She built and discarded several plans for convincing Chase. It all came back to his request that she give him time.
“Can I really love him if I never remember our past?” She returned Beatrice to her stall, staying with the mare and whispering questions into her furry ears. “What if I never remember? Even worse. What if I remember years from now and it tears us apart. He claims he has no idea what happened.”
She had no reason to think he’d lie. They were back to that awful place where he had information and refused to divulgeit out of some inane reasoning that it might influence her memories in some negative way. Or was he afraid to tell her?
Beatrice flicked her tail, and the rough strands lashed over Michelle’s arm.
“Okay. I hear you. Wrong train of thought. All he’s done is try to protect me. I might not agree with his method, but he’s trying to help.” She believed that. If she didn’t, then love was out of the question.
She recognized Chase’s steps the minute he crossed the threshold. He walked straight to the office and disappeared inside, not avoiding her but not seeking her out.
It hurt either way.
Leaving Beatrice’s stall, she retreated to the B&B and her Bible. Chase, Aunt Sarah, and the messages she’d heard at church told her to turn to God anytime she had a problem. They all promised that God cared about everything. Even her broken heart? She flipped through the Bible’s thin pages, reading scraps of verses. When that didn’t help, she dragged the chair over to the window and curled up with a notebook, pen, and the Bible. She poured her pain onto the pages. All the words she’d been unable to articulate into a prayer appeared in scrunched scribbles so shaky they’d be unintelligible to anyone but her.
Tears blurred her eyes and fell onto the notebook. Coming home was not a mistake, but it certainly hurt like one. Loving Chase in the past was not a mistake.
Loving him now might end up breaking her for good. She anticipated the next memory. Surely there would be more. Answers were in her head, everything she needed to know about why they’d failed years ago.
That kind of love wasn’t meant to be thrown away. It was meant to be treasured. Something had torn them apart. It all came back to that. Chase claimed not to know. Which meant it had been her. Had she been at fault? Or had she learnedsomething so devastating about Chase that she’d left it all behind?
Chapter Thirteen
Maybe he should’ve told her. She’d wanted to know what happened to them. Telling her she’d left him and he still didn’t understand why would hurt her more than not saying anything. She might not have her memory, but she hadn’t changed so much that he didn’t still know how she thought.
The office chair squeaked. “You’re quiet this morning.”
“Lot on my mind.” He turned the coffee cup around in his hands and peered into the blue ceramic. He’d drank almost the whole thing and had no memory of taking the first sip.
“I’d ask, but pretty obvious it’s about Michelle.”
Leave it to Mom to jump right into the problem without any hint of warning. “I’m riding out with the boys in a bit. Got a few cows missing on the lower pasture.”
“They’re probably holed up in the valley by the creek.” Mom spun around to face the computer. “Yep. That herd always gets split up this time of year.”
“We’ll bring them up to the southwest pasture for the rest of the month. They’ll be old enough to separate calves soon.”
Mom noted the change in the computer before leaning back and picking up her coffee. She eyed him over the rim, questions pulsing between them in the sullen silence.
His sullen silence. He’d refused to talk about Michelle since coming up from the barn yesterday. His heart couldn’t take the conversation yet.
She remembered both confessing their love for each other. It was devastating and poignant.Lord, is she ever going to remember why she left?
He had other things to worry about. Things that he’d considered priorities a month ago. The minute Michelle walked back into his life, his perspective changed. He’d put himself in a dangerous position and gave Michelle all the power. The ranch needed him to put effort into running all the operations. He couldn’t just stop doing his job.
Even if he wanted to. Just long enough to see how things worked out with Michelle.
The risk outweighed the reward. She might never regain her memory.
She might choose him today and leave tomorrow when a new memory reminded her how much she loved the city.
“You look lost.” Mom’s comment was quiet, almost like she didn’t mean for him to hear.
“Thinking.” He did that a lot. “If this herd gets split every year, why do we always put them in that pasture, knowing we’re going to have to go hunting for them?”
“Because you know where they’ll be. If you put them in a new place and they separate, you won’t know where to look. That herd’s always been peculiar.” Mom shrugged and stood, making her way to the coffee pot on the counter that ran behind her desk.
The home office was cozy and clean, not cluttered and somewhat chaotic like the barn office. She kept this spaceorganized all the way down to how many paperclips stayed on the desk versus in the drawer.
