(Braden)
“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”
—JOHN MUIR
Just before hitting send on my reports to Tobias, I offer up a thank-you to the tech gods. An agreeable, supplicant, polite thank-you that is absent of any cuss words. Because showing up here at four a.m. to bang my reports out at the last minute was a risk, and had anything gone wrong, I would have had to call Tobias and ask for an extension. Since I’m still on thin ice with him, acting like a flake would not be a smart move.
I’d taken this past weekend to make a quick trip out to Kansas so I could help Garrett on his newly purchased farm. After just two days of Garrett running my ass ragged, I was ready to come home to my cushy job. While I always understood that farming is a challenging, backbreaking way of life, just a few days working as Garrett’s lowly minion proved that I didn’t know the half of it. I rolled into Hotchkiss last night too late and too tired to do anything but eat dinner and crash. But the trip was worth it, no matter how early I had to get up this morning. Garrett is on track for the next phase in his life, he has Cara back, and most important, he’s happy. As for me, seeing Garrett settled put a few things into perspective, and my long drive home offered plenty of time to think.
The truth was, I’d fallen for Amber. Hard. Fallen so hard that it was easy to become a vindictive asshole when things ended. Because when you love someone and they choose something or someone else over you, it fucking hurts. When Laurel left, I did the same thing, acted out in the same snarling ways.
But loving and losing Amber was worse. With Laurel, I never once wanted her back, which probably says a lot about how little I had invested in that relationship. Amber, though . . . Amber I wanted back. I still want her back. I want to love her and take care of her, have her give the same to me. I want to be there when she eventually does fill a Colorado elk tag, help her pack it out, then take her home and put her in a warm bath like I did a few months ago. I want to do that same thing every single archery season for as long as we can both make it out into the field.
But that isn’t going to happen. I’d let her go too easily. Even if we view the idea of what makes for a rewarding life differently, I didn’t do enough to see if we could make it work somehow. And finally admitting all that to myself has helped, in almost the same way it did when I was in Oregon and my mom called out my feelings for Amber. In both instances, everything became easier when I owned the truth. The almighty power of acceptance or some shit, I guess, because it’s less difficult now to focus on my life and my work, just as I’ve done this morning.
After sending my reports to the printer, I lean back in my chair and watch the ancient contraption slowly crank out the reports. But they are printing—no error lights, no paper jambs, no ink running low—so I must be doing something right.
A bell dings. It takes me a second to remember the little bell that sits on the reception station, there for those days when there are public hours but I also have work to do in my office. That way anyone who comes in to find an empty front desk can feel as if help is just a bell ring away. Today, though, I do not have public office hours. But since I arrived at the crack of dawn, I didn’t think to lock the front door behind me.
The bell dings again.
I cast a look down at my clothes, the ones I wore all day yesterday and put back on this morning after dragging my ass out of bed. My ancient Oregon Ducks tee isn’t exactly work wear, but I have an extra uniform shirt stashed in a desk drawer, so I dig it out and start to put it on over my T-shirt. Per our employee manual, we’re required to wear uniform shirts tucked in, so I unbuckle my belt and open my pants up to tuck it in.
Ding.
Jesus.
Ding-ding-ding.
“Be right there!” I call out, biting my tongue to keep from saying anything more colorful. The bell then starts to ding nonstop.
Fucking hell. My pants are only half-closed, but I manage to get my zipper up just as I storm into the main office.
Where Amber is standing, continuing to ding the fucking bell with a goofy grin on her face. Her eyes then dart to where my hands are on my still-undone belt. The grin fades from her face, and she stares at my hands.
“Please tell me you were back there polishing your crystal ball. Because if I interrupted another woman doing the polishing, that’s going to make my trip out here a real bust.”
“Neither,” I manage, croaking until I clear my throat. “I was working. Alone. The office isn’t open today, so I just had a T-shirt on. I had to put on a uniform shirt.”
Amber’s features relax. She’s dressed in a black hoodie and some faded jeans with a hole in one knee that looks earned instead of designed, and a pair of brown lace-up work boots. Her hair is in a loose side braid, and she’s tugged on an obviously well-loved Rangers ball cap. A white three-ring binder is in her hand, which she now holds up.
“I need to show you something.”
Before I can say “what?” or, you know, ask what the hell it is she’s doing here, Amber is headed down the hall and into my office.
Christ. I know how this scene ends because this is where we started. Been there and done that. And even if my heart believes going there again sounds like a good way to make it stop hurting, my brain knows that won’t help me move on. Even so, I follow her anyway.
My stupid heart sinks when I don’t find her sitting on my desk, but standing awkwardly against the wall across from my desk. I clear her without pausing and sit down in my desk chair. Amber clasps the binder to her chest but doesn’t say anything—she simply stares at me. I raise my brows. She blinks and smiles sheepishly.
“Sorry. Seeing you again distracted me for a second. I missed looking at you.”
Fuck me. I’m unable to come up with even a smart-ass remark because all I want is to tell her how much I missed everything about her. Amber thrusts her binder forward.
“I’m here because I want to show you this.”
My brow furrows up. “You came here from Texas to show me a binder? You could have mailed it. Saved yourself the travel money. And the time.”
The dynamic that’s always defined us creeps up with my dry sarcasm and her responding smirk, and it feels like whatever time was lost between us is nothing but old news. Once again, I’m the big oaf who likes telling her how it is, and she’s the beautiful woman who loves pushing my buttons. Amber lurches up from the wall and begins my way. My heart starts to pound, and when she’s near enough that a rush of strawberry hits my nose, I close my eyes and take a deep breath, reopening them just as Amber hops up on my desk. She shimmies around a bit to get comfortable, and all I want to do is grab her by the hips and make her stop.
She flips open the binder, shielding the contents from my view.
“I’m not going to do the reality show.”
Relief rushes through me, hard and fast, replaced by hope that I know I shouldn’t latch on to. “Good. I know it’s not my business, but I’m glad.”
She shakes her head. “It is your business. Or at least I want it to be.”
Amber sighs. “You were right about everything. The two clowns who run the studio came to Austin and implied I have the personality of a blow-up doll . . . but with a good rack. And this was their approach to get me to sign with them. I’d hate to know what they’d say if they didn’t want me.”
“They what?” My body rises up from the chair a few inches as if these pricks are in the room with us and I can take them by the throat the way I want to. Amber waves a hand in the air.
“Don’t make me repeat it. All that matters is that I passed, and they, along with their porkpie hats, are back in LA.”
She takes a deep breath and turns her binder around. My eyes drop and zero in on a picture of Amber standing in her backyard, looking pared down but more beautiful than ever.
“I have a new plan. This”—she points toward the photo—“is a working pitch book for the new Web-based show I want to create. One that reflects my lifestyle and my perspective, but updated. I’ll still focus on outdoor sports, hunting and shooting mostly, but I want to branch out from there.”
She starts to flip through each page. First to a picture of her in a wintering cornfield, clad in a traditional olive-green shooting jacket with a twelve-gauge in her arms. The next is a shot of her and Trey out on his boat, lines cast, while they laugh their asses off. She turns another page. Amber and Trey again, but this time it looks like they’re at his furniture business, because industrial lathes and saws are in the background and Amber is watching Trey work on a sketch.
“I want to include segments on all the cool people I know, or the artists that hang out with Trey and Teagan.” Another page flip to a picture of Amber standing in a pigpen surrounded by piglets with Colin grinning side frame. “Even guys like Colin. Ranchers and farmers. Their stories, my stories, all through the filter of my brand.”
The next picture gets all of my attention. Along with my dick’s attention. She’s out for a trail run, dressed in skimpy workout gear, with sweat trailing down her neck and disappearing into the cleavage I missed more than I can stand at the moment. I must have let out a noise of some sort because Amber chuckles.
“Glad to hear I look good enough to sell the fitness segments I have in mind.”
“Damn good,” I choke out, dragging my eyes away from the photo to look at the real-life Amber in front of me. Her cheeks are flushed bright pink and her eyes are lit up with excitement and focus. She’s proud of this—and she should be.
“This is amazing. This is the kind of show you deserve to have. This is you.”
Amber’s cheeks flare a shade darker and she averts her eyes from mine by looking at the wall behind me. “You told me not to settle, to be a hundred percent of who I am. That’s what this is.”
“I’m so fucking excited for you, sweetheart,” I whisper.
I spot a few tears brimming in the corners of her eyes, but she blinks them away before returning her gaze to me.
“I have one area I’m still struggling with.” She turns to the last page.
It’s a photo of her standing in her kitchen, flour dusted on her cheeks and her hair a little mussed as she pretends to look frazzled while reading a cookbook. She’s wearing a 1950s-housewife dress that’s so short her garter is visible, with red heels so high they make my mouth go dry.
“I want to do some cooking and food segments. While I’m not this bad in the kitchen, I could use someone to help me learn about, oh, I don’t know, making sauerkraut. Or energy bars. Or snack mix. Someone like you.” She grasps her binder to her chest. “Tell me what you think.”
I swallow thickly. “I think I was trying to get over you. And I think you’re making that impossible.”
“Good. Because I’m not over you. I don’t want to be. I want us.”
My heart starts to stagger about in my rib cage, like it wants to bust out of my chest and flop itself right at Amber’s feet. My brain, though, knows there are still valid reasons why we can’t be together. One of them is glaringly obvious.
“But you live in Texas,” I murmur.
“I’m also in between fixed gigs right now. So I could get a job at the Cabela’s in Grand Junction and work on the first few episodes around here so we can be together. That’s the beauty of what I want to create. It doesn’t have an address.”
My face furrows as I take in all that she’s offering. To leave her home, her friends, and her family, relocate to Colorado and get a real job here—just to be where I am. It would sound awesome if I didn’t know what it’s like to be on the other side of a sacrifice like that. And even though I didn’t ask Amber to do this, I hate the idea that she would forfeit parts of her life to be with me.
There’s another solution though, one where it doesn’t seem like anyone would have to sacrifice anything.
“Or I could move to Austin.”
Amber sucks in a harsh breath. “You would do that?”
I shrug. “Garrett’s in Kansas now; Cooper’s busy with babies. My family doesn’t live here. I like my job, but it’s not my life, so I can find another one. And since going to Austin ruined me with real barbeque, now I can’t eat at True Grit and enjoy it.”
Amber grins. I tilt my head, pausing to be sure I’m ready to tell her the real reason why, whether it’s Texas or Tennessee, where I end up doesn’t much matter.
“I once moved across four states because a woman broke my heart. So I can certainly move three states to be with the woman who can help me make it whole again. Because she’s the one I want to give it to.”
We stare at each other for what feels like days. Two people so different, and so alike at the same time. Amber crawls off of my desk and into my lap.
“Do you remember that day we said goodbye outside your house? When we talked about no promises but made one anyway?” she asks.
I nod. Amber’s eyes go soft, lost in what looks like sentimentality. A feeling that I know she’s fighting hard to avoid running from, because she forces a long breath before saying more.
“We said we would forget all the reasons this shouldn’t work and try to find just one reason it would. I found that reason, Braden. It’s an easy one, too.” Amber gives me a weary smile. “Because I love you. That’s my reason.”
I swallow the rise of emotion that threatens to turn me into a blubbering fool, answering her with the only words I can manage.
“I love you.”
Amber lets her eyes drop closed, obviously working to keep her own blubbering at bay. She sighs and opens her eyes again.
“But we should keep discussing this. My life’s changing in big, scary ways. Now you’re talking about doing the same thing to your life. So we shouldn’t rush into this. We don’t have to decide anything today, or tonight. We can talk it out. Grown-up and mature-like.”
I put my arms around her, pulling her close and brushing my lips across hers.
“Sure. We’ll talk it out. All night or for as long as we need to. We have our one good reason, so all we have to do is start there and we’ll be fine.” I kiss her once, murmuring my next words against her lips. “Now. When you talk about being grown-up and mature, you mean naked, right?”
Amber laughs, relieved and relaxed. “Yes. Naked is very grown-up. And very mature.”
I lean back, look at her for a beat. “I missed you. Losing you turned me into a real asshole.”
Amber crooks a skeptical brow.
“Fine. It turned me into a bigger asshole.” I shake my head. “It’s possible I ruined some poor kid’s first deer hunt with a bow, that’s how much of a jerk I became. You make me happy. You keep me from acting like a selfish ass all of the time. And I need you to keep doing that so I can become the guy worthy of loving you.”
She wraps her body to mine as tight as she can, arms around my neck, legs around my waist, and her face tucked into my neck.
“You already are that guy. But I need you to have me one hundred percent; a full life, no compromises. Without you . . . I’d always come up short.”
Those words become everything. Filling in every scar in my heart and each empty space in my world. Amber made my once-simple existence so fucking complicated that I can’t imagine it without her again, and I don’t want to. She is the untamed, uncontrollable force I needed in my life more than I could have ever understood.
And I’m ready for her now. Ready for what makes her wild and wonderful, for the way I know she’ll always make every steep and muddy trail worth the climb—season after season.