LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Two

      It was odd to be standing here with a man she’d known for so long, talking like virtual strangers. Sawyer wasn’t quite the same as Olivia remembered him. She figured that would still be true even if his mind was fully intact. He might not have his memory, but these last hard years hadn’t been erased; she could see that in the lines on his face and the strands of premature gray around his temples.

      Sawyer crossed the kitchen to the coffee maker and reached for a stack of filters. Olivia watched him work for a moment. He’d bulked up a bit since the last time she’d seen him, making him move with more confidence. His hands—she noticed them as he fiddled with a coffee filter—looked tougher, more calloused. He glanced instinctively toward the toddlers, who sat in the middle of a plastic minefield of toys.

      “You used to like baseball,” Olivia said.

      “Did I?” Sawyer glanced over his shoulder. “Playing it or watching it?”

      “Both,” she replied. “You played in high school, at least, but that was before I was in high school, and before we properly met. You’re older than me by a couple of years, by the way.”

      “Right.” He smiled.

      “We used to play catch in the park, you and me. When you weren’t working. You worked a lot.”

      “Did you play baseball, too?” he asked.

      Olivia would have...but there had been some women who’d liked to play with the local team who’d been part of spreading those rumors about her, and avoiding them had been simpler and less painful than standing her ground and facing them down. At that point she’d been so tired from the constant badgering around town, that she’d just let people believe what they wanted to about her. If they wanted to think she was sleeping around, then so be it, because no one was listening to her anyway. It was easier in the moment, at least. But it had confirmed that getting out of Beaut was the only option she had.

      “No, I wasn’t into baseball,” she said. It wasn’t entirely true—but it wasn’t really a lie. Joining the team would have been fun under different circumstances, but all she had was reality, not a fairy tale. And in her reality, baseball hadn’t been right for her at all.

      “Huh.” Sawyer cast her a peculiar look, then turned back to making the coffee again.

      “Why?” she asked. “Do you remember something?”

      “No, you just really tensed up when you said you weren’t into baseball,” he replied. “What’s up with that?”

      “Stuff I’d rather forget,” she said, forcing a smile, then nodded toward the coffee maker. “You remember how to make coffee.”

      Sawyer nodded. “I realized that yesterday. How did I take my coffee when you knew me?”

      “How have you been taking it so far?” she asked.

      He screwed the lid back onto the coffee canister. “Lloyd has been handing it to me black.” He flicked the button on the coffee maker and turned back toward her. “I’ve been following suit when I make it myself. Is that how I liked it?”

      Olivia shrugged. “When I knew you, you used to take a dribble of cream and about five spoons of sugar.”

      He frowned slightly. “That sounds gross. Are you sure?”

      “Maybe you changed how you took it,” she suggested. “I mean, maybe you started worrying about your health.”

      Or maybe Mia had started worrying about it. Olivia couldn’t speak for what had happened in his marriage.

      “I’ll try it both ways,” Sawyer said. “Maybe you’re right.”

      And maybe she wasn’t... She’d adored Sawyer, but had she known him as well as she thought?

      “How much did you and I hang out?” Sawyer asked.

      Was he thinking the same thing?

      “Quite a bit, back in the day,” she said. “After you graduated, a lot of your friends had left for the city, and I didn’t have a lot of friends anymore, besides Mia. So you and I kind of bonded over the lack of other options.”

      “That doesn’t sound like a great foundation.” But a smile tugged up the corner of his lips. “What do you mean, anymore? What happened to your friends?”

      “I wasn’t terribly popular,” she hedged. “I was quiet. Kind of boring. And senior year, everyone decided to pick on me.”

      “Oh...” His gaze filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

      “It was a good thing, in a roundabout way,” she countered. “For us, at least. We might not have given each other much of a chance if we’d had other options. We wanted opposite things out of life, so we were a bit of an odd couple.”

      “Did we date?” he asked. “You called us a couple.”

      “No, I meant that in the most platonic way possible.” She felt her smile slip.

      “But you were friends with my wife,” he said. “I’m just trying to piece it all together here.”

      “Before you two started dating, Mia hung out with us a lot, too, and she was crazy about you. She harbored this huge crush, and it took you a while to clue in.”

      Sawyer met her gaze, but didn’t answer.

      “So, maybe you had more options than I did,” Olivia conceded. “But Mia was beautiful and fun, and she could ride better than you.”

      “I don’t know why, but I feel mildly insulted with that,” he said with a soft laugh. “How well do I ride?”

      “Better than you play baseball,” she joked. But then she remembered that he didn’t know, and she sobered. “You’re a really good rider. You always have been. You go on the cattle drives to move the herd, and you come back with all these stories about hungry wolves and belligerent cows.” She paused, remembering the way his eyes would sparkle when he embellished his tales. “You taught me to ride.”

      “Am I a good teacher?” he asked.

      “No.” She crossed her arms, as if she needed to defend her position on that. But he really hadn’t been. He expected his students to function on instinct, like he did.

      “No?” He laughed softly. “But you said I taught you. That’s something.”

      “You’re bossy,” she countered. “You yell a lot when you’re teaching. After that first ride, I wouldn’t take your calls for a week.”

      “Oh. Sorry. Obviously, we made up.”

      “Just barely.” Olivia chuckled. “We had fun, mostly. When you weren’t bossing me around and telling me I’d get myself killed. We were good friends.”

      “So, this is your chance to turn the tables, I guess,” he said, sobering. “I’m the one who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

      “I’m a nicer teacher,” she said with a short laugh. “You don’t have to worry that I’ll take my revenge.”

      The coffee maker burbled as it dribbled fresh brew into the pot, and Bella toddled up to her father and held a plastic toy up for his inspection. Sawyer bent down, looked at the toy seriously, then said, “Very nice. I like it.”

      Bella looked at the plastic block in her fingers as if seeing it again for the first time. Then she smiled up at Sawyer, her blue eyes glittering.

      The girls remembered their father just fine, and they obviously recognized their daddy in this

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