Horses Don’t Miss People
HORSES DON’T MISS PEOPLE
Sadie
The truck rumbled beneath my hands as I drove Herbie home, the morning light thin and gray, and I told myself that the hollow ache cracking open somewhere behind my sternum was probably just gas.
It wasn’t gas.
Dawson Lockhart—the boy who had once hauled me, laughing and shrieking, into the ocean at two in the morning and then had the audacity to tell me he was going to marry me for the first time while my lips were turning blue—had slipped out of my cabin before dawn without so much as a sticky note.
Not a text. Not a coffee left on the counter.
Not even a single dark hair on the pillow to prove he’d existed at all.
Just gone, the way a good dream dissolves the second your alarm goes off, leaving you grasping at something you can’t quite name.
I’d done what any reasonable woman does when the man she never stopped loving vanishes into thin air.
I’d laced up my shoes and run until my lungs burned, past every landmark this stupid, beautiful, suffocating small town had conspired to tattoo into my memory.
Each stride felt like a protest against the uncertainty.
My path traced the old logging roads, past the turnoff that led to the upper meadows and the beach where we’d once snuck out in the middle of the night to swim under the stars.
I remembered how he’d shivered in the cold, laughing as he pulled me in, and how I’d thought, even then, that there was nothing in the world more solid than Dawson Lockhart.
I ended up back at Buddy’s. I didn’t venture inside the farmhouse.
It was too much for me to face that early in the morning.
Instead, I hung out on the old tire swing hanging from the Oak tree.
I wasn’t sure why, but I always felt close to my mom when I was by that tree.
Maybe because she used to like to read under it while I swung and climbed its branches.
I tried to connect with her, to feel her presence, I even spoke to her, but it felt like I was speaking to myself.
After half an hour of waiting for a sign from the universe that she was there and heard me, I gave up.
I found Herbie parked under the maple tree, the hood dusted with seeds and sap.
When I opened the door, I was instantly transported back in time, the truck smelled like Buddy.
His cologne permeated the space. I turned the key in the ignition and the engine coughed, then roared to life.
I let it idle for a minute before backing slowly down the gravel drive.
It felt strange to be behind the wheel of Buddy’s truck again.
Almost like I’d stepped into someone else’s life, someone who hadn’t had her heart broken and duct-taped back together so much so that she couldn’t remember what it felt like to be whole.
I couldn’t help but relive the last time I’d driven it, that morning, years ago, when everything fell apart.
The memory was as clear as if it were playing on a screen in front of me.
I’d gone to the Bluewater Inn where everyone stayed for Grad Night.
Everyone except me, thanks to Buddy’s strict regime.
While I was under his roof, there were no overnights with the opposite sex.
The only time I got away with it was when I lied and said I was staying at Abby’s or Ella’s.
But there was no way he would fall for that when he knew the tradition that all seniors rented rooms and stayed at the Bluewater Inn, which was why my curfew was midnight.
I woke up early, got coffee and donuts, drove to the inn, walked up the sidewalk, and saw him through the open window, lying in bed with Vicki Blair. I dropped the coffees and donuts and must have made a noise because it woke him up.
My entire world imploded. I had only a vague memory of stumbling back to the truck and driving away.
I do remember my hands were shaking on the steering wheel.
I couldn’t get them to stop no matter how hard I gripped it as my heart shattered into a million tiny pieces.
I also have a vivid memory of looking in in the rearview mirror and seeing Dawson burst out of the door wearing only his boxer-briefs chasing after me.
I remembered the taste of salt in the air, the sick feeling in my stomach, and the ache in my chest that felt like it would never leave.
Dawson showed up on my doorstep a couple of hours later and apologized.
He didn’t deny it. He didn’t make excuses.
He did say he was drinking, but that was his only explanation.
By ten p.m. I was on a flight to New York.
I showed up at my Uncle Ronnie’s, asked if I could stay the summer, and never looked back.
But even after everything, I never stopped wondering what happened that night.
He told me he’d been drinking. For years, I tried to convince myself that was enough—that alcohol could be the blame—but doubt lingered like smoke, curling into every scenario I tried to play out in my head that would make his behavior acceptable.
Now, as I drove Herbie along the coastline that led back to the ranch, I realized I’d never bothered to ask myself what I really wanted. I’d spent so long running from pain that I’d forgotten how to move toward something better.
Could I forgive Dawson for his transgression? We were young, but I had no suspicion that he was unhappy or that he had any sort of wandering eye. That was why it was so blindsiding. He never gave me any reason to suspect him. It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I’d had no idea he was capable of that, so what else was he capable of? That was what had truly devastated me, even more than the cheating itself.
The silence in the cab was comforting, a buffer between me and the questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
I took the long way home, windows down despite the chill, letting the wind sting my cheeks and clear my head.
The sun was starting to burn through the clouds, casting everything in a golden haze, and for a moment I felt weightless, as if the past had loosened its grip on me.
But the closer I got to the ranch, the tighter my chest became. I thought about Dawson, the haunted look on his face when he thought I wasn’t watching. Something wasn’t right. I replayed our conversation from last night, searching for clues in the pauses and the things left unsaid.
He’d mentioned that he’d written to me after I left.
That there were letters. The more I turned it over in my mind, the more it didn’t add up.
Buddy had always known where I was. If Dawson wrote to me, why hadn’t I received anything?
I’d even asked Buddy about Dawson a few times, desperate for some scrap of news, and he’d never once mentioned the letters.
Would it have changed if I’d gotten them?
Probably. No—absolutely. Even after all the years and all the hurt and all the reasons that had turned into bricks stacked up like a wall between us, the truth was that a single word from Dawson would have torn it all down.
That was the reason I’d blocked him. Not because I hated him, or wanted to punish him, or because I was so noble that I could stay away on the strength of principle alone.
It was the opposite. I knew that if I spoke to him, if I even heard his voice, I’d be too tempted to get the next flight back to Valentine Bay, and pretend that none of it—the heartbreak, the betrayal—had ever happened.
I needed to find out why Buddy had kept Dawson’s letters from me, but I didn’t want to risk destroying what little peace Buddy had managed to carve out for himself.
I couldn’t bear the thought of forcing him to watch his granddaughter ricochet back into a broken relationship that everyone in town believed was already dead and buried.
Even now, when I let myself go there, it felt like a selfishness I couldn’t justify.
As I pulled into the long, aggressively manicured drive of Lockhart Ranch, all those good intentions shriveled in the heat of jealousy.
A Porsche Cayenne was idling at the gate, its pearl-white paint gleaming against the backdrop of the old-growth oaks.
I watched, frozen behind Herbie’s windshield, as the driver’s window rolled down.
The woman inside was beautiful in the way only people who went to med school and also had time for Pilates and highlights could be—manicured, toned, and impossibly perfect.
Dr. Angie Chang gave me a quick glance that was both assessing and dismissive, then gunned the engine and sped off toward the main road.
I made my way to my cabin, Herbie’s engine ticking under my hands, and let the jealousy throb in my chest until it gave way to something even uglier: shame.
Not just because of how much I cared, but because of what it revealed about me.
I hated cheating. I despised the very idea of being the other woman.
I’d spent my entire life making sure I didn’t become the kind of person who hurt people the way I’d been hurt—and yet, here I was, face burning, heart pounding, tempted beyond all reason by my ex-boyfriend and his stupid, perfect jawline.
After parking, I found myself trudging toward the stables, past the paddocks where the Lockharts’ longhorns grazed with the deliberate nonchalance of royalty.
I told myself I was just getting some air, but the truth was that I needed to see Dawson in the daylight, to remind myself of how much distance there still was between us.
I needed to prove to myself that I could look him in the eye and walk away unscathed.