#jake stone

Cowgirls, they don’t forget.

Neither do the cowboys that lose them.

That loss, it’s what they write country songs about. The way it tears you up inside, the way you can’t ever really heal. Jake’s been with countless women over the years, but none could ever hold a candle to you. Your smile haunts his dreams when he lies alone in bed recounting the nights you used to sleep beside him.

That broken promise still rings in his ears, an oath to leave when the fall swept with the leaves that twirled through main street. You were off to college a decade later than most to pursuit your dreams of becoming a vet. He was meant to go with you, spend the years you were obtaining your degree as a professor, teaching Art History.

But then he opened that letter meant for his father by mistake, discovered how badly the family business was really doing.

You couldn’t stay, he couldn’t go…

It had gotten into a fight because it’s not the first time you’ve waited for him, but you make sure it’s the last. He doesn’t even get to say goodbye. You drive out of town a week early, heading for a place he can’t hope to follow.

You don’t call, and he doesn’t write.

Somethings are better left alone.

Until he becomes a librarian, until he arrives at Fortune Downs and discovers that that horse training outfit Slayton started has its own vet, one he’s intimately familiar with.

You look beautiful stand there in that stall, hair tied back into a fishtail braid as you brush down Calamity, the only damn horse Slayton has left in the race. She’s a pretty little thing, build for speed and agility. She’s a winner he’s sure of it.

He opens his mouth to say something, anything but then he remembers Flynn’s words from this morning, about how librarians can’t have friends, they can’t form relationships. He doesn’t know how to explain where he’s been all these years, he can’t explain how he won’t be present for the rest.

His heart aches as he casts one final look at you, still enthralled in your duties to Calamity.

It’s for the best, he tells himself as he walks away. You know it’s for the best.