"You're angry."
"Of course I'm angry. He left her and dumped the ranch on us." I swallowed hard. "I don't want to see him again, ever."
Sienna didn't push. She just held my hand tight. I stared at the ceiling while the pines moved in the wind outside.
"We used to do everything together,” I said. “I’d just like to know why. Just... how you do that. How could you walk away."
Sienna shifted, wrapping her arm across my chest and holding me tighter. "I don't know, but he’s the one missing out. Look at what you guys built without him."
I let out a slow breath in the dark, my hand smoothing down her back. "We didn't build much, mostly just kept it from falling apart. But we're still here."
The tension bled out of me, leaving nothing but the steady rise and fall of her chest against mine.
"Thank you for telling me," she said.
We lay there in the quiet until the faint crunch of gravel drifted through the open porch door. A second later, Wren's voice floated up from the yard below, low and muffled as she talked on the phone. She was pacing the driveway, completely oblivious to us, but the sound was enough to break the bubble we were in.
Sienna went still, listening to the footsteps fade toward the barn.
"I shouldn't be in here," she whispered after a minute, though she didn't move an inch.
"Probably not."
"I mean it. The rules were mine.” She settled back down against me with a soft sigh. "Five minutes, then I'll go."
She didn't go in five minutes, and I didn't remind her. I just lay there with her breathing slow against my chest and the mountains black in the doorway.
She slipped out before daylight, when the sky was just starting to turn gray. The mattress shifted, cold air filling the space she left behind, but I kept my eyes shut. Opening them would’ve meant reaching for her and pulling her back under the covers. Neither of us would’ve been quiet enough to keep the rest of the house asleep.
So I stayed perfectly still, letting her sneak back down the hall, and spent the next hour just breathing in the vanilla scent she left on my pillow.
I made it through the entire day without slipping, right up until dinner.
I walked into the kitchen just as Sienna set a massive, steaming bowl of chicken pasta and a platter of garlic bread on the table. She was wearing a sundress tonight, pale yellow with little flowers on it, the kind of thing you'd wear to a farmer's market back east.
It hit me right in the chest.
She took a seat near the middle of the long wooden table. My usual chair was directly across from hers—the same one I'd sat in every night of my life. I pulled out the one beside her instead and sat down.
Dad started serving the pasta. Colt didn't even break stride in his story.
"—so anyway, she takes one look at my palm and says I've got a long lifeline," Colt said. "Real long. Says I'm gonna live past ninety."
"How much did that cost you?" Dad asked.
"Forty bucks."
Dad shook his head. "Forty dollars. For a woman to hold your hand and lie to you."
"It wasn't a lie, Dad, it's a reading."
Wren came in with the water pitcher and stopped dead halfway to the table. She looked at me, then down at the chair I was in, and scowled.
"That's my spot," she said.
"Sit anywhere." I reached for the garlic bread. "Half the table's open."
Wyatt's place sat clean, no plate, Maisie's booster gone from the seat beside it. I tipped my chin at the empty spots. "Wyatt not coming?"
