So while I might be on my lonely island of isolation, I wasn't completely alone all of the time. Living out in the sand dunes, your neighbors became a source of family and help when you needed it.

Case in point, my monthly dinner with the residents of Carova. Since the accident ten years ago, I haven’t been very social. There was the two years at North Carolina State, and those had been a train wreck, and then I'd cut my losses and come home. Since then, I’d pretty much kept to myself. I talked to Aunt Carolyn, emailed with my clients, occasionally smiled at grocery store clerks, and gathered once a month for a potluck dinner with the full-time residents of Carova.

Nelly, the seventy-year-old woman who lived a few houses down from me, had set it up two years ago. She’d insisted we needed to know who was out here three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and if they could do anything to help us. The very first dinner had been a who’s who of skills. I was the computer whiz, and could help anyone fix their Internet or PC. Nelly was good with cooking, and always had extra sugar or milk on hand. Her husband Alfred knew electric inside and out; he’d fixed my generator after a particularly bad storm. Megan, the woman whose house bordered the back of my property, was a genius with cars and could fix anything that might be wrong. The married couple on the cul-de-sac, Jim and Betsy, were great when it came to travel plans, whether you needed to get out, rent your house out, or have someone come and visit you.

There were thirty of us total, the people who occupied this isolated haven. We all knew the horses by name; we all knew the rules of living out here. We helped each other out, even if we weren’t the most social bugs. Hell, we lived out on a strip of sand, clearly we didn’t want much human interaction.

But tonight was the night. We had a rotating schedule of whose house it would be hosted at, and my stomach was swinging from nausea to paranoia with all of these people in my home for this month’s dinner. The noise was foreign, the people sitting on my things unseen for such a long time. I’d cooked homemade macaroni and cheese, meatballs with red sauce, key lime pie, and chocolate walnut cookies. All my specialities, all so not meshing with the others. Everyone in the neighborhood brought what they could cook best, and we had a sampling of the randomest foods under the sun.

A tiny part of me craved this, and had a lot of fun conversing and socializing for a night. But I was so out of practice that it felt awkward, stilted.

“Oh that horse is just beautiful, isn’t she?” Nelly was speaking to Jim in the corner of my living room, by the record player.

My mind flashes back to a wet Carson holding me in the same spot.

“That she is. I think the other one is pregnant too, Harriet. She looks like she’s pregnant. Maybe I’ll call the association and check.” He taps his finger on his chin.

“Oh, I heard the Cole boy is running the joint now. A fancy vet and everything …”

I pass by and Nelly hushes, not wanting me to hear her conversation about Carson. Too late.

She’ll likely know from rumors just what went down between him and my family. She didn’t live here at the time, but anyone who moves to Carova knows how Joel Sayer died. There’s a gravestone down by the water and everything.

“Blake, how is the job with the association going?” Victoria, an older woman with vibrant hair that she dyes a shocking shade of orange, asks me.

“Job? I’m not working with the association.” I set my plate of food down.

“Oh, someone saw you in a meeting with them last week, we all assumed you were doing their books.” How the hell did she know that? God, the gossip in this town.

“No, they offered me some graphic work, but I turned them down.” Not that this was anyone’s business.

Nelly spoke up. “What?! You would be great for them; their logo is so outdated. You should say yes.”

Part of me just thought Nelly wanted to meddle. She’d been on me for a long time about a boyfriend, and I’d yet to date anyone under her steady watch. She knew my history with Carson … maybe she thought it would lead to something. I knew she wanted the best for me, but I kept my neighbors on a need-to-know basis. At arm’s length.

“Yeah, you’d be so great. Your work is killer.” Megan nodded her head. I’d done all sorts of marketing materials for her auto business six months back.

In my head, the wheels started to turn. What colors I’d choose, what horse graphics or stock photos. If I’d include the ocean, or Jeeps. Designing for the association would be fun …

“Yeah, maybe.”

It was a bad idea. But once the artistic side of my brain got going, I couldn’t do anything else but design until the creation was out on the page.

* * *

A knock on my door was the last thing I was expecting. When you’re a recluse with a penchant for hiding from anyone or anything that comes within fifty feet of your house, you’re typically not inviting anyone to come over. And in Carova, drop-by visits aren’t really the norm.

I walk down the stairs of the second floor to the landing that houses the front door. Peeking over the stairwell, so that they can’t see me through the stained glass, I see a woman standing on my front porch.

A very familiar looking woman.

Understanding blossoms in my chest, and I know immediately why she’s here. Walking down the steps as she rings the bell again, I open the front door for her.

“You can’t just email me the most amazing fucking graphics and then not answer!”

Melissa struts into my house as if I’m hiding marketing materials under my bed where she can’t find them. And to be fair, I did do exactly what she’s accusing.

After the dinner with my neighbors, the next day I had to sit down at my computer and create the entire gamut of marketing materials for the North Carolina Wild Horse Association. Business cards, pens, signs, T-shirts, bookmarks, Facebook ads, tiny horse figurines … anything you can imagine, I toyed around with it.

And then stupidly, in my hectic excitement, I’d gone to Melissa’s email in my inbox and sent them to her. I usually got on a design high; I was so hyped up about the cool graphics I’d created that I had to share them with someone.

Except this someone had been the exact person I shouldn’t have done that with. I’d already told Carson I wanted nothing to do with his business, had stormed out of lunch. A lunch Melissa had graciously set up. And come to think of it, I’d never apologized.

“Come on in.” I wave a hand sarcastically, my socialization overdrive too much right now.

I didn’t expect to be around another person so soon after the dinner, and it was grating. I used to be the life of the party, the girl who everyone wanted to be around. But maybe that was because I was attached to Joel and Carson. Now? I couldn’t go two days being around people. It was grating on my nerves like a shredder on Parmesan.

“She has a sarcastic side, who knew?” Melissa looks at me, an eyebrow raised in appreciation.

The petite brunette walks up the stairs to my main living area, completely uninvited.

“Um, excuse me …”

“Do you live here all by yourself? Damn girl, I can barely afford my apartment above the ice cream shop next to the office. Maybe that’s because I have an online shopping addiction and a weakness for Sephora, but whatever.” Melissa shrugs like she isn’t talking a mile a minute.

“I inherited it from my family.” She didn’t need to know the details.

“Right … I thought someone mentioned that.” She stood in the middle of my living room, gawking at everything. “So listen, lunch the other day—”

I cut her off. “I owe you an apology, it was completely unprofessional of me. It was just … a bad situation.”

Melissa’s face radiates sympathy. “I didn’t know that you were her. I wasn’t here for everything that happened.”

Shock slams into me. “Did Carson tell you?”

Hurt roils in my gut. I didn’t realize he was walking around telling practical strangers about our past.

Her hands wave into the air. “No, no … he didn’t at all. But we live in the Outer Banks. Of course I know about you, at least from rumors. People around here talk, not that I believe a word. But you know that I’d have heard something, I won’t lie. I just didn’t realize that you were the girl. I’m sorry if I caused any trouble between you and Carson.”

Her honesty actually eased my worry a bit. “Okay, okay … I believe you. And you didn’t cause anything that wasn’t already coming.”

Melissa nods her understanding. “So now that we have that out of the way, you can come work for me.”

I feel my nails digging into my palms, a nervous tic that’s developed over the years. “No, I couldn’t possibly. Feel free to use those graphics, but I can’t continue on. They were just taking up space in my brain and—”

“Nonsense. You’ll come work for me.”

“I wouldn’t be working for you, I’d be working for Carson. And I can’t do that.”

She makes a psh noise, waving her hand at the same time. “Screw whatever his name is. You wouldn’t. I’d be hiring you for my team, and you’d never have to deal with the dear old boss man. Just you and me, developing ideas. Come on, Blake. You know you want to. You live out here among the horses, you see them everyday. You know them best. That is a huge advantage to me, and it would make everything you create so much more relatable to people who are curious about the wild horses.”

She did have a point. “I would only go through you?”

This was a terrible idea. Especially after the other night, when I’d let Carson touch me. He got under my skin with the song my father used to play for my mother, the one about regretting letting her go. His proximity had felt like nothing I’d had in a decade, and I was a moth to the flame. It might burn me, but I went ahead despite it all. Carson had held me, really held me. As if the horrific events in my life could just be erased with his two hands. How could I let him that close again?

But, these were my horses. Even after everyone in my life had left, they were the ones who had stayed. I felt like I owed them this courtesy, and honestly, it was a passion project for me.

Melissa steps closer, her hazel eyes flashing with a battle almost won. “Only through me, and I’ll double whatever your rate is.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Not that I was hurting when it came to money, but as the sole earner and my only safety net in life, it was good to have financial security. The little voice in my head warned me off, trying to get me to see reason. But my heart … it had already left the side of the pool, plunging two feet in before the water swallowed me up.

“Okay, I’ll work for you. But only you. And I get creative control over everything I design.”

She pumps a fist in the air. “Deal!”

And then Melissa does something unexpected. She hops across the room and hugs me. Two human arms, wrapping around me in a gesture of warmth. I’m so stunned that I can’t move.

“I don’t usually hug vendors, but I feel a connection to you.” She backs up. “We should grab coffee sometime, get you out of your single girl cocoon.”

I can’t help but laugh, a sound that is foreign to my ears. “I kind of like my cocoon.”

“But you’ll like my world better. So I’ll call you, and we’ll go out. Wait to hear from me!”

And with that she walks out of my house, slamming the door shut behind her. I’m still so shocked that I can’t move just yet.

But when I put my fingers to my lips, I find a smile forming there. The first genuine one in what feels like a very long time.