Page 83 of Midnight Surrounds Us

Today, I was just Aubrey, the wild, “grab the bull by the horns” woman I’d always been, here to claim her cowboy. Maybe it had taken me a few years to find her again, but I had, and I wasn’t planning on looking back.

I jumped around the mother and son and raised my other hand in the air, letting the dress drag through the dirt. Jesus. Had I shrunk from menopause too? I didn’t remember the dress being this long when I’d worn it twenty years ago. I had on the same boots today I’d worn with the dress back then, but the stupid things were still stiff, and running was causing an unbearable pinch on my toes.

“Ryder Graves! Wait!”

He hadn’t heard me. He turned his horse, and I watched as his body tightened in preparation for his ride.

“Rye! Wait for me!”

Calla stood in my direct path. Maybe I should’ve stopped to talk to her. To promise her I wouldn’t hurtherlittle boy’s heart, but even she couldn’t get in my way today.

As I passed her, her surprise at seeing me running toward her son to tangle him up in an inappropriate love match quickly died when Daisy stepped up to the plate. She wrapped her arm around Calla’s shoulder and shook her finger in the woman’s face to warn Calla to keep her opinions to herself.

Daisy winked and smiled at me, and loudly she said, “Good girl. Go get your cowboy.”

She’d given me the last push of adrenaline I needed. At the top of my lungs, I screamed, “Rye!”

He stopped his forward movement. Looking over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed and he scanned the crowd, but he still hadn’t seen me.

Two heavy-set old men were the last obstacles in my way, and I prayed that when I pushed past them, I wouldn’t knock them down.

Good grief, has running always been this hard?

The men heard me huffing and puffing behind them. They stepped to the side, and one of them extended his arm with a smile and his hat held out to show me the way.

Rye had given up. I saw the way disappointment lowered his shoulders, and he lifted his reins and began to move.

He was leaving!

“Ryder. Fucking. Graves! Stop. Don’t go!”

Finally, he saw me.

His face lit up, changing from a hard mask of defeat to the biggest smile I’d ever seen. He jumped from his horse and walked toward me a few steps, but then he stopped. Another cowboy with black hair under an even darker hat led his horse closer to Rye. Rye handed the man his reins, and then the other guy backed up and Blue went with.

I stopped running and, with my hands on my shaking thighs, tried to catch my breath. I held up a finger, hoping Rye would know I just needed an old-lady minute. Everyone was watching me. I felt their eyes on my back, but I couldn’t have cared less.

Some smartass behind me blared “In Your Eyes” from their phone. I couldn’t tell who the offender was, but I had my suspicions about Benji, though how he would have any clue who Peter Gabriel was stumped me.

Before they’d left this morning, both my boys told me they supported whatever decision I made. All along I’d known they would, but the fear was real. Who was I if I wasn’t Aubrey George, widow and mom?

But I was the same girl from a million years ago, just with a few more miles on her and a lot wiser. I could be all those thingsat the same time, and it didn’t change who I was to the people who loved me.

And if I loved Rye as hard as I knew I could and he loved me back, I’d be a better mom and daughter and friend, because I’d be happy.

As soon as my front door had shut behind the boys, I flipped on my porch light and vowed never to turn it off again, and that was when the mad dash started, which was also when I realized I needed help and called my friends.

I could feel them now behind me, supporting me, and when I could breathe again, I straightened and locked my eyes on Rye’s.

At the edge of the fenced pastures, past an open gate at the start of the hills that would lead him away, Rye stood, hands on his hips, smiling and waiting for me to come to him, to let my fears and doubts go and give myself to him.

And that was my plan, just as soon as I took off these godforsaken boots. I yanked my dress above my knees and pulled them off, one at a time, and chucked them into the dirt. Catcalls and whistles sounded around me, and they carried on the wind from the cowboys still mounted on their horses. Even over the incessant mooing of the cows as they moved in increasingly more urgent circles in their pens, I heard them.

Rye laughed, his own age lines crinkling at the edges of his eyes under the shadow of his hat, and like he couldn’t wait one second longer, he took two more steps toward me.

I ran full out, as fast as I could go, my feet hitting the dirt over and over, ruining the pedicure Ronnie had given me and probably the hem of my dress.

When I was close enough to hear him, he said in an easy voice, “Hey, Spitfire. Nice dress. Change your mind about seein’ me off?”

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