Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Jackson Carey did call her that night, and he came in in the morning to get a cinnamon twist, and Cara felt like she should be more excited about that than she was.
Sort of like riding horses, honestly. She just couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm.
He was a nice man. He was handsome. And he was exactly the kind of person that she should be happy to go on a date with. He was definitely gearing up to ask her out.
She should just put him out of his misery and ask him if he wanted to go out. Why not? She was flattered by the attention. He had a Walker vibe to him, she thought. Easy.
Her heart didn’t jump up into her throat when he walked into the bakery.
She got a pleasant little feeling of warmth, but it wasn’t like the whole vasovagal response she had when Zane walked into a space she was in.
It had been extremely telling when she had just finished talking to Jackson, and then Zane had come in, looking like a bad boy fantasy, all black cowboy hat and black jeans, intense dark eyes and beard.
She needed to stop. Fascinating was fine, obsession was something else entirely. He was hot. So what? Many men were hot. Jackson was handsome. She couldn’t bring herself to think hot. But handsome and nice.
So maybe she should obsess about him.
She was feeling bad about her decision to not go on the ride, frustrated with herself, and honestly, the two men were sort of a metaphor for the thing she was frustrated about. Jackson represented something safe, something secure.
Zane represented something wild that lived on the wrong side of danger.
She wasn’t taking either option, that was the point. She was pursuing nothing. She was still stuck, like she was caregiving, like she still had restrictions around her life, and it was like she had no idea how to live differently.
A long time ago, she’d heard that when kittens spent the first part of their life in a cage, even when you let them out, they still saw bars around them.
She felt like she was one of those kittens.
Seeing bars that weren’t there, but even knowing that didn’t help her feel like she could break through them.
It was difficult to fight against the most essential part of your nature.
Difficult to come to terms with something that felt like it was keeping you… safe.
She had never been in physical danger, never once in her whole life, but she had sure seen a lot of people die too early.
It was the kind of thing that fundamentally changed your brain chemistry. Having to look at the fragility of life, of love.
She’d been thirteen when her father died.
Her mom had already been showing very early signs of dementia.
Though, they didn’t realize that at the time.
But her mom had been the one who seemed fragile.
Who seemed like she was going to need to be taken care of, and her dad had been larger than life.
Hale and hearty. Such a kind and fun man.
He had a booming laugh and had been just full of life and joy.
She wasn’t like him. Her brother wasn’t like him.
Her mom hadn’t been like him. He had been completely unique.
His personality had elevated all of them.
He made them have more fun. He’d made them try things they wouldn’t have otherwise tried.
He’d never had any health problems, he had tons of energy and heart.
He was just awesome.
And then he had a heart attack that killed him almost instantly. A widow maker.
They’d sadly discovered why they were called that.
They made frail women into widows, and thirteen-year-old girls fatherless, and that shock, that had never gone away.
That memory made her hate being estranged from her brother at the moment.
Because he was one of the only other people on Earth who knew their dad the way that she did.
Marlowe had known him for a little while. Aiden and Marlowe had been around twenty-one when he died, and Marlowe had been with her brother for three years at that point. She had known him from family dinners and a couple of camping trips.
But it wasn’t the same as being raised by him. It wasn’t the same as having that great, gregarious figure in your life and then just having him gone.
She watched The Muppet Christmas Carol every year, and the ghost of Christmas present always oddly reminded her of her father. That was a weird thing that she’d never said to anybody. But sometimes she watched it just because she felt like she could see her dad around the holidays. In a Muppet.
Yeah. She was sad.
But it was the mood. That joy, cheer, and gregariousness.
Even if it did make her a little bit sad. Even if it did make her miss what she had had.
She sighed heavily and went back into the kitchen. The bakery would be closing soon, and everybody would be out on their ride.
She had lived here for three months, and she had barely done any of the outdoor things. She hadn’t put herself out of her comfort zone at all.
Well, she had Jackson’s number now, so she could call him. She could make a date with him. But she had an immediate negative reaction to that.
She could go on a hike. There were so many trails all around the property, and they were supposed to be very easy to navigate. Easy enough that they sent their guests out on them unguided all the time.
It was coolish, and there was a bit of cloud cover, which was nice, because this late in the month, it was starting to get blistering hot at points during the day, and she didn’t necessarily want to go out into that.
Riding a horse also seemed like a bridge too far, but a little nature hike? Surely that was within her scope.
She locked the bakery up and got into her car, trying to decide which trail she was going to take.
She knew there was one that followed the bottom of one of the hills and gave you a good view of Painted Ridge.
Painted Ridge was called that because it had fine sand all over the side, and cream, red, and black sand ran through it like brushstrokes.
When it rained, it looked even more astonishing as the water bled into the colors and deepened the hues.
Mustang River was such a magical place. It was green and lovely in places and had the look of the high desert in others. There were petrified forests and beds of lava rock, bottlebrush-shaped pine trees, and twisty, enchanted-looking manzanitas.
And she had spent so little time in any of it.
Once she had chosen a trail, she sent Marlowe a text letting her know where she was going and parked her car at the trailhead.
It was an easy trail. And not very long, she didn’t think.
She had spent a lot of time looking at the little brochures that they gave to guests, and she was pretty sure she remembered that this was only a couple of miles round-trip.
She might not be very adventurous, but she knew she could walk a couple of miles.
She did that regularly around town.
She was wearing a dress, but she was wearing very sensible, comfortable shoes, and in spite of the clouds, it was warm. She put her phone in her dress pocket and started up the trail.
It was pretty. Pristine and quiet out here, and she let out a slow breath, glad that she had made the decision to come out there.
She should do this more often. Really, she could do it every day after work.
Okay, maybe that was a little bit overkill, but it wasn’t the worst idea.
The trail wound steeply up the mountain, and sweat beaded across her skin, and she found herself thankful for the cloud cover.
She’d assumed it would be an easy hike, since it was suggested for guests, but maybe she was even less outdoorsy than she’d realized.
This was on her, probably, for assuming this would be like a casual walk around town.
She felt a raindrop land on her nose, fat and unexpected, and then there was a rumble of thunder in the distance.
She frowned.
She hadn’t thought that it would actually rain. It had been a very dry summer. And the day had been so warm earlier.
Oh well. It was warm. At least, that was what she thought for the first few minutes, and then it began to feel very cold.
Because the rain started to fall thick and fast and the wind began to pick up.
She hadn’t realized she would be walking into a thunderstorm.
But it seemed like no one had realized that since they had all gone out on a trail ride.
She didn’t start getting worried until the trail became muddy and slick.
It wasn’t terribly high up, but it was high-ish, and there was a hill at the other side of the trail, with the mountain on the other side.
That was when she decided she was turning around. She couldn’t do the whole loop, not in this weather.
She took a breath, and turned around, and began to walk back down.
She was annoyed that she had been thwarted. It felt like a metaphor. A metaphor for her life.
She had tried to do something cool, and she had failed at it. She had tried to step out of her comfort zone, and it had gotten even further out of her comfort zone, and she had to quit.
She was exasperated, but she didn’t want to be the dumb girl in the first fifteen minutes of a crime show who got herself killed because she didn’t listen to her intuition.
That meant quitting.
But she was still mad about it.
Then the ground disappeared from under her feet.
She was falling, sliding, the dirt biting into her legs, a rock gouging her knee, as she tumbled down the embankment.
She reached blindly around her, trying to grab something, trying to put the brakes on her descent, but she couldn’t grasp anything.
The ground was too soft, and there was nothing to hold.
She fell the last foot off the embankment. A hard rock stopped her and sent her tumbling to the ground, debris, rocks, and mud landing on top of her, burying her lower half.