I can’t be the girl who asks questions she shouldn’t, who falls into him like it’s inevitable, who invests in a man who once packed his bags and left her behind.
So I don’t ask.
I shift a little in the saddle, stretching my spine, letting the silencebetween us stretch with me. “God. When’s the last time we did this?”
“Senior year.”
I blink, glancing over at him. “Seriously?”
His grip on the reins tightens slightly and he nods. “We took Red out. Rode down past the south pasture, followed the tree line all the way to the bluff. You said you wanted to see the valley from up high before it got too cold.”
The memory stirs in my chest. The air had been crisp that day, thick with the scent of pine and the last traces of summer. The sun hung low, casting everything in gold as we rode through the fields.
We had stopped at the bluff, the highest point on the ranch, where you could see the valley stretch for miles. Boone had tied Red’s reins to a fence post, and we sat side by side on the worn wooden rail, our legs swinging, the world quiet except for the occasional rustle of the wind through the grass.
“You told me,” Boone says, “that if you could do anything, you’d go anywhere. Everywhere. That you’d never stay in one place for too long, because there was too much world to see.”
I feel it then—that tug low in my chest. The one that always hits when I think about all the places I swore I’d go but never did. Paris. Rome. Some little town in Ireland with crooked streets and fog-covered hills. I thought back then that if I stayed here, I’d disappear. That I’d forget how to want more.
A smile curves the edge of my mouth, soft and almost sad. “That sounds about right.”
Boone doesn’t respond at first, but I catch the shift in him—the way his shoulders lower like something inside him just gave in. “Your hair smelled like lavender that day,” he says. “Wind kept blowing it back into my face on the ride, it was all I could smell. Still smells like that.”
Something catches in my throat.
I look over my shoulder, aiming for something playful, something easy. “Someone has a good memory, don’t they?”
Boone adjusts his grip on the reins, his voice quieter now. “There’s nota thing I don’t remember when it comes to you, Lark.”
The words settle deep, heavier than I want them to be.
I swallow hard, turning forward again. I don’t ask what else he remembers.
And I don’t tell him that I never made it past Montana.
That all those big, sun-drenched dreams I carried at eighteen—full of train tickets and half-planned road trips, of hostels and strangers and nights spent under skies that weren’t mine—never left the notebook I scribbled them in.
I never stood at the edge of the Cliffs of Moher.
Never saw the northern lights flicker like gods dancing above Iceland.
Never climbed the worn stone steps of Machu Picchu or swam in the hot, still waters of a cenote in Mexico.
Instead, I learned how to measure formula with shaking hands. How to hold a baby and my breath at the same time. How to stay.
Love looks like sacrifice more often than it looks like adventure. There are different kinds of bravery and maybe mine was this. Choosing a life that didn’t match the map I’d drawn, and building something beautiful anyway.
And I don’t ask if he ever pictured a life with me—if, in those quiet, in-between moments, he let himself imagine what it might’ve looked like. Us, here. Something real. A house tucked back on this land, maybe with a wraparound porch and chipped paint we’d pretend we’d fix someday. Mornings with coffee mugs we never bothered matching. Kids with his honey-brown eyes and my fire in their bones, running barefoot through the fields until the sun disappeared behind the hills.
I don’t ask if he ever saw me in it—really saw me. Sitting on the counter, eating dry cereal straight from the box while he stirred something on the stove. Sharing Diet Cokes in the sticky summers. Stealing the blankets in my sleep. Singing off-key to every song on the radio during long drives. Laughing too loud. Always taking the last fry.
I don’t ask if he ever imagined me curled up next to him on the couch, feet in his lap, watching old Westerns and pretending to care about theplot just because it made him happy. Or if he remembers how I used to sneak sips of his coffee, just to wrinkle my nose at the taste and make him roll his eyes.
I don’t ask if he ever let himself wonder what might’ve happened if he’d stayed.
If we’d stood a chance.
If he ever wanted to.
