Tucker
“The usual, hon?” Dottie asks as I reach the front of the line. She’s run Biscuit Ridge, the town’s most popular bakery and café, for longer than I’ve been alive.
I tip my hat at her. “Yes. Thank you, ma’am.”
Smiling sweetly, Dottie plucks the largest chocolate chip muffin from the cabinet and pops it into a paper bag. “I do sell other muffins, y’know?”
Chuckling, I take the bag from her outstretched hand. “Yes, Dot, I know. I’m just partial to choc chip.”
With a melodic laugh, she continues. “Oh, I’m well aware.
You’ve been ordering the same thing since you were knee-high to a grasshopper—well, minus the coffee.
I still remember those Sunday mornings all those years ago when you’d be here at opening like clockwork, for two coffees and two muffins—always your standard latte and a vanilla one, and always chocolate chip muffins. ”
Dottie looks almost wistful as she recalls the memories.
I, however, feel as though there’s suddenly a lead balloon in my stomach.
It’s not like I don’t think about her constantly, but it feels different when she’s brought up by other people.
Although I suppose Dottie didn’t actually bring her up at all, my own conscience did.
Those Sunday mornings feel like a lifetime ago.
“Feels like just yesterday,” I reply, smiling politely in hopes that Dottie can’t see straight through the lie.
After bidding Dottie farewell, I take my time strolling the streets, enjoying the brief reprieve from work as I sip on my coffee and scoff down the muffin. I’m popping the last piece of muffin in my mouth when I finally reach my destination.
The bell overhead chimes lightly as I stride into Clark Apparel.
The renowned Beaumont Ridge cowboy brand, run by one of the best people I’ll ever know, is our one-stop-shop for all ranch and rodeo needs.
Ranch hands wore through the knees of their jeans again?
Randy will sort ‘em out with new ones in a matter of hours. The tie down ropes have up and disappeared from the school’s barn?
Just give Randy a call, he’ll have three replacement options quicker than you can find where the kids hid them.
Despite telling myself I’ll be in and out in five minutes max—only here to collect some uniforms for the upcoming annual rodeo—I’m unsurprised when I find myself wandering into the horse accessory aisle on instinct.
Ginger is probably the most spoiled mare in all of Tennessee; she certainly doesn’t need a damn thing, but that doesn’t stop me from looking anyway.
The temperature is due to drop anytime now, so it’s probably not the worst idea to look at a new blanket for her.
She’s had her current one for a while, and it’s getting a little shabby.
A shuffling sound to my right draws my attention.
With her back to me, a woman fiddles haphazardly with a few reins on the wall.
The way she’s struggling to organize them makes me think she’s never set foot near a damn horse in her life.
I could wander over and offer my assistance—I can tell she’s not a local, so I doubt she’d get all up in arms about it—but I might just mind my own business to—
I clock the impending disaster a moment too late.
An almighty crash ricochets across the shop floor as the display tumbles, taking the woman down with it.
Hauling ass down the aisle, I pull the shelving off the poor woman currently crumpled in a heap, limbs and blond hair everywhere.
The shelving now a safe distance away, I offer my hand to the woman who still has her face turned down. “Here, let me help you up.”
The way she noticeably stiffens when I speak is slightly off putting, but I continue to hold out my hand regardless. It’s not until she looks up at me that I understand why, and my body stiffens like hers as I take a step back.
The face that’s staring back at me brings me to my knees.
There, between the saddles and the stirrups, is the only girl I’ve ever loved.
Except girl is no longer appropriate.
Because in the twelve years since I’ve seen her, she’s turned into a woman—a woman with the ability to leave a grown man breathless.
You could line up every supermodel and actress in the world, but they wouldn’t hold a candle to Gracie Clark.
She’s both the same and yet different. Gone is the strawberry-blonde shoulder-length hair of her childhood, replaced by long, blonde strands framing her face and billowing around her chest. A face that looks unchanged, only more mature.
Her eyes are wide with sheer shock, the blue of her pupils are bright.
The sunlight streaming through the shop’s windows makes them look almost ethereal.
Even from a couple of feet away, I can make out the light dusting of freckles across her nose—the sight of which threatens to transport me back to long-suppressed memories of summer nights spent lying side by side in the truck bed counting those freckles one by one.
I used to know the placement of each one across the bridge of her nose, all sixteen of them.
I’d start to count them, she’d let out a melodic laugh, and just like that, everything would fade away. It was just my Gracie and me.
Gracie. Just Gracie. I lost the right to call her mine a long time ago.
Once again, I reach out my hand in assistance, the gesture shaking her from her shocked stupor.
Rather than let me assist her, Gracie scrambles back out of my reach and haphazardly gets to her feet.
I get the feeling just being near me is bad enough, let alone touching me.
I’m immediately disappointed in the lack of contact—I need to know what it feels like to have her hand in mine again.
I’m staring, but I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.
Mesmerizing.
That’s the only word that even remotely begins to describe her.
I let my gaze trail down from her face, taking in the rest of her.
There are curves I’ve never seen, never felt beneath my touch, creating the most alluring figure—slight around her waist, but with hips and thighs that the teenage Gracie dreamed of having.
Her boot cut jeans hug her lower body perfectly, as though they were custom made for her.
She dons Clark Signature boots beneath the hem, matching my own.
Gaze roaming from toe to tip, I meet her piercing eyes once more.
She hasn’t moved an inch since she got to her feet—hasn’t even blinked.
I really should stop staring, it’s rude.
But I can’t. Nothing in the world has ever drawn me in the way Gracie did, something that clearly even time can’t change. I don’t think anything could ever beat this view.
When I lost her, it was in slow motion. There wasn’t any immediate heartbreak.
There was loss at first, definitely, but not heartbreak.
That came slowly, without warning, and by the time I realized it, it was too late for anything to be done.
We had drifted apart like feathers in the wind.
Yet, by some unknown miracle, the wind has returned her.
And I wasn’t going to let her go this time.