Images of his chiseled form came wafting back to my mind, and the sounds of last night began to echo off the corners of my memory before my mother’s voice broke through my musings and told me something that absolutely rooted me to the kitchen chair.
“Flynn came to look for you after you left. Showed up on our doorstep looking like a wet dog trying to figure out where you were. We had no idea what he was talking about until we found the note in your room about the job in Paris, but by the time we came back to show him the note Flynn had taken off for his car and skidded out of the driveway, and that sweet boy never did come back.”
“He… he came here?” I breathed as the blood slowly drained from my face.
“The day after graduation, yes,” she nodded.
I was stunned. Flynn had come to my house looking for me. After leaving him cold and alone in his dorm room after all of those graduation parties, he ran to my parents’ house looking for me. I felt a wave of guilt rise up in my throat, and I couldn’t stand to take another sip of my coffee. Tears ricocheted down my cheeks, and in any other moment in my life, I’d be embarrassed to cry in front of my mother. She was the epitome of emotional reserve, and I’d never even so much as heard her yell unless she was shouting across the barn at my father. But at that point, I didn’t care. I’d just left Flynn to wake up naked and cold and alone in a trailer five years after I’d done the exact same thing to him, and I felt like I was going to be sick.
“You owe him an explanation, sweetheart. If anything, to clear your own conscience.”
I didn’t know if I could tell him. How could I look at the only boy I’d ever loved and tell him I didn’t trust myself around him? How could I look at the man he had blossomed into and tell him that he’d tamed the strong, untamable woman? How in the world was I supposed to look at the man I’d now left twice to wake up alone that the reason I left him behind was because I didn’t think he could come with me if I offered. That I didn’t feel he had a place in Paris.
How in the world could I possibly tell Flynn that the reason I left the way I did was because I wasn’t strong enough to do it any other way?
I felt the bile rise to the top of my throat before I pushed my coffee mug away, and when I shoved myself away from the kitchen table and headed for the staircase I knew, deep down, I had to talk to him.
I had to tell him everything.
I knew, deep down, my mother was right.
Chapter 7: Flynn
I dragged myself back to my ranch and started feeding all the animals I had stabled up. My horses were begging for food, and I felt a pang of guilt that I left them be for so long. I had no intentions of staying overnight in that trailer, much less with some piece of ass, blast from my past. So, I decided to feed them some dessert for breakfast, give them plenty of sweetened water to drink, and went ahead and opened their stalls so they could get some fresh air in the pasture. I was supposed to be giving lessons today, but I walked on up to my home and decided to cancel everything for the day. I could tell already that my mind just wasn’t in the right place.
My mind kept flying back to last night. Sure, I’d missed her. That woman lit up my world back in college. I may not have been anywhere near a virgin when I met her, but she sure as hell made me feel like one. Everything was a new experience with her, and every night I woke up with her in my arms was like the first time I’d ever woken up next to her. The light would always catch her hair just right, and her light snoring would always make me smile. There wasn’t a morning where I’d grind into her back that she?
?d push me away or tell me she was too tired.
God, I missed slipping in between her wet heat in the mornings.
. Nothing could mimic the feeling of sliding into her from behind every morning before I got up and made us coffee, and every morning it happened, I knew it was where I wanted to be.
Until she up and left and never looked back.
It was disgusting, really, how much I loved that woman. I told with the guys at the rodeos that she was just my lucky charm, but, she was the woman I planned on spending the rest of my life with. The week after we graduated, I had a ride planned. I was gonna take her with me, and if I won, it would give me $5,000.00. I was gonna take that money and buy her the ring she deserved, and I was gonna get down on one knee at the next rodeo, in front of God and everybody else, and ask that woman to be my wife.
I wanted her to bear my children and be my family. I wanted her to sell her fashions out of a store she dreamed. I wanted to build that store for her alongside her father with my bare hands in between my traveling to rodeos, and I wanted to have a farm full of animals to retire to so we could watch our grandkids run around with the ponies and puppies. I wanted to wake up every morning and smell her heat on my skin. I wanted to slip behind her in the shower every evening and slowly press her back against that tile wall. I wanted to make her dinners and take her out and experience family vacations with her. I wanted to yell and scream and fight behind closed doors before pounding her into the wall while grunting how sorry I was and how beautiful she looked wrapped around my cock.
But she took all that with her when she left without a word and never looked back.
Hell, she didn’t even tell her parents where she was going!
I made my way out to the bulls and fed them good before I headed on over to the little heifer barn I had. I didn’t keep too many heifers around, just enough to breed with the bulls who were retired so I could sell the calves they birthed for the rodeos, but I’d always made sure they were reared to a certain age before I ripped them from their mothers. Some breeders sold them the moment they plopped, but I wanted my heifers healthy. There wasn’t any reason to give away any calf that was born before their first birthday, and I kept it that way on my farm.
Just because I made money off my animals didn’t mean I had to be cruel.
Once the bulls were taken care of, and the few small babies I had were tended to, I trotted on over into the heifer barn. Right then, I had eight of them, and three were already reaching an age where they wouldn’t be able to bear calves any longer. I had two that were pregnant, and I made a mental note to call the vet and come check on them. One wasn’t due for a few more months, but one we were keeping an eye on. She had been due two days ago, but she was still upright, and the calf was still growing regularly, so the vet wasn’t fussing.
But I guess I just worry too much about my animals.
I milked the cows in the barn before I fed them their next meal, and I went over to pet both of my pregnant heifers before giving them some words of encouragement. I snaked my phone out of my pocket and dialed the vet up the road, and he agreed to come by and take a look at them. I told them I didn’t think she was in labor, but I did want to keep an eye on her in case something were to go wrong. If she was carrying a bull, I could use the money, and if she was carrying a heifer, I could use one to replace the three aging out in my little population.
Chelsea would’ve done wonderfully in this type of lifestyle.
As long as I’d known her, she’d loved animals, but horses were her favorite. The first time we ever went horseback riding together was on the weekend in between one of her family’s camps, and I just couldn’t get over how beautiful she looked on that majestic animal. Her hair blew back in the wind, and her hips rolled graciously on top of the horse’s galloping form, and it was the first and only time I’d ever fallen off the back of a horse. She turned herself around and galloped back towards me, and I could see the worry in her eyes before a smirk upturned on her face.
“Got them bulls under control, but can’t handle a little horse?” she had quipped.