Sweetwater Valley || Shawmila

3.

At 27, Camila didn't expect to return to live in her childhood home and fall in love with someone right in that place. Her plans were quite different: long nights in the studio, her voice on the radio, perhaps her first concerts. Since she was a girl, she had learned not to have too many expectations; she had discovered firsthand that life is unpredictable. After her parents' death, she promised herself not to take anything for granted anymore, but unfortunately, the heart wants what it wants.

Her first love was music. She remembered her eleventh Christmas vividly, when her father gave her her first guitar. It was light wood, and Camila had no idea how to tune it. For months, she strummed random chords, frustrating every member of her family, until her mother decided to pay her some music lessons. She spent entire afternoons plucking the strings, her fingers bleeding and nails breaking. The pain only motivated her to do better.

Adolescence was a period full of inspiration, between romantic torments and hopes for the future, so she filled pages and pages of diaries with lyrics she intended to turn into songs.

She knew that music was her path. She had to fight to follow it, so after graduating, she was convinced she could somehow make it big. She let her guard down, hoped to achieve her dreams, and ended up getting her heart broken.

It wasn't the first time that love, in one of its many forms, left her bleeding. Her parents, music, men... and despite everything, her heart hadn't yet surrendered, hadn't yet learned its lesson.

She knew that Shawn, sooner or later, would manage to conquer her. His sweet eyes and jovial spirit were a lethal combination for her, and his appearance only amplified his natural charm. She saw him every day, with his T-shirt tucked into his pants and his curls poking out from under his hat. He was kind, polite, a bit old-fashioned, but he could also be sarcastic, at times insolent. She liked that duality.

She didn't expect to fall in love so quickly. Years before, she had promised herself not to give her heart to any man, but in less than a month, Shawn had managed to ruin all her plans. Spending most of her time with him probably accelerated the process, but at the same time, she was surprised that she hadn't found a flaw yet that could shatter the idyll they had created together.

After their first date, there weren't many other opportunities to go out together. Camila, despite spending most of her life working with cattle, wasn't used to the exhausting rhythms and overwhelming tiredness that followed. To her surprise, in the evening, she barely had the strength to step into the shower and wash off the dusty layer that had stuck to her during the day.

But Shawn didn't seem too bothered by it; in fact, he never missed an opportunity to jokingly tease her. She didn't find it hard to admit to herself that this made him even more charming in her eyes. She appreciated his humor.

And so, even though their lips hadn't yet touched, every night Camila closed her eyes and waited for those amber, smiling eyes to peek into her dreams. In those solitary nights, she let her mind replay the image of Shawn, sweaty and glistening in the sunlight, his white shirt stretched over his broad shoulders, his curls tousled under his hat, and a pearly smile that illuminated his face. Sometimes she struggled to believe he was real.

And when impatience crept in and her body begged for some relief, Camila let the darkness of her room hide the languid movements she traced on her own body.

In the end, more than a month after her return to Sweetwater, the fatigue of farm work had become a habit again. While dining with her sisters and Uncle Jimmy, her arms no longer felt so heavy and tired, and the horse's trot no longer left her sore. She was slowly returning to her old self, and she wasn't the only one who noticed.

After the first stormy days and tensions with her sisters, Camila took stock of herself. She knew she had behaved badly towards them, but she was too proud to admit it. Regaining Isabela's respect had been easy. A couple of her dresses and the promise of a day at the hairdresser's were enough to make her forget the wrong she had suffered. The sixteen-year-old, excited about the gifts, updated her on the latest gossip in town and her teenage dramas, and it seemed like the two had never been apart.