Kelly watched the tall rugged man slide down off of his horse and slowly make his way over to her. Their eyes locked when he was about 20 feet away from where she was sitting. Her horse was tied a few yards away. She broke eye contact for a moment and looked around. She was in the middle of nowhere, a good half mile away from her small farm house. How in the hell did someone just happen upon her out here? Can't a girl get a little peace and quiet on the supposedly deserted plains?
She didn't have too much time for these thoughts as the man sauntered over to her. She sat up a little straighter against the rock she was leaning on as he approached. She felt her stomach tighten as she got a better look at him. He was tall, with piercing blue eyes and dark hair. He had a healthy amount of stubble that was just a hair shy of a full beard. It was neatly trimmed but gave him a haggard appearance that she normally hated, but on him it fit. She could see a gleam in his eye that told her he would either have a biting comment for her or a pickup line. Under the circumstances she hoped for the former.
He stopped a few feet away from her and she started to stand up, but he stopped her with a flick of his hand.
"Goddamn city folk. You have no clue what you are doing, do you?" He growled lowly.
Her eyes widened and she started to sputter some sort of comeback, but the look in his eyes kept her quiet.
As she sat trying to come up with something to say that could appease him, she couldn't help but wonder how exactly she got here. How did she get in this position in the first place? Out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cattle, no one who'd known her for more than a couple of years within 500 miles of her.
Her eyes widened and her jaw clenched as in a flash she saw the whole picture, the big picture, from beginning to end, or at least until this moment. It was almost cathartic as she stared into his cold blue eyes. She recalled how it all began.
**********
Kelly cheated on her husband. It took her a long time to be able to admit that without adding some sugar coated rationalization about how their marriage had been over months before she slept with someone else. She had finally gotten to the point in her life where she could admit her faults without trying to defend them. It wasn't a place she arrived at easily. For several months after her divorce, she would tell people that she and her husband had grown apart and gone their separate ways, but now she could finally admit the truth. She'd cheated on her husband. Plain and simple.
Three years earlier Kelly had been a successful corporate woman buzzing and whirring her way up the various machines. Her husband had been a carbon copy. They had been married 2 years when the tedium and monotony of their lives first started to get to Kelly. She assumed that it was just the normal passing of their relationship into a less passionate, more comfortable phase. Most of her married friends agreed. They'd tell her it was just how it goes after a little while. The spark dies, but the relationship remains. And that's what you're supposed to build your lives on. The relationship.
Kelly tried hard to buy into this philosophy. She really did. She ignored offers from other men. She tried her hardest not to fantasize about handsome strangers she met along the way. First, she stopped talking to her friends about her secret deep desires. Then, finally, she stopped talking to her husband about them. They used to have fun in bed sharing fantasies, but the longer they were together the less frequent their exciting moments got. They still had sex. A lot of sex from what she could tell from her other married friends. But it just wasn't exciting or core-shaking. It never really was.
Kelly was not sure when exactly the moment came where she decided that she'd had enough, but one afternoon, sitting behind her big oak desk, she took a chance. A co-worker, Michael, had been sending increasingly flirty inter-office messages to her for the past few weeks and this time she responded with just as much, if not more, flirt.
It started innocently enough. Michael was handsome and sexy and he made her feel like a goddess in bed. At first. He was a few years younger than she was so it was all a little forbidden on top of the fact that she was married. The first month of the affair was torrid, but eventually it began to take on the same slant as her unfulfilling marriage. Her exciting sexy affair became yet another thing in her life that she was obligated to do. She worked with the man, was even almost friends with him, so she couldn't very well just cut it off and return to life as normal. And she had the distinct impression that he was growing a little too attached to her.
It was with some horror one day that she realized she had chosen the worst possible partner for a discreet affair. Even worse was the fact that she was so damn good at hiding it. Kelly realized that part of the reason she had allowed herself to be lead into the affair was because it was a way out of her marriage. But at the rate she was going, her husband was never going to find out. He was working 90 hours a week and he thought she was doing the same. In truth, she was working about 70 hours a week and fucking Michael the other 20.
Her husband, Peter, loved her and trusted her. He was painfully content with their life, even happy with it. This made Kelly feel even worse, even guiltier, about her unhappiness and her moments with Michael. Now both of the men in her life seemed quite content with the status quo and she was even more restless. Something had to give.
She and Peter had just settled down to a nice dinner one Saturday evening when she looked at him across her wine glass and said, "Peter, I've been sleeping with someone else. I feel horrible for doing it, but I'm so unhappy with my life I don't even know how to fully put it into words."
She watched his eyes bug out as he swallowed his drink of water. At least she hadn't elicited a spit take.
He argued with her at first. Declaring that they could work through it, save the marriage, that he was angry but could forgive her with a little work and a little time. That was Peter. The hero. The fixer. The ultimate good guy.
By the end of the weekend she had made it very clear with a lot of explaining and a few tears from both of them that it was over. She wasn't happy. As she explained how she felt to him for the first time, Kelly was able to see her discontent a bit more clearly. It wasn't Peter. It wasn't Michael. It was her. It was her life and her job and her lack of interest in it all. As she fumbled with her words trying to make it clear to Peter as well as to herself, she experienced a brief but shining moment of clarity. She had to get away.
Kelly hadn't thought too much about what telling Peter would do to her life, but she quickly realized that if she did not leave, then she would get sucked back into it all. Either with him or with someone else. She knew she had to leave the city, the entire state for that matter. The desire to start over - to wipe the slate clean, become someone else, someone much closer to who she really was - was so strong when it hit her it almost seemed too simple.
That's what she decided to do. That would be her new motto. Keep it simple. She would do what made sense to her and no one else. She needed to start something that would be hers alone and not allow the world around her to shape her into a form she didn't even recognize.
A voice in her head told her to go west. So, she went west.
She took half of their savings -- Peter made her -- packed one suitcase, and then she started driving.
Kelly ended up in southwest Kansas and decided that was far enough. During her first year she made a small purchase of land and an old farm house and began to rebuild her life. She did what she promised herself. She kept it simple. She kept to herself. She only formed relationships with a few nearby families and they were mostly business. She made a few smart moves and ended up with several heads of cattle and a few hands to work them by her second year.
