Page 63 of One Night Rancher

Dammit all.

And no matter how hard he had tried to make sure that it didn’t... That it didn’t want anything, not ever again... No matter how hard he tried, she had gotten in there. She was under his skin. She was in him, no matter how hard he had tried.

He sat down, right there on the mountainside, and looked out at the broad expanse of everything.

“She thinks that you’re out there, Sophia,” he said, feeling like an idiot. But he had nothing. He had nothing to hope for, nothing to lose, nothing to gain. He might as well sit there and talk to the night sky. “But I just can’t feel anything. Or I’m afraid to. I wanted to believe that there was nothing left to hope for so that I could never get hurt again, and here I am. I haven’t hurt this bad since... Not since you. But I did it to myself. I did it to the person that I care about most in this world.” He felt a stabbing sensation in his chest. “I love her. I am in love with her, and I sent her away, because I’m too afraid to claim that. Because I’m too afraid to want it.”

He closed his eyes, and he waited for something. For inspiration to strike, a lightning bolt from heaven.

Yeah. Because you could ignore all that and say you didn’t believe in it, and then just get a sign the minute that you asked.

It was dark, and so was his soul.

He lowered his head, keeping his eyes closed, and he waited. He waited there all night. Until the sun started to rise up over the view in front of him. And it was the strangest thing. Just as the golden rays of light began to touch the brush on the rocks all around him, the flowers, he saw them. Hundreds of them. Little white butterflies, rising up from every surface. All around.

And he felt...

Love. Like he never imagined before, like he never felt it before. Like everyone who had ever stood in the spot before him was still there, like Sophia wasn’t gone.

“You tried to tell me,” he said, looking all around. “But I’m a particular kind of dumbass, so you can’t just send a few. I guess I needed a whole butterfly storm.”

And he could see it, like he was looking straight past that horizon. A life and the world all lit up with this kind of love. And he could see himself with Cara.

His Cara.

And once he could see that... Once he could believe it... In this thing that had felt intangible and impossible only a few hours before, he knew.

That he loved her.

And that life might not come with guarantees or certainty. That the world was a harsh and dangerous place.

But love was what made it worthwhile. Love was what endured.

Love didn’t work all by itself. You needed faith to go along with it.

And that’s what he’d been missing. The ability to believe, in this thing that was bigger than he was.

In this thing he couldn’t control. It had been easier to do when she was beside him. Bright and perfect. But maybe he needed this moment, to try and see the light without taking hers.

Because he needed to bring back what he was taking. Needed to give equal to what he was getting.

And he was ready now.

He could only hope that she would still want him after how badly he had messed up.

But he’d loved her for a very long time. He could see that now. When he looked back and forward, and at the present moment, it all added up to love.

Maybe that was why he so obsessively didn’t like to look at his life.

He’d been living a whole life.

But he was done lying. And he was done running.

Unless it was straight to her.

Fifteen

When she woke up the next morning and heard pounding downstairs, she was afraid that it was a raccoon. Or maybe a ghost.

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