truly led anywhere at all. The fact was, she didn’t feel like she was heading anywhere but into a futureless void anyway. No plan. No strategy. Just a long, desolate road to nowhere.
Twisting the knob on the radio dial, Josie tracked through the stations, one by one. Each played a song of love lost and she just couldn’t stomach that. It wasn’t love with Seth. It was something, but it couldn’t have been love. She pressed her finger on the button and silenced the depressing music.
Glancing down at the map Darrel had scribbled on a napkin, Josie noted she needed to stay on the highway for five more miles before the turn off. When her eyes lifted, she glimpsed something encroaching in her periphery.
“What in the world…?”
A truck lined up with hers in the oncoming lane, but they were headed in the same direction.
“Oh, this guy thinks he’s going to pass me, huh?” Josie gritted her teeth. “Not going fast enough for you, buddy?”
She jammed her foot to the pedal and lurched forward, but the weight of the trailer made the effort for naught and they lagged behind. The truck accelerated so their bumpers where lined up.
“Seriously?” Josie threw her hands in the air. When the tinted passenger window of the truck rolled down, she nearly swerved off the road. “Seth?”
“Pull over, Josie.” He flapped his hand to wave her to the shoulder.
“What are you doing?” she yelled over the road noise. Wind whipped through the open window and swirled around her face creating a tumbleweed of hair.
“Josie, pull over!” he bellowed again.
Taking her foot off the gas, Josie let the truck and trailer veer to the right, slowing to a stop in a plume of dust. Seth pulled off in front of her and shut off his truck.
“What is he doing here?” Josie asked Cowboy, but the cat was fast asleep, curled in a little ball on the passenger seat.
Clicking open her seat belt, Josie grab the keys from the ignition and stepped down from the vehicle.
Seth had already gotten out of his and jogged toward her, but rather than slow up as he got closer, his movements shifted into an all out run. He crashed into her, cocooning her body against his massive chest. “Josie!”
“What are you doing, Seth?” She wrenched free from his grip and fought to regain the wind he had just knocked out of her. “How did you find me?”
“Why would you just leave like that?” He was out of breath, hands in the air. “Just leave the ranch without saying goodbye?”
“It’s all over, Seth. Everyone knows none of it was real. And now I’m seen as some lying arsonist and I don’t know”—she gave a mocking shrug—“it’s not really a label I wanted to wait around and let stick.”
“No one believes those things.”
“Yes, they do. And all of that is beside the point, really. The horses you hired me to break are gone. There’s nothing left for me at the ranch, Seth.”
A sedan whizzed by on the road, the rush of wind it created flapping the fabric of Josie’s coat. She zipped up the jacket and crammed her hands in the pockets.
“Do you understand how much it hurts me to hear that?” He leveled an injured look at her.
“That the horses are gone?”
“That there’s nothing left for you at the ranch. I’m at the ranch, Josie. Is that not enough?”
She clenched her fists inside her pockets. “What do you want me to say, Seth?”
“That you love me. That it doesn’t matter what my family thinks, or what the town thinks. I want you to say that you love me and that we’re worth fighting for.”
“What if I don’t have any fight to give, Seth? Have you ever thought of that? Maybe I’m all out of fight.”
“Josie, you have more fight in you than anyone I’ve ever met. More than those mustangs, even. And remember what happened to them? Just when we thought they didn’t have anything left, they proved us all wrong.”
“But I don’t have anything left, Seth. And I don’t have anything left to give you.” She spun around on her heel, but Seth jumped in front of her.
“The only thing I want from you is your heart, Josie.”
“Oh, is that all?” she snipped.
“I want you, Josie. Just you. As you are.”
She dropped her head back and shut her eyes. “Why are you making this so difficult?”
“Because walking away from this—from you and me—it shouldn’t be easy. If it is, then maybe you