by Jamie Magee
“Wyatt, nothing much has changed when it comes to my parents. I’ve just learned to deal with it.”
Wyatt looked away so she would not see the pain in his eyes. No doubt she had learned to deal with it, and she did so by being with the guy her mother had handpicked out for her.
That same wave of the past came over Harley as she walked into Camille’s home. Nothing had moved; all the furniture, all the paintings on the wall, the smell of it, the feel of it, it was all the same.
Beckett was even the same. He came in the back door right after Wyatt and Harley, wearing his famous overalls. “Yeah, they said the banker’s daughter crashed into town with a bang,” he said, pulling Harley into a hug. He chuckled as he passed her by, calling Camille’s name.
The dinner table was different, though. Camille and Beckett were still there, Beckett’s parents, too. Truman and Easton both came to dinner as well, but just like Wyatt, they had turned into men. Trey and all of Wyatt’s younger cousins were away at school. Apparently, Ava was supposed to be but ran in the back door just as everyone was sitting down.
“What are you doing, young lady?” Beckett said as Ava went around the table, kissing her grandfather, then her father, messing up Truman’s hair, nudging Easton, elbowing Wyatt. Once she reached Harley, she pulled her up into a hug. “Came to see Harley. God, you look amazing,” Ava said, extending her arms, looking over her. Ava did, too. She wasn’t a girl anymore; she was a young woman. Bright blue eyes, long brown hair, fit, simply gorgeous.
“So I’m just paying for school for my health? I want a refund,” Beckett gruffed as Ava sat down between Camille and Harley, pushing Harley close to Wyatt.
It felt like the entire table noticed that move. Easton’s stare shifted between Wyatt and Harley, so did Truman’s. Beckett laughed; Wyatt’s grandfather shook his head.
“I finished my labs on Tuesday.” She looked at Harley. “I’m going to be a nurse.” She nodded to Easton. “Kate already is.”
“Kate already is because she didn’t take semesters or summers or whatever else off, like you,” Beckett said. “Do I need to remind you that Wyatt obtained his degree in three years while riding professionally? Moved on to a latch on to another field when that was said and done?”
Harley glanced at Wyatt, hearing the pride in Beckett’s tone, seeing how it somewhat embarrassed Wyatt. He refused to meet her stare.
“You’re only young once, Daddy.”
“Who told you that lie? I’m still trying to grow up, ain’t that right, Momma?” Beckett said with a deep laugh, earning a smile from Camille.
“So what have you been doing?” Ava asked Harley. “Are you in school?”
Harley smiled slyly, glancing in Beckett’s direction. “I’m taking a semester off.” After hearing what Wyatt had been up to, she was feeling like a total slacker at that point. Harley wasn’t far from a degree, but she was never able to manage her horse life and school at the same time, not with the deals her mother signed her up to attend or even coordinate.
“What are you going to school for?” Ava pressed.
“Basically investment banking, but business law is attached to the course major.”
“What exactly do they teach you in banking school?” Beckett asked. “How to count money? I can help you with that—one head of cattle, two head of cattle. You need to subtract, that’s easy,” he said, pointing to Trey’s empty seat. “One college fund,” then to Ava, “Another one, some days anyways.” He nodded his chin to Easton and Wyatt, “One six-pack, two six-pack.”
“Hey now,” Easton said. “I fill that fridge up more than I empty it these days.”
“These days; I’m still running a debt from y’all’s senior year.”
“Beckett, did you get those back fences repaired today?” Camille asked in a tone that clearly said to change the subject.
Harley just sat back and took it all in, tried to figure out what she had missed. No one was really offering up much information or going out of their way to fill Harley in except Ava, who told Harley where everyone was now, including the horses that were still at the barn and those that had left.
“Is Stolen Heart still here?” Harley asked.
Ava went to answer her, but Camille changed the subject again. “We need to start setting up for the shows over the remainder of the season. Figure out who’s going or not.” That statement led the conversation in every direction to the point that Harley had even forgotten the question she asked.
Once dinner was over, Wyatt, Truman, and Easton went to the back porch. Each time Harley found a reason to look that way, she found one of them looking back at her, could swear she saw the anger in their eyes.
When she finally excused herself to go upstairs, Camille called after her. “Harley, if you see fit to going on a midnight stroll, please use either the front or back door to exit. I wouldn’t want you to fall and hurt yourself further.”
“Good plan,” was all Harley said.
She expected short little knocks like that before she came here. The Dorans were just a blunt family. They never really let you get over something you had done in your past, but they didn’t stab you with it the way her mother did; they joked about it, to the point where you could laugh at yourself. Harley was a long way from laughing about her situation but appreciated any step in that direction she could take.
***
“That was a bit tight,” Truman said to Easton and Wyatt as he leaned into the rail of the porch. It was his idea to ask Easton over tonight. He would be at dinner no matter what but thought if Easton were here, it would help balance out Wyatt a little more.
This role reversal was making Truman uneasy, to say the least. Over the years, Wyatt had become the fun one in their group, the one with a quick smile, fast wit, nicknames, the one that eased tension.
Not since that call, though. All that aggression they knew was under the fast smile had flooded to the surface. The entire farm felt heavier, so did the fire station. It was blowing Truman’s mind, honestly. He knew it ended bad, that they were ripped apart, but before that, growing up, when they knew Harley was coming to the farm it was like getting ready for Christmas; she brought a calm to the farm, a balance, the kind of company you walked straighter around but didn’t mind having there constantly.
Easton had walked through a hell that no one would wish for, and Wyatt was there with him through that. Truman was scared to death to follow all of them into the fire department, and even though Wyatt still teased him, he made sure Truman was at ease.
Now it appeared it was Wyatt’s turn to walk through hell, a life change. And they were all going to be there with him to deal with it.
“She’s not the same,” Wyatt said under his breath.
“Did you guys talk?” Easton asked. He saw what happened in the cab of that truck, her eyes fly open, how she’d kissed Wyatt like he was a life force, the way he kissed her back. He thought this was a done deal, even figured that Camille was overreacting by telling Wyatt to take it slow. But then he saw the reaction Wyatt had to the evidence that Harley had moved on in her life, in some way. Easton was cussing himself for gathering all that stuff off the highway. Maybe if he hadn’t, all of this would be easier, Wyatt wouldn’t be looking like he was on the losing end of this deal.
“Not much.”
“Then how do you know she’s not the same?”
Wyatt smirked. “Because she snapped on me.”
“What did you say?” Truman asked with a furrowed brow, his dark blue eyes slicing into Wyatt.
Wyatt shook his head. “Something like I shouldn’t give her crap about being with someone two years after we split – asked if I’d rather she had just slept around, then asked who I’d been with in a roundabout way.”
“You didn’t think to ease into that conversation?” Easton asked, almost dumbfounded Wyatt went down that road that fast.
“It just happened,” Wyatt said with a curse under his breath.
Easton leaned a littl
e closer. “Wyatt, years back you were not Mr. Innocent.”
That was true. Too true. For the most part since he’d been home, he had been. This town was too small to start something unless you meant it. Wyatt might hang out at the pub, dance with a girl here or there, something like that, but for a good while he’d been straight. If he had known that Harley would be back at his farm down the road, in a relationship or not, he would have thought twice about a few random nights when he was far from home.
“None of that meant anything,” Wyatt said, glancing to Harley, who was making her way upstairs. So much for talking to her tonight, he thought to himself. Random nights or not, he’d never moved on to another, said things to another, clearly Harley had done that with Collin, Harley moved on, and that scorched him with fury.
“Girls don’t see it that way, even I know that,” Truman said. “Did you tell her?”
“It’s not like I have some big number,” Wyatt snapped.
“More than one,” Truman shot back. “Makes you look like an ass giving her grief.”
“Maybe you guys should just keep the numbers off the table,” Easton said, moving between Truman and Easton.
“Numbers or no numbers, she’s not the same, I’m not,” Wyatt said, knowing that somehow she had fallen into the life that she had always told him she hated, and there was no way in hell he could give her that life. Or would want to.
He was a southern man. He was a horseman. The socialite life was not his gig, not now, not ever. All his time on the road taught him where home was, who he was, and what he wanted, and it was right where he was standing. His legacy was right here, not in some boardroom.
Back then, he would have been a stable boy at her family’s home, would have left it all behind. Now, now he knew he cold never outrun his life. There was only one thing missing from the paradise of it: sharing it with someone.
“Well then, the not-the-same-Wyatt and the not-the-same-Harley need to get to know one another for the first time,” Easton said.
“I don’t think I can live through that again,” Wyatt said under his breath as he walked off the back porch and disappeared into the shadows of the night.
Chapter Eleven
After a long, hot soak in a tub and some pain medicine, Harley drifted to sleep, staring out her window in the direction of the main barn, halfway hoping that she’d see a flash of light.
Those meds put her in a deep sleep, well past her automatic dawn wake up call. By the time she made it to the stables, the horses had been fed and the morning lessons were being tacked up. Wyatt was nowhere in sight.
Ava found her in Danny Boy’s stall.
“He looks so good...well, outside of the injuries.”
Harley smiled to thank her.
“You still need a ride into town?”
Last night at dinner when Beckett was asking about her truck and why she decided to trash a machine like that, she had said that she needed to pick up a rental in town. She’d hoped Wyatt would take that hint, but it wasn’t looking like it.
“Yeah, that’d be nice.”
Ava ran Harley all over the place before she bothered to take her to get her rental. She wanted to show Harley the new shopping center that had just gone up, and she said she had to pick up a few things for school.
“I’m calling Mom to tell her we’ll be too late for dinner,” she’d said while Harley was waiting for the truck they had given her to be cleaned. Harley felt the disappointment wash over her; it was like being seventeen again, watching the days move by, watching for every window of opportunity to steal a moment of time. She had hoped that she’d at least see Wyatt at dinner; now all she could think to do was make sure she was up before dawn the next day to catch him in the barn feeding.
“I never can find you online, at least outside of some blog or article. Do you seriously not have a profile anywhere?” Ava asked her as they sat down at a little café.
Harley shook her head. “I’ve looked you up, though,” she admitted.
“But never called,” Ava said with a lifted brow.
“It was hard at first, then after…it just didn’t…it would have hurt.”
“After Dorcas?”
“Yeah.”
“I told you to stop.”
“You have to understand where my head was then. I was drowning in emotions.”
“Then? Not now?”
“Now it’s not as bad.”
“Because of that rich boy those articles always show you with.”
Harley bit her lip before she spoke. Even though Collin wasn’t here, he was still being a shield for her. “He keeps my mother away. He’s my best friend.”
“You and Wyatt used to be best friends.”
Harley grinned at that.
“You guys were not as secretive as you thought. I saw it. I think we all did.”
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. She and Wyatt were always a little more daring around the kids their age but still held back. If she knew then that they knew and were not going to say anything, they could have had so many more moments…then again, that would only make now all the more difficult. “Everything looks and feels different at seventeen. We were sure no one knew.”
Ava’s smile fell a little. “Harley, I can’t tell you how destroyed he was…he fell hard.”
Harley looked away, then right back at Ava. “I told you I looked you up online…when I did…he looked happy.”
“Wyatt? He can smile with the best of them, happy with life; that doesn’t mean he was over you.”
Harley shook her head as she looked down at her phone; Collin was checking on her through text. She told him she was with Ava, and the ‘boy’ was still pissed.
When she looked up, Ava was looking through her phone. “What did you see online? He’s not really smiling in any of these - well, that one, but you know his real smile.”
Harley waved her fingers toward her. She had looked up Ava more than once, every time Wyatt’s birthday would pass, an anniversary to an epic moment between her and Wyatt, or just because she woke from a dream that felt too real. Unless Ava had deleted any photos, she knew exactly how to find them.
She found the picture of the girl hanging on his arm in one photo and showed it to Ava. “That’s Brant’s girlfriend. That’s his hand, right there on her hip.” Those explanations went on for the next few images that had haunted Harley in the past, each one making her feel like a fool.
When Harley found the picture of the girl leaning over his shoulder kissing his cheek, his arms reaching up and around her, that smile on his face, Ava busted out laughing. “That’s me! That was right after he had been gone for almost half a year. He only had a little while before he left again. That was a huge party down at the pub for him and Easton.”
Harley’s eyes locked with Ava’s. She felt her heart pick up a little, felt like a fool all over again.
“Harley, I don’t know how innocent he was when he was away, but here, he’s been a saint, at least when it comes to girls, and even when he was away—he loved no one else. Girl’s honor. I know my brother. I was there through it all. He’s not over you.”
Harley willed herself not to show any emotion in her expression, even though she was feeling the worst of them. “Ava…I’m pretty sure your brother is impossible to get over.”
“Then don’t.”
Easier said than done, Harley thought to herself.
To hear Camille and Ava talk, you’d think Wyatt was madly in love with her, but around Wyatt she felt like public enemy number one.
She took her time driving back to Willowhaven Farms. By the time she got to the house, Ava had already parked and was long inside. Harley sat in the truck for a few minutes, tried to gather her nerve, then glanced to the main barn. She could see the lights on in the apartment.
Harley held her breath and started to walk across the driveway. Right as she got to the gate that would lead her in, Johnnie was driving out. “I just did a night check, your boy is sound a
sleep.” Harley smiled to thank him and started to walk further. Johnnie called after her. “You might want to steer clear,” he said with a chuckle. She glanced back, trying to understand what he meant by that. “Green Honda out front. You know what they say, don’t come a knocking…those two are anything but quiet.” He shook his head again, amused by his words, and then drove off.
Standing right there, Harley almost puked. She started to run, not toward the main barn but away from it. As soon as she figured out she was going toward the path that would lead her to the back creek, she stopped.
She leaned on the fence and just tried to breathe in and out. In and out, she thought to herself.
Wyatt knew she was here, knew that her room basically could see into his apartment, and he brought a girl home. She was starting to think that it was his family that wanted a second chance, not him, and her wayward mind told her that his mother wanted Danny Boy back, not her.
Like he could feel it, her breaking, Collin called at that moment.
“Still pissed?” he asked when she answered.
“Something tells me he has a smile on his face right now.”
“Oh yeah? Then why is your voice trembling?”
“I don’t feel good here.”
“What? Why?”
“The place is the same. It’s all the same but me. It’s cold.”
“They’re being mean?” Collin’s tone was defensive, assertive, exactly the way it always was when he discovered someone was hurting Harley.
“That’s not it. I don’t know how to say it.”
“Harley, you knew going there would not be easy. You just have to work through it. Keep your head high.”
When she didn’t say anything, he spoke. “You want me to fly there? I can stay for a bit.”
“No, don’t come; it will make it worse. I’m fine. I swear I am. I’m figuring out some things are safer in memories.”
Collin sighed. “You’re not there to go back, but forward.”
“No, I’m here because that million dollar GPS you put in the rig detoured me and some asshat lost his load and almost killed my horse.”