by Tia Siren
It all became even more evident late one Sunday night. Things had been going well and my guard was down. We had cooked a lovely dinner together, laughing and talking while we prepared fried chicken and mashed potatoes. The dogs had watched lazily while the sound of the evening news echoed from the television in the living room. It had felt so normal and like I was blessed with a glimpse of what life could have been. Everything went downhill when we sat down to eat, however.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you—I got a call back from a good friend of mine in New York, Matthew Johnson. You might have heard of him before,” Lincoln said after several large bites. “He’s the top real estate investor on the East Coast. Anyway, I told him all about how your parents died and left you with mountains of debt but how this place is a gold mine for business, and he’s interested in investing some money. He’d be more than willing to fly out and take a look at the land to see what he can offer you.”
I stared at him with a slackened jaw. He must have seen the mixed emotions playing on my face, because he quickly explained himself.
“I know, I should have run it all by you first, but you can’t waste time in this industry. The longer we wait, the closer you are to losing the family business, and the closer I am to losing a very hefty investment. It might not seem like a big deal to you, but my time is just as important to me as my money.”
I continued to look at him. I didn’t know whether I should have been enraged or disappointed. The words he had said, they just didn’t fit with the person I thought he really was. I’d thought his holier-than-thou persona was just a facade, but the more he spoke, the more I understood that he had turned into a conceited monster and there was nothing I could do to try to reverse it. Still, even as I stared him down with conflicted eyes, he continued to talk.
“I worked hard to get where I am now. I’m sure you know. I was homeless for a while and then I started couch hopping while I worked a few jobs. It was sheer luck that I found the right person at the right time. That person was the perfect stepping stone to keep climbing my way to the top. They say that millionaires have to be smart and savvy, and that’s exactly what I am—only a little bit better because I’m more than a millionaire now. You should see some of the properties my business owns now. It all started with a run-down little apartment in Queens, and now I have business branches internationally. It’s not all luck. It’s hard work. Some people don’t understand that concept and just want a quick fix. That’s exactly how people end up like the people in this town: run down, pathetic, and nowhere in life.”
Hearing him speak in such an apathetic manner toward the people of my hometown kick-started a fire in me.
“Watch your mouth, Lincoln,” I said heatedly. “Do you even hear the words you’re saying right now? Do you understand how disrespectful you’re being?”
“How am I being disrespectful?” Lincoln asked. He looked at me like he couldn’t believe someone was interrupting him in the middle of his tangent.
“You act like everyone who isn’t a millionaire, especially the people of this town, are beneath you. You’re talking like money is the only thing that can prove someone’s worth when you know for a fact it isn’t because you grew up with nothing,” I said.
“Exactly. I grew up with nothing, so I know what it feels like to not matter, and I forced myself to work hard until I did matter. Now I am everything the people in this town wish they could be,” he said defensively.
“No. You’re actually worse than the people who tormented you growing up,” I shot back at him. My skin was getting hot and my grip tightened around my fork. “There are people here who have to scrub toilets and drive trucks for a living, but they’re doing it and remaining humble. They don’t look down on everyone who isn’t making as much as them.”
“I’m not looking down on anyone. I’m simply saying that hard work gets you far in life, and the people who don’t get what they want are just lazy or don’t want what they say they do,” he said.
I shook my head. “Your mother worked harder than anyone I know, and she’s still living in this town. Is she lazy? Did she not want a better life for herself and her family?”
My words seemed to have struck a chord, because the man who knew so much didn’t have another word to say. I pushed my food away and stood up. He had become a disgusting shell of the man I once knew.
“The Lincoln I used to know was as wild and rebellious as they came, and he didn’t have a cent in his pocket. He had to scrape together all the extra money he made cleaning up at the rodeo just to take me on dates, but he was humble and kind. That was the boy I fell in love with, and that was the boy who broke my heart and ripped me into a thousand pieces when he left me behind. Now you’re nothing but a sorry excuse for a man. No one cares about your nice clothes or the amount of money in your bank account. You used to stand up against people like you, people who thought they were better just because they had more. Your leaving hurt me a lot, Lincoln, but it hurts so much more seeing what you turned into.”
I placed my plate on the ground to let the dogs eat up the remaining food. Lincoln looked at me with wide, sad eyes, but I refused to make eye contact. He didn’t attempt to stop me as I made my way out of the kitchen, and I didn’t look back as I headed to my bedroom to lock myself in my room for the night. I climbed right into bed and I lay there silently, praying for something I had never thought I’d want: for Lincoln to just leave me alone and go back to New York.
I never wanted to see him again.
Chapter Nine
Lincoln
An encompassing sense of sadness hit me as I listened to the tangent Harper went on about how I had changed. Her eyes were narrowed so that the corners of her eyes began to crease, her cute button nose was wrinkled in a way I had only seen when she was upset with me, and her words were as sharp as the knives in the kitchen. I listened to everything she said, but I was unable to respond, because she stormed out of the kitchen before I could even process that everything that had happened wasn’t just a dream. I had never seen her so upset in my life, and I had done some pretty upsetting things to scare her when I’d been younger.
I felt like an asshole. She made it seem like I had become some sort of monster. She failed to see that I had actually made something of myself. I wasn’t at fault for how far I had come compared to where I’d once been. In fact, I thought I was one of the only success stories our town had to offer. People should have held parades to celebrate someone from such a little town making something of himself. Instead, people seemed to shun me more than they had when I’d had nothing to offer the world but rough hands and a hard head.
I couldn’t wrap my head around exactly why Harper would like the old me better than the me I had become. The two were drastically different, and I was happy with the person I had turned myself into. The old me hadn’t had a single cent to his name, and he had struggled to do the little things women went crazy over. How could someone like who I’d once been when I didn’t even like who I had been before? It just didn’t make sense. I had become a new and improved version of Lincoln Heatherton, and that didn’t seem to impress Harper at all. In fact, it seemed to repulse her entirely.
As I thought, I decided to clean up so that Harper could at least see that I was true to my word. I grabbed her plate before the dogs could get to it and put her food away in a container so she would have enough to eat the next day. I had noticed that she wore a lot of baggy clothes, and I knew it was because she had lost so much weight after losing her parents. Worry filled me whenever I thought about it. I had to make sure she didn’t lose any more weight, or else she’d be in dangerous territory. I washed all the dishes and cleaned off the kitchen counter before making my way down the hall and to my bedroom.
The bedroom I was staying in was one of the rooms the Callahan family had turned into a guest room. It had a large queen-sized bed with a wooden headboard that had been made by Harper’s grandfather. The bed had red and blue sheets with little flower desi
gns across it. It was tacky enough to be charming. I didn’t waste any time undressing and changing into my bed clothes. As I grabbed my three-hundred-dollar silk pyjamas, I felt a nudge of guilt. Harper’s words replayed over and over in my head. Of course, I didn’t agree with her, but it was odd to feel bad for having nice things and being successful.
I climbed into bed, but I couldn’t seem to get comfortable. I wound up tossing and turning for what felt like hours before I gave up and decided to let my mind wander until I fell asleep. I glanced out the window in my room that looked out onto the backyard. In the distance, I saw the tree where I’d had my first kiss and lost my virginity. I thought back to how Harper and I would ride her horses—her on Ash and me on Cow. We would ride for hours, just enjoying the outdoors and one another. Then we’d let the horses roam around while we talked beneath the tree. That was our tree. I was sure if I walked over to it, it would still have the little carvings we had made on the surfaced roots.
Harper had changed a lot since I’d left. She had once looked at me with eyes full of adoration and wonder. In her presence, I had felt like I could do anything. The world had been mine when she’d been by my side, and I’d felt so much bigger with her than I had seemed around everyone else. The love she’d had for me was one I couldn’t find in any of the other women I had encountered since. It was like a once-in-a-lifetime type of thing. After returning, there was no love, no affection, and no wonder. She looked at me like I would look at a spot of mud on my shoe. It was disheartening, but I understood why.
She had admitted that she’d been hurt when I’d left. I knew it had hurt her, but I had been hurt too. I’d turned my hurt into something I could show off. She had turned her hurt into resentment. I deserved her anger and her hate, but I did not deserve to be treated like I didn’t matter to her when I knew she still had feelings for me. Seeing her resist her feelings caused my heart to sink. I wanted her affection and the warmth of her body pressed against mine. Those doors didn’t close when I left. I left so that I could one day give her the things I couldn’t have given her then. But it seemed far too late to try after seeing how badly she was hurting. Even if we did get back together, there was no way in hell I would move back to Wyoming and give up everything.
I had come so far, too far to walks back into the life I had left behind. My business was my baby, and I still had so much nurturing to do before I’d be happy with everything. I couldn’t settle down and give everything up, and Harper didn’t even want me around. Perhaps in a different lifetime or dimension we could have had the happy family and the future she had planned for us. I just couldn’t let myself get sucked back into the empty abyss of my hometown. I had been nothing while I’d lived there. I had been less than nothing. People had treated me as if I’d been worth so little compared to them. Returning was like walking back into a nightmare that I’d worked so hard to forget about.
Eventually, I drifted off into a less-than-peaceful slumber. I rarely dreamed, but that night I dreamed so vividly.
I was walking down a long hallway that resembled that of the one in my New York penthouse. The cold white marble of the floors felt like ice beneath my feet, and the white walls resembled that of snow. It was like walking down a hallway in heaven, but, for some reason, I was weeping. I wept as I walked, like I had lost my mother. My body was shaking and my heart was beating faster and harder than it ever had before.
Finally, the hallway came to an end right in front of a large wooden door. The door looked like it was from an old Western. It was old, sun bleached, and rickety. I hesitated before pushing it open, and, as soon as I did, I was transported from my home to the center of a stadium. The cold marble floor was replaced by warm dirt and mud, and the white walls had turned into bright lights and stadium seats filled with people just watching me. There were familiar faces mixed in a pool of blurred strangers. I looked around, confused and scared. It wasn’t until my eyes landed on Harper that I felt some sense of relief. I wanted to make my way over, but my legs wouldn’t move. It was like I was stuck in quicksand.
I tried my hardest to get out but to no avail. It seemed like hours. The harder I tried, the harder it got, and the more I struggled, the more the audience members laughed at me. The only person who wasn’t laughing was Harper. Instead, Harper was weeping. Her captivating eyes were red and swollen, but she looked just as ethereal as ever.
“Harper, help me,” I called out, extending my hand toward her.
As soon as I moved, a loud thud echoed behind me. I turned my head as much as I could to look back and see a gate had opened. The gate opened into darkness, but within that darkness I saw two glowing red eyes. Fear filled me once more, and I began to struggle harder against the dirt and mud. The roar of laughter from the crowd grew louder to the point that it hurt my ears. My heart began to pick up its pace.
Slowly, the glowing red eyes got closer. As the creature walked out of the darkness and into the bright lights, I realized it was a bull made of pure gold. It was decorated with the finest gems. Its eyes were large red rubies, and it had money as its tail. I wanted to stare in awe, but something within me was telling me to get out. I made a move to jerk my leg out and, thankfully, was set free. My good fortune didn’t last long.
As I ran away from my place and put distance between me and the bull, I made eye contact with Harper. I sprinted over to her as fast as my legs would allow. When I approached the gate, I reached my hand up for her to help me get up. I heard the bull getting closer. His footsteps were getting louder and heavier with every passing second.
“Please, help me up, Harper,” I yelled, frantically reaching my hands up for her to grab.
She shook her head. She was still weeping as she took a step away from me.
“Harper, what are you doing?” I panicked. Was she just going to let the bull kill me?
“You left me, Lincoln. I wish you would have never come back,” she cried out. “I wish you would have never come back!”
Her words echoed through the stadium, and even the crowd began chanting her words. All around me, all I heard was “I wish you would have never come back” over and over. Between the chanting and laughter, I heard the bull. Just as I turned around to confront my fate and accept the bull’s horns, everything went black.
I woke up with a start. I shot right out of bed, panting heavily. My first reaction was to do a quick check of my body to make sure I was awake and to assure myself that my dreams were far from reality. There was little comfort in realizing that I, a thirty-year-old man, had had a nightmare about a golden bull chasing me down. I shook my head at how silly it was and glanced over at the clock, surprised to see that it was already ten in the morning. I rolled my eyes and kicked myself for panicking so badly over a bad dream, but, no matter how hard I tried to fight the thoughts, I couldn’t help but feel like my dream meant something.
After spending some more time relaxing and calming myself down, I got out of bed. I slipped into my Gucci house slippers and made my way to the bathroom to start the day. I had a lot of work to do to figure out how I was going to change the stables to make them suitable for the imported horses. I got dressed quickly and skipped breakfast. After the night I’d had, food was the last thing on my mind. While walking, Jack and Gin trotted up behind me and excitedly followed me out of the house.
The air was still, thick, and full of fog that morning. I could see far enough to spot the outline of the tree out in the distance, but anything past that was a mystery. I zipped up my jacket and made my way over to the barn, whistling loudly as I walked. I didn’t notice that Harper was tending to the horses until I was close enough to see her long blond ponytail swaying with her movement. The urge to walk over and pull it filled me, but I resisted. I had always loved a woman who tied her hair up. I couldn’t explain why, but it had something to do with how Harper always wore her hair. I stopped whistling and smiled at her politely.
“Good morning, Harper.”
She glanced at me over her shoulder
and then looked right back at the horses. I knew then that she was still upset about our exchange the night before, but I didn’t want things to get worse between us. I could live slightly comfortably with her being resentful for me leaving, but having her hate the man I had become hurt too much. My heart stayed in its placed at the bottom of my stomach, but something inside me was still motivated to do something right.
As if I were a marionette puppet, it felt as if strings moved me toward her. My body found comfort being close to the angelic, yet extremely stubborn, woman in front of me. I cleared my throat once more. For once, words failed me. I didn’t know what to say, but I wanted her attention.
“Can I help you, Lincoln?” she asked without turning to look at me. She busied herself with brushing the gorgeous horse before her. I smiled as I remembered Lady. He had been her mother’s favorite horse.
“A-are you busy tonight?” I asked her softly. I stumbled over the first few words, but I recovered gracefully. At least, that was what I thought.
“You’ve been here a week. You know my day-in and day-out schedule,” Harper retorted in a monotone voice.
“I was thinking we could go see the rodeo,” I said. “It’s Friday night. I know it’s free to enter tonight, and we could get some dinner while we’re out. You’ve been cooking the entire time. It’d give you a break.”
“I’m not in the mood, Lincoln,” she muttered.
“Look, I feel bad about what happened between us last night,” I said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I don’t want things to get worse between us. I’m just trying to help you out, and I’m just trying to make it easier for both of us. Please, just one night.”