There was usually some kind of resentment when children were expected to go into the family business. Too much pressure, expectations of grandeur, unfulfilled dreams for the child and animosity towards the parents.

So it was a good thing that my dream was to run my family business, or I would have been lumped right into the group of unhappy adults performing jobs that left them emotionally unsatisfied and bored. My love for what my family had passed down in its lineage had carried me to veterinary school, and to a degree rooted in the exact nature of the job I was about to put on my shoulders.

My great-grandfather had started the North Carolina Wild Horse Association seventy-five years ago as a way to preserve and protect the sanctity of the beautiful animals that inhabited the islands. They were being pushed out of the mainlands, as houses went up and tourists came flocking, the herds etched out to the furthest ends of the shores. Great-Granddaddy Cole, and a few other members of the community, began raising awareness and then formed the Trust, thus enacting rules and bylaws for the humans who lived and vacationed here about what they could and couldn’t do where the wild horses were concerned. The Trust also protected the horses; it allowed the Association to grow food off of the land so the animals could sustain; we tracked their movements and tried to facilitate breeding. Our biggest moneymaker, and the thing that kept us in business, was doing tours through the neighborhoods that the horses frequented.

One of which was Carova.

“I’m glad to have you back.” Dad slapped my knee as he steered the pickup towards Duck.

The Association office was located in Corolla, but nothing in the Outer Banks was easily accessible. And by not easy, I meant that there was a one-lane road connecting absolutely everything. That was something I’d forgotten in Boston, with its winding highways and jam-packed traffic. Things down here were slower, less hectic. I leaned my head against the rest and sucked in a lungful of sea breeze through the window.

“It’s good to be back.” And I genuinely felt that way. “I can’t wait to see them.”

My trip to see the horses alone when I’d first gotten back had completely backfired, but I wasn’t about to divulge to my father that I’d seen Blake.

"You should see the new foal, I'll try to find her out there today if I can. She's a beauty."

My blood had started tingling already. Caring for animals was in my family's genetic makeup, and I'd definitely gotten the bug. Maybe I'd been influenced because my father ran the company solely responsible for taking care of them in the Outer Banks. Whatever it was, I never really had a say in what it was I would do when I grew up. He took me down to see them when I was about five, the ponies galloping and playing along the waves that crashed onto the shore, and that was it. The rest was history as they say, I was gone, hook, line, and sinker.

Billy Joel's "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" fuzzed through the old speaker system in the truck, and dad hummed along. No matter how much money he made, or what kind of status he held in this community, my father had never cared much about material items. I loved that about him, and now that I was a grown-up, appreciated that he'd never let me become so caught up in what I did and didn't have. This pickup had about two hundred thousand miles on it, and he'd drive it into the ground. That was just the kind of man he was. I worked everyday to measure up.

"I figure we'll integrate you slowly. I've had some new staff come on since you were home last, and I'll need to teach you some of the systems we've put into place. But for today, let's get to the fun part. We'll drive out to the beach, see if we can't spot some of your old favorites."

Dad got just as excited about the horses as I did. This was our passion, and I knew I was a lucky son of a bitch to have such a close relationship with my father. As an only child, and an only son, I obviously had priority. But we'd always had an easy relationship; I was as much of him as the world had allowed me to be.

"Haven't been back to Carova in a long time." I didn't mean to say it out loud, but now it was there, floating between me, him and Billy.

We'd lived in Corolla throughout my childhood, just off the beach highway that connected Carova to civilization. So naturally, I spent every waking moment in the stranded sand town. It had been my sandbox, my schoolyard. My best kept secret and my worst memory. It was the place I'd fallen in love, and the hell that threw it all back in my face.

"There aren't a lot of the old neighborhood kids left." Dad is trying to avoid getting deep, mainly because I know how much it upsets him too.

Maybe he doesn't know that Blake still lives there. My heart drops into my balls thinking about seeing her. The deer-in-headlights look in her big, hypnotizing blue eyes. Her long blond hair, so thick and radiant I used to tell her it was like a horse's mane.

Would she be sitting up on one of those balconies, waiting for me? Looking out onto the beach, trying to spot me?

No. My head slapped my heart hard, grounding it in reality. Blake Sayer wanted nothing to do with me. But that was going to be awfully tough now that I'd be living a mere town away from her.

"Yeah, right. Well, the horses are still there. I'm anxious to start tracking their patterns. I haven't studied their behavior in years, it'll be interesting to get acquainted with them again."

After I'd run out of the Outer Banks ten years ago like the devil was trying to drag me down to hell himself, I'd solidified my plan in a year of healing. Attend Tufts University, graduate with top honors, then get my masters in either veterinary medicine, or animal psychology. Lucky for me, friends and relationships were not anywhere on my radar after I left home. So I loaded up on courses, double majored, and had spent every second of the last ten years studying, logging clinical hours, and attempting to pass my exams.

And now I was home, with two Tufts University degrees in hand, to take over the family business. It had been a long, hard road, but nothing worth working for until every brain cell in your head was screaming was easy.

Dad passes the Harris Teeter where I'd nearly gone into cardiac arrest just hours before, and winds through downtown Corolla. No matter how long I stayed away, nothing really ever changed. The old baseball field, with its rickety dugout where we would get drunk on high school nights. The ice cream shop I spent thousands of hours in, flirting with girls and being a general menace.

The side street where Blake and I had gotten into our first fight, when she'd walked home in the middle of a lightning storm and I'd basically tackled her to the ground to save her life.

Everything here reminded me of her. Relics of a lifetime ago.

And what reminded me of her brought every last whispered thought of him back to life.