Take Me Away (Southern Bride 6)

A hint of a wobbly smile appeared on her face. “Did we have a fight?” she asked.

“No.”

Suddenly, the tightness in her face disappeared. “I don’t care. I don’t care what happened, why it happened, how it happened. I don’t care. I do not care.” She almost sounded frantic. “I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “You came back to me, or I came. It doesn’t matter. We’re together. That’s all that matters now.”

I cupped her face in my hands and wiped her tears away. “Linz.”

Sobs escaped as she spoke. “No, Nolan, don’t. Please don’t. I don’t want to remember. I mean, I want to remember us, but I have my dreams that I’m almost positive are memories. That’s all I need. You’re all I need. Please.”

Leaning over, I kissed each eye, her cheeks, the tip of her nose, each corner of her mouth as she cried. “I love you. I love you more than anything on this Earth. You’re mine, Linz. You’ve always been mine.”

She sobbed harder and held onto me as I wrapped my arms around her. A sick feeling rolled through my stomach as I thought about what I had taken from her. The dreams, the years I had robbed from both of us. The child we had both lost and never had the chance to grieve over.

“I want out of this storm,” I whispered as I squeezed my eyes shut.

She moved her head back and looked into my eyes. “Tell me what to do, Nolan.”

“Love me, Linz. Please, just love me.”

Her arms wrapped around my neck, and I pressed my mouth to hers once more. It was like the first time I had ever kissed her. I wanted the moment to last forever. I needed it to last forever. Linnzi fit me so perfectly, and I knew—like I knew then—that she was the only woman I would ever love. She was here, in my arms. She was mine once again. And I vowed to do everything in my power to make it all up to her.

I wasn’t sure how long we stood there and kissed until I finally stepped away. “We better go.”

Her lips were swollen from my kisses. When she pressed her fingers to them and smiled, my chest squeezed.

“That kiss,” she whispered.

“Will be picked up later. Come on, let’s get back to the horses.”

After we braved our way back over the bridge, we rounded up the horses and rode on. As we rode in one of the pastures, we ran into one of the ranch hands who had just pulled up in the ranch truck.

“Bubba is about to start caking cows,” I said.

“Caking cows?” she asked, her nose scrunched up in the most adorable way.

“Yeah, dropping cubes for them. Want to feed them some cubes?”

She frowned. “Cubes?”

I kept forgetting she had forgotten all of our time together. She clearly doesn’t remember anything about ranch life. Before Linnzi moved to Boerne in high school, she had lived in Austin in a subdivision where you could spit on your neighbors from your bedroom window they lived so close to one another.

“Cattle cubes. It’s a combo of grain and roughage. We feed it to them about once a week to help balance out their protein when we’ve got dry pastures.”

She nodded, but I knew she had no idea what in the hell I was saying. “Do they like them?” she asked as we both got off our horses.

“See for yourself,” I answered with a wink.

I walked over to Bubba and reached out to shake his hand. “Hey, Bubba, how’s it going?”

“Nolan, it’s going. Paul told us you were back.”

“Only for a few days.”

He gave me a nod.

“I was wondering if you could spare a handful of cubes.”

He smiled. “Yes, sir. Number 480 is our gentle giant.”

I reached in and grabbed some and then turned to Linnzi. The cattle were all walking up, making their presence known.

She laughed. “Well, they are certainly vocal.”

“They know a good thing is coming. Bubba will drive along and let it all dump out and they’ll follow right behind.”

“Why do they have numbers on their ears?” she asked.

“It’s like their form of a dog tag. It makes it possible for us to identify them, and tells us what shots they’ve had, as well as other information about them.”

She chewed on her lip. “Does it hurt when you do it?”

“Nah, feels like an ear piercing.”

“How do you know that?” she asked, giving me a skeptical look. “Did you ask them?”

“Oh Lord,” Bubba groaned.

I laughed. “We don’t abuse our cattle. When we slaughter them, it’s done in a very peaceful way as well. Not everyone who raises cattle treat them like shit.”

Her face changed into a regretful expression. “Oh, I wasn’t saying that you did. I’m so sorry if you thought…”