I have to look, have to watch him, as he takes a seat at the coffee shop counter and slowly stretches his right leg out and then rests his cane against his denim-clad thigh.

My gaze travels from his thigh and then up, over his chest, to his mile-wide shoulders, and finally to his face.

Sweet Jesus, he’s good-looking. Even better looking at forty-something than twenty-something. He’s all man now. There’s no boy left in that face.

“Ma’am?” the waitress at my elbow repeats.

Startled, I jerk my head around, look up at her. She’s holding a plastic pitcher. “More tea, ma’am?”

I hear what she’s saying, but I’m so shocked that it requires an effort to respond. “Uh, yes, please. Thank you.”

She fills my huge plastic tumbler and then moves on. I steal another glance at Dane, who’s ordering the barbecue beef brisket dinner plate.

Oh wow. Dane. Here. Dane. After all these years, and it’s been a long time since I last saw him. Eighteen years. I’d just graduated from Stanford, and he’d just won his second national bull-riding championship. He was also newly engaged to Shellie Ann, a girl I went to high school with. It made me so mad. I felt physically sick from jealousy, love, and longing. So sick I couldn’t even be in the same room with him, and he was at our house, in our kitchen.

Brick said I acted like a bitch that day, but Brick didn’t understand. I loved Dane. I’d loved him for years, and I’d hoped that once I finished school, once I was twenty-one and finally old enough to be with him, we’d be together. Instead, he proposed to a pretty girl from my high school class whose only accomplishment in life was being crowned homecoming queen.

Appetite gone, I reach into my purse for cash to pay the bill and escape before he sees me. It’s being a chicken, I know, but I don’t want to talk to him. My feelings are still too strong—and not in a good way. Seeing him again just makes me mad.

He knew how I felt.

He knew I adored him.

He knew I wanted him.

But maybe that’s how it is with first loves. Maybe it’s natural to carry a torch. And let’s face it, I didn’t fall for him just a little bit. I fell hard. So hard that my folks sent me to California to boarding school just to keep me away from him.

In hindsight, no sixteen-year-old girl belongs on the professional rodeo circuit, and as a parent, I can say it was the right thing for them to do. But at the time, it broke my heart.