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“You haven’t talked to her?
“No. I refused to. I needed to focus on the muster … and you being with me on it.”
“That’s fair. I had to talk to her. She’s reviewing our accounts, I couldn’t avoid her. She really thought she was protecting us, and our families. And she was only twenty-two.”
Tom snorted again, adjusting his position.
“Are you making excuses for her?”
“No way. I’m stating the facts.” I paused, and then added. “I didn’t forgive her. Just so you knew. Not yet.”
“Did you ever wonder what it would have been like?” Tom’s voice was so soft in the firelight. A log crackled, spraying embers up the chimney.
“If we’d dated?” I asked.
“Yeah. If we dated, went to the same university, stayed together.”
“I did, sometimes.”
“We were young though.”
“Maybe we wouldn’t have lasted.”
“Had our own spectacular break-up resulting in a family feud.”
“The great rift of Ballydoon.” I spoke in a deep, movie voice over voice. “Dynasties of farming families at war.”
We both chuckled and listened to the fire. But it had ended as a rift, a secret one, between Tom and I and that had threatened our families.
“Amanda created a self-fulfilling prophecy by pretending to be me and dumping you.”
“I should have talked to you at the university that day.”
“When I was kissing some guy?”
Tom flinched. “He gave you a kiss on the cheek. He seemed overly familiar.”
“Sounds like some of the jerks I’ve had the pleasure of knowing over the years. Richard was the supreme jerk of them all in the end. And I could have talked to you but I was too embarrassed. Didn’t want to look like I was begging for you to have me back.”
“I should have talked to you.” Tom repeated with a sigh, the sound deep and sleepy. “In my fantasies, it always worked out.”
“What did?”
“Us.”
What a different last four years it could have been; friendship, sex, just being together. Would I have ended up engaged to Tom now instead in that parallel universe? Would we have made it?
My body trembled at the thought.
“Are you cold?” he asked, shifting again.
“No,” I rasped.
“You shivered.”
“Not from the cold.”
Tom shifted and grizzled. “You’re still cold, Rosie. Why didn’t you say something?”
