I stared at Brooklyn, feeling befuddled. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Are you serious?”

She seemed confused. She pouted her bottom lip into a frown and the lines in her forehead wrinkled.

“Serious about what?”

“You’re really asking me where I’ve been all this time?”

“Yes.” She stared at me firmly. “I haven’t seen you in years, and now you show up in the woods where I’m working?”

“I already told you, I live here.”

“In the woods?” She pursed her lips into a snickering smile.

“As much as I’ve got the mountain man thing going on here, no, I don’t live like a cave man out in the woods.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be that far off of a story. You literally disappeared without a trace,” she stated.

She had to be joking. She was the one who ditched me to run off and get engaged to some other guy. We had been essentially fuck-buddies in high school. We tried our best not to get attached. For a while it worked, but under the surface, maybe it wasn’t such a great idea. There was always attachment, no matter how minimal or substantial. We tried to reap the benefits, but I should have known that in the end, someone would end up hurt. And I was the one who got hurt. I had it coming to me. It was my fault. I told her she could come to me any time for sex and there didn’t have to be any strings attached to our mutually agreed flings. I just couldn’t keep my feelings out of it. I just couldn’t get it through my thick skull that Brooklyn wasn’t meant for me.

“You got married,” I reminded her. “End of story, right?”

“Yes. You were going off to college. I overheard you talking to your counselor about leaving because there was nothing there for you anymore. And you told me yourself. I knew you weren’t going to stick around. So, yes, I married someone, and then I got divorced,” she countered.

“When I meant there was nothing there for me, I didn’t mean that literally. My parents left. I was a nobody in that town.”

She frowned. “When you said it, it kind of hurt. I shouldn’t have been so emotional about it because of what we agreed on from the very beginning.”

I narrowed my eyes and really studied her. She was still beautiful even if she was angry. “How long?”

“How long what?”

“How long have you been divorced?”

Brooklyn glanced up at the sky and sighed deeply. “Four years.” She refused to meet my gaze.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She looked at me and gave me a mocking smile. “Don’t pretend you aren’t thrilled to hear that news.”

“Why would I be thrilled?” I shrugged. “I always wanted you to be happy.”

“So, is that why you ran off to take your precious football scholarship?” Her eyes reflected pain.

“I didn’t take the scholarship,” I said quietly.

“You didn’t?” She seemed surprised to hear that revelation.

“No, I backed out.”

“Then what have you been doing out here? Why do you live in this small mountain town?” She blinked and gave me a curious look.

“I happen to love the mountains and being surrounded by nature,” I told her slightly defensively.

She smiled. “Me too. That’s why I became a wildlife photographer. Remember when I told you about that?”

“Yeah, I do. I also remember that one time you snapped a photo of us in bed.”

She burst out laughing. “Ha! I didn’t even remember that.”

“You still shoot nudes?” I teased.

“No, of course not. I don’t have anybody to shoot them with.”

My face grew hot and if I was mistaken, I think I even blushed a bit.

“You turning down a scholarship and moving out in the boondocks still doesn’t explain why you disappeared for all those years ago,” she said.

“I didn’t disappear,” I said. “I just moved. There’s a difference.”

She studied me with a puzzled expression. “So, if you didn’t use your football scholarship, then what have you been doing all this time?”

I took a deep breath and rested my hand against the side of her car’s side mirror. “A lot has happened in the years since I’ve seen you.”

“Yeah, obviously.” Her eyes flickered with interest, but there was also sadness and loss in there that I recognized because sometimes I felt those emotions too.

“I didn’t feel like there was any reason to stick around if you were getting married to someone else.”

“Oh.” Her eyes went downcast, and she appeared to be more wounded by my statement than I had expected.

“I mean, there were other factors too,” I quickly recovered.

“Yeah?” She peered up at me.

“My parents. You remember how they had that restaurant in the center of town?”

Brooklyn’s eyes brightened warmly. “Oh yes. I remember that place. It was the little Italian restaurant, right?”

“Right.” I leaned against her SUV and directed my gaze to the horizon beyond the lake. “My parents lived by the seat of their pants. They didn’t have rules. Everyone kind of lived for the moment.”

“Sometimes, I feel like I’m living by the seat of mine too,” she chimed in.

“Well, that’s all fun and games when you know what you’re doing. My parents didn’t have the business sense, the training, or the motivation to learn how to run a restaurant properly. They made money, but just like any business, the restaurant had bills to pay. Employees. Vendors. Suppliers. Repairs…you name it. They were terrible with money, and their misfortunes soon caught up with them.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“If they’d held on a little longer, I could’ve done something. But the bills were piling up fast, and I was just a kid at the time, so there was nothing I could have done to save them or the restaurant. They ended up having to hand it over to the bank. They gave the house I grew up in back to the bank too. They didn’t have savings to fall back on as my mother had a bit of a gambling problem. It was a huge mess.”

She frowned. “I didn’t know you were going through all of that. We were supposed to talk about this stuff together, remember?”

“I know, but it was a lot…too much. I’m surprised your dad didn’t tell you about the foreclosure of our home and restaurant back then. He was one of the investors that actually put in a bid to buy it from the bank.”

“He has selective memory,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I bet he does. I’m sure he remembers that time he caught us kissing behind the school’s gym. He knew who I was then and what I represented.”

“I got in the car with him and he told me to stop seeing you or he’d take it up with the coach. The last thing I needed was for him to go blabbing to the coach or other school officials and then cause you to lose your scholarships or something.”

“That’s why you started acted shady,” I added.

I swatted a mosquito and then said, “I wasn’t acting shady. I was just trying to put some distance between us for a bit.”

“For a bit? It was more than a bit, especially after your dad hooked you up with Daddy-Big-Bucks,” I teased.

“You won’t let that go, will you?”

“Honestly…?”

“Okay, well, don’t let it go. So, what did you do then? After you turned down the scholarship? Move out here?”

“Believe it or not, I joined the Navy.”

“The Navy?” Brooklyn quizzed.

“Yep.” I nodded. “You said that like you’re surprised. What? Did you not think I was built for the military? I stayed in for eight years.”

Brooklyn smirked. “Wow. You were always so disciplined. That’s what I admired about you. No wonder you’re a good swimmer.”

“I never would've imagined that you would have been divorced from your wealthy husband,” I murmured.

Brooklyn had a look of perplexity on her face. “How did you even know I got married in the first place? It seems you were gone before I even said my vows.”

“I got wind of your engagement to your boyfriend from a freshman I used to tutor. Distant cousin to your ex or something like that,” I said. “I convinced myself to stay out of it, that it wasn’t my business and I didn’t need to intervene. You didn’t seem like you needed saving. You seemed happy.” I glanced at her with a sheepish smile. “In retrospect, I was probably a little bitter. I felt like saying something to you, but at the same time, I didn’t want to face you.”

Brooklyn gave me a warmhearted look. “Well if you had known the truth, you wouldn’t have anything to be bitter about.”

“What do you mean?” I crossed my arms over my chest and studied her. It was really starting to get chilly out here in the woods. Although, Arizona had mild temperatures for this time of the year, I could literally feel the warmth waning away with the receding sun.

“After you left, I looked for you. I searched in all the ways I knew how, but I always came up empty. I told myself that you were pursuing your goals and I had to stop looking. But I always wondered where you had gone.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had probably already enlisted in the military. I made a split-second decision after talking with the recruiter and once I signed up, I was flown out to start training.”

“Did you stay in the military?” she asked.

“I got out after my eight years were over. I wanted to try to pursue other things.”

“You’ve been successful, but look at me, one failed marriage later and I’m back at square one.”

“That’s not true at all. You pursued your passion,” I told her.

She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. All those wasted years convinced me that I should actually do something for me.”

“So, you didn’t have kids then?” I hated to be blunt in asking, but if we were getting everything out in the open, then we might as well dive in all the way.

“No.” She glanced at the ground as if she were both relieved and regretful to not have kids yet at this point in her life. “I guess I held off so long because I knew Edward, my ex, wasn’t really the one. That last year when I discussed separating, he tried to get me to stay. Tried to call my doctor and tell her that my birth control was making me sick so that she’d take me off of them.”

“Wow, that’s really messed up.”

“Yeah,” she chuckled. “I just wish I had someone to talk to, you know. Maybe if we had kept in touch…”

I gave her a pondering look. “Did you really think that if you found me though, that we could just continue to have sex? While you were married? As much as you like to have your cake and eat it too, I don’t think it works that way, Brooklyn.”

Her mouth fell open, and she had this look of disgust on her face, appearing to be insulted even though that hadn’t been my intention. I wouldn’t have had sex with her while she was engaged or married to someone else. That, in my humble, old fashioned opinion was unreachable territory and completely off limits. I knew my limits. I wasn’t that much of an ass.

She didn’t answer. I saw her clench her jaw, and she turned around to open her driver side door.

“Brooklyn,” I said and tried to backtrack. “I was only kidding.” I touched her arm, but this time she jerked away from me.

“You are such a fucking asshole for saying that. For thinking that I was trying to find you so we could fuck like rabbits like we used to,” she shouted.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s exactly what you meant.”

“Come to my house,” I blurted in a last ditched effort to stall her. “I have a lake house nearby. At least come get some dry clothes. The temperatures are dropping, and I don’t want you to get sick.”

I glanced at her and waited, hoping that she would oblige my offer. I wanted to keep talking to her. I needed to know more about the time I lost with her. I wouldn’t rest until I had the whole picture.