Page 80 of Never Left You

“A picnic?”

“You said lunch. I um…” She handed me the reins. “I made us sandwiches, and Luna’s saddle bag has snacks and water.”She cleared her throat and turned to my horse. “And a bottle of wine.”

“Wine? We have to talk and you’re bringing wine?” I raised an eyebrow, smirking down at her.

Her lips twisted. “It’s a white wine.”

“And that makes a difference?” I chuckled, stepping forward closer to her. I smelled the cinnamon again and had to force myself not to kiss her, over and over. “I have something to tell you,” I whispered.

She smiled, her free hand reaching out to my arm, her fingers trailing down to my hand. “Then let’s go to the lake and talk.”

Twenty-Five

Abi

“Iwas…”Itrailedoff, taking in what Cash had just told me. “Blocked? You blocked me?”

“No,” he hastily replied. “I didn’t. I don’t even know how to block a number.”

“It’s not hard.” I arched my back away from him, using my palms to keep me upright on the blanket I had spread out by the lake.

The grass was damp, but the camping blanket I stuffed in Luna’s side pouch before meeting Cash kept us dry as we sat and ate lunch. Cash wasted no time in starting the conversation, evencreating a small buffer by giving me a kiss before we set up the picnic. He knew what he was doing. Making me swoon before starting the talk. We needed to finish what we started last night; we had to get this all out on the table, but I honestly didn’t expect to hear what he told me.

I was blocked on his phone. Well, that explained why he only responded to me today.

“I promise you”—he leaned forward slightly, moving his legs to rest his elbow on his knee—“I didn’t. I meant what I said by you could call me, I just thought you didn’t want to. But then…” He swallowed. “I heard your voicemails.”

“Which ones?” I inhaled, nervous that he finally heard every single one. The drunken ones, the ones where I was crying and sobbing, and then the ones where I told him I was done with him.

“Stetson was lost…”

“Oh, ok.” I let out a breath of air.Phew. “Those ones are nice.”

“Nice?”

I rolled my eyes. “Nicer. I may have left some pretty mean ones there towards the end. Well, when I thought it was the end.”

“Abi, I’m sorry. It was never an end…”

“But it was. I know I said this last night, but you just vanished. I was pretty certain I would never see you again.”

“I fucked up.”

“You kinda did.”

“You tried to call me, and text me, and I didn’t even try once.”

I tightened my lips. I had two ways I could take this. I could get up, mount my horse, and tell him I never wanted to see him again, basically rip up those big girl pants that Lachlan told me to put on, or—if I meant what I said last night—I could take a deep breath and think about what I really wanted from this.From him. From us. Take us, whatever we were, forward. Not stuck. We could go around and around this all day. It would be never ending. But that was just pointless.

There’s no way I could walk away from him.

“You swear you didn’t block me?” I lifted my chin and inched closer to him.

“I didn’t block you.” He met my gaze. “I don’t know how you got blocked. I had the face ID on my phone. I had passwords that only me and—” He stopped, his eyebrows pinching as a look of realization hit him. “Shit.” He mumbled, running his hand down his face.

“What?”

“This is a stretch…”

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