Page 67 of Cherry Tree Ranch

“Here,” he says, taking the triangle piece of fabric. “Like this.”

He pulls my hair behind my shoulders, tucks tendrils behind my ears, and lays the fabric on the top of my head. With the two ends hanging down, he ties the fabric at the back of my neck. His warm, calloused hands dance across my skin. They may be what I missed most. He smoothes the top and adjusts it with the care of a stylist.

“OK, OK,” I tease. “It’s good. Come on, let’s get to it.” I use his previous words and give him a wry grin.

“Looks good on you.” He smirks, then, “I missed this,” he says earnestly.

“Me too.”

Cash glances at me. “You know … I honestly never anticipated how people would react to what I did at the rodeo. I had no idea what a disaster it would be. They shouldn’t have treated you like that and I’m terribly sorry.”

I bang him in the leg with my basket by way of forgiveness. “It’s OK.”

“It’s not OK, but I do have everything sorted with Billy now, so you know. Kaylee and I have to work together until the finals next month, but Kaylee convinced him to let the whole couple thing go.”

“Oh yeah?” I make my way to a tree towards the end of a row.

“Yeah. I mean, what could he do? It was all over social media. No one believes we’re together any more. Kaylee made up a story about our break-up, and people bought it.”

I’ve stayed away from social media, but Lani did tell me about this particular post. “I bet Kaylee was pretty mad after what you did,” I say.

“Oh, yeah. She was upset at first. She’s a good person, but she’s let her image become everything to her since her mom died. She liked to control it, you know? And at the rodeo there she totally lost control of how people saw us. I made her look fake, and that was embarrassing. Plus, it’s never a good feeling to be rejected, and her ego was already bruised by the real break-up.”

I think back to the way she reacted about me borrowing Cash’s truck. That tracks.

“Honestly, though, since she’s been capitalizing on being single … her fans actually seem to like her better now.”

“They like that she feels more available, I guess,” I say, stepping up on a ladder. This is something I’ve forced myself to do lately without Cash and his long legs and arms to pick the highest cherries.

“You noticed?”

I half turn. “My friend, Lani, follows you guys. So she tells me stuff.”

Cash picks below me and looks up. “A lot of those old posts were staged, so you know. Or old pictures, reused from before.”

We don’t say much else for a while. We fall into the familiar rhythm of picking cherries together, dumping them into crates when our baskets and bags are full, and moving to the next tree. Cherries aren’t usually supposed to keep growing into August like this, but my trees do.

One last cool breeze for the morning rushes down the row. I breathe it in, the smell of late summer, and the fact that Cash is back.

“Cash?”

“Hmm?”

“You said that you broke up with Kaylee because you saw me at the rodeo that first time. Did you mean…?” I don’t finish the question. I drop a cherry into my basket and tilt my head. “We hadn’t even met then.”

He pops a single knuckle and drawls, “No, we hadn’t.”

I step closer. “So, why then?”

He looks down, thinking. Then, unblinking, he stares up at me and says, “I don’t know how to explain it. In that moment, everything stood still except you.” He steps closer and takes off his hat. “I always thought I had a plan for my life, but then you and this place threw me for a loop. Everything felt upside down, but in the best way.”

“It was the same for me,” I admit.

“What was?”

I wave my hand around and look up at the bluebird sky, “All of it. With … the world standing still when I saw you. You and this place throwing me for a loop.” I sigh. “But, Cash, I don’t want to ruin your plans.”

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I peer at the screen, then immediately put it back.