“Maybe by this time next year you will.”
“Yeah.” She smiled and lifted the flowers to her nose again. “Maybe.”
“Have you heard from him?” I asked.
“No. His phone calls stopped, at least I think. I forget to charge that phone all the time. But I haven’t had any messages to talk about us or the house. I think his visit here was the end, but you never know with him. He can be unpredictable, which is part of why I stayed with him for so long. He’d act distant and rude for months. I’d swear we were done. Then it was like he knew I was about to call it off because he’d become this entirely different person. He’d make me laugh. He’d be affectionate and caring. When I look back over our eight years together, it was like living in a constant state of whiplash.”
He sounded like a manipulative dick but I swallowed that comment because I suspected that Winn knew it already.
“He knew my parents,” she said. “That’s the other part of why I stayed with him. Because they knew him. Or I guess I should say that he knew them. Anyone else and they would just be photographs and stories. And they would have been a stranger to my parents. That’s not a great reason to stick with someone but . . .”
“It’s understandable.” It was the reason why I hadn’t brought anyone home to my parents. Because there hadn’t been anyone I’d wanted to give them memories about.
But Winn . . . maybe it was time to take Mom up on her offer and take Winn over for dinner.
“Why’d you end it?” I asked. “You never told me that night he was at your house.”
“He was sleeping with someone else.” She huffed. “I found out because she called the house looking for him. Can you believe it? She thought I knew because her husband knew.”
“She was married?”
“Yup.” Winn popped the word. “Apparently they’d made this arrangement. Sex only. Her husband was good with it, but Skyler must have known that I’d say fuck no, so he’d hidden the affair.”
“Prick.”
“Pretty much,” she muttered. “I’m just guessing, but I bet she dumped him and that’s why he made his visit.”
“He thought you’d take him back?” Idiot.
“Skyler got away with a lot. He must have thought that eventually I’d forgive him. That eventually I’d pick a wedding date. I don’t know. After my parents died, I pushed him away. He didn’t pull me back.”
Because he was a fucking idiot.
“It hurt,” she said, twirling the flowers between her fingers. “We’d made a lot of promises together. Eight years is a long time to live your life around someone. But then I realized that we lived around each other, not with each other. I couldn’t count on him. The promises crumbled. When I started peeling my life away, making it my own, there weren’t many threads to untangle. The house is all that’s left and that’s simply paperwork.”
At the moment, I was thinking of tangling her up so tight she’d never get free.
“It worked out the way it needed to,” she said. “I’m glad to be here in Quincy.”
“I’m glad you’re here too.” I stood, returning to the seat and the handlebars. The moment I was settled, Winn’s arms wrapped around me and the insides of her thighs pressed to the outsides of mine.
She fit me. Perfectly. In more ways than just riding on a four-wheeler.
“Keep going?” I asked over my shoulder. “Or head back to the house?”
“Keep going.”
I grinned, glad she was enjoying this, and started the engine.
Another hour later and the sun was beating down on us. We’d worked our way past Indigo Ridge, crisscrossing through pastures and bouncing from one fence to the next. The ridge was behind us and the only reason I’d come this far was to show her one more edge of the ranch so she could get a better idea of the size.
The backside of the ridge was a massive rise, the hill covered in evergreens. But on the flats, there wasn’t much shade. Without a hat, I worried she’d get sunburned, so I aimed the wheels for home.
I slowed at a gate, ready to get off and open it for us, when I glanced up to the forest and saw a plume of smoke rising from the treetops. It was in about the same spot as Briggs’s cabin. “What the hell?”
It was July. Fires in July were not only unnecessary but goddamn dangerous.
“What?” Winn asked, following my gaze. “Aren’t there fire restrictions right now?”
“Yeah.” I turned the four-wheeler around, and instead of heading home, we tore through the landscape toward my uncle’s cabin.
Winn clutched me tight as we wound through the trees and up the road. The scent of charred wood and campfire reached us as we crested the climb and pulled into the cabin’s clearing.
Briggs was standing beside a pile of burning pine limbs, smoke billowing from its center. The orange and red flicker of the flames tickled the open air, sending sparks on the breeze.
I parked and flew off the four-wheeler, racing over to my uncle. “Briggs, what the hell?”
He had a shovel in one hand. A hose in the other. “Harrison? What are you doing here? Didn’t even hear you pull up.”
Harrison? Fuck. I yanked the shovel from his hand, slammed the end into the dirt, stepped out a scoop and tossed it on the flames.
“Hey! I’m—”
“Trying to burn down the whole fucking mountain.”
“It’s a slash pile burn. It’s under control.”
I ignored him, shoveling as quickly as I could. Then I snatched the hose from his hand, dousing the fire. Steam hissed and popped as it broke through the pile.
A small cough made me turn to see Winn behind me. “What can I do?”
I handed her the hose.
“Who are you?” Briggs asked her. “Harrison, who is this? What the hell do you think you’re doing with another woman? Does Anne know?”
“I’m Griffin, Briggs. Griffin,” I barked. “This is Winslow, and you’re in her way. Move.”
He flinched at the volume in my voice and shied away.
Damn it. At my age, Dad and I would have looked nearly identical. I should be patient. I should take it easy. But a fire in July? We waited until the dead of winter when there were two feet of snow on the ground before we burned slash piles.
The rumble of a truck’s engine came from the road, and Dad’s pickup skidded to a stop beside the four-wheeler. He flew out the driver’s side, running our way. “What’s going on? I saw smoke.”
I waited until he was close enough to throw him the shovel, so pissed off I could barely see straight. “Talk to your brother. He thinks I’m you.”
Without another word, I grabbed Winn’s free hand and pulled her away from the hose. She followed, silently climbing on the back of the four-wheeler and holding on as I sped down the road and away from the cabin.
“Goddamn it.” I shook my head, my heart racing.
Winn’s hold tightened. She’d heard me.
We rode straight for home. I parked in the barn, letting the quiet settle after I killed the engine. Then I hung my head. “It’s getting worse. I didn’t want to believe it. Yesterday, he was so . . . normal. At the parade. At the rodeo.”