* * *

That day, I'd met the two people who would sculpt my life in their own hands. Blake and Joel Sayer were the most important people to ever touch my life, to influence the person I was today.

That day, I'd learned that there were not just wild horses on this last frontier. There was a wild girl, one I'd follow to the end of the earth and jump over the edge with if she asked me to.

I'd only been seven years old when the world brought the twins into my universe. And ten years later, it tilted our axis, sending each one of us spinning off course in different directions. That night, the one that blew us all to smithereens, was one that still woke me from a dead sleep, cold sweat rolling down my back. It had ruined me so incredibly that I couldn't step foot back on Carova in ten years.

And now I'm back. Dredging through the quicksand of emotions that hit me each time I see a landmark on the beach or in the woods.

The tree under which I'd asked Blake to be my girlfriend.

The old hammock Joel and I had set up and spent time swinging from.

The abandoned house, high on the hill, that held so many memories it was hard to even look at.

Most people thought that when the sun was highest in the sky, when it kissed the water in iridescent, sparkling rays … that was the best time to observe the horses.

But my favorite part of the day had always been dusk, the hour before the sun fades over the trees.

Being back on Carova is like a recurring dream I forgot I had. One of the ones you always wake up from, only to forget throughout the day. But when you fall back into sleep, the same fantasy world comes to life in your brain, reintroducing itself.

A chestnut-colored mare walks by me, barely looking at where I stand just feet away. I’d forgotten too, how trusting these animals were. How unbothered by humans they were.

I jot down a few notes in my black Moleskine, about her walking patterns, coat condition, the way she reacts to me. I think this is the horse Dad said had just given birth, and I can tell by her still semi-swollen abdomen.

There don’t seem to be any other horses around for the moment, she must have left the foal somewhere, so I observe the foliage, the animal tracks. It feels good to be back in my element, documenting and taking stock before I get down to the nitty-gritty of business. Since the tours we put on, taking tourists out in open-air jeeps to observe the wild horses, are our moneymaker … we need to make them as exciting as possible. And to do that, we need to know the horses’ patterns. We need to know how they group themselves, where they hang out. What time they’re on the beach and which ones might be a problem around people.

I’ve been out here for two hours, collecting samples and just watching, breathing in the air I haven’t been blessed to be surrounded by in quite some time. And until now, until the sun went down and the dark descended over the long sand roads, I have avoided looking up at that house.

The one that is more familiar to me than my own childhood home. The yellow three-story with the wrap-around decks, the ones that Joel and I used to race around. The planks that Blake used to lay on, her back sticking to the deck in the summer heat, as she looked up into the heavens of stars overhead.

A light came from the big bay window on the second floor, and I knew she was in there. Over the years, I’d tried to quietly keep tabs on her, make sure she was okay. I never asked my parents anything overtly obvious about her, but I made it my business to know where she was, if she’d left. From all I knew, she’d gone to college for two years and then came back, staying in this house even through the second most tragic event in her life.

How easy it would be to throw a rock at her bedroom window, the one I’d climbed in all of those moons ago. Who knew if that was still even her room? Maybe she’d moved to the master on the third floor. Maybe she had a man who stayed there with her.

The thought burned me, a simmering mixture of rage and guilt roiling in my gut. I had no claim to her, no right to even dream something like that.

Putting my pen and notebook in my back pocket, I start to walk towards the Jeep I’d driven out here.

Until … a figure appears in the window. The last rays of the sun dance over the glass, but from down here in the shadows, I can make out her face watching the sunset. The way her eyes still go wide at the last twinkle of the day, her hands spreading over the pane like she’s trying to grab it and hold on. Does the night haunt her like it does me?

And just like that, she’s gone, walking away from the window as the dark swallows me. My fingertips tingle at the memory of holding her on that deck, down on the beach … so many sunsets we’d spent together.

But that was a lifetime ago. A lifetime that was dead and gone, taken on the darkest of nights with one wrong turn.