Eli stood and headed toward the door, stopping briefly in front of his towel-clad brother.
“Just because she might be a little spooked about whatever happened on your little getaway doesn’t mean you have to get spooked too. Call her. Texther. Do whatever you need to do to let her know you’re all in if you are.” He shrugged. “It’s just a thought.” He strode back out the door before Ash had a chance to respond.
Once back in the bedroom, he grabbed his phone from where it was charging on the dresser and then swore.
His phone was a loaner with exactlyzerocontacts aside from the two numbers he knew from memory—his brothers’ and Sloane’s. Okay, so he did remember one other, but Willow hadn’t just blocked his number. She’d gotten a new one herself. And since they’d both been living under the same roof for the past ten days, they hadn’t yet gotten around to exchanging numbers.
He hurried back out to the kitchen, opening and closing drawers and cabinets.
“Come on, Eli,” he mumbled to himself. “Tell me there’s a drawer full of junk somewhere around here. No man isthatorganized.” He finally found it in the drawer next to the fridge. Amid random pens and pencils, a tape measure andthreerulers, and so much loose change that Ash wished it was 1989 and there was an old-school arcade around the corner, he found an unopened package of sticky notes.
When his short nails were no match for the cellophane wrapping, he tore the package open with his teeth, grabbed one of the random pens, and scribbled what he would have sent in a text. Thenhe marched back into the bathroom and stuck it right in the center of the mirror where she wouldn’t miss it.
After that, he threw on a clean T-shirt and jeans, tossed a few odds and ends into the camping pack he’d emptied straight into the washing machine, slid on his boots, and grabbed his hat. When he made it outside, his brothers already had the trailer hitched to Eli’s truck and were ready to hit the road.
He laughed as he watched Eli hop into the driver’s seat and Boone take the passenger side.
“Right,” he mused, opening the cab’s rear door. “The youngest has to sit in the back seat.”
Boone reached back and ruffled Ash’s hair like it was twenty years ago. “What…was the celebrity hoping for some sort of special treatment?”
Ash swatted his hand away and told his brother to piss off using a much more choice four-letter word. “I’ve been sleeping on a couch for over a week without complaint,” he reminded them.
Eli laughed as he put the truck in gear and began rolling away from the property. “I think I’d file the mention of the couch as a complaint, wouldn’t you, Boone?”
Boone shook his head. “Come on, Eli. Is that any way to treat our poor baby brother’s martyrdom? The man has been suffering.”
Ash groaned. “All right. I can see how this little trip is going to go. You two get to be assholes, and I getto take it.” But a smile tugged at his lips. Before Eli’s little family reunion, it had been years since the three Murphy brothers were in the same place, and even then it was at one of Ash’s shows, so how much did that count? Before that? Ash was pretty much a kid. And though he’d never have admitted it then, he loved when his older brothers messed with him because it made him part of their world, a world for which he was always just a little too young or a little too naïve.
“Exactly,” Boone replied. “I’m glad you understand the group dynamic.”
They all sat in what felt like their first comfortable silence as they made their way out of their small hometown and toward the state highway. Then Eli turned on the radio, and the ribbing started all over again when they landed on a station playing none other than an Ash Murphy song.
“Nope,” he declared, leaning forward and reaching for the station presets. “Not happening,” he continued, then pressed button after button until he found an alternative rock station that had no chance of tossing one of his records on. From there on out, it didn’t matter what song blared through the speakers because in his head he started to hear it—the melody for his and Willow’s duet.
That was a good sign, right? It all was… Time with his brothers, bringing two more horses back to the ranch, and the song—no…hislife—finally starting to take shape.
Chapter 18
Colt, Jenna, and Willow held out their flashlights to illuminate the trail that led from the Meadow Valley guest ranch out to the property’s bonfire site where this morning—because technically 2:00 a.m.wasmorning, even if no one had actually slept yet—Colt was on duty with the ranch patrons who trailed behind them, all with flashlights of their own.
“I still can’t believe this is your job,” Willow told her brother as she glanced in his direction. His free hand was clasped in Jenna’s, and she smiled wistfully at her brother for this life he’d created for himself. “You get to spend every waking moment doing exactly what you love,” she added.
Colt smiled at his sister and then planted a kiss on top of his wife’s head as they continued toward their destination. “Isn’t it the same for you?” he asked.
Willow paused to think, which didn’t feel like the right response. Shouldn’t she have immediately replied with “Yes!” or “Of course!” Instead she found herself taking mental stock of the career she’d built over the past five years, the weight of the guitar case in her free hand.
“Wills?” Colt asked when she’d seemingly gotten lost in her head.
“How y’all doing?” Jenna called over her shoulder, letting go of Colt’s hand and dropping back toward the trail of guests several feet behind them.
“She’s not subtle, is she?” Willow asked with a laugh as her brother closed the gap between them so they were now walking side by side.
Colt laughed too. “Not even a little. Just one of the many,many, MANY things I love about her.”
“I get it. You’re in love, and your life is perfect, and the rest of us are all just here to cheer you on from the sidelines.” Willow let out a breath “Sorry. That was a bit of an extreme reaction to you simply acknowledging that Jenna is amazing, which she is.”
“She is,” Colt agreed. “But our life isn’t perfect, Wills. We have our good days and not-so-good days just like everyone else. Before you got here, we had a three-day stint of giving each other the silent treatment and me sleeping on the couch.”
