* * *
While the chili slow cooks,I take all eight of my friends out to the barn.
“This is so freaking cool. Can we sleep out here?” Grant asks.
“Uh… the barn? Instead of the house?”
“Well, we’ve got our sleeping bags anyway for the camping trip next week. I feel like it’d be more fun out here.”
I shrug. “Sure. Suit yourself.”
I show them around the property where I grew up—walk them past the garden, point out the pear tree that’s been there longer than I have. The guys gravitate toward the four-wheelers immediately, and within five minutes they’ve torn off into the fields like it’s the X Games. The girls and I hang back, brushing down the horses in the stalls.
“So… that was a little awkward,” Maya says, running her fingers through my mare’s mane. “My bad. Didn’t mean to get all graphic in front of your family. That’s just totally normal conversation at my house. I need to recalibrate. I forget I’m in the Bible Belt.”
“It’s okay,” I say, waving a hand. “They probably needed a little lightening up anyway.”
“Faith,” April says, suddenly serious. “We need to talk aboutyou. What the hell—sorry, heck—is going on with Keith? I tried explaining it to the girls on the way down, but they weren’t getting this whole ‘we’re engaged but taking a break’ thing.”
I roll my eyes. “Keith and I are sort of on a temporary pause. Ofhischoosing,” I say, twisting my engagement ring.
“You broke up?” Alex asks. “April told us a little, but I thought I misunderstood.”
“No, we didn’t break up. Not exactly. We’re definitely getting married. He’s just… in D.C. for the summer, and we’re hitting the pause button until he’s back.”
“When’s he coming back?”
I shrug, eyes glossing over. “I don’t know. He hasn’t really… talked to me since he left.”
“Not really? Or not at all?” April presses.
“I haven’t heard from him at all.” My throat tightens. “I think that’s part of the whole ‘Rumspringa’ thing—we’re not supposed to talk. So we can, um… explore. Or something.”
I choke on the words as they come out, the reality settling hard. The silence. The distance. The fact that the man I’m supposed to marry hasn’t so much astextedme in a week.
Maya rubs my back. “So he’s ghosting you. And calling it Rumspringa.”
I wipe a tear from the corner of my eye. “It’s fine. He just needs space. He’ll come back. It’s… it’s just my cross to bear.”
April folds her arms. “Faith, you’re looking at this all wrong. If he’s out there living his wild oats fantasy, then maybeyoushould be too.”
She taps her nose. Danger sign.
“Faith, what happened to your trench coat?”
“My…trench coat?”
“Yeah. The one I borrowed when I went to Morgan’s hotel that night. You know,naked underneath.”
“Oh,” I wave a hand, trying to laugh. But my stomach flips—because the second she says that, guess who flashes across my brain?
Hunter Holloway.
I wonder what he’d do if I showed up tohishouse like that.
Would he eat me alive with his eyes the same way he did when I waited on him?
Okay, fine, I didn’t justwonder.I may or may not have GoogledHunter Holloway shirtlessthis morning. For… science.
