Now, pulling into my apartment complex in Uptown, I touched the horseshoe pendant at my throat. Five hours of highway between us, but I could still feel him—taste coffee and promises on my lips, feel the phantom pressure of his hands on my waist.
My apartment was on the fifteenth floor of a gleaming tower that promised "luxury urban living." I'd been so proud when I'd signed the lease, proof that the ranch girl from Copper Creek had made it. Now the lobby's marble and mirrors just felt cold, pretentious. The doorman nodded in recognition, but I'd never learned his name. After three years, I'd never learned any of my neighbors' names.
The apartment itself was exactly as I'd left it—minimalist, modern, everything in shades of gray and white because a designer had told me it was sophisticated. No color. No warmth. No life.
I'd lived here for three years, but it had never been home. Just a very expensive place to sleep between office hours.
The boxes I'd ordered online were waiting by my door. I started in the bedroom, folding clothes I'd forgotten I owned. Designer suits that cost more than most people's rent. Shoes that had only touched pavement between the car and office. A life that had looked perfect from the outside but had been slowly suffocating me from within.
My phone buzzed. Wyatt.
Missing you already. Honey is moping.
I smiled, texting back:Just the horse?
Maybe the rancher too.
Only 13 days left.
Too long. The bed still smells like you though.
Heat flooded through me at the memory of our morning in that bed. I was about to respond when a knock at the door interrupted. I wasn't expecting anyone—had told no one except HR that I was back in town.
Mark stood in my doorway, looking like a catalog ad in pressed khakis and a button-down that probably cost more than a ranch hand made in a week. His smile was the one that had once charmed me—confident, practiced, just the right amount of vulnerable.
"Heard you were back," he said, already moving to enter.
I blocked him. "How?"
"Building management called. Said you'd scheduled a move-out inspection." He tried to peer past me at the boxes. "You're not seriously doing this."
"I seriously am."
"Ivy, come on. You're upset about the ranch visit. I handled it badly, I admit. But throwing away your whole life over a fight?"
"It's not about the fight, Mark."
"Then what? That cowboy? You're giving up everything we built for some rough-handed rancher who'll have you barefoot and pregnant within a year?"
The casual insult to Wyatt made my temper flare, but I breathed through it. Mark didn't deserve my anger anymore. He didn't deserve anything from me.
"We never built anything, Mark," I said calmly. "We had sex. We attended the same events. We looked good on paper. But we never built anything real."
His face flushed. "We dated for eight months."
"And in all that time, did you ever ask about my childhood? My family? Why I never talked about home?"
"I assumed?—"
"You assumed a lot. That I'd be grateful for your attention. That I'd follow your plan. That I wanted the same empty life you did." I shook my head, feeling lighter with each word. "We never had anything but convenient sex and compatible calendars. I'm sorry if you thought it was more."
"You're making a mistake," he said, but the confidence was cracking. "Dallas is where you belong. The partnership, the money, the future?—"
"The future I want includes dirt roads and cattle and Sunday dinners with too much food. It includes people who know my name and my story and love me anyway. It includes a man who built a house from dreams I shared at seventeen and never gave up hope I'd come home to it."
"You'll be back," he said, but it sounded more like a question. "When the novelty wears off, when you remember what you're giving up?—"
"I'm not giving up anything," I said gently, because I finally understood he'd never been cruel, just clueless. "I'm finally choosing what I want instead of what I thought I should want. There's a difference."
