by Joanna Sims
“Do you know, we don’t have a picture of us together,” she said as they pulled onto the highway, leaving Sugar Creek land.
Skyler had been very considerate about his aversion to social media. He still got a knot in his gut when he remembered what it felt like to be a teenage kid on the receiving end of so much simultaneous obsession and venom. He had been very careful about his image once the show was canceled. And Skyler, to her credit, hadn’t taken pictures of him while she was photo-journaling her trip for her supports, coworkers and friends back home.
“That’s my fault,” he admitted.
“It’s like we didn’t exist at all.”
“You don’t really believe that,” Hunter said more sharply than he had intended.
“I don’t know what I believe.” Skyler rubbed her hands over her face, dark circles from stress and lack of sleep noticeable beneath her eyes. “This isn’t how I expected things to end between us.”
He glanced over at her; he wished that he wasn’t driving while they were having this conversation. He wished that it didn’t feel inappropriate to discuss a heavy subject like their geographically challenged relationship when she was so worried about her father.
“This isn’t goodbye,” he said, and he heard the certainty resonated in his own voice.
“It isn’t?” she asked doubtfully.
“Not for me.” He took his hand off the wheel for a second to squeeze her hand reassuringly. “It’s not goodbye—it’s ‘see you later.’”
That got a small smile out of her. “Okay.”
At the airport, Hunter pulled in front of the terminal to unload the baggage. Before he took the truck to the parking lot, he asked the baggage handler to take a picture of them. They took off their masks and posed for the picture.
Skyler put her mask back on and took her phone from the gentleman. “Thank you.”
Skyler looked at the picture and then showed it to him. “We look good together I think.”
“I think so.”
After she was checked in, Skyler wandered over to the carousel where he had seen her for the first time.
“I never did get a chance to go to the museum.”
He turned her around and wrapped her up in his arms. “Hey. Montana will still be here. The museum will still be here. I will still be here.”
They stood together for many minutes, the world going about its business while they were stuck in that one moment together. When boarding for her flight was called, Hunter tightened his hold on her.
“I love you, Skyler.” He looked into her eyes so she would see that he meant it.
“I love you.”
For the briefest of moments, they slipped down their masks and kissed.
“Remember,” he said after he pulled his mask back up. “It’s not goodbye. It’s ‘see you later.’”
She nodded and began to walk away from him.
“Don’t forget me, Skyler,” he called after her.
She turned around. “I’ve loved you almost all of my life, Hunter. How could I ever forget you?”
* * *
“Molly!” Skyler was relieved and grateful to see her friend awaiting her arrival. “I’m going to hug you,” she said to her friend.
“I get tested every day at my new job,” Molly told her. “Hug away.”
They hugged each other tightly. Skyler was grateful to have Molly, the closest thing to a sibling she had in her life, to help her navigate the next several days. They managed to MacGyver her luggage into the early model Toyota Molly had borrowed from her aunt.
“I’m so sorry about your dad,” Molly said as she navigated out of the parking garage and pointed them toward home.
“I still feel like I’m in shock,” Skyler said while sending Hunter a text that she had landed safely.
“Of course.”
“First Mom dies from complications related to COPD, and then Dad has to handle my diagnosis without her, and now he’s in the hospital with a stroke? He doesn’t deserve it.”
“Neither do you,” her friend said.
Skyler couldn’t deny that it felt like the worst kind of luck, but she couldn’t dwell on it. She needed to dwell on how to make her father whole.
“How does it feel to be back?” Molly asked.
“Weird,” Skyler admitted. “Different worlds.”
“I bet,” her friend said. “You look amazing.”
Skyler touched her hair. “I need a haircut. It feels really good to be able to say that again.”
“Mom will do it for you. She’s been cutting the neighbor’s hair on the balcony. Strange times.”
“If she’d be willing, I would really appreciate it. I’m starting to feel like a Muppet.”
They arrived at Skyler’s 1930s single-family two-story house in Queens—it had seen better days. The whitewash paint was more gray than white and the roof had needed replacing for years. Her mother had always been the iron fist when it came to maintaining curb appeal. Molly helped her drag her heavy bags up the steps to the house.
“You packed a ton.” Molly lugged the last bag up to the top step.
“I didn’t wear half of the stuff.” She put the key in the door. “I could’ve taken one suitcase and a carry-on.”
Once inside the front door, which opened directly into the living room, Skyler turned on the lamp just inside of the door and looked around. There were papers strewn on the floor near her father’s favorite recliner chair and a bowl of half-eaten popcorn on the scratched, 1970s coffee table that her father had refused to let go.
“I wish I could stay.” Molly sent her a regretful look. “I tried to get out of my shift.”
Skyler hugged her friend tightly. “Thank you, Moll. I’m so lucky to have you in my life.”
“Same.” Molly squeezed her tight. “Keep me in the loop. I check my phone on breaks.”
“I will.”
“And I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Skyler shut the door behind her friend, locked it and then looked around with a heavy sigh. She had called her father on the way home from the airport and he sounded in good spirits, except for the fact that he was upset that she had cut her trip short. Over the course of the summer, her father had come to believe that her trip out west was exactly what she had needed to reboot her life.
“Don’t come home,” he had told her in a complete 180-degree reversal of his initial response to her trip.
“I’m coming home,” she had said in a tone that brooked no argument. He hadn’t convinced her not to go and now he wasn’t going to convince her to stay while he was in the hospital.
Skyler moved around the two-story house in a bit of a daze, picking up papers and putting them in the recycling, gathering up random dishes and stacking them in the sink. Her father had returned to bachelor life in her absence—not completely messy, but not overly concerned about keeping a tidy house. Room by room she made her way through her childhood home, finding a shirt or a pile of grease-covered uniforms from the garage along the way. The house felt empty and sad, and she knew that she would need to keep herself busy straightening the house and unpacking her bags while she awaited her father’s release.
The dishes had been washed and were drying in the dish drain; the uniforms were in the washing machine. Skyler rolled her largest piece of luggage through the house to the back door. She opened the door and was greeted with the concrete slab between the house and her garage apartment. Weeds pushed up through cracks in the slab and it was odd that this was one of the only splashes of greenery she could see.
In that moment, she missed the trees of Montana, so plentiful and fragrant, desperately. Or perhaps she just missed Hunter desperately. As if he had picked up her thoughts on some mutual wavelength that connected them, no matter how many miles separated them, Hunter called.
She quickly picked
up the phone on the first ring.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he said back. “I miss you.”
“I miss you so much,” she said, juggling the phone and the suitcase as she continued on her path toward her apartment.
“I have Daisy with me,” he told her.
“Thank you, Hunter. I need her to be okay.”
“She is,” he reassured her. “The question is, how are you? How is your father?”
She wrestled her suitcase through the door to her apartment and then collapsed on the couch. She had, in fact, missed her couch. It was the perfect fabric and so comfy. She sat up long enough to kick off her shoes before sinking back, with a happy sigh, into her couch. They spoke for an hour with a promise to speak the next day. One by one, she got her bags into the apartment. Before Sugar Creek Ranch, she would not have had the strength to travel across country, begin to clean her father’s house and still get her bags to the apartment.
But now she was tired, and all she could think about was crawling into her own bed, getting some sleep and then going to visit her father as soon as visiting hours started the next day. Thank goodness the hospitals were now allowing visitors.
A quick shower later, Skyler set the alarm on her phone, then ran her fingers over the only picture of her and Hunter together that she had set as her home screen wallpaper.
A text came through from Hunter in response to her text letting him know that she was going to sleep. Sleep well, my love.
The bed, her wonderful mattress, felt like home to her. Her pillows, her blanket, her sheets. But the bed was lonely without Hunter. She missed his body making everything too hot; she missed fighting over the blanket, each accusing the other of being a blanket hog. She missed being able to curl up next to him, put her hand over his heart and smell the wonderful scent of his skin. That night, as the sounds of her neighborhood kept her up instead of lulling her to sleep, Skyler wished she could get Scotty to beam Hunter right into her bed. No, that wasn’t true. She wished that Scotty would beam her, and her bed, back to Montana. Somewhere along the way, the real Montana—the one with the rabid ants, giant horseflies, mud and manure, had begun to feel more like home than New York. She didn’t know it before she left Sugar Creek...but she knew it now. Montana was Hunter’s home; and for her, wherever Hunter was, that was home for her, too.
Chapter Fifteen
“I’m okay, Sky.” Chester Sinclair slumped into his recliner.
Skyler watched as her father tried to use the lever to recline the chair; her father had had a stroke on the right side of his brain, which had caused some weakness on the left side of his body.
She rushed over to his chair, helped him recline and then didn’t take offense when he growled at her for helping him when he didn’t need it. Her father was a lefty, which made this stroke a serious blow. Yes, he had other mechanics that worked in his shop, but with the pandemic and people driving less, business had slowed and he was already struggling to make ends meet. In order to not lay off any workers, Chester had been taking in some overflow clients from a company that had some older model diesel trucks. Now he was going to have to give up that revenue stream, and if he couldn’t come up with another solution, he would have to start furloughing workers.
“Dad.” Skyler kneeled by his recliner, acutely aware of the fact that at the beginning of summer, and not all that long ago, he had been the one kneeling beside her chair. “It’s going to be okay.”
Chester put his hand on her face, looked her over real good. “You’re better. That makes everything okay for me.”
Skyler had a ton of ideas about how to keep them afloat while Chester was recovering, none of them her father was going to like. So she decided it would be best for her to let him settle in to the routine of physical and occupational therapy for his left-side weakness and then she would broach some touchy subjects with him.
“Here’s the remote.” She brought him the control for the TV. “Molly and I will be in the apartment if you need us.”
“I’m glad you’re home, Mr. Sinclair.” Molly had her hip leaning against the kitchen counter. When she had first come to this house for a sleepover, Molly had to stand on her tiptoes to reach a plate of cookies Skyler’s mom had made for them.
“Thank you, Molly.” Her father always had a smile for Molly.
Skyler leaned down, gave her father a kiss on the cheek and then she and her friend walked to the back of the house toward the apartment.
“He’s going to get better,” Molly said, her hazel eyes concerned. “He’ll get some therapy and he’ll get better.”
Skyler sent her friend a brief smile while she unlocked the door to her apartment. She did believe that her father was going to get better. He was strong and determined, and she had seen life knock him down plenty of times before. Chester Sinclair had always gotten back up and worked so hard that he was even better off than before.
“I have to learn how to cook,” Skyler mused, looking at the pile of luggage still yet to be unpacked. “No more takeout for him. He has to be on a healthy diet.”
She exchanged a look with her friend and said, “He’s going to hate that.”
They both laughed. Chester was a steak-and-potatoes kind of guy—getting him to change his diet and start to exercise was going to be a challenge. But if she could worm and herd cattle, she believed she was more than up for the task.
“Do you want me to help you get this done?” Molly nodded toward the luggage.
Skyler lifted her shoulders with a sigh. “No. I’m not ready to tackle this. I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”
Molly knew her well enough to know that they weren’t about to discuss something frivolous. Her friend took her typical seat on the sofa and curled her legs beneath her.
“What’s going on?”
Skyler joined her on the couch, sitting cross-legged and facing Molly. “I don’t know why I’ve waited to tell you this.”
Molly waited for her to finish.
“But Hunter and I...” She stopped for a moment to find the exact right words. “Fell in love.”
Molly’s heart-shaped face went from surprised to joyous quickly. She stood up, sat down next to Skyler and hugged her tightly.
“I’m so glad,” her friend said. “I was so worried that I would have Chase and you wouldn’t have your own cowboy.”
Now she was glad that she waited to tell Molly. This was the kind of moment she could look back on with a smile for the rest of her life—the day she told Molly that she was in love with Hunter Brand, and now Hunter Brand was in love with her!
Molly, of course, asked the obvious question. “But why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I think it was so new and so unreal that I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. Not even with you.”
She reached out and squeezed Molly’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
Molly shook her head quickly, her wild curls dancing about her shoulders. “Don’t you worry about it for one more second, Sky. I’m just happy. For both of us.”
Her friend sat back, her face beaming. “We both got our cowboys. It really happened for us.”
“Well...” Skyler wanted to temper Molly’s enthusiasm. There hadn’t been any promises or proposals and even plans between them. “I’m not sure there’s a cut-and-dried status category for us. He has his life at Sugar Creek and I have to make sure that the bills get paid around here.”
“It’s going to work out for you.” Her friend had always been an optimist. In fact, Molly had never faltered in her belief that she was going to survive cancer.
“You know what makes me feel happy right now, Moll?” Skyler said. “To see you so happy with Chase.”
She meant it sincerely. She didn’t know where her relationship with Hunter was going to go, and that was just the reality of
the current moment. But to see Molly glowing from being in love with Chase was just as rewarding as if it was happening to her.
“Your cowboy is coming,” Skyler said with a smile.
“Your cowboy is coming, too,” her friend said emphatically. “Just you wait and see.”
They talked for nearly two more hours, bouncing from one subject to another, and then Molly had to go home and get ready for work. Skyler was still on leave from the insurance agency; she had some serious thinking to do about her next steps. Unfortunately, none of those next steps would lead her back to Hunter anytime soon.
* * *
“We’ve been missing you at the family events.” Hunter’s eldest brother, Bruce, had come up to his place among the ancient oak trees. It was a rare visit to his remote and private stake on Sugar Creek.
“Is that right?” Hunter was sitting on the two-seater bench that he had carved with Daisy curled up next to him.
Bruce had grown a beard and he needed a haircut, but his ocean-blue eyes, the same as his own, were both curious and concerned. As the eldest of the siblings, Bruce was expected—by Jock—to wrangle his brothers and sister if they looked like they were straying from the herd.
“Mom is worried about you.”
That was a punch to the gut; he never wanted to upset his mother. And yet that knowledge wasn’t enough to make him want to break out of his self-imposed isolation. After Skyler’s trip was abruptly cut short, and his life returned to the way it was before she had arrived, Hunter found that his preference to be alone now extended to his family, too.
“And Dad?” Hunter asked, knowing that news of Brandy and Dustin’s relationship had burned through the gossip wires in Bozeman like a wildfire.