Page 39 of Broken Cedar

“That’s probably why Colt picked her.”

I laugh. “He picked her?”

“Sure.” Ben shrugs like it’s obvious. “Said she’d remind you how to ride without letting you get lazy.”

I glance toward the paddock. “Yeah, that sounds like him.”

Ben smiles. “Boss usually knows what he’s doing.” Then he keeps walking.

I finish brushing the chestnut and hang the brush back on its hook. She nudges my shoulder once before lowering her head into the fresh hay I’d left for her.

I step into the late afternoon sunshine without really thinking about where I’m going. I can hear voices drifting across the yard. Across the lane, Colt is already in the south pasture. The horses move around him in loose clusters, ears flicking as he and two ranch hands guide them through the open gate. He doesn’t shout, just uses small movements, and the animals respond instinctively. One of the younger hands rides over and says something I can’t hear. Colt listens, then points toward the far fence line. The young man nods and heads off without another question.

I stand there longer than I intend to. Listening. Watching the ranch settle into its evening rhythm. The afternoon is sliding toward evening. Shadows stretching across the hardpack.

When I finally head inside, Mom is at the stove, stirring something that smells like garlic and rosemary. She doesn’t look up when I come in.

“There you are,” she says. “I was starting to think you two had eloped to Canada.”

My heart does that particular lurch it’s been doing whenever anyone mentions Colt and me in the same sentence, which is often, because we live in the same house and have spent the last four days having sex on every available surface. “Canada’s closed today.”

She laughs, and the sound fills the kitchen. “Potatoes need peeling. Knife’s by the sink.”

I wash my hands and find the peeler. Through the window above the sink, I can see the north pasture, the distant figures of horses being moved, and somewhere out there, Colt.

“Did you have a good ride?” Mom asks. She’s chopping onions now, her eyes watering, the knife moving with the efficiency of a woman who has chopped ten thousand onions in her lifetime and will chop ten thousand more.

“Yeah. It was…yeah. Good.”

“Everything okay? You seem quiet.”

I am quiet. I have been quiet since we rode down from that hill, since Colt’s arm withdrew from around my waist and the warmth of his body against mine was gone. But Mom doesn’t know that. Mom thinks I’m just tired from riding. Mom thinks a lot of things that are simpler and kinder than the truth.

“I’m good,” I say. “Just thinking about work stuff. Emails I should answer so they don’t keep piling up.”

I keep peeling potatoes, and Mom busies herself telling me about her day. The neighbor’s new grandson—eight pounds, healthy, looks exactly like his father, which is unfortunate because his father is no looker. The weather forecast—rain coming, nothing serious, good for the pastures. Another person asked for her potato salad because everyone always asks for her potato salad, and yes, I know it’s just potatoes and mayonnaise and pickle juice, but there’s an art to it, Hallie, there really is.

I make the appropriate noises. Nod in the right places. Chop potatoes into quarters the way Mom likes them. Set the table without being asked. Check the bread in the oven. Move through the kitchen on autopilot, my body knowing the choreography even when my mind is somewhere else entirely.

Somewhere else being the lookout. The blanket. Colt’s mouth on mine. The confession—I wasn’t exactly thrilled when you left—delivered in that flat, matter-of-fact Colt way that contained more honesty than any grand declaration ever could.

We agreed it was just sex. One week. No promises. And at the end of the week I would go back to the city like nothing ever happened.

But standing here in this kitchen, with my mother’s voice in my ears and the smell of rosemary filling the room, one question keeps circling back: What if leaving had been the wrong choice? Not because the life I built was bad—it wasn’t. It was good. It was mine. But maybe I’d spent eight years convincing myself there had only ever been one right path, when the truth was far more complicated.

I thought staying meant resigning myself to a quiet life. A life where Colt and I could never be together because wanting him would always make everything too complicated. And with how I felt about Colt, how could I stay? It would have been so awful to watch him date other women—or, God forbid, marry someone else.

The hardest part wasn’t leaving. The hardest part was the eight years that followed. Eight years of carefully constructed distance, of holidays cut short, visits postponed, excuses piled on excuses like a wall between myself and the truth. All that time telling myself that what I felt for Colt was a complication I was wise to avoid, a phase I’d outgrow, a mistake that belonged to a younger, less self-aware version of myself.

When the truth is simpler and more devastating: I missed him. I have always missed him. And missing him is the most honest thing I’ve felt in eight years.

Mom is still talking about potato salad. About the particular way Mrs. Harmon makes her deviled eggs that nobody can quite replicate. The screen door creaks. I know the sound of Colt’s footsteps the way I know my own heartbeat.

Mom turns. “There he is. Perfect timing. Dinner’s in five.”

Colt steps fully into the kitchen, and his eyes find mine. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say back.