He put a hand on his hip. “Why do I feel like the four of you are trying to sneak out past curfew and you’re doing a very poor job of it?”
Holden, Ashton, and Gramps all had wide eyes.
I held my hands up, my heart racing. “I mean, I don’t even know if I’ll get into vet school. There were over seventeen hundred applicants this year and only a hundred and thirty spots.
Dr. Atkins put his hands on his hips. “I’d be shocked if you didn’t get in. The dean of the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine and I were roommates during our time there, remember? I’ve talked you up, big time. Not that you needed it. He was already impressed. He told me you aced the interview. And you have a 4.0 still, right?” Iacedthe interview? My heart soared. And immediately slammed back to earth. Because I wasn’t going. I couldn’t give Blue up. I wouldn’t.
“Yes,” I said feeling so ashamed. Nobody with a 4.0 should downgrade their plans. Especially if they pulled that in Biochemistry.
Silas aimed himself at me. “You have more than five hundred vet volunteer hours. And more than seven hundred medical hours from when you ran with the rescue squad. Are you telling me you put all that time in for nothing? You didn’t even do volleyball your senior year because you wanted to focus on this and now you’re quitting?”
The shame hung over me like a cloud of darkness.
“You don’t need to worry,” Blue said quietly, looking as guilty as I felt. “She’s going to vet school.”
My head tilted and my eyes burned. “Blue, you know I can’t.”
“What?” Silas shouted, looking like he wanted to rip something apart.
“Hey,” Gramps said gently, waving Silas off. “What do you mean you can’t?”
So I told them. I told them everything the coaches’ wives had told me. “If Blue goes to the NFL, I have to go with him.”
Silas’s hands shoved into his hair and he turned away from me.
“Hey, Anna,” Holden said, scratching his brow. “You gotta hear how crazy this sounds, right?”
I gulped. “What’s crazy about it? If I learned to go after my heart from anyone, I learned it from the two of you.” I pointed between him and Silas.
“Yeah.” Silas let out an angry chuckle as he turned back around. “But not at the age of nineteen and at the expense of your entire future.”
“I’ll be twenty.” I nodded firmly.
“It’s too young,” Holden said softly.
Blue’s hands were at the back of his head and his chest was rising and falling too quickly.
I threw my hands out. “Do you see how ridiculous you all are? Blue’s old enough to go pro at the age of twenty but?—”
“Twenty-one. My birthday’s in March, remember?” he said, almost too low for me to hear, which was good because I plowed right over his comment anyway.
“—I’m too young to decide if I want to go with him? Why? Because he’s a guy? Y’all need to stop treating me like a child.”
Ashton lifted a hand. “What would your mom tell you?”
“I have no idea!” I half-yelled. “That doesn’t work this time! You think I haven’t asked myself that same question? Doyouknow what she’d tell me? Would she tell me to go after my heart? Or would she tell me not to give up on my dreams? She was a hopeless romanticanda raging feminist. It doesn’t reconcile. And none of it matters anyway because she’s. Not. Here!” I threw my hands out even wider. Everyone stared at me, tight-lipped for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Exactly. None of you know the right answer either.” I huffed and stormed past all of them, choking on my tears.
“Anna!” Silas yelled when I was five feet from the door. “You have to go to vet school!”
I yanked the door open. “No! I actually don’t!” Then I walked outside and slammed it shut. I jogged through the grass, toward Mom, fighting back tears. I didn’t even bother opening the gate, just hurled myself over it and kept going. Running until I collapsed on top of the grass in front of her grave.
“Mom.” I lay my cheek against the cold ground above her. “I don’t know what to do.” My heart was kicking like a bucking bronco. “I love him. So much. But I want to be a vet so badly.”
Somebody dropped behind me and I already knew it was Blue. I could tell by his breathing, the sandalwood smell, and the gentleness of his hand on my back. “Hey.” He pulled me into his lap. I turned, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and pressing my face into his neck just as I had at the first Knoxville game.
My voice shook. “Let’s just get married. We’ll elope and then they won’t be able to tell us what to do.”
His fingers traced along my spine. “No. We’re not doing that. Hey.” He pushed me back so he could look at my face. “You need to be a vet.”
