Finished with his lunch, he wadded up his napkin and dropped it on the plate. “If you want me to talk, Abbs, you’re going to have to spend some time with me. I’m not just going to fire away a bunch of rehearsed answers.”
“But—”
“You can start by making it to family dinners. Tonight. No more skipping out.”
She huffed. “If I show up, you’ll start talking to me about the article?”
“Come to dinner.” He left some cash on the table and slid out of the booth. “Don’t be late.”
* * *
Logan sat with Cliff in his truck as it rolled along the graveled road toward the Holbrook Ranch. His buddy had to make a delivery for the saddlery to a loyal client and invited him along for the ride.
His nerves still rattled from that lunch. He’d been a fool to think Abbie’d eventually relax around him, but he yearned for it just the same. Couldn’t stop thinking how he might accomplish just that.
“You can wait in the truck if you want,” Cliff said. “Lina will probably demand an autograph if she spots you.”
Before he replied, he caught the mischievous smirk Cliff couldn’t hide and stopped himself. “How’re the ranches doing around here?” he asked, referring to some of the bigger local spreads. In some areas he’d traveled, they were being bought out by large corporations. He hoped Starlight was spared that travesty.
“Surprisingly good.” Cliff slowed for a turn. “Most of them still in the right hands.”
He was glad to hear it, even if Cliff might be leaving something out. The ranch he had grown up on, only a few miles from the Holbrook place, was sold shortly after his dad died. With the amount of debt it’d amassed, his mom couldn’t afford to keep it. He was too young back then to get a job, so they moved in with his grandparents.
He hoped the new owners had made themselves a true home there. A place where their kids could run wild for generations to come. His dad had hoped for the same thing for them, but it hadn’t been in the cards for their family.
“I’ll just be a minute.” Cliff shifted into park and hopped out.
Logan fiddled with his phone a minute, the temptation to text Abbie nearly overwhelming. It had to be that he was back in Starlight. There’d been moments since he returned when it felt as though everything was still the same. As if time had somehow frozen itself during his two-year absence and nothing changed.
But everythinghadchanged. That was the problem.
Discovering he didn’t know what to text, he jumped out of the truck instead to lend Cliff a hand. His buddy had tried to save him the attention but it’d come sooner or later, whether he wanted it or not. Lina, he hoped, would be glad to see him.
“Thanks for your help back there,” Cliff told him as they left the Holbrook Ranch an hour later. Lina, as expected, had talked his ear off. But it felt good to know someone in town was excited to have him back. Luckily, he had a couple extra tickets to leave with her—she smiled quite broadly at that.
At the end of the drive, he couldn’t fight the pull. “Think you could turn down that road?” He wanted to see what the ranch had become. Even if the new owners had let things get a little overgrown or rundown like his grandpa’s place, he wanted assurance that a family was happy where he’d grown up.
“Logan, I’m not sure you want to—”
“Please?”
Cliff sucked in a sigh, gave a curt nod, and turned onto the graveled road Logan used to ride his bike down. He wondered what Cliff wasn’t telling him.
Tall trees intermittently lined the road, and Logan smiled. He’d taken Abbie down this road in an old beat-up truck he’d had back then, more than once. Even taught her how to drive a stick shift, and tried not to panic when she nearly ran them into an ancient oak.
They’d parked in the ditch that evening and watched the stars in the glow of the moonlight from the tailgate of his truck. He couldn’t take her to the ranch, but it was almost the same thing. “The same stars I watched from the roof outside my bedroom as a boy.”
They spent years together, but in the blink of an eye, it all disappeared. He hadn’t realized how badly he still wanted it back until he saw her last night in Cliff’s kitchen. They could have the life they’d always planned, if only she could let him finish his rodeo career first, the way he needed to.
“Some things’ve changed,” Cliff finally said as they drove up on the property. But Logan had to look twice, because it didn’t look like the right place.
“You sure this is it?” It wasn’t remotely recognizable. It didn’t look like someone’s home at all. Not with the convoy of cement trucks, concrete silos, parking lot filled with cars, and layer of white dust that seemed to coat everything within a hundred-yard radius.
Cliff rolled to a stop on the grassy shoulder. “Happened about a year ago.”
“What happened to the family that used to live here?” But only a strong-willed memory could conjure vague images of what that might’ve looked like. The factory erased all evidence of such a thing.
“Last I heard, they packed up and moved out of state. Ranching life . . . it wears on people. Especially those who don’t really know what they’re getting into. I think they gave it a solid effort, but they just weren’t cut out for it.”
