Wild Horses by Claire McEwen

find? We don’t all have enough money in our trust funds to run off and work for free in the rain forest.”
    Nora stood up, feeling shaky and sick. She shouldn’t have come here, shouldn’t have thought she’d have the self-control to keep the past in the past.
    Understanding dawned in Todd’s eyes. But she didn’t want to hear his reasons why she was wrong. Or to feel the weight of his judgment for one more second. “I need to go. I’ve got to work early. To get some more of that money I’m in it for. Thanks for the drink.”
    â€œNora, hang on.” He stood up, too, leaned a little across the table with his hand out, palm open, as if pleading for her to stay.
    â€œNo.” She took a deep breath and forced herself to look right at him and end this conversation for good. “Look. It’s a strange coincidence that we ran into each other like we did, and that we’re in the same town. But that doesn’t mean we have to be friends. Let’s just agree to be polite and we’ll both be fine. I won’t be in Benson forever anyway.”
    â€œBut...”
    â€œI’ll see you around, Todd.” There was all that old anguish in her—burning deep and low—that she didn’t want to feel and, most of all, didn’t want him to see.
    Nora pushed through the double doors of the bar and into the summer night, inhaling the cool air with relief. She jumped into her Jeep and gunned the engine out of the parking lot, not stopping until she was outside town, until the streetlights were gone and the lights of Benson had faded and she could see every star, horizon to horizon.
    She parked her car and stepped out, feeling the dry soil compress beneath her, letting the sensation ground her. Leaning against the driver’s-side door, she looked up at the glittering sky.
    How was it possible that Todd had the power to make her crazy after all these years? She was a rational person. She always had been—except when it came to him.
    He said he’d changed, but he was still the clueless rich kid who’d never had to struggle to put a roof over his head.
    Nora took a deep breath of the clean air and let it out slowly. She just wanted all of her feelings about him to be gone. To live her life without the burden of her old, dusty love for him. Because, despite his ignorance, despite their differences, he still haunted her.
    She kept the memories at bay during the daytime—she’d had years of practice at that. But at night he came to her in dreams so vivid that she woke in the morning genuinely shocked to open her eyes and find him not there.
    And now he was here, as opinionated and idealistic and idiotic as ever. The guy she’d dreamed of, who’d never dreamed of her. And somehow she would have to figure out how to keep going forward and living her life, knowing Todd wasn’t just in her dreams anymore. He was in the machine shop in town, and at a ranch down the road. He was here in her hometown, judging her and finding her lacking.
    Dreams were easy. They faded in the daylight. Reality was a lot more difficult.

CHAPTER SIX
    T ODD TURNED IN to the driveway of Marker Ranch, half wondering if Nora would be at the other end with a shotgun, ready to run him off her land. He probably deserved it after his lame comment about money last night.
    He slowed his truck at the sight of the potholes in the dirt road that led slightly downhill. The road was in desperate need of work, and he wondered if he could get someone in here to grade it for Nora and Wade. Though they probably wouldn’t let him. Nora would tell him to take his rich-boy charity and shove it.
    Not that he was rich these days.
    He hit the brakes and eased his truck over a large bump in the road. He glanced at the broken fences lining the drive and the weed-choked pastures that on second glance seemed to be filled with...cars? He stopped his truck and looked around. All through