The broken boy - healed by innocence

Welcome home

*Cooper*

The telegram found me in Cheyenne, the words simple and to the point: I need you home. Love, Ma.

I rode out to the ranch where I have been working as foreman, gave my notice, packed up my few meager belongings, hightailed it to the railway depot, and hopped on the first train going through that would get me to where I need to be as quickly as possible. Moonshadowville, Texas, a town once described as being on the far side of nowhere, but when I left, had been bustling with activity and promise. The railroad had changed its destiny.

No, that’s not quite right, I muse as I sit beside a window on the lumbering train and watch the empty vastness rolling by. Alpha Chase Moonshadow had created the town from nothing, courted the railroad barons to ensure a stretch of track went through his town to increase its chances of thriving, and in so doing had altered the makeup of the land and the lives of a good many people.

He, along with his Luna, had changed my life as well, had dragged me from the hellhole that had been my boyhood existence and given me more opportunities than I deserved. Which is the reason I don’t hesitate to leave everything behind when I receive the telegram.

Although if I'm honest with myself, I have to admit I'm more than ready to return. I have missed the place, missed the people. Missed Faith.

I had hoped time and distance would cause her to fade from my memories, but she is as vibrant as ever, and not a night passes that I don’t dream about her.

Faith Moonshadow is the most beautiful she-wolf I have ever laid eyes on, although I haven’t always viewed her in that light. When she was born wrinkled, red, and caterwauling worse than any bawling calf I had heard up until that moment I had proclaimed her to be butt-ugly. But she had quickly managed to worm her way into my heart… not that I have ever been too pleased about that.

I'm probably somewhere between a decade and a dozen years older than she is. My true age is anyone’s guess because the man who had called himself my pa hadn’t paid much attention to the details of my life. It wasn’t until I went to live with Chase and Callista Moonshadow that I learned people kept track of the time they spent on this earth.

Since they had taken me in on a cold night in December 1881, that had become the date when they honored my birth. I can’t deny it's a good day for a little revelry because it marks the moment my life transformed from a mere existence into actually living.

As for Faith, her arrival had come in May 1884, duly noted and recorded in the family journals. The last time I had seen her had been six years earlier on the night she had turned nineteen, after a celebration that had no doubt left a good many men and possibly a few she-wolves greeting the following morning with an aching head.

I also suspect a number of cowboys had awakened a little heartsore because Faith has a way about her of making a man long for things he could never possess.

In the distance, the town comes into view, and although it's not exactly as it had been when I left, I'd recognize it anywhere… the Grand Hotel dominating the skyline. It had been ahead of its time when it had been built in 1881. I have seen much more of the country since then, but nothing else reminds me of a grand and majestic lady as much as it does, maybe because I have long worshipped the she-wolf who had envisioned and built it: Callista Moonshadow.

It's odd, all the emotions ricocheting through me. Pride, joy, a bit of remorse, a bit of dread. I have little doubt my abrupt departure had left many a burning question, and some might be wanting the answers with my return but if I have my way, they will go to the grave with me.

*Faith*

I stand on the depot platform and watch the smoke billowing from the behemoth in the distance bearing down on us. My stomach knots, and I take a deep breath to release the tension that has been building ever since I learned Cooper was on his way home.

I have known this day would come, sooner or later. A reckoning. A chance to prove I'm no longer the silly nineteen-year-old girl who threw herself at him and humiliated herself in the process.

The last time I saw him had been awkward at best. I expect it to be no different this time, especially when he learns all the truths about me… and he will. I have never been able to hide anything from him. Once, he had been my best friend, my most trusted confidant, but then when I had needed him the most, he rode out of my life. Not that I blame him, not deep down inside. But the girl I had been still holds a grudge.

I can't remember a time when I haven't loved him. I didn't learn to walk because my mother and father encouraged me; I took those first steps because they provided the opportunity to keep up with Cooper.

Not that my memories go back that far, but I know myself well enough to know what has always motivated me, to know most of my actions have been an effort to tag along with the older boy my parents had taken in.

The train pulls into the station with a bellowing of steam and a screech of brakes. People disembark in a frenzy as though anxious to get to where they are going or to greet the people they have come to see.

All except him.

As though in no hurry, as though he has all day and the world will wait for him, Cooper steps off the train, holding the saddle slung over his back with one hand at his shoulder. He is a tall drink of water who would quench any she-wolf’s thirst. Damn him. The past six years have served to make him more handsome, and a body that hard work on the range had honed to perfection has somehow managed to become even more pleasing to the eye.

He walks toward me with a lazy, loose-hipped stride that speaks of no rush to be anywhere, his boot heels thudding against the wooden platform, and I can feel it quivering with each step he takes, just as I imagine she-wolves quiver whenever he gives them that sultry look through eyes so dark as to be almost black, as black as his hair.

Just as I quiver now that he is near enough for me to see that he hasn't shaved recently. The short stubble adds a ruggedness to his sharp jawline.

When he reaches me, he uses the thumb of his free hand to tip his black Stetson back from his brow, and the few shadows that had dared to play over his features retreat. At the corners of his eyes, tiny lines fan out, lines that hadn't been as deep before. A somberness hovers around him like a well-worn duster designed to protect against the harsh elements, and I wonder if he has dreaded seeing me as much as I have him.

“Faith.” No smile, no grin that had once brightened my world. Just the one word, spoken flatly, with no emotion, with no hint as to what he is feeling… and that in itself communicates everything.

I have imagined this meeting a thousand times, hadn't slept a wink last night, practicing just the right inflection, just the right words to greet him after all this time. They hover on the tip of my tongue, but my fist beats them to the punch… literally… and I feel the jarring pain traveling up my arm before I have even realized I have given him a quick jab to the cheek, just below his eye, that has his head snapping back and his saddle hitting the wooden planks with a thud that causes them to shudder.

There is emotion now, rioting on his face, in his eyes. Fury. Shock. Disbelief. “What the hell, Faith?”

“That was for leaving without saying goodbye.”