When I woke up this morning I reached out searching for Mia, thinking she was there with me. When I found nothing but cold air, disappointment cut through me like a knife.

I was scheduled to take a red-eye flight out tonight, so I’d be home and could get to Mia early tomorrow.

That wasn’t good enough.

I rented a vehicle and drove like a madman to get home even earlier. I’ve been chugging coffee and counting down the hours until I finally have her back in my arms. In four hours she’ll finally be mine. After a week of nothing but her voice and hearing her come over the phone, it’s taking all I have not to go grab her, throw her over my shoulder, bring her back to our home and claim her. That’s the only thing that’s keeping me sane right now. The thought that soon she will be in my house…

And once she is, I’ll never let her go.

I make it to the house in record time. My first instinct is to go directly to her, but I know I need to calm down a little first, I don’t want to scare her. That won’t do either of us any good.

I head into the office to look over all of the notes that Joe has left me and try to catch up. It’s best to get that out of the way now, because I know once I have sweet Mia in my arms, work will be the last thing on my mind.

What seems like hours later, I get up to make myself another cup of coffee. Only to look at the time and realize I’ve spent too much time in the office and I really need to check on Mia’s car again. Not that I think it’s worth salvaging, but I know if I were to just replace it with a brand new Jeep, she’d probably never feel like an equal.

“Joe,” I call out, as I head to the barn.

“What’s up?” he responds.

“Did Tack get a chance to look at Mia’s car?” Tack is the mechanic that works on our tractor equipment and I know he sometimes will do side work to make an extra buck to feed his growing family.

“Yea, he’s looking at it now. He was ranting over how it’s just a pile of shit and should go to the scrapyard,” Joe replies.

“Yea, I know. Too bad Mia won’t have that, or I would have done it myself. Thanks Joe, you know where I’ll be if you need me.” I respond as I’m walking away.

I walk over to the building that houses our tractors and now Mia’s rust bucket of a Jeep Wrangler, I see Tack under the hood.

“Yo, Tack!” I holler out so he doesn’t bang his head on the hood.

“Hey, Cash. I hate to be the barer of bad news, but I’m not sure this old girl is going to be up and on the road soon.” You can see the defeat in his eyes.

“Why do you say that?” I can see he doesn’t want to tell me. Joe must have told him how I am with Mia already. He obviously knows she’s important to me and that I want to keep her safe.

“Well she needs a new transmission, her tires are shot, and from what I can tell her heater doesn’t work either, not to mention you saw her brakes while you were in town,” he tells me.

“Son of a bitch!” I snarl. Knowing she drove into town in this vehicle, just pisses me off. She wasn’t safe. She could have been stranded on the side of the road where no one could help.

What if the wrong person would have found her? What if she had been hurt?

Just the thought is enough to make my hands shake.

“Sorry Cash. I wish I had better news. I can fix it. But it will take some serious cash, and this rust bucket just isn’t worth it,” he lets me know.

“That’s alright Tack, go ahead and scrap it. Just make sure Mia doesn’t see where it gets sent to. Knowing her she’d try and run after it and demand it could be repairable. Damn, stubborn woman.” I’m exasperated just thinking about what I’m going to tell Mia about her car. “I appreciate you working on it. Send me the bill whenever and I’ll get you paid.”

“You know it,” he says.

I make a mental note to have Joe drive me into the next town and look at getting Mia a new vehicle, something reliable, with a great safety rating and I want it to go good in the snow. It also needs to be bigger, something to eventually hold a growing family.

I’m done waiting. I’m going to go pick Mia up.

I pull into the bed and breakfast, not remembering how I got there, but knowing I was daydreaming about Mia the entire way.