This is ridiculous.
I barely know her. I shouldn’t feel like this. Not over someone I kissed and tasted once, talked to on all of three occasions, and barely managed to convince to stay seated at a bar with me for more than an hour. She’s probably long gone already—back on a flight to New York, returning to her high-rise apartment and her glossy life.
Maybe she’ll write a smart-ass article about the strange little cowboy town where she accidentally kissed one of the locals like it was the damn climax of a Nicholas Sparks novel.
And I’ll still be here.
Riding bulls and broncs, working the ranch and fixing fence lines—just doing what I always do.
But that doesn’t stop me from remembering that little black dress she wore that made my knees buckle a little just looking at her. And her scent?
Soft. Sweet. Fresh. Like...
Like bluebonnets blooming after spring rain. The thought crashes into my mind before I can stop it.
Bluebonnets?
Fuck me, I actually just compared a girl to a flower. What the hell is wrong with me?
My mind flashes back to Mia’s face and the glint in her eyes that drew me in most. Those striking blue eyes that said everything her mouth was too stubborn to admit. The way she tried so hard to pretend none of this was getting to her, but her eyes gave her away every damn time she looked my way.
The way she looked at me when she thought I wasn’t watching—like she saw something in me I didn’t even know I’d buried.
That’s the part I can’t shake.
I lean forward, rubbing Midnight’s crest, trying to distract myself. She flicks her ears back at me, like even she’s tired of my brooding bullshit.
Fuck.
“She’s gone,” I mutter. “Let it go Taylor.”
It’s not like anything could’ve worked anyway. That’s what I tell myself—again—clinging to the excuse like it’s gospel. I don’t date. I don’t open up. I don’t give anyone the kind of power Mia had in the palm of her hand after five damn minutes.
But when she talked about Cold Springs, about needing to escape the small town life for the noise and anonymity of the big city—I understood her in a way that startled me. It was like she wasn’t talking about geography at all.
It was about needing to outrun the shadows chasing you. About trying to find yourself somewhere new, hoping distance would dilute the pain.
I’ve been doing the same thing from the comfort of my own damn porch for years.
I should’ve walked away the first time she smirked at me, like she could dismantle me with one sarcastic quip and sideways glance at a time.
Instead, I kissed her.
God, that kiss.
Seared into my mind, like the blueprint for every kiss that’ll ever come after. Like my body learned something it’ll never unlearn. And I’ll compare every future kiss to it, every touch, every woman—because none of them will be her.
And I knew it the second my mouth met hers—that I was in trouble. That I’d just sealed my fate with lips, I was never meant to taste twice.
She'll move on. Hell, she probably already has.
And now I’m out here, trying to outpace a ghost who probably left town already.
Bluebonnets.
For fuck’s sake.
It’s pathetic.
