It isn’t often that I venture into town. Typically, I schedule a trip once a month to get groceries, stock up on hygiene products, possibly get a hair cut, and pick up any packages at my P.O. Box.

Getting out of Carova isn’t just mentally uneasy; it’s also an island unto itself. Surrounded by water on three sides, and sand on the other, you have to know exactly how to drive onto the beach highway as to not get stranded.

Loading up my four-by-four all wheel drive Jeep, I deflate the tires a little so that they’re perfect to roll through the sand.

My home, which has been passed down for generations in my family, looks much the same as the rest of the homes in Carova. Three stories, the bottom of which is on stilts and is an open-air garage, or carport. It used to be sunshine yellow, but in its old age is now a faded beige. The top two stories have wrap-around porches, and I spend a lot of my time on the one on the third floor that faces the ocean. It doesn't have the flair of the new model mansion monstrosities that have popped up all over the Outer Banks as of late. But it's got charm and history, and I love it.

Whistling for Rhett, my black lab, I get in and buckle up. He runs out from the back of my property, almost smiling in his glee to go for a ride in the car. Once he's locked into his own seatbelt, I back out of the carport and onto the sandy path that serves as a road between the dunes.

The wind whips through the doorless truck, sweeping up my blond hair and tossing it everywhere. The air has a colder note now in September, but it's still mild and sunny on the coast of the Atlantic. Glancing over, Rhett is sniffing the air like it's a drug and he is high as a kite. I catch my own eyes in the mirror, guileless and such a light blue that my father used to say he could see into my skull.

Being that it's off-season, the beach highway is deserted. And it's literally that; a series of tire tracks going north or south, marking up the beach where the wild horses come to play. The state considers it a highway, since it's the only way in or out of Carova, and during the summertime you can find tourists stuck in the sand. Opportunist locals will help tow them out, but for a steep price of one hundred and fifty dollars a save. One of my neighbors does it, and says he makes about six hundred dollars a day in peak months. The money doesn’t matter to me and my nervous system can’t take much human interaction, so I avoid these parts during June, July and August as much as I possibly can.

The car coasts and bumps through the sand, and in about ten minutes, I maneuver the wheels up and over the dune that leads to the first paved road into Corolla. As soon as the car hits blacktop, I wish I hadn’t come. Other cars drive the same road, and although it’s only one or two vehicles I see in the off-season in rural North Carolina, my nerves rattle and the isolation that has settled into my bloodstream begins to defrost. Sure, I see the random assortment of neighbors or tourists who come and go from Carova throughout the month, but I spend almost every solitary second to myself.

That’s how it’s been for almost the last four years. Since the last flickering light of love on the abandoned landscape of my life burnt out.

Gritting my teeth and baring the unsettling storm moving through my bones, I give Rhett a treat and keep him buckled into the car. “I’ll be back soon, my handsome. You stay here.”

On a Tuesday at ten a.m. in September, the Harris Teeter is nearly empty. That’s why I chose to come out today, getting all of my work done late into last night so I could pack a whole day of errands in outside of Carova.

Making quick work, my cart is full of fresh vegetables, fruit, snacks, meat, toys and food for Rhett, shampoo, soap and all of the other things I need to get me by another month on the last frontier. I throw two paperback romance novels and three bars of Cadbury caramel filled chocolate for pleasure. I’m a simple woman, but even I have some vices, albeit very measly ones.

An older couple smiles at me as I pass them, and my lips tip up in greeting. The gesture feels strange on my mouth, and I realize I haven’t genuinely smiled at another person in far too long. Maybe I do need to get out more, this isn’t so bad.

Except I’ll think that, and then I’ll try to bring my laptop to a coffee shop, even one down here in the off-season, and someone will cough. And the women at the table next to me will be talking loudly about their husbands, complaining about their perfectly normal lives. And a man will be toting a toddler around, frustrated when the child doesn’t eat politely or keep his voice down. The noise and chatter will grate so harshly on my nerves that I won’t get anything done, and banish myself back to my own personal Elba.

There was a shift in the stale air of the grocery store, just as I rounded the corner towards the guest services desk.

When a hurricane was approaching the shore of the Outer Banks, you could feel it. The male horses sensed it, taking towards the woodsy inlands and protecting their harems, or packs full of female horses. The air tasted different, fueled with crackling electricity and pent up frustration. Hurricanes brought destruction and devastation.

My own personal hurricane was standing mere feet from me, and I never felt him coming. The ground should have shifted; I should have felt his presence coming from miles away. But I wasn't attuned to him, not anymore. Not after tens years.

And still, he could topple me like a sandbag wall in the face of an indomitable wave. Attacking my heart and lungs from the inside out until I was wheezing, drowning in every emotion I thought I'd tucked safely away.

His presence had sought me out, urged me from my isolation and trapped me at the exact moment it knew I'd be near.

Carson Cole was back. And I already wanted him gone.