by Selena Kitt
Yep. That was my exciting life in Anza, but I found myself, as the weeks passed and the date of my big test approached, feeling stronger, more self-sufficient and discovering new things about myself that I’d never explored before. I also found myself Googling alternatives for people with premed majors who didn’t go to medical school. They weren’t all bad—research, nursing, consulting—but they weren’t my dream. And I knew I was going to have to dig in deep to find the courage to take that damn test again and face another possible failure, or else say good-bye to my dream forever.
The most surprising thing was, out of the blue one night, I wrote a letter to the Biological Sperm Donor—Gerard, I corrected myself. From now on, I was going to refer to him by his name. I knew I’d never mail it. But I’d researched and found out more about him from the information that my mom had given me. I also tried to find anything I could about my three half siblings that were almost two decades older than me. I had one half-brother, Glen, who was thirteen years older than me and two half-sisters in their late thirties.
I wrote this letter to Gerard, my father, and in it I poured out all my grief at the loss of a parent I never knew. I resented him but I also wanted to know him. And at last I let myself admit that. I wanted it, but not enough. I wanted my hatred for him to melt away so I would be free. Because my entire life I’d seen those feelings as a fortress protecting me from potential hurts and damages. Instead of a fortress, they had been a cage, holding me back.
And maybe someday, somewhere along the line, I’d finally be able to open my heart to someone, once it had healed.
Heath came up the following weekend and stayed in his old room. He’d lived with us during the last three years of high school when his own parents had thrown him out after he came out to them.
We went out at certain times of the day to catch the light just right for his photos. It was during his sunset shoot that he broached the forbidden subject.
“You heard from Drake?” he asked casually as he pivoted his camera on its tripod to get a better angle of the homestead house and the three cabins all lined up nicely alongside it.
I shook my head, following his vantage point down the long slope of our drive.
“You haven’t logged in to the game in weeks. I keep looking for you. You going to quit?”
I shrugged. “There’re lots of games out there. I can play something he didn’t design.”
“It sucks that you are going to let him drive you away from a game that you love and all your online friends. I’ve gotten messages from both Persephone and FallenOne saying they were worried about you.”
My insides tightened and I swallowed. “Oh really? Fallen asked about me?”
“Yeah, couple nights ago. Said he was worried. Told him you were at your mom’s.”
“Shit,” I said, squeezing my eyes closed and turning away from him to rest my arms on the ranch fence that surrounded our property. “That’s all he told you? He didn’t tell you his name or anything like that?”
Heath hesitated. “Why would he? He’s never told us his real name.”
I clenched my teeth, staring toward the dying sun. “Yeah, he had a reason for that.”
“What—that he’s a chick or something? Or someone famous? Remember when we all used to try to think up what movie star or famous athlete he was?”
I drew in a breath and held it. I wanted to make my voice sound as calm as I could when I told him. It wouldn’t tremble or break—it would be strong, clear. “FallenOne is Adam.” Shit. It had quavered. The moment I’d said his name, I’d heard a slight tremor right at the end of the second syllable.
There was a long stretch of silence. “No shit?” he said, his voice dark.
I nodded. I wished it was all just a joke.
“Well—fuck—that explains a lot, I guess.”
“Like what?”
“Drake always seemed kind of familiar to me. He didn’t to you?”
He’d overwhelmed me. Completely. Like the storm I often likened him to, he’d obliterated everything else around him. I shrugged.
Heath shot me a concerned look. “It really didn’t end well between you two, did it?”
“I’m not going to talk about it.”
He sighed. “Mia, I’m just worried. You don’t look well. Your mom says you aren’t eating much and you work yourself exhausted every day.”
“It’s good for me.”
“Holding on to anger and resentment isn’t.”
I sighed. “You’ve been hanging around my mom too long.”
“What did he do to you?”
I blinked and looked away. “Nothing I didn’t want him to do.”
His brow trembled. “Ah.” Then he cleared his throat. “That’s not what I meant. I mean why are you like this? I’ve known you for ten years and I’ve never ever seen you cry like you did that day in Irvine. You aren’t eating, aren’t acting normal. Are you at least going to retake your MCAT, still?”
I looked away. “The jury’s still out on that decision.”
He scowled. “I hope you don’t give up on your dreams because some dickwad played you.”
“If I don’t, it’s not because of him.” I ground out.
“Okay. please don’t kick my ass when I ask you this…”
I darted a warning glare at him. “If you have to start it out like that then maybe you shouldn’t ask.”
“Mia… did you fall in love with him?”
“No,” I snapped, folding my arms tightly in front of me. “And even if I had, it wouldn’t matter, okay? He’s the one who walked out on me.”
He looked pissed off. “I see.”
I held up a finger and pushed it at his face. “No more talking about this shit, okay? It’s over. It’s the past. I have a life to get on with. No more bringing it up.”
He stared at me for a long moment before he simply nodded and pulled his attention back to his camera, adjusting the tripod.
After Heath went home, falling into my normal routine again comforted me. And a week later, my mom announced gleefully over lunch, “My first Internet reservations are coming in!”
I was pleasantly surprised. Heath had just rebuilt her website the week before but there hadn’t been much traffic on it.
“Yep, some people coming in for the regular rooms starting next week and the week after next, someone booked the best room in the house—Roy Rogers.” The biggest separate cabin, the “luxury suite” of our ranch. Every room we had was named after a famous cowboy or cowgirl. I’d secretly named my bedroom Annie Oakley because there just weren’t enough awesome cowgirls on our list.
As much as I’d shucked my cowgirl identity when I’d gone off to college, I started to feel the comfort my younger self took in being with our animals. It was a healing experience. I didn’t have to worry about lies or bullshit from animals. I didn’t have to worry about being double-crossed. As long as they got their food and their exercise and the occasional bit of human affection, they were happy.
A week later, Mom and I hurriedly made the finishing touches for our new guests and welcomed them in. We’d gone down to nearby Temecula and shopped at the home stores for new bedding and sheets to match our theme for the cabins.
In the Roy Rogers room, the paint smell had faded, mostly because we kept it open and aired morning and night and dusted daily—because on a ranch, there is no shortage of dust. It wasn’t the penthouse suite of the Amstel Amsterdam, or the VIP suite in the Emerald Sky Luxury resort, but it was something.
Because I’d been helping my mom get our first guests checked out, I didn’t get to work with the horses until mid afternoon. I’d decided to give them the day off because making them work during the sweat of the day—and July in Anza was no joke at all—would have been too cruel. But there was still work to be done. Like poop. Because hot or cold, rain or shine, horses made poop. And I had to clean it.
I was out in the stalls and then in the barn, battling flies and bored horse—Snowball, who was n
ot interested in having poop taken out but was very interested in love from his favorite person. And who was I to resist? But after twenty minutes of this, I was getting impatient, shoving him aside to get at the poop in the sawdust.
I was hot, sweaty, bedraggled, smelling of horse crap and covered with sawdust shavings. So of course this was the moment when Mom decided to pass through the barns with our new suite guest—who had apparently just checked in—on a tour of the facility.
“Snowball, move your fat ass,” I growled at the horse, giving him a good-natured slap on the bum.
“Mia, are you in here?”
“No,” I answered between gritted teeth. What the hell? She had just heard me yelling at the horse.
“Our new guest is here. Come on, I just want to introduce you.”
I sighed. Snowball was going to have to live with the remaining bits of poop for another day. I huffed out of the stall, placing the rake against the door but not removing my giant gardening gloves. I’d make this quick, give him a smile, a few words of welcome and a nod and be about my work. I approached my mom standing beside a tall man. As they were backlit by the afternoon sunlight, I didn’t get a good look until I was too close to turn away.
But when I did finally see his face, my feet grew instant roots into the ground and I almost flopped on my face from the momentum. Because towering over my mom, a subdued smile on his face, stood Adam.
He had on jeans, tennis shoes, a casual button-down shirt and he was as gorgeous as ever. I hadn’t spoken to him in over a month. Since that last heated night in St. Lucia. I’d thought I’d never see him again. Yet here he was, looking down at me with benign eyes that missed nothing. Not even the snowfall of sawdust in my hair.
My heart began to thump at the base of my throat and I swallowed, suddenly finding it difficult to breathe. What the hell was he doing here? Was he posing as my mom’s newest guest? Cold panic rose up from my tight stomach. How on earth could I hide this reaction from my mom? The blood was draining from my face—I knew that much. Was he here to torment me with regret for the things I had said to him? Was he here to try and make amends?
I didn’t know what to feel. So many emotions swirled inside me. I was loathe to admit that one of them was a complete heart-charging thrill at seeing him again. Another was a dread, a fear. Would he expose me to my mom? Tell her about the auction—about what a terrible, bitter, child-person I was?
Mom’s voice cut through my buzzing thoughts. “Here she is—this is my daughter, Mia.”
Adam’s gaze shot to mine like a bolt of lightning and I suddenly felt myself starting to sweat. A heat built inside me so quickly, it felt like I would combust from the inside out.
“Hi, Mia,” Adam said. And I was at least thankful he didn’t carry out a ruse that we didn’t know each other. No false “nice to meet you.” I jerked my eyes from his, which speared me, and dropped them to the ground in front of my feet.
Mom continued, completely oblivious to the tension thickening the air. “This is Mr. Drake. He’ll be with us for the next week. He’s preparing to hike a segment of the Pacific Crest Trail from here to Yosemite. Sometime soon.”
The Pacific Crest Trail stretched from the Mexican border to Canada, tracing the crests of all the mountain ranges of the three states in between: California, Oregon and Washington. The hearty people who hiked it were either “thru-hikers,” doing the entire run in seven or so months straight, or “segment-hikers” who pieced up the trail into bits and did it a little at a time, sometimes over the span of many years.
So this was the story that Adam had given my mother. He was going to do a segment hike of the PCT? What a load of bullshit. My eyes flicked back to Adam, whose smile had faded but whose face bore a certain grim self-satisfaction.
The breath I’d just drawn flew right out of me again. I shifted, putting my hands on my hips because I had no idea what else to do with them.
“Hey, Mr. Drake,” I croaked out. “Welcome.” My mom frowned. She’d finally noticed my weird reaction and there would be questions later, no doubt. But I feared being alone with her much less than being alone with him so I resolved to stick near my mom’s side all night—and probably find lots of excuses to drive into Anza proper or even down the mountain for the next few days.
“Dinner is in two hours and I’ve asked Mr. Drake to join us,” Mom said, throwing a pointed look at my grubby clothes.
I only nodded. I had no other words. I didn’t look at Adam again—didn’t have the courage for it. And as he followed my mom out of the barn, he darted one last glance my way before turning out of my view.
As soon as he was out of sight, I fell against the nearest stall door, my back sliding against it until I sat on the ground. My heart hammered like I’d run a marathon and I shook—a deep-freeze hardening my soul. The nearest horse, Whiskey, poked his head out and nudged against me. I was utterly floored by this new development.
I had just begun to move past this whole thing—or so I’d thought. But now I felt just as shivery and vulnerable as the girl who’d rushed out of the Draco Multimedia complex while sobbing the month before.
A splinter of pain passed through me as I remembered the circumstances behind that last time I’d seen him, with his arm wrapped around his former lover. Maybe Lindsay was going to come up to meet him here? Maybe he’d arranged this on purpose so he could flaunt her in my face, because that day at his office wasn’t enough? Would I be able to suffer though seeing them here, together?
If it weren’t for the fact that mom needed my help so much for this next week, I might have been tempted to call Heath and ask him if I could go crash on his couch until Adam left. It was inevitable that we’d have to interact with one another, but I resolved that I would try my hardest to avoid the confrontation he sought. With this tangle of unwanted emotion inside of me, I went on the rest of my poop hunt with a vengeance.
Chapter Seventeen
It took me an hour to recover from the shock of seeing him again so suddenly—and here of all places. It was obvious he was here to see me, and, after checking the reservation book my mom kept at her desk, I was reassured that he would be here alone. The only reason he’d leave his girlfriend behind to come up here would be to confront me. But why? What more was there to say between us that hadn’t already been said?
Adam didn’t seem the type to want to rub salt into the wounds. Or at least I would have thought so before that display at his office. He’d been rubbing plenty of salt then. I burned with anger at the pretense under which he was here. Whatever it took, I’d keep my mom from getting involved. With any luck, he’d leave and she’d never know that there was a history between us.
I didn’t want to talk to him and resolved that I wouldn’t, except to exchange shallow pleasantries for my mom’s sake. I had no desire to find out what his current dating status was or if he was sleeping with Lindsay again. The very thought of it hurt like a bitch.
After showering and doing my hair, I helped Mom put the finishing touches on dinner by tossing the organic, handpicked salad. She was an excellent cook—part of the entire picture of her livelihood. She made breakfasts for her guests every day, creatively concocting new and special repasts. Breakfast was her specialty, but her dinners were damn good, too. When I was little, she’d gone to culinary school during my summer vacations to get better at it.
Dinner was beyond awkward. The only one not affected by the silent uneasiness was my mom. Adam and I did not talk to each other. The entire conversation was conducted through my mother.
“Mia’s a medical student.”
“Not yet,” I corrected her.
“Well, she will be once she aces this big test that’s coming up.”
At least Adam didn’t ask me sham questions that he already knew the answers to—like he had the first few times we’d met. He did mention that UCI had a good medical school and that I should consider applying to it. It was already on my list. Though the thought of attending school in the same cit
y where his company was located had greatly lowered it in ranking on my list of top schools. UC Davis, in northern California, was starting to look better and better.
“I understand you have some wonderful back country around here, even off the PCT,” Adam said to Mom.
“Yes, great for hiking or riding. Do you ride, Mr. Drake?” Mom asked.
He laughed. “No, not at all. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been on horseback.”
If he was angling to get a guided ride from me, I’d have to be quick on my feet to deflect the request. My mind raced with excuses I could come up with. Sore throat? I had to study? A horse had stepped on my foot?
Mom said, “If you’re interested, we have some great horses for beginners and Mia used to take guests on sunset rides. Maybe I can coax her to do one for you if that sounds like something you’d like to do.” Shit, shit, shit. Shut up, Mom.
Adam fixed his dark gaze on me for a moment and my eyes stayed glued to my plate, shoveling in my food as fast as I possibly could. “That sounds like a wonderful idea, but how about a hike this evening, Mia? Do you hike?”
I took a long time to answer, my mind running through at least a half a dozen more excuses—all lame—before I spit out probably the lamest one of them all. “I’m a runner.”
“Perfect, so am I.”
Fuck. I should have known he would say that. As always, he’d thought a few steps ahead of me and had been ready.
“I would only slow you down on a run,” I said, anxious to evade this.
Adam smiled, gazing into my eyes knowingly. “It would be fun. Do you know of any great views?”
Mom, of course, had to put her two cents in. “Why don’t you take him up to that vista spot you love so much?”
Sometimes I wish I could tell her to shut the hell up. I gritted my teeth and darted Adam a murderous look. He looked supremely satisfied, like a bear that had just dug into a picnic basket.
An hour later, I was in my room changing into my running gear when my mom knocked on the door and came in. “Did I put you on the spot back there? Are you okay with taking him out for a run?”