“You want to help people, not grow corn.”
“Well, of course,” Sarah wondered aloud as Charlie’s hoof stomped to the floor, and she jumped back to avoid her toe getting mashed. “Of course, I don’t grow corn just to add to the mountain of feed corn out there somewhere. I grow corn for livestock andpeople.I sent out milk and eggs forpeoplebecause some peopleneedraw milk or A2A2 milk. It’s thepeople.”
“That makes sense based on what I know about you, Sarah. Now, if you want to spend your life helping people, the only real questions arehowandifthe farm will help you do that. If it won’t, it’s time to let it go.”
Andthat’show all this psychoanalysis fit in with Blaze manipulating her to leave the farm.
Sarah gasped. “Oh, Icouldn’t.”
Blaze tilted his head, and his gaze didn’t let her wiggle an inch. “Why not?”
“Becauseit’s my farm!What if I sold it to some city boy, and it’s the wrong decision? And what would I do with Charlie and HowNow if I didn’t have a barn to keep them in? They wouldn’t fit under a single bed in a shared dorm room.”
Even though the image of her horse and milk cow curled up under a bunk bed like cats was funny.
“So you’re keeping the farm because your pets need their own big house out in the back of your big house?”
“I have a commitment to Charlie and HowNow!” She smacked Charlie on his flank, and the tall bay tossed his head and shook his black mane, his rope halter flopping on his big head. “When I make a commitment, it’sforever,which means these two furry jerks are my responsibility. Sono,I won’t sell my farm.”
“Forever, huh?” he asked, staring straight at her.
Dear saints in heaven, she hoped Blaze wasn’t about to spout off an example of her being irresponsible. She wasn’t perfect. No one was. She’d probably screwed up, and Logan had probably told him about it. “Yeah.Forever.”
He looked at where his arm was casually draped over Charlie’s neck. “Nothing is forever.”
“It’s as forever as I can make it. Why shouldn’t it be forever?”
“Things change,” Blaze said quietly, all the urgency gone from his voice. “People change.”
“Iwon’t,” Sarah said. “Or if I do, it won’t be to break my promise to these fluffy nutjobs.”
And when she saidbreak my promiseand Blaze winced, Sarah regretted that she’d mouthed off. “I’m sorry. Logan broke his promise to you, didn’t he?”
“It’s not important.”
“It is.”
“We have more important things to talk about.”
“Do we?” she asked.
Blaze flapped his hand in the air in the general direction of the barn doors, Remi and the chicken coop, and his Aston Martin car now hidden in the cornfield and covered with a green tarp strewn with cornstalks. “Yeah, we need to plan how to get out of here. We need to plan where to go. We need to plan what to do once we get there. We don’t need to talk about me.”
“It sounds likeyoudo.”
“But you don’t want to hear about all this.”
“Sure, I do. That’s what friends are for,” she said.
Blaze’s mouth scrunched up like he was repressing something by sucking on a sour candy.
“What did he promise?” she asked.
“We all promised, and we’ve kept those promises until now.”
“Logan and the others,” she guessed, watching flickers of emotions play over his face, winces and furrows between his dark eyebrows.
“We were the throwaway kids at school. Our families didn’t really want us or were gone. We stayed over the holidays at school except for those few weeks we had to go somewhere else, usually at Christmas, when we crashed at your grandfather’s in Manhattan.”
