I might be stubborn, but I was an expert at reading between the lines. If I told her the truth, it wouldn’t go over well. Heck, she might even run before I made it to Seddledowne. And if I let her get away, that was it for me.
Griffin
I’m heading to a fire. In South Dakota. Our layover was in Kansas.
I turned off my location in case she hadn’t actually deleted me from the Find My app.
When she didn’t text back, it felt like someone cinched a strap around my ribs and pulled—and it didn’t loosen for the rest of the flight.
“You’re a freaking moron,” I muttered as I drove my rental from Charlottesville home. Idjit. Simpleton. Nimrod. Bonehead. Walking bad decision. You name it, I said it to myself.
I white-knuckled the steering wheel as the valley opened in front of my parents’ house and the barn came into view. This was the headquarters for DoubleTake Beauty, apparently. But it was also where Jules had been staying since I left. Seeing her place of residence terrified me.
The fact that my parents let her live there rent-free left me conflicted. On the one hand, I felt betrayed. Shouldn’t they side with me? On the other, I was glad she was safe, warm, and loved by my family. I took it as a good sign that she’d chosen to stay close to my family even when I wasn’t around.
Gramps had also let her use his old ranch truck until she bought herself a car. But when I pulled around the barn, neither Gramps’s truck nor Peyton’s Ruby Red Bronco wasthere. Every other Dupree truck was, though—and a side-by-side to boot.
A minute later, I stood in the loft apartment doorway, staring at the destruction. Apparently, there’d been a fire, and the sprinklers had gone off, flooding the place. I bomb-whistled, but no one heard, courtesy of the two industrial air movers at either end of the room.
There had to be thousands of dollars’ worth of damage in here. Drywall ruined. Hardwood floors curling up at the edges. Kitchen cabinets warped. Drenched hay from downstairs pushed up through the floorboards, leaving the whole space reeking enough to turn my stomach.
I glanced to my left to see Ford bent over, picking up a loose nail. The perfect position to give him a good shove right in the behind.His rainbow mohawk was gone, replaced by a boring but clean half-inch buzz all over his head.
“We’re going to need to pull up those boards and replace them, for sure!” Bowen yelled above the noise to Dad.
The three of them already looked almost identical anyway, but seeing all of them rubbing their chins with their right hands as they studied the floor made me laugh under my breath.
Gramps, Ashton, Blue, and James were here, too. James was here? Should he be handling a push broom like that? And should he have Willow strapped to his chest?
He had AirPods in, eyes trained on the hardwood, no expression. Willow must’ve been down for all the noise because she was out. Dang, she got big while I was gone. She had fat rolls now and long, blond eyelashes. Grief hit me in the chest—she was basically a mini-Sage. I wondered whether it hurt James every time he looked at her, or if it comforted him to know Sage had left a piece of herself behind.
“What happened in here?” I hollered.
Dad’s head snapped around, face splitting open. “Griff?”
I strode toward him, and we met in the middle of the room. We gave each other a rib-cracking embrace.
“Seriously, what happened in here?” I asked. “Is everyone all right?”
“Yeah, yeah. Everyone’s fine.” He pulled back but kept an arm around my shoulders as he steered me across the room. “Just two women who thought they were chemists for a minute. They’ll be outsourcing from here on out.”
He passed me off to Bowen, who hugged me and handed me to Ashton, who handed me to Gramps, who handed me to Blue, who tried to hand me to Ford.
I sidestepped him with a curt nod. “Hi, Uncle Ford.”
Blue laughed into his fist. “Told you he’s still ticked.”
Ford crossed his arms. “UncleFord? You haven’t called me that since…ever. I think you left off a letter.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think I did. You see, Funcle is a coveted title in this family. It stands for favorite uncle. And that would be Funcle Ash, so…”
“Funcle actually stands for fun uncle, I do believe,” Bowen corrected.
“Shhh,” I said. “Either way. It’s still Funcle Ash.”
Gramps chuckled.
“Yes!” Ashton double high-fived me. “It’s been a hot minute since anyone called me Funcle. But I’ll take it.”
