Wild Card

Maverick opens it. “Merry Christmas!” he exclaims. Except it’s October, it’s Thanksgiving, and now Mav just looks like a big dork.

You were it for me. I gave my heart to you and I never got it back. I don’t even think I wanted it back.

I love you. Body and soul. I will never stop loving you. I will never stop being there for you. You’re my whole fucking life, Raven.

I missed you. Always. You’re standing right in front of me and I still miss you.

Your heart is where my home is. I’ll go wherever your heart goes.

Loss of love is the most terrifying feeling in the world.

But luck is something we latch onto because we believe in hope. And hope exists because we believe in something better.” He pauses. “The fault of man is that we never live long enough to be the person we want to be.

him, loving him, is the easiest thing in the world. I know they say that you can't go home again and in some ways, I think that's true. Because when you leave, you change. But that doesn't mean a place can't be a home to you again, it just means it becomes a new one.

Loss of love is the most terrifying feeling in the world. It’s the feeling of your heart emptying, slowly being drained. Because that’s the thing about love. It’s free to give. It’s never free to receive. We all know the cost of loving someone, of being open-hearted, open-souled. We know that at any moment it could all end. The world is filled with worst-case scenarios. People die. People cheat. People fall out of love. People lose sight of who they are, or what they want. People…they grow apart.

What feeds your soul?

Love either makes you afraid or brave. I choose to be brave.

We all carry this yearning in our hearts for a place for us to truly belong. Somewhere here we can be ourselves and give love and receive love and never have to worry about the cost.

I love you Shane Nelson and I love you wild. You’re my hearts and my home and my whole damn life. I promise.

Rachel, I love you. I loved you then, I love you now, and I loved you in all the light and darkness in-between. I love you with a wildness I can’t tame.

What I feel for you…it’s wild and it’s raw and it’s as fucking real as that sun above us.

Dammit, Rachel … This isn’t over. You know it isn’t. You can’t just come here and tell me that I’m not worth another chance. You can’t pretend that you don’t want me, need me. Fucking hell, I’ve been needing and wanting you every single day since you left and I refuse to believe that you haven’t felt the same way.

Do you feel it? I want to ask her. Do you still feel what we had together? Did you ever think of me on cold nights? Did you feel that longing in your bones for just one more moment, one more chance?

When I told my boss that I was coming here, you know what he said? He said, if it's just stage one cancer, then why do you have to go? And for a split second I almost agreed with him. Because that's what I've trained myself to do... And then I thought, wait a minute. Why does my mother have to be on her fucking deathbed before I go? Why do people have to die or almost die before we decide we need to make things right? So that's why I came. Because I should have come sooner and I wasn't going to wait until later.

What feeds it? What gets you up in the mornings? What makes you want to be a better version of yourself, to keep on growing? What makes you feel alive? More than that, what makes you want to be alive forever, finding the lust and the joy for it day by day?” She pauses. “Now change that around. Not what, but who? Who feeds your soul?

Just remember that life is out of our hands.” I wait patiently, sensing he’s going to continue. He always does. Grandpa will talk your ear off for hours if you’re not careful.

I’m Rachel and he’s Shane and we go together, fit together, because we always have.

You dreamed about me?” she asks quietly, her eyes finally meeting mine. “I always dreamed about you. Every night. Under every moon. For the last six years. The moon would always be changing, but my dreams never did.

word love never sounded so wild as it did when it came from the lips of Shane Nelson. That one simple word that would set my heart loose, like a horse galloping across the plains, free and real and pure. And yet my heart would always return. My heart would always return to him. “I love you, Raven,” he’d say, and I wouldn’t just hear it. I’d feel it. I’d live it. The love he had for me, the love I had for him—it was