Love Lift Me by Synthia St. Claire Page A

stretch his legs.
    “Kat,
I just want to make things right between us.”
    “I
already said I didn’t want to see you again, yet here you are, trying to cozy
up to me like nothing ever happened,” I said, arching myself forward on the
saddle, which Zip took as his cue to get moving again. “Well, it ain’t gonna
work!”
    Any
further pleas on Hale’s part were lost to the beating sound of hooves. Faster
than I’d ever felt him run; Zip sprinted across the open expanse at the middle
of the meadow and bounded high over the crossbar gate on the opposite side of
the field. He kept going, the wind coming off the coast blowing in his mane, and
we followed it, down into the narrow rows of sweet-smelling trees in the
orchard, as if he were sensing my anger and hopelessness and wanting to outrun
my emotions.
    I
wanted to get lost there, to go in and hide and never come back out again. It
reminded me of Shane, and the place he’d described from his childhood home. A
forest of never ending trees, with no one else around for miles, and trails
covered by a layer of soft leaves to walk on from an uncountable number of
autumn days.
    By
the time my senses came back to me and I could open my eyes again, Zip had shed
his wild instinct to run and was meandering along a babbling stream. There it
was shallow enough to cross, but the horse simply followed along the cold,
smooth stones. He took me farther away from my troubles; Hale, and mother’s
slowly worsening health, and everything else. They pressed down upon my soul with
a weight almost as heavy as the jagged metal which held me inside the wrecked
bus.
    Emerging
from the woods, I looked out towards the orange flare of sunset coming down
across clear water. I recognized where I was immediately; Stokes Pond. All was
quiet and the water was flat and still. Not less than fifty feet away, jutting
up out of the pond and cattail reeds like a monument of man untouched by time,
was the old pier I’d fished from and escaped to in my younger days. There
wasn’t another soul around for miles.
    Without
a word of command from me, Zip took us up the sandy, sloping shoreline and
stopped in front of the pier. I left the horse there and walked up to the
stained wooden planks, which looked the same as they had so many years ago.
This was my place. My place to think.
    I
slid off my boots and socks and relished the trapped heat and the hardness of
the wooden planks beneath my feet. It was like going back to a time with no
worries, when the only thing I had to concern myself with was wondering how to
stretch out the hours in the day to make them last longer.
    At
the end of the pier I sat down and touched my toes to the water, sending out a
faint set of ripples that would spread out and disappear before they could come
back to me. The pond was cool and pleasant, and from my vantage I could watch
the sun sink. Down it would go, seeming to submerge in the cool water and
extinguish itself.
    I
sat for over an hour, letting the slowly fading sun touch me with its warmth. My
mind tried to work out all the troubles that lingered and those that lay ahead.
I was so wrapped within myself that I didn’t notice the soft sounds of
footsteps until they echoed off the pier behind me.
    “I
can see why you said this was your favorite place,” said a gentle voice that brought
me back to the present. When I turned, I saw him standing there and wearing the
same confident grin that had captured my attention from the moment I met him. “It’s
absolutely beautiful out here.”
    Shane.

Eight
     
    Had
I fallen asleep and begun to dream? I almost pinched myself to find out
when I took in a great breath, felt the cool water between my toes, and
realized this was all real. When Shane stepped forward onto the pier and
encircled the silver chain and locket around my neck, I held my breath.
    “Back
home again, right where it belongs,” he said. “Just like you, I see.”
    “S-shane?”
    “It’s
nice to see you again,