordinary stuff – the things I’d wear to school on most days, simple shirts and blouses, a few pairs of torn-up jeans and some skirts. Everything seemed either perilously outdated or more like something I’d wear to stay warm. I was never one to chase the heights of fashion. Girls like Cindy Reid cared more about that than I ever did, and she stuck out in Kirkland like a well-dressed sore thumb.
He said we were going dancing. There must be something in here! I grabbed the clothes I’d already looked through and slid them down to the far end of the rail. There, tucked away in the very back, still wrapped up in a sheet of thin plastic, was the slinky black evening dress I’d nearly forgotten. It had been a gift, the one and only real present Hale had ever bought for me.
I pulled it out of the closet, slipped the plastic cover off, and held it up in the light. The material was soft under my fingertips, with a bit of give and stretch that meant it would hug in all the right places. Around the waistline was an evenly spaced line of shimmering crystals that looked like a thin belt but was really just a design. Black spaghetti straps connected around the top in the front and back, and thankfully a few years in the closet hadn’t worn them down.
As I held the dress I thought about the day Hale had given it to me. He had promised to take me out for Valentine’s Day our senior year on The Enchanting Queen, a romantic old riverboat. I’d so looked forward to it, to the chance to have a real romantic evening with him. As silly as it sounds, I remember hoping Hale would ask me to marry him that night. Foolish wishes were par for the course when I was eighteen and hopelessly in love.
He never did ask me. We never even went on the cruise. The night before, Hale had gone to a friend’s house, had too much to drink, and decided that he was perfectly capable of driving himself home. After crashing his truck into a ditch only four miles away, the local sheriff found him passed out drunk and lying across the bench seat with his head hanging in the floorboard. The entire next day Hale was sitting behind bars at the Kirkland Detention Center, nursing a hangover and being served with his first DWI.
Ultimate Alphas: Bad Boys and Good Lovers (The Naughty List Romance Bundles) Page 18
