Page 82 of Wild and Wrangled

Dusty lifted his hand, and I felt his fingers curl around the back of my neck. “I need you to know that I don’t blame you, angel—for leaving me in Montana. I don’t blame you at all.”

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. Thinking about that hurt. “You don’t?”

“Not at all. I mean, I was heartbroken for a long time, butwith every year that passed, I realized that even if you’d stayed, that didn’t mean we would’ve made it. Maybe things would’ve gotten so bad we couldn’t fix them. I knew you weren’t happy. I knew that the life I longed for then wasn’t the life you saw for yourself.”

“I saw a life with you,” I said. “And…I think that was kind of the problem. I didn’t really see me or what I wanted. I just saw you, and then I realized I was living your life instead of mine or even ours,” I said honestly. I didn’t leave Dusty because I didn’t love him or want to be with him. I left him because I wanted something for myself, too. I didn’t know that then, but I knew that now. The problem, I realized once I got home, was I didn’t know how to go for it, so I ended up living the life my parents wanted instead.

“I think…I think that you choosing to leave—even being brave enough to—is what makes right now possible,” Dusty said as his thumb moved back and forth along my cheek.

“How do you mean?”

“We were young, Cam. And that doesn’t mean our relationship wasn’t real or substantial or all of the things that we know were true.” He paused for a second. “We were in love, and as much as I wanted that to be enough then, I don’t think it was.

“There’s all of these things we can’t control that push on us—timing, dreams, stress, hopes—and it makes sense to me that two eighteen-year-olds couldn’t handle that heat. We went in two separate directions, but roads that go in opposite directions come back together all the time.”

“Is that what we’re doing now?” I asked. “Coming back together?”

“I hope so,” he said. “That’s what I want. Do you?”

“You’ve always been so…forthcoming,” I said with a smalllaugh. “It used to make me nervous. I felt like I wasn’t worthy of someone so…sure about me.”

“And now?”

“It still makes me nervous,” I said honestly. “But it also makes me feel more secure in where we’ve been and where we’re at and…where we’re going.”

“And where are we going, angel?”

“Forward? How does that sound—” Dusty kissed me before I could finish. I let everything around us fall away. It was just me and him and all the things we felt for each other. Three words got stuck in the back of my throat, and even though I didn’t say them, I think Dusty knew.

Chapter 36

Dusty

Cam and I went to Riley’s soccer game together on Saturday morning. I didn’t want to not show up the first time Riley asked me to do something—even if that something was at the Meadowlark Rec Center on a Saturday morning.

When Cam and I walked in, my first thought was that I had no idea there were this many seven-year-olds in this town.

The place was packed.

I wanted to grab Cam’s hand as we walked in, but I didn’t. I let my hand brush hers, though, and she didn’t pull away, so I did that a couple more times before I saw Gus, Teddy, and Riley sitting on the bleachers. My mom and Hank were there, too.

Gus was putting—well, trying to put—Riley’s curly hair into a ponytail. She looked fucking adorable in her purple soccer uniform. She told me last year her uniform was pink, but this year it was purple because she was on the seven-year-olds team.

A grin stretched across Teddy’s face when she saw me, and she immediately looked at our hands.

“I like this view,” Teddy called as Cam and I got closer. When I glanced at Cam, she was blushing.

My mom looked up then. A wide grin stretched across her face. She stood when we got closer. “Good morning, you two,” she said.

“Hey, Mom,” I said.

When she hugged me, she whispered in my ear. “Do you have something to tell me, Dusty?”

“We can talk about it later,” I whispered back. When I pulled out of her hug, my mom gave me a look that said there was no way we were not talking about it later.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said to Cam, and Cam hugged her, too.

“Cam,” Gus said. “Can you help me with this?”

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