"Are you mad at me now?" she asked. I looked at her up and down and tried to imagine it. Natalie with straw in her hair on horseback doing a cattle run.
“I feel like I don’t even know you anymore,” I joked.
She shoved me playfully. “You didn’t need my help.”
“It would have been nice; just saying.” We walked back to the cabin in silence.
“Well, you’re doing great,” she said. “Just remember: hardwood burns long. Smaller splits burn hot.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said, holding the door open as we went inside. “Too bad you can’t stay, I could use you around here.”
“Neither of us is going anywhere for a long time,” she said, walking over to the fire. The cabin was warmer than outside, but we were both cold from the walk. With that snow out there, she was right. We were stuck there, and I had no complaints. I went to the kitchen and pulled a saucepan out.
“Get that fire going. I’ll make us something warm,” I said, looking over my shoulder at her. Cattle ranch in Montana. Guess that was how reliable it was to judge a book by its cover. It was surprising, in a good way. Like I knew a secret about her nobody else did. She had depths I had no idea about. I couldn’t wait to get to know her better.
Chapter Eighteen
Natalie
"Who taught you how to make this?" I asked, taking a sip of my hot chocolate. It was thick and rich. Some whipped cream and marshmallows, and it would have been perfect, but I hadn't thought that far ahead shopping for him. It was still delicious though.
"My mother."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"Why? Is it bad?" he asked lightly.
"No. It's delicious. About your parents."
"Thanks. It's not like I'm trying to get over it or anything." I flushed, looking down.
"Cameron, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"
"Don't," he said with a small smile. "It's okay. Really. I haven't talked about it much is all. Not like this, I mean. As soon as they died, people were more interested in interviews and discussing wills. I don't really have a lot of people to reminisce about them with."
"You were close to them."
"Yeah, but it was just me," he said. "I don't have any siblings, and the rest of the family was never that close to us."
"Guess the grass is always greener on the other side. I used to wish that I was an only child. Being born last, there was a short time before I left for college when I was the only one still at home, but so often it felt like a competition since we outnumbered my parents by three."
"My mom used to make this stuff for me when I came to their bedroom at night because I couldn't sleep. At some point, I just started getting up and going to their room because I knew she'd get up and spend time with me even though I was meant to be asleep." He paused, swirling the liquid around in his cup. "My dad told me when I was fourteen why I was an only child."
"What did he say?” I asked cautiously.
"After having me, they had wanted more children, but my mother had a cancer scare when I was about two or three. It was in her uterus. She couldn't get pregnant again after going through treatment, even though they had detected it early enough for her to have fully recovered."
"That must have been painful for them."
"I asked him why they hadn't adopted or used a surrogate or done something about it. I knew that they could have if they had wanted to."
"What did he tell you?"
"He said he hoped I would never have to choose between what I already had and what I hoped I could get when I was an adult." I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything. I took another sip of my hot chocolate, watching him. He had been looking down this whole time into his cup like he was watching his memories play out inside of it. "I used to wish that I had siblin
gs but not because I was lonely. I don't remember ever feeling like that. I wanted them because if there had been more of us, I wouldn't have had to be the one to take over the company. If my parents had had three or four kids instead of just one, at least one of them would have wanted to follow in my dad's footsteps since I hadn't."
Do you think that was why your parents had you, I started to ask before the vibration of my phone on the coffee table interrupted. I picked it up to see who was calling me.