“To what end?” His grip was firm when she set her palm against hers. “What good does it do if I tell you what I know? Trust your memories, not how other people perceived you.”
Hints of the coldness she’d experienced that first day chilled the space between them.
Chase closed her door and rounded the hood. When he climbed into the truck and started the engine, he glanced her way and removed his hat, setting it in the seat between them. “I’m not trying to make it difficult.”
“Then tell me what I want to know.” Her emotions spiraled. The earlier laughter no longer bubbled and lightened her mood. Anger and frustration took hold. She’d been warned about that too. She clamped her tongue between her teeth to keep from calling him every foul name that came to mind. It wasn’t his fault. He had a point. Anything he told her would be his version of her, not who she was in her heart.
Only her memories could tell her that.
“You were fearless.” He wheeled the truck down a rutted path that knocked them both side to side. An aged barn emerged when they rounded a corner. It leaned toward the ground, the tilted roof rusty and worn. Chase drove all the way up to the barn, tapped her gloves, and picked up his hat. “Even when something scared you, you never let your fear or what other people thought stop you. I still see that in you.”
“I don’t.” Her skin prickled. “If I’m so fearless, what am I doing here except running away from my problems?” She held up a hand to stop him from defending her. It happened withoutconscious thought— more of a muscle memory than a decision. She dragged her hand back down and tugged on the gloves. “Can we talk about something else? I promised myself I wouldn’t make today about my amnesia. I failed, but I’d like to finish out the day in a good way.”
“What do you want to talk about?” His boots made soft thuds with every step. Boot prints appeared when he lifted his feet, and she had a sudden urge to step into the hollows he left behind.
“Tell me about you. What was it like growing up here? Did you always want to be a cowboy?” He’d mentioned it that first day, and she’d never gotten more of the story. “Did you always live here?”
“Yep. Born and raised.” He shoved open a squeaky side door and ducked into the darkness. “Come on in. It looks rough, but it’s fine.”
She eyed the structure. It all came down to trust. Did she trust that Chase knew what he was talking about? She fixed the gloves where they’d slid down her fingers and entered the barn. The smell of hay hit her right away, and she sneezed with enough violence for her eyes to sting.
“God bless you.” Chase weaved his way along a narrow path between towering stacks of hay bales. “Cowboying and ranching are close to the same thing. I like the responsibility and having a job that fulfils me.”
Hmm. Did she have that? She worked back through the memory of that day she’d tried to return to work. She’d been so knotted up over not remembering the people and struggling with the day-to-day tasks that it had blurred into a nightmare. None of it made sense. She remembered how to walk and talk but had struggled with her job despite six months of intact memories. If this God Chase and Sarah believed in truly cared, why was he still punishing her? He’d locked her memories away and she wasdoing anything she could to retrieve them, even going to that church service.
“What’s your last memory?” Chase’s words cut through her murky thoughts.
He hefted a bale of hay and chucked it onto another stack. Dust stirred into the air and drifted lazily.
Sweltering heat wrapped around her, clogging her throat. “The Christmas one.”
He winced in what looked like sympathy. “What’s your favorite memory that you have?”
“I don’t like this game.” She swung her arms back and forth by her sides. “Put me to work. I’m all decked out and got nothing to do.”
He grunted while throwing another bale of hay up onto a stack seven feet high. “Grab that last one and put it to your left.”
She bent at the waist and gripped the grass strings, straightened her legs, and heaved. The bale scraped over the ground but didn’t lift higher than her boots. “How’d you make this look so easy?”
He flexed his arms, showing off a rather impressive amount of muscle. “Experience.” He turned away and tossed another. “You’re not getting out of answering. Favorite memory?”
“Laughing with you this morning.” She admitted it quietly; almost afraid he’d laugh. “Everything up until then has been chaotic and full of fear and uncertainty. This morning, I felt human again, like a whole person and not a fragmented shell.”
She strained again, this time lifting the hay bale up high enough to slam it on top of the single bale to her right. Her throat ached. She blamed the dust and not the sudden intense way Chase stared at her. She squirmed under that gaze but held it without flinching.
“I wish I could promise you’ll get your memories back.” He finished moving the stack of hay, then moved on to another.
“What’s the goal here?” He shot her a questioning look, and she patted the hay. “Why are you moving hay from one stack to another?”
“Checking for mold or damp spots. We put this hay up late in the fall. I’m cautious about letting it dry, but I always check it when we reach this point.” The quiet sounds of him throwing hay around like it was frisbees instead of fifty-pound blocks fell between them. “Ranching is the kind of thing that can take over your life. Our finances rely on the cows, the hay, things that most people never think about.”
“What’s your favorite memory here on the ranch?” She picked at the hay beneath her. “And you can’t steal my memory. I want one from years ago. Tell me about the first time you rode a horse, or something like that.”
The edges of her vision blurred, and another memory fragment speared her.
“You can do it.” The male voice in her ear was warm and inviting. “Put your foot there and swing up, just like we practiced.”
“I know.” She grabbed the horse’s mane and the back of the saddle, bounced, and swung up. Her body settled. “It’s different when there’s a real horse under you instead of the saddle on a fence.”
