Melody

 

Melody didn’t make it back to the house. She’d stopped by the tree and stared at the home she’d grown up in. She couldn’t go back, not right then. Dad’s betrayal was too strong at the house. Not to mention Stryder had paid for her electricity! How could she sit there in the light he paid for and not think of him?

She didn’t need that kind of pain. She claimed a seat on the swing and gave into the anger and hurt. Why had Dad lied to her? Why had Stryder? Wasn’t that what he’d done? He was drinking and she’d caught him.

“Wake up, Melody. That was a child’s promise.” Dashing away the tears on her cheeks, she sniffed. Of course, it was a child’s promise. She wasn’t stupid. But… she didn’t want anymore drinking in her life. She didn’t want that and she had thought for sure Stryder had been affected the same way she’d been by her father’s drinking growing up.

She was wrong. And the worst part wasn’t the broken promise, it was how naïve and stupid she had to seem to him that she had reminded him of it. Taking a deep breath, she leaned her head on the rope.

She could be happy with Stryder instead of having just discovered that he drank and his current love was at his house. How in the world was Melody going to live at the Steel ranch while the Flints were just down the way – happy, making babies, and being a family? Making babies. She closed her eyes. The babies she had always wanted with Stryder.

Melody couldn’t. She’d never survive. She didn’t have to have a crystal ball to know she’d never make it. She’d lost too much of who she was to her father’s betrayal already. She didn’t have to lose anymore. She wiped at her continuous tears and lifted her chin. It was settled. She would still sell the house. The car and the house. She could take everything she could get and start over somewhere else – far away.

The only place she felt calm was at the tire swing. She wondered if there was some way she could take it with her. Every important memory she’d ever had of Stryder was there at the swing. He’d even broken her heart there.

Melody closed her eyes as the memory replayed itself.

 

Stryder’s hands were strong at eighteen and the summer sun had beat down on them both. Melody didn’t want to look directly at him, but she had to see if he was telling her the truth. She looked over her shoulder, taking in the youthful promise of masculine features and his bright brown eyes.

“I have to go, Mel.” He half-shook his head in earnestness.

She didn’t want him to leave. She needed him. “No. Why? Stay with me. I don’t graduate until next year. I won’t get into college. We don’t have the money. If you wait… I’ll go with you. I can get a job and…” She blinked back tears. She was begging him for all she was worth and she didn’t think it was working.

Her blurry vision had made it hard to see his guilty expression, but something in the way he cocked his head had told her something was off. He stopped the tire swing and turned the tire around so Melody faced him. Pulling her between his broad stance, he pulled her close. Tilting up her face with a thumb, Stryder studied her with a deep tenderness in his brown eyes. “I’m going for us. For you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t go. I promise. Things will get better.”

Her mom had left not too long ago and Melody’s feelings of abandonment were fresh. “Do you promise to come back to me?” Why would Stryder come back when her own mother hadn’t? She had the strong sense that once he left, he’d never return.

“You couldn’t keep me away.” He’d leaned down, placing his lips on hers but Melody could taste his tears with hers.

 

Melody had found the proof that he had tried to keep his promises – all of them. If Melody hadn’t been so proud and wrapped up in her own depression, she might have been strong enough to go after him. Find him. But it wasn’t hard to believe he’d abandoned her when her own mother had never come back.

She’d made her mistakes and she was going to have to live with the consequences. Stryder with Candy and buying up Two Rides. Just the thought was enough to make her nauseous.

Patting her thigh, Melody nodded. Yep, if she wanted to be normal without the pain of seeing them together, she had to leave. Nothing was holding her there anyway.

She ignored the questions of when Stryder had started drinking. She couldn’t examine that. He hadn’t said anything when she’d confessed and she’d been ashamed, thinking he was mad at her. Maybe he had been thinking of a way to tell her. Maybe… she had to start giving him the benefit of the doubt. Wasn’t that what she wanted from him? From anyone?

She stared at the moon still cresting the sky in the east closer to her house. She couldn’t look toward his home and see Candy and him sitting on the porch or maybe silhouetted in the window like a greeting card.

Stryder’s voice reached her before she saw him. “Mel, I…”

Inhaling sharply, Melody held up her hand, frustrated to find more tears coursing down her cheeks. She kept her back to him so he couldn’t see her shame. No. He didn’t need to see how she was hurting. “Stop. You don’t owe me anything. I understand. I get it.”

He didn’t say anything as he walked across the bridge and closed the distance between them. She couldn’t hide from him, unless she swiveled back and forth on the swing like a two-year-old. He moved into her line of sight. “But you’re mad. I can see you’re hurt.” He stepped closer, studying her in the moonlight.

Melody shook her head slowly as she tried to search out her true emotions. She had nothing to lose, so why lie? “I am hurt. I’m sad. I’m not mad, but sad, so yes, that’s true. I’m sad about everything I lost.” She had assumed he’d been judging her for breaking their drinking pact but he’d never said anything. She’d thought that on her own. She’d assumed he abandoned her without investigating further. That was on her, too.

What else was she responsible for?