Chapter 14 #2
Her legs carried her forward though every instinct screamed stop. The Christmas card lay face-up on the worn wood, edges catching the overhead light.
She picked it up.
The painted cowboy stared back at her, hues too bright for the yellowed paper. Cade’s likeness, the set of his shoulders, the slant of his hat. But even as she watched, the image shifted. Colors bled together like watercolors in rain. The firm lines of his jaw softened, dissolving.
“No.” She pressed her thumb over the figure, trying to hold him in place. The paper felt warm, almost alive. “You can’t. Not like this.”
But the paint didn’t care what she wanted. It ran and merged, Cade’s form melting into the background until she couldn’t tell where he ended and the landscape began. His hat became a shadow. His hand on the horse’s neck just another swirl of brown.
The warmth faded from the card. It became just old paper in her hands, brittle at the edges. A Christmas card with a half-finished painting, like someone started creating a cowboy and given up midway.
Tessa’s knees hit the concrete. She didn’t remember falling. The card fluttered from her fingers and landed in the sawdust. She stared at it, waiting for the image to reform. For Cade to step out of the paint like he stepped into her life. For this to be an anxiety dreams so she could wake up.
Einstein nickered above her, mournful, the sound he made when he was upset. She glanced up at him through tears. His dark eyes reflected the overhead light, making her mini appear ancient and knowing.
“He’s gone.” She didn’t sound like herself. Too small. Too broken. “And I’m the one who sent him away.”
* * *
Snow slapped Cade’s face.
When he staggered up, the cookhouse roof sagged under drifts, smoke curling from its stovepipe. Lanterns swung above the barn door, flames bending in the wind. No artificial lights, no paved yard. Just rough timbers, snow-buried fences, and the yard as it had always been.
He was back in 1878.
Relief should have hit. He made it through, alive, still standing. This was his world, the one he built his life on. He should be happy.
He was not.
Men poured from the cookhouse, shouting.
“By God, it’s Cade!”
“Thought the storm took you!”
“You made it, Sullivan!”
Hands clapped his back, arms pulled him in tight. One of the older men swore under his breath and wiped his eyes before he let go.
Another shoved a mug at him, voice rough with laughter, promising to fill it with whiskey. Their relief pressed in close, reassuring and warm.
It should have filled him. Once, it would have. But the noise rang hollow against the memory of Tessa.
“Where in blazes you been?” Captain Murray asked.
“Storm covered the trail. I found shelter till it passed.” The lie came quick, automatic. His mouth moved, the same as always, but the words felt borrowed.
Then he spied Paloma at the hitching rail. Another man held her reins. Jeffers, green as grass and barely old enough to shave, grinned. “I lost my horse and I was on foot, couldn’t see a damn thing. And then this one appeared. She saved my hide.”
Cade stopped. Paloma carried him through eight winters, across rivers in flood, through storms that would have broken lesser horses. She was his one constant.
He held out his hand. “She’s mine.”
Jeffers fumbled the reins over, shame creeping across his face. “Weren’t sure you’d be back.”
He took the reins, ran his hand down Paloma’s neck. She leaned into his touch, nickering low. She knew him still. But the sting remained. He could be filled in for. Substituted. Erased with the world barely noticing.
The men hauled Cade into the cookhouse, shoved him onto a bench, pressed a bowl into his hands. The long table gleamed with grease. Lanterns smoked against the rafters, shadows clinging to every corner.
The stew was meat and potatoes swimming in fat, everything the same dull color. He lifted the spoon, swallowed. His throat closed around it.
Yesterday, no, a century and a half from now, Tessa held out a donut and brightened his world.
Wyatt’s words came back to him. The moment I came through the portal, my old life ended. Same might be true for you.
For Wyatt, the card spit him out. When he’d returned to 1878, the men had not known him, and he nearly faded into nothing until Eliza pulled him back.
Cade had not glitched. He was back at home. The men knew his name. His horse stood outside. His bunk waited. The card shoved him right back where he belonged. So why did he feel like a burned-out stump inside?
Because belonging here meant losing her.
The men rattled off problems, fences down, cattle scattered, water troughs frozen. Work needed doing. Fix the southeast stretch first. Drive the herd out of Pine Gulley. Split wood.
Tessa’s face rose in his mind and he missed her something fierce. He thought about the night they went skating and the fun they’d had going shopping.
He glanced down at his clothes, startled to find he wore the clothes from the Christmas card painting and not the clothes she bought for him. How?
He pushed back from the table, and stepped outside again, restless and unsure of himself. Paloma waited at the hitching post, ears flicking as he approached. He pressed his forehead into her mane, and shut his eyes. He should have felt home. He should have felt whole.
All he felt was grief at the loss of Tessa.
Tessa on the ice rink, her hand grabbing for his when her skates went out from under her.
Tessa pulling him into that clothing shop, holding up a flannel shirt against his chest, telling him he couldn’t live in the same three shirts forever.
Tessa under the mistletoe, going still when she realized where they were, her eyes finding his just before—
The ache tore through him, sharp as the wind.
Footsteps behind him. He turned to see Rhett Kelsey step out of the house, narrow shoulders, ink-stained fingers, eyeglasses, always watching. Even though he was younger than Cade, he was a widower. Five years ago, consumption took his wife and young son.
“You don’t look like a man who found his way home,” Rhett said. “You look like a man who lost it.”
Cade blinked. “Storm took me by surprise, but I made it.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Rhett paused, studying him. “You’re back, but you’re not the same. You’ve changed.”
“Not sure what you’re getting at.”
Rhett kept his eyes on the horizon. “I know the look. Man who left something behind he can’t get back. Nothing here fills that hole.”
The truth of it sat heavy. Cade said nothing. Rhett was an observant man, but this was downright spooky.
Rhett gave a small nod, the kind a man gives when he’s said all he dares. He turned back toward the house, shoulders hunched.
Cade stayed where he was beside Paloma. He had his horse. His crew. His work. Everything that once defined him.
But it wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough again.
He thought of Wyatt who told him his old life was gone, the new one permanent. Cade’s fate was crueler. His old life reclaimed him, but his heart was chained to the new.
And the woman who haunted him wouldn’t be born for a hundred and twenty years, wearing a sweater with lights that blinked like stars, holding the only thing that might carry him back to her. The Christmas card painting.
But she had to want him.