Layla slugged him in the bicep and he chuckled. “Seriously, guys, it’s no big deal.”
Logan snorted. “No big deal. He says it’s no big deal, Lay. I totally believe him. Don’t you?” His brother’s sarcasm coated the cab.
“Oh, yeah,” Layla said, laying it on thick too. “He’s not freaking out or anything.”
“I’m not,” Darren said. “It’s going to be…different this time.”
“How so?” Logan asked, pulling onto the busiest freeway Darren had ever seen. He gripped the armrest and marveled that his brother knew how to navigate this kind of traffic.
“For one, we’re not fighting.”
“Mm hm,” Layla said.
“No, really. We didn’t at all. We just drove around and talked, and then we rode until it was time for dinner.” It had pretty much been the most perfect afternoon Darren had ever experienced, and he hoped he could remember the comfortable hours he’d spent with Farrah forever.
“We barely touched, and well.” He cleared his throat. “She wouldn’t let me kiss her.”
“Goin’ slow,” Logan said. “That’s probably smart.”
Darren’s brain thought so. His heart wanted to press on the accelerator, the same way it had this summer. But he hated how that segment of their relationship had ended, and he wasn’t willing to repeat it.
So if he needed to go slow, as if they’d just met and were getting to know each other, he would.
“I just realized something,” he blurted.
“What?” Logan and Layla said together.
“I have to get to know her again,” he said. “She’s not the same woman I met last fall. Or the one I dated this summer. She’s…changed.”
“So have you,” Layla said, grinning at him.
“I have?”
“Sure,” she said. “You talk more, for one. And you smile more. And you bought a farm and have a completely different life now than you did last fall.”
“So we’re basically starting over.” Darren thought he’d care more than he did. He didn’t need to get married right away.
“You’re coming home, too,” Layla said. “You two belong together. You’ll find your way home together.” She sighed happily and hooked her arm through Darren’s. “Now, I hope you brought your swim trunks, because we’re eating dinner on the beach.”
Darren’s systemfelt like it was on a yo-yo. Cold, warm, cold. He’d been back in Vermont for three days, but he’d returned to a warm house. Then gone out to cold Steeple Ridge to ride and collect Rambo from the cowboys that had taken care of him while Darren was away.
Back to the warmth of the fireplace, to Rambo sleeping on his feet at night, to hot coffee in the mornings.
But not this morning.
This morning, he was clapping his hands together to keep them warm while he loaded Farrah’s boxes into the back of his truck. She was organized in a purely chaotic event. Each box hadbeen packed, taped, and labeled. All he had to do was go in, grab them, take them out, load them up.
He went from warm, to cold, and back to warm.
By the time she got back with the rental truck, only her furniture remained. “Sorry,” she said as she climbed down from the cab. “They wanted to give me this giant one, and said they didn’t have this sized one, and it took forever.” She swiped her hair off her forehead and flashed him a flustered smile.
“But this is the one you want?” He reached to lift the sliding door in the back.
“Yeah, it should fit everything. I don’t have that much.”
He peered at her. “Farrah, the house is full of furniture.”
“Oh, but I’m not taking it all,” she said, striding back toward the house. “I marked the things I’m taking with an orange tag.”
