“Ask away, then. What do you want to know?” Lucas glances up from his burger, freezing mid-bite like he expects this to be a trap. I arch my brow and gesture impatiently with a french fry before popping it into my mouth. “If I don’t want to answer something, I’ll tell you to fuck off. Just ask.”
He swallows the bite of his burger and washes it down with a sip of sweet tea. Silence stretches between us for a few moments as he thinks.
“What are you doing here?” he asks finally.
“Eating dinner,” I answer, easy as pie.
He rolls his eyes, some of the uncertainty draining from his frame. “On the ranch, you brat. You were always so insistent on getting the hell out of here when we were younger. Why not stay in Tallahassee, or move to California permanently?”
I blink in surprise, realizing that he knowsnothingabout what I did after he left town. I thought he was just playing stupid when we were in Bozeman, but there’s nothing but curiosity in those ocean blue eyes.
“I didn’t go to Tallahassee.” I say it bluntly, barreling on before he can say anything about that. “Wayne had already fucked off to Billings by that point and the ranch was falling apart. I decided to stay and keep Dad from running everything into the ground.”
It’s a very cut and dry version of events, but I’m not particularly in the mood to delve into my feelings. Besides, half the reason I stayed was because I kept hoping Lucas would change his mind and beg for another chance. For obvious reasons, I have no plans of bringingthatlittle tidbit up.
“Do you actually like it here? You were so anxious to leave.” He runs a hand through his hair like he’s worried he’s pushing his luck, but I actually don’t feel any urge to bite his head off, even with all of the memories filtering through my mind right now. “I just… Guess I’m mostly wondering if you’re actually happy here. Figured you’d have some big plans or something.”
I hide the sympathy that flares in my gut with a teasing smile and knock my foot into his ankle beneath the table. “Are you looking for ideas for your own life, Cross?”
Something almost wistful flickers across his features at my little joke. Maybe the words reminded him that our lives could have been intertwined instead of two separate things. Maybe I’m projecting.
Lucas snorts and rolls his eyes at me. “I don’t think I’m cut out for the glamorous life of accounting, sadly.”
It doesn’t escape my notice that he says nothing about his own goals. That might actually be a good sign. I was serious about him taking some time to let himself breathe before trying to plan his life.
“I’ve been thinking about moving out,” I say, finally answering his question as I toy with the lid of my milkshake. “It’d be nice to start my own little accounting firm. I could get my CPA license, get a couple partners to join in on it. I’d probably stay in the state, but having my own space would be nice.”
“Why don’t you?”
I huff out a sigh and sit back, shrugging as I glance around the trailer. Making eye contact feels too intimate right now, too much like I’m inviting him along.
“The ranch is doing alright now that Mary’s around, and with Wayne back to handle the legal stuff, things are better,” I say. “But Dad’s still Dad, and Wayne is still Wayne. It’s hard to just leave them to handle it on their own when they haven’t been able to handle it in the past. I know they’ve both changed, and I’m proud of them, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if I left and we wound up losing the ranch because I wasn’t here.”
I brace myself for Lucas to give me the usual rundown. Everyone always tells me I’m a perfectionist, that I’m too controlling, that my family can manage without me. They just don’t realize that I’m not doing any of this just to be in charge. I’m here because I worry, because Icare.
If I could have run off like Lucas did, I would’ve done it years ago.
Instead of the scorn I expect, Lucas smiles at me, soft and understanding. He knocks his foot against my ankle in a mirror of my earlier gesture, and it makes me chuckle.
“You don’t have to go far,” he suggests, his voice gentle and quiet. “Could still come and check on everything if you didn’t go too far. And if you had partners, they could handle business if you ever needed to come back for emergencies.”
I freeze with a french fry halfway to my mouth, surprised at how practical Lucas is being. I’m even more surprised that he’snot trying to convince me to just ignore the ranch entirely and do my own thing.
Everyone I’ve talked to about it has insisted that the ranch will survive without me. I know itwill, but those what-ifs are pretty fucking scary.
“I… Yeah, I guess I could.” I honestly haven’t thought about this as more than a pipe dream, but when he puts it like that, it seems doable. “It could work.”
“Just saying, it might be good for you to put yourself first occasionally,” he says with a fond grin. “I know you worry about everyone, but you deserve to do things that are important to you, too. You don’t have to be silent about things you want just because you don’t think they fit with what other people are doing.”
I sip at my milkshake just to have something to do while my mind spins at a million miles an hour. I’ve always focused so much on how my plans put other people out, terrified that they’ll give up what they want to accommodate me. It’s just been easier to mold my life around what everyone else is doing instead of doing what I want.
If I had tried back then. If I had told Lucas that I wanted to stay together…
It’s ridiculous to think about now, a day late and a dollar short, but maybe things could have been different.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say, both in response to him and to my own thoughts.
“Giving your own wants a chance might be a good change of pace for you, Jenny,” he says, his eyes crinkling in a warm smile. “You deserve to at least try to go after the things you want, don’t you think?”
