As much as he hated it, she spoke the truth. “I’m sorry you have to go through that all over again. It was hard enough the first time.”
He’d lost count of how many times he’d held her in his arms trying to comfort her and tell her everything would be all right. What a hypocrite he must have seemed when her father was sentenced and he rejected her. How he wished he could have that moment back. To do it differently. He’d been young and desperate and so, so stupid to think the only way to keep his promise to Abbott was to hurt her so deeply she would welcome the chance to get as far away from him as possible. He’d been too immature at the time to realize the wound would run so deep it would last forever. That once gone, she would never come back to him.
“I’m a lot stronger than I was the first time.”
He didn’t doubt it. When a body went through something like that it either broke them down or built them up. Looking at her now, it wasn’t hard to see which side of the coin Meredith had ended up on.
She pointed to the path in front of them. “The porcupine has crossed. Were you waiting for something else? A raccoon? A bear perhaps?”
He smiled past the pain in his chest. “No. Guess I just like this.”
It had been a long time since she’d teased him and the light smile that played upon her full lips brought every last one of his senses to stand on end and lean toward her. He loved the easy conversation between them, the quiet moment where everything they had once been bloomed in front of them as if it could be reclaimed. It was a pipe dream, but for that one moment he wanted to sit there and enjoy it.
“This?”
“Us. Just talking. I’ve missed it.”
She glanced away, deep into the forest. He worried he had ruined things, but then she looked at him and he saw the same hope reflected back in her eyes. Something inside of him loosened and the walls around his heart crumbled. One more smile and he knew they’d turn to dust and that would be it.
“It is nice.” She smiled and there it was. Dust. He was a goner. There would be no moving on from this. Not that he ever really had. He’d claimed to be too busy for marriage and family but it had been a lie as big and bold as they came. In truth, he simply couldn’t imagine sharing his life with anyone other than Meredith. Marrying someone else, knowing they’d be playing second fiddle to a memory, hadn’t seemed fair. His father had done that and it had ended in disaster.
But what if he could have a second chance?
“You think it’s possible for us to be friends after all that’s happened?”
She looked at him, her expression giving no hint to her own feelings in that regard. “Is that what you want?”
No. He wanted so much more. He had from the first day he danced with her at the Autumn Festival and she had bowled him over with her beauty, inside and out. He’d been determined to never let her go. He saw in her the future he’d always dreamed of, not the one his father had mapped out for him. He’d marched to her father’s house the next day and promised he’d love, honor and protect her until his dying day if only Abbott would overlook Hunter’s parentage and give them his blessing.
He had, and in the end, Abbott had called him on that promise. It had been their undoing.
“I’ll take what I can get,” he told her. He didn’t have the right to ask for more, but he hoped. God help him, he hoped.
She smiled at him and the warmth inside of it wrapped over his exposed heart and made it whole again. “Maybe we can try. We’re going to be living in this town together, after all. We should try to get along.”
It was a far cry from throwing herself into his arms, but, like he’d said, he would take what he could get and go from there. He tucked the image of her smile away and kept it safe, knowing he would pull out the memory a hundred times over in the next few days.
“All right then,” he nodded and slapped the reins. The wagon jolted and they started along the path again.
“Is it true what I heard?”
“Is what true?”
“That you’ll be resigning as sheriff soon.”
Was that disappointment he heard? “It is.”
“But I thought you loved being sheriff?”
“I did. I mean I do.” He’d never had a job he’d loved more. Certainly nothing at the Diamond D Ranch appealed to him as much as his current occupation. When the town had pinned the star to his chest after McLaren’s death, he’d been overwhelmed by the responsibility of it, but their trust had humbled him and he set about ensuring he was the best sheriff the town had ever had. And along the way he’d discovered he loved it. In time, he discovered he was pretty good at it, despite his father’s opinion to the contrary.