“A guy.”
“What guy?”Gran asked, her eyes narrowing.
“Just a guy.He said he was buyin’ flowers for his mom.Isn’t that nice?”
“Who’s his mother?”my own nosy mama asked.
“Oh my gosh, you guys.I was tryin’ not to lie to you.And I’m not answerin’.You two are the biggest gossips this side of the Continental Divide, and some things don’t need to be announced over a bullhorn through town.”
Gran gave up trying to coerce information out of me, but only because she knew I’d tell her later.She had more patience than a saint.She walked into the back room and picked up her knitting project, then relaxed into her rocking chair and her hands became a blur of loops and pulls.
Mama, on the other hand, pressed her nose to the front window.“That man’s walkin’ into the sheriff’s station.Maybe he’s a criminal.I wouldn’t be surprised.All those tattoos, and did you see his hair?Ain’t no men around here wear their hair like that.”
“Oh my God, Mama,” I said, rolling my eyes.“Just ’cause someone has tattoos and long hair doesn’t mean they’re bad.It just means they have tattoos and long hair.”
“Yeah, but then what’s he doin’ at the station?”
“Maybe he’s reportin’ a crime someone else committed.”I laughed.“Maybe he’s there to report thatyou’restalkin’ him.”
“Avery Jane Harlowe!I am not.”
“Looks like you are.”
She turned away from the window and crossed her arms over her chest.“Well, I’m not.”
“Okay, good,” I said, waving my hand toward six buckets of flowers on the floor, “then you can help me get these lilies into the fridge in the back before their edges start to curl.”
My childhood best friend had probably gone into the sheriff’s station to see his sister, Deputy Sheriff Abey Lee.If he’d just arrived in town, it seemed like a good place to start.I hadn’t seen or thought about him in a long time.Years.Not consciously anyway, but he’d always starred in my dreams.
The last anyone knew, he had brought his son to town for his brother to raise, and then he ran again.
Dixon and I hadn’t been friends in a long time.We’d grown up and grown apart, as kids do, but then I watched all through middle and high school as he became someone entirely different than the sweet little boy I’d spent my summers with.He became distant and angry, and he did every single thing the adults in his life told him not to.
He’d gotten into more fights than I could count, and he’d been on track to waste his life.And I’d heard that was exactly what he’d been doing since he graduated high school by the skin of his teeth.He’d become an addict.He’d run away.
But now he was back?And he looked… healthy.He looked strong, which was the complete opposite of how he’d looked the last time I’d seen him, two days after I graduated a year after him.I had been preparing to start business classes at the community college in Jackson.I hadn’t even waited until the fall semester; my first college course began two weeks after high school ended.
But Dixon had been drunk that night at the local diner, causing a ruckus with his friends.They actually managed to break José’s front window when they chucked a chair at it.Dixon was lucky no one had been hurt, but he and his stupid friends had spent the night in jail anyway.
That misguided, angry guy felt miles away.Now, Dixon seemed the opposite, quiet and stoic, mindful and… sad.
If I was honest, the tattoos were kind of hot.One had been visible peeking out of his T-shirt on the side of his neck, and it looked like he had a dragon on his left forearm, but I imagined he had a lot more under his clothes.A mountain rose up the sides of his wrist and peaked at the center point of his right forearm, and he had numbers or markings on his fingers that made me curious.I kind of liked his long hair.His older brothers were pretty clean cut.They were both good men who treated their wives well and bought flowers for them regularly, like partners should.
Dixon was different.He always had been.
And that had never been more apparent than it was today.
ChapterThree
Dixon
The heavy sheriff’sstation door slammed shut behind me from the momentum of its own weight when I entered, and the only person in the room looked up from a mass of papers on her desk.
She was my brother’s girl, the one he’d brought with him when he came out to California four years ago to try to talk me into coming home.I hadn’t been ready then, though, and Brand showing up had made that pretty clear to me.He’d wanted me to face my past, but when they’d left and I spent the next week wide-eyed and jonesing at three in the morning, I knew for sure I wasn’t ready.Not even close.
That was when I really went off the grid—Idaho, Alaska, and then I ended up in the PNW, acting like a fucking lumberjack in the Cascades, chopping down trees for a guy who gave me a cabin to live in and an honest wage.
It was there I finally came to terms with myself in the dead of winter, when I couldn’t get down the mountain for food or water, nursing an empty stomach and frostbit fingers.That was when I finally knew I needed my family again and that I was ready to face them… and ready for them to need me.
