I sigh.
“Tell him I’ll leave the key under the mat,” my mom says.
“Your mom says—”
“Yeah, I got it,” I tell my dad. “Thanks.”
He grunts his acknowledgement. “I’m glad you’re coming home, Oakley. We’ve missed you.”
There goes that ache in my chest again. “Yeah. I’ve missed y’all, too.” Lawson signals for an exit, so I do the same. “Dad, I gotta go. I’ll see you soon, all right?”
“Drive safe.”
I can hear my parents in the background talking about dino nuggets for a moment before the call ends. Forty-three going on four, apparently.
I follow Lawson into the parking lot of a fast-food place. He parks off to the side with the trailer, so I pull up next to him, rolling down my window.
“Get us some food?” he asks. “Coffee, too.”
My lips twitch. I suggested we make breakfast before leaving this morning, but Lawson wanted to get on the road as quickly as possible. I can’t blame him, considering our plan to drive straight to Montana without rest. Finding somewhereto stay for the night with Bell would be a logistical nightmare better avoided.
He sure didn’t make it long without coffee, though.
“Any requests for your Royal Highness?” I ask.
Lawson doesn’t comment on my cheekiness. “You know what I like.”
Suppose I do.
With a salute, I pull around to the drive-through, ordering enough food and drink to last us a while. Lawson looks amused when I hand his share of the haul over through his open window.
“Some of this for Bell?” he asks.
I stare at him, appalled he’d even joke about such a thing. “Don’t you dare think about feeding any of this to my cow, Lawson Darling. She’s bad enough as is. Could you imagine if she got a taste for fast food? She’d be like a shark after blood.”
He huffs a laugh. “Oh, sonowshe’s your cow?”
“Don’t start,” I warn him. “I can still turn back around, y’know. Then she’ll beyourcow andyourproblem.”
“You won’t do that,” he says, confident he’s got me on his hook. And damn if he doesn’t. “Come on. Let’s get back on the road.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, peeking into the trailer to make sure Bell is all right. Of course she is, her tail swishing merrily. She’s probably plotting her next attack.
I return to my vehicle, and Lawson pulls back onto the road, me following. I want to be mad at my friend for so easily uprooting me from the life I’d tried to create in Kansas. But apparently, my roots weren’t buried down that deep, were they?
Lawson was right. There wasn’t a thing tethering me to my temporary home in the end. And now that Montana is on thehorizon, the two of us traveling steadily that way, all I feel is a familiar sort of longing for everything I chose to leave behind.
My house. My job at Darling Ranch. My family. Wendy. Lawson.
I traded one life for another, thinking the benefits would outweigh the loss. They didn’t, though, did they? Even with Stevie and I at our best, I never felt settled. I kept waiting for it to come, that feeling of home.
But it never did.
Which is probably why I didn’t fight harder when Stevie told me it wasn’t working. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t, either.
And it’s why I can’t be mad at Lawson for dragging me back to Darling.
It was inevitable. I just wish my failed attempt at love hadn’t hurt the one person I never meant to.
