Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 28386 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 142(@200wpm)___ 114(@250wpm)___ 95(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28386 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 142(@200wpm)___ 114(@250wpm)___ 95(@300wpm)
I’m missing someone. I’m missing part of myself. I know it.
He’s out there. He’s out there. He’s out there.
Every time I look to the horizon, I feel that truth like a hot iron on my chest.
I’m in the wrong place. Or he is. Or both. I don’t know where the certainty comes from, only that it’s enormous and it won’t leave me alone. It’s a daily presence.
“I want him found. Now.” I drag in a breath, scream-whispering, “Now.”
The pasture seems to rise around me, preparing to swallow me whole, the chirp of the crickets growing deafening. My notebook is small now. Far away. I drop it out of fear and crawl on hands and knees into the hollow of the Wanting Tree, wrapping my arms around my knees and hugging them to my chest.
That’s when I hear the voice—and the earth’s rotation seems to stop on a dime.
Life just…pauses.
It’s a young man’s voice. As if it’s coming from a great distance away. From beyond the darkness of the hollow. It’s deep and twangy. Full of Kentucky. I can’t make out what he’s saying. The words come and go. Loud and soft. Gone for a few seconds, then back. But I’m holding my breath, yearning to hear every single syllable. I’m electrified by the voice.
“Hello?” I call back, moving to a kneeling position, flattening my palms on the inside of the tree, part of me wondering if I’m having an extreme response to grief. “Is someone there?”
All I hear is a rapid intake of breath. Is that me?
Or someone else?
“Hello?” I try again.
“Hold on.” The voice ebbs in and out. “Hold on.”
A whimper of disbelief leaves me, moisture coasting down my cheeks. This can’t be happening. I’m hearing things. I’m projecting this magic because I want to hold on to this last piece of my grandmother. Right?
No, the golden shimmer is back, just outside of the hollow, the ground trembling beneath my knees. Then sound of swarming locusts grows so loud, I have to slap my hands over my ears, cowering into the heart of the tree. My heart pounds like the hooves of our stallion on fresh packed dirt and there’s a sense of an impending homecoming that I’m almost too scared to believe. To hope for.
As suddenly as it started, the noise stops.
Impenetrable silence falls.
Slowly, I lower my hands from my ears and crawl on hands and knees out of the hollow, looking around, half expecting the ranch to be gone, carried away on the wind. But everything is exactly like it was before.
Except for the shirtless man lying thirty yards away in the grass, a dusty white cowboy hat clutched between his fingers.
No.
No way.
I’m seeing things. It’s probably some trick of the light. A bale of hay positioned at just the right angle. I’ll just go over there, confirm it’s an inanimate object and go to bed, because obviously I need some sleep.
But just as I’m crawling out of the hollow into the grass, the man sits up and looks at me.
And the impact of his eyes is like a battering ram to my heart.
I gulp down a sob, tingles racing from the crown of my head to my fingertips.
I can’t breathe. I can’t…breathe.
I’ve never seen him before, yet somehow he’s familiar. His dark unruly hair and piercing gaze that is soulful and…humorous all at once. He must be a lot older than me, because he’s built like a man, unlike the boys I graduated with. They’re much smaller, softer, while this guy has dirt and chest hair and muscles and all of it fits him. He’s grown into himself. He wears confidence like a cloak. He’s also very curious about me, slowly climbing to his feet, his full height of well over six feet—and he slaps his cowboy hat against his powerful thigh.
“Well, hot damn,” he says in a southern rasp. “Aren’t you a beautiful sight?”
Chapter
Two
Blaste
I have no earthly idea what just happened.
One second, I was inside the tree, searching for the source of the most incredible voice I’d ever heard in my life, the next I was lying in the grass and night had fallen. I’ve passed out drunk in a few fields in my time—all in good fun—but this felt different. I’m fitting to figure all of it out later, though, because right now the only thing that matters is the girl. She’s my only focus. And hell, she’d be any man’s focus.
Sweet Jesus, she’s pretty.
Based on the way she’s dressed and the deep stain on her lips, she must be one of the brothel workers from town. My brother, Jim, doesn’t usually bring women home with him, though. Did she follow him here? Or maybe they didn’t have any available rooms to complete their transaction, so he decided to tumble her in the barn? Whatever the explanation, he’s not laying a finger on this one for the rest of the night. Or ever. In fact, some part of me is praying like hell he hasn’t touched her yet.