Page 129 of Never In My Wildest Dreams

She laughed. “Oh, you big, strong, man with a tender heart. How can I make this easier for you?”

“You can’t. It is what it is.”

“This is going to be hard.”

“Yeah.” He wouldn’t lie about it. “But we were kids when I moved away. And you know, college, law school, busy job… Nobody did anything wrong.”

She set her hand on his thigh. “You know I can relate, right? I gave my love and loyalty to people who didn’t value it, and it made me shut down, too. I wasn’t going to expose myself to that kind of hurt again. But you know what? We’re not all cut from the same cloth. You and I, we love deeply.”

Hedidlove deeply, thoroughly. He was a loyal guy. When he gave his heart, it was for life. He just had a hard time believing it could be reciprocated. So to hear her say she was built the same way... It cracked open the part of him that craved that kind of relationship.

“And it sounds like your friends were just good-times guys. There’s nothing wrong with that. They’re just not the right people for you. You need more out of your relationships.”

He wasn’t sure about that. Something wasn’t adding up. They weren’t good-times guys. At least, not that he remembered. “I like that, though. That you and I are cut from the same cloth.”

In the middle of the long driveway, she braked and leaned across the console, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and burying her face in his neck. “God, Slick. Of all the ways I imagined us running into each other, the things we’d say…none of it was as good as this. With the way you left, I thought I’d built it up in my head. But I didn’t. It’s real.”

The air in the car was charged with static electricity. “Yeah, Hellcat. It’s real.”

He’d thought he had a great life. A great job, top-notch roster, enviable apartment in New York. He got to travel the world, and he had money in the bank. He hadn’t seen how empty it was until Hellcat and Stevie filled it.

But the fact remained. He lived in New York. Hellcat wouldn’t live there, and his contract bound him to the city.

Maybe luck brought them to that cabin, but he’d need to pull out a miracle to keep them together.

Man, he hadn’t been to the fairgrounds in years. To the left, white tent flaps fluttered in a breeze as people dressed in Wild West costumes roamed from one stall to the next, checking out the jewelry, pottery, and artwork. To his right, rows of food trucks filled the air with scents of sugary fried dough, barbecue ribs, and kettle corn.

Two horses pulled a shiny red-and-black stagecoach past them. “When I was a kid, my dad and I used to dress up as gunslingers.”

“I wish I had a picture of that,” Hellcat said.

A child leaned out the window waving and smiling. In the past, he might’ve ignored them, not giving them much thought. But this time, he could imagine it was Stevie, and it jabbed at his heart. So, he waved back.

Because it would hurt his daughter’s feelings to look into the eyes of some detached, uncaring man.

“Did your mom dress up, too?” Hellcat asked as they passed a family dressed like homesteaders, the mom and daughters in long dresses, the father and sons in suspenders and dusty boots.

“Not that I remember.” Since Stevie was in a teepee with her grandparents and they didn’t want to interrupt the storyteller, they headed over to the Battle of the Brews tent to meet the bride and groom and some of the guests.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “Why not?”

“Just not her thing, I guess. But I don’t know. I stopped coming with them in middle school.”

“After that, you and your friends were the assholes terrorizing the crowds with skateboards and cutting in lines?”

“You have a terrible impression of us.”Us. He hadn’t said that word in a long time. “We weren’t bad kids.”

“Right. Just thrill-seekers.”

“We started out as a pack of boys, but as the years went by, more and more dropped out. They got girlfriends or decided to focus on band or football or whatever. Eventually, it was just the four of us because we made the hockey team.”

“I would never have dated you back then.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I was a good-looking kid.”

She grinned at him. “Who didn’t have time for me.”

The revelation struck right between the shoulder blades. That was the core issue. The one he needed to address.

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