I took a deep breath, willing my heart rate to slow down, and climbed on top of the horse's back. Sitting tall in the saddle, I inhaled deeply, letting the feeling of sitting astride a horse again sink into me.
Okay, so Stan was right. It did feel pretty good to be back in the saddle.
Stan stood beside the horse. "Look at that," he said. "Like you've been riding every day for the last twenty years."
Abby would be proud. No, I thought, she would be up my ass for not riding for all these years, calling me a chickenshit and laughing at me.
I missed her.
And I missed riding.
"Why don't you try a short ride right around here, something to get your feet wet?" he asked. So I tried it, just around the property until my heart stopped beating its objections wildly in my chest. When Stan gently suggested I go for a longer ride, I was ready.
I rode away from the house at a gentle pace, savoring the feeling of riding again. It started to feel less awkward and more natural as my body remembered how to ride, my movements syncing up with the mare's. I lost myself in the ride, drawing in deep breaths of the mountain air. The landscape fell out before me, hills rising in green grass as far out as I could see, meeting the horizon, the sky this weird mixture of blue and grey. It was a storm sky - that's what my mother called it, anyway.
I missed her too.
I loved this place, loved the land, loved growing up here. It was a part of me that I couldn't escape, no matter where I went. Years ago, I had thought that was the worst thing in the world, when I tried to leave my past behind and start over, divorced from the painful reminders of everything that had happened here. Now, I was beginning to realize that when something was so much an integral part of you, you could never let it go.
Maybe that's why I was having such a hard time getting Cade out of my head.
When I was older, after I'd gotten over my fear in middle school and high school, riding became a high for me. It was freeing, gave me space when I wanted to be alone. When I rode across the hills here, I remember thinking that this was the closest experience in the world to flying.
It must be how Cade felt riding his motorcycle.
I passed the grove of aspen trees. They were bigger now, but the grove was still there, untouched, just like it had been when I was younger. The sight of the trees triggered a memory of Cade and I, out here in the summer evening, so strong that it was like it had happened yesterday. A memory of my first time, with Cade.
~ ~ ~
His finger under my chin, Cade tilted my head up toward his. He looked down at me, his expression clouded with lust. I melted into him, my lithe body, taut from running track and swimming, pressed up against his. I could feel his chest, hard under my fingertips, muscled from wrestling and working on his dad’s ranch. My heart beat fast, so fast I thought I might have a heart attack. I was eager and completely terrified. Cade and I had gotten as far as second base before, but never this far. I’d never gotten this far with anyone before, and I knew tonight was the night. I wanted to go all the way, and I wanted to go all the way with Cade. He was the one.
Cade whispered in my ear. “I love you, Junebug.”
“I love you, Cade.” I felt his hand slid down my waist, to the hem of my tee-shirt, and he pulled it up over my head.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said. His lips pressed against mine, and he kissed me, tentatively, his lips matching the hesitant movements of his hands over my shoulders, down my arms, then to the tops of my breasts. I felt goose bumps dot the length of my arms and my skin tingled in response to his touch, as if a current of electricity were flowing through the length of my body. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes,” I replied, breathless. Was I sure I wanted to do this?
I had never been more sure of anything in my life.
When he made love to me underneath the aspen trees, the summer air sticky warm on my skin, I thought, I thought, I want to stay here like this forever. It was the happiest I’d ever felt in my life. If I’d have known then how fleeting it was, how ephemeral that feeling would be, I would have tried harder to hang on to it then.
~ ~ ~
"June!" I was so lost in the memory, that when I heard Cade's voice, calling me from a distance, it was a minute before I realized it was him. But there he was, riding from the ridge toward me on his horse. The sky behind him was greyer now, signaling the weather changing, a storm threatening to roll in. The air had that distinct smell, the one that said that the sky was going to open up any minute now.
As he rode toward me, for a moment I saw him as the adolescent boy I'd just been thinking about, the Cade I remembered from high school. I felt the same nervous flutter in the pit of my stomach that I used to feel when I saw him, that mix of anticipation and surge of hormones, lust and love all jumbled up together.
Cade rode up on the horse, pulling up on the reins as he got closer to me. His horse neighed, sidling up beside Missy, and I felt her relax under me, shifting her weight to accommodate for mine.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
And just like that, old Cade was gone, replaced by new Cade.
"Riding. What are you doing out here?" I asked. "Are you following me again?"
"I was riding. I had no idea you were up here," Cade said, his brow wrinkled. "Don't worry, I'm not interested in following you. You can get your little cop friend to protect you, if you're that worried, little girl."