I pulled out the middle book, one of Anneliese Harris’s newer ones, because I was always re-reading them, and showed it to River. My best friend started to laugh, too. Rey came back and took one look at what we were laughing at and let out a giggle-snort that sounded so silly, it just spurred us all on.
“Holy fuck, this is the weirdest day of my life!” I wheezed after a while, wiping my eyes with some napkins.
Rey, despite his issues about leaving the apartment, let alone going all the way to another state, lifted his bottle of water. “To Illinois?”
River and I toasted with him. “To Illinois!”
Chapter 2
Theo
I was sweeping the front steps of our little office building for the third time, trying to will my headache away. Even the five dogs scattered around the edges of the yard were judging me as they kept an eye on me.
One of the barn cats, Mollie, wandered in from behind the office and plopped her butt in the middle of the hard-packed dirt road that led around what Ruth had called the human buildings to the stables.
Fuck, it still hurt to think about her.
“Put that broom away, you’ll wear it out,” Sierra, the rescue’s current head of operations in Ruth’s absence, told me through the cracked open window. “I’m trying to finish this email, and the constantsweep, sweepis scattering my brain.”
I grunted. Then I stood the broom against the wall and turned to survey the yard.
Everything was in top shape. We’d made sure of it. Hell, last night Cook had come by to make a few easy meals for the fridge and freezer, in case the new guy—his name was Lake, I reminded myself—wasn’t good in the kitchen.
When I’d found Ruth that morning, two months ago, I had changed. For a couple of days, I hadn’t thought of myself at all. My best friend was gone. I had shoes to fill until someone told me what would happen next.
Then Hudson McMillan had come by to do that and…yeah. Now there was this kid who’d visited the farm once and would decide the fate of the whole operation.
A horse whinnied in the distance, and I sighed. The horses. There would always be more to rehabilitate, to try to save. As much as I wanted to say we could save them all, we couldn’t. Some were too far gone either mentally or physically. But most—Ruth had liked to say—we’d be able to save most, given time.
My gaze caught on Hudson’s pretentious black SUV that slowed down on the road, the blinker bright against the shiny black.
The car slowed to a crawl, Hudson likely telling the guy about what he was seeing. It rolled past the pond and then turned to the parking lot next to the office.
“Here we go…” I murmured under my breath.
“Remember what you promised,” Sierra sang through the gap in the window.
I rubbed my jaw, then plastered what I hoped was a neutral expression on my face.
“Stay,” I said quietly, knowing the dogs heard me fine.
The doors to the SUV opened, and Hudson stepped out. He gave me a warning glance, which was a bit offensive. I could behave.
“Who’s Hottie McEyebrows?” a blond young man who had slid out of the back of the SUV asked.
Hudson guffawed. “Boys, this is Theo Fenton, he’s the foreman.”
The blond smirked a little but stayed quiet.
The other guy, around the same age it seemed, walked to me and stuck out his hand. “Hey, I’m Lake. The a-hole is River.”
Then, before I could make any sort of comment, the boys said, as one, “No relation.”
I huffed with amusement despite myself. “Lake and River, huh?”
The tinted windows of the SUV were cracked open, and my eyes caught movement. Scared looking eyes peered at me through the gap in the window, before whomever was still in the car hid again.
I raised a brow at the boys.
