Tomorrow was my wedding day. I should have been in bed. If I’d stayed there, I wouldn’t have heard my first best friend say those things about me. I wouldn’t know what Cormac Kelly really thought.
Now, there was no unhearing it.
Laughter and the clink of glasses followed as I stumbled back to the sidewalk and turned toward my parents’ house. My feelings were bruised. My heart ached. Cormac and I had been thick as thieves. Even though that had faded years ago, I’d believed our friendship had meant something.
My pace picked up. Tomorrow was my wedding day. Mywedding day. No one was going to take that from me, especially not Cormac Kelly and his unwanted opinions. He could stuff them in his saddle and ride his high horse right back to Wyoming.
Jackson and I were getting married, and we would make this marriage work.
Come hell or high water, we were going to be happy together.
Chapter Two
Zara
Mysuitcasewasstuffedso full, I was scared the zipper was going to break and I’d be buried under an explosion of clothes. My car wasn’t any better, filled to the brim with everything I’d need for the summer.
“I’m beginning to think you’re not coming back,” Zane said, throwing himself on my stripped bed.
I brushed my hair out of my face with a sigh. “Don’t worry your pretty little head. This is a summer job. I have no interest in experiencing Wyoming winters.”
He raised a doubtful brow. “Your suitcase says otherwise. Do you really think you need two pairs of heels?”
I scrunched my nose, contemplating, then nodded decisively. “You never know what could come up. I’m not going to be working all the time.”
“Still…” he swung his crossed leg, his flip-flop dangling perilously, “it’sWyoming—and not even Cheyenne. Though it is a stretch to call that a city.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Since when are you such a snob? It’s not like Portland is the paragon of glamour.”
He flicked his fingers. “I just can’t see you so far from the coast. It doesn’t make sense. Can you explain this very abrupt decision one more time? Since you’re leaving me with Mom and Dad, I need to be able to talk them down when they start climbing the walls with worry about you.”
My brother was nothing if not dramatic, but that didn’t mean his point wasn’t valid. We were a tight, close-knit family, and our parents were the definition of overprotective. I loved them. Really, truly loved them. Since I’d split from Jackson, they’d been superheroes, offering nonstop support, checking on me every day, making sure I wanted for nothing.
That was why I needed to go somewhere I could breathe on my own. No matter how well-intentioned, sometimes their concern was suffocating.
I sat beside him, laying my head on his shoulder, and he reached for my hand, threading our fingers together the way he always did.
“You know how much I’ve always loved the Kelly ranch,” I said. “The summers I spent there were so uncomplicated.”
Before things got heavy. Before I grew up and made a string of bad decisions. I wouldn’t have said it was the last place I was happy, but it might have been the place where I could dial back into those days—when I was sure of who I was and where I was going. I needed that more than anything.
He huffed. “Because there’s nothing there.”
I poked his side. “Exactly, Zaney. Nothing but cattle, horses, and endless blue sky. That’s the point.”
He shuddered. “All that land creeps me out. I went once—never again.”
My brother was a city boy. Funny, since our mom was a nature lover. But our dad only spent time outside to be with her, so I guessed he’d inherited that gene from him.
When we were ten and eleven, they’d shipped us off to spend the summer with their college friends, Lock and Elena Kelly. Zane had been completely miserable, but I’d lived my best life on their ranch, getting dirty and exploring with the Kelly kids. The next summer, Zane’s refusal to go back was adamant, while I couldn’t wait to return—which I did, every summer until I was sixteen.
I lifted my head, drinking in my fill of his face. Zane had our mom’s blue eyes and long lashes, hooded by our dad’s heavy brow that always seemed a little suspicious. His bronze skin was so smooth it was almost unreal, even up close.
My brother was a beautiful person, inside and out, and I was going to miss him more than anyone. I’d been missing him for years, though, all of my own doing. My life with Jackson had become so chaotic, I’d distanced myself from pretty much everyone, not wanting them to see and question and know. I’d been embarrassed and ashamed—still was, to be honest—and had barely been able to face any of them. The second I walked out on Jackson, I was lucky my parents and brother had immediately opened their arms to me. If they hadn’t...I didn’t want to think about where I’d be.
Still, I needed more...different. The last six months, they’d propped me up. It was time for me to figure out what standing on my own two feet felt like.
I dug my teeth into my bottom lip, considering my words. “I need this reset—a summer away from everything, so when I come back, I’ll be ready to start fresh. If I had to do it now…” I shook my head, “I can’t even think about what that would look like. I’m not there yet. And a lot of my best memories happened during the summers I spent at the ranch.”
