Chapter 7: Dallas

I dragged myself back to my ranch and started feeding all the animals I had stabled up. My horses were begging for food, and I felt a pang of guilt that I left them for so long. I had no intentions of staying overnight in that trailer, much less with some piece of ass, blast from the past. So I decided to feed them some dessert for breakfast, giving them plenty of sweetened water to drink and then opening their stalls so that they could get some fresh air out in the pasture. I was supposed to be giving lessons, but I walked on up to my home and decided to cancel everything for the day. I could tell already that my mind just wasn’t in the right place, thanks to that damned woman.

My mind kept flying back to last night. Sure, I’d missed her. That woman had lit up my world back in our college days. I may not have been anywhere near a virgin when I met her, but she sure as hell made me feel like one. Everything was a new experience with her, and every night I woke up with her in my arms was like the first time I’d ever woken up next to her. The light would always catch her hair just right and her light snoring would always make me smile. There wasn’t a morning where I’d grind into her back that she’d push me away or tell me she was too tired.

God, I missed slipping in between her wet heat in the mornings.

After she left the first time, I had tried for months to find a replacement. I’d bought lotion warmers and warming lubes. I had tried different toys from stores I vowed to never venture into again, and I’d even tried watching porn a time or two, just to see if I could replicate the feeling she gave me every morning. But all of it had been fruitless. Nothing could mimic the feeling of sliding into her from behind every morning before I got up and made us coffee. She just simply couldn’t be replaced and I’d been forced to accept that I would likely never see her again…

I’d been forced to accept that she had up and left and wouldn’t be looking back.

It’s disgusting, really, how much I had loved that woman. I used to tell the guys at the rodeos that she was just my lucky charm, but in reality, she was the woman I had once planned on spending the rest of my life with. The week after we graduated, I had a ride planned. I was gonna take her with me, and if I won, it would give me $5,000.00. Then I was gonna use that money to buy her the ring she deserved, and I was gonna get down on one knee at the next rodeo, in front of God and everybody else, to ask that woman to be my wife.

I wanted her to bear my children and be my family. I wanted her to sell her fashions from a store she dreamed of. I wanted to build that store for her alongside her father with my bare hands in between my traveling to rodeos, and I wanted to have a farm full of animals to retire to so we could watch our grandkids run around with the ponies and puppies. I wanted to wake up every morning and smell her heat on my skin. I wanted to slip behind her in the shower every evening and slowly press her back against that tile wall. I wanted to make her dinners and take her out and experience family vacations with her. I wanted to yell and scream and fight behind closed doors before pounding her into the wall while grunting how sorry I was and how beautiful she looked.

But she took all my dreams away when she left without a trace with no explanation and no goodbye.

Hell, she hadn’t even told her parents where she was going! Maybe it was because she had intuitively sensed the wildness in me, and worried that if she had told her parents where she was going, I would track her down like the hunter I was. Maybe she subconsciously knew that I had her scent memorized, and that if given a hint of a trail to follow, I would track her down, permitting my bestial nature to take control.

If anyone could tempt the wildness out of me, it was her.

I couldn’t deny that more than a time or two, I’d found myself wondering how she would respond if she ever knew the truth about what I was. It wasn’t something I liked to think about though.

I made my way out to the bulls and fed them good before heading on over to my little heifer barn. I didn’t keep too many heifers around, just enough to breed with the bulls who were retired so I could sell the calves they birthed for the rodeos. But I always made sure they were reared to a certain age before ripping them from their mothers. Some breeders sold them the moment they plopped, but I wanted my heifers healthy. There wasn’t any reason to give away any calf that was born before their first birthday, and I kept it that way on my farm. Just because I made money off my animals didn’t mean I had to be cruel.

Once the bulls were taken care of, and the few small babies were tended to, I trotted on over into the heifer barn. Right then, I had eight of them, and three were already reaching an age where they wouldn’t be able to bear calves any longer. I had two that were pregnant and made a mental note to call the vet to come check on them soon. One wasn’t due for a few more months, but we were keeping a close eye on the other one. She had been due two days ago, but she was still upright and the calf was still growing regularly, so the vet wasn’t fussing. But I guess I just worry too much about my animals.

I milked the cows in the barn before I fed them their next meal, and then went over to pet both of my pregnant heifers before giving them some words of encouragement. I snaked my phone out of my pocket and dialed the vet up the road, and he agreed to come by to take a look at them. I told them I didn’t think the one in question was in labor, but wanted to keep an eye on her in case something was to go wrong. If she was carrying a bull, I could use the money, and if she was carrying a heifer, I could use one to replace the three aging out in my little population.

Autumn would’ve done wonderfully with this type of lifestyle. As long as I’d known her, she’d loved animals. Horses were her favorite. The first time we ever went horseback riding together was on the weekend in between one of her family’s camps. I just couldn’t get over how beautiful she looked on that majestic animal. Her hair blew back in the wind, and her hips rolled graciously on top of the horse’s galloping form. It was the first and only time I’d ever fallen off the back of a horse. She turned herself around and galloped back towards me, worry in her eyes before a smirk upturned on her face.

“Got them bulls under control, but can’t handle a little horse?” she had quipped.

To this day, it’s my favorite memory of her. She was concerned, but confident. Graceful, yet dominant.

My god, the life we could’ve had together.

I finished tending to the cow barn and slowly made my way over to the chickens. It was egg collecting time before I sprinkled down some seed. I could hear my dog howling at my presence from the kitchen window. Lord knows the mess my beagle probably made while I was gone. And while Autumn continued to flood my mind, I couldn’t be angry at myself. I had gotten another chance to lay with her, to feel her skin underneath my fingertips, and hear her sounds whispered into my ear. God, she felt just as warm and tight as the first time I had laid with her in college, and it was as if I could feel her legs still wrapped around my waist. I mindlessly gathered the eggs from the nests as the memory of her scent wafted up my nose. My hand shook while I fed the chickens as her groans and grunts filled the caverns of my ears.

She had flooded my soul in college, and now, she had managed to wiggle her way back in. While I was mad at being weak, I couldn’t be mad at caving. That woman was a mystery I had yet to decipher, and I had to admit that I’d still give quite a bit to spend my life trying to figure out why.

I might not give everything, but I’d still give up a lot more than I should for a woman who left me the way she did. Twice.

I still wonder to myself why in the world she left...

I guess I technically could have asked her last night, but I was so fucking shocked to see her at my door, I couldn’t think straight. Of all the people who could’ve come knocking at my trailer after that ride, it had to be her. I should’ve asked why she was there…whether she came to see me, or if it was just a coincidence that I was riding that particular day. I should’ve asked why the hell she left me those years ago. I should’ve yelled about how much I loved and cared for her, and how her leaving had thrown me off a bull I couldn’t stand to get back on. I wanted to blame her for so much and yet, I still wanted to throw her onto that bed and fuck her body senseless into the mattress in that rickety trailer.

And that’s precisely what I had done. I threw my anger away the moment she started crying on that fold-out couch and I decided to show her what she had been missing out on by leaving me. I decided to show her exactly how I had memorized her body. I decided to shower her with my affection just like I would have every day in between our last meeting and our current one had she never left me.

But I didn’t want to shower her anymore because I was so angry with her. My contradictory feelings were maddening.

Deep down, I wanted to show her that I really was hoping she would stay this time around. Whatever made her leave the first time, I was hoping to trump it. To be better than it. To show her that I supported her and cared for her and that I would give up and do anything to make her happy.

But I still woke up alone.

That’s what made me angrier than anything. That’s what really made my blood boil as I ripped the egg basket and marched for the house.

It wasn’t the fact that she left again; it was the fact that I didn’t want her to leave, and the fact that she didn’t seem to care.

Maybe we were just too different, even though that was the hardest thing to accept.