If it was a possibility.
"Hey, are you okay?" Drake fell into step with her.
"I'm fine. I just wanted to check on Journey. It's been a hot minute since I saw him last."
"I'm glad Ma told everyone to use the stalls."
She spun around to him. "Let's not ignore the elephant. Your family needs this idol to go back to your home. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. That's a lot of pressure for something I've never seen."
"Hey, now," he responded as he put his hands on her shoulders. "There's no pressure. Up until a couple days ago, we had no idea there was even a possibility of going back to the Sacred Gardens. It's not like we've been sitting around pining to do it. To be honest, I had never even thought about it."
"But you want to go home?" She almost held her breath as she waited for his answer.
"My home is with you, wherever you are. I barely remember where I came from, and if it means I lose you, I don't care to ever see my home world again."
She stepped up against him, and his arms wrapped around her. She just wanted to feel safe and loved, just for a minute. Drake pulled away slightly so he could lean down and kiss her. "I mean every word, Joey. Here, there, it's all the same to me as long as I'm with you."
She smiled at him, even though she didn't feel it all the way to her heart.Will he end up resenting me if we stay here?
She decided a change in topic was needed. "What am I going to tell everyone about Percy?"
Drake kissed her on the nose. "Let's check on the horses. We don't need all of the answers right this second."
They held hands as they crossed the lawn to the barn. Scarlet greeted her before she handed Joey her phone. "Don't leave it behind again when you go jaunting off. I was going crazy."
Joey checked her missed calls, but they were from Scarlet. Nothing from Pine Oaks.
"Yeah," Scarlet admitted sheepishly, "I called you a few times before I realized I was listening to your phone ring."
Warren came out of the supply room with a sack of feed. "You're just in time to feed that boy of yours."
Scarlet set the shovel that she'd been using in a stall off to the side. "Have you seen Percy? He and his goons seem to be missing."
Joey glanced at Drake before she answered. "They probably went into town to smooth over the afternoon matinee fiasco."
Warren stopped at Journey's stall. "That's what I figured. Bad eggs always show back up."
"Not all of them," Joey mumbled to Drake when Warren walked away. "But we will need to figure out how to break the news."
They fed the horses and then headed toward Drake's cabin. "Do you want to sleep here?" he asked.
It was exactly what she wanted, but they had to do something first. "Can you take me home? So I can find Dad's journals and we can try to find that idol. I don't want it hanging over our heads."
He stared at her for a minute. "We can. It won't take long. But only because you want to, and not because you think you have to."
"I want to. It's like there's a whole section of my life that I didn't even know about." She paused. "And I want to check on my mom. I haven't talked to her in a bit, and she hasn't called."
For a second time, she climbed on the back of a dragon and within minutes, Joey and Drake stood outside her home. She searched her father's office while he took a slow tour of the house.
"I adore these photos of you growing up."
She laughed as she lifted the journals out of a drawer. "My mom fancied herself a photographer, so where you see one, there are six dozen others in a box somewhere."
Drake stood in the door and gestured to the living room. "And someday soon, I want to cuddle on that couch out there and look at every single one of them."
"Our asses will be numb before you get through the first tote." She thumbed through a few pages. "I wish I knew what I was looking for. Something that says idol, I assume."
"I don't know what exactly what he would have written, but if there's one thing I agree with Percy about, it's that your dad gave you that pendant as a treasure map, not just as a random piece of jewelry."
