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‘I was really angry with you, TJ,’ she said quietly. ‘For a long time. Sometimes, I still am. Because you didn’t let me choose. You showed me what it was like to be cared for, and then you snatched it away. And even though I know it wasn’t what you’d intended, it was something Holden always did. In a lot of ways, you hurt me more. Because I trusted you. I chose you.’

There was no point in arguing that he had done what he’d done from a place of love, not control. Maybe Skye hadn’t had the life experience at the time to separate the two. And even if she had, the result was the same. It was her, floundering, wondering what she’d done wrong to be cut off.

‘I’m so sorry, Skye. If I could go back …’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know what I’d do. And that’s the honest truth. Because the past two years have been awful, and I’m glad that you weren’t there to see me drag my way through them. I’m glad I didn’t burden you with that, even though I think you would have made it easier for me to carry. But I am still sorry I hurt you.’

‘Okay.’

‘Will you forgive me?’

‘Of course. But don’t do it again.’

‘Hades himself couldn’t drag me away,’ he said, and if he thought that Holden still might, he didn’t give the words life.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me?’

TJ frowned. ‘Ask you what?’

‘When I first realized I loved you.’

TJ’s grin was quick and lethal, but it did not come close to reflecting the blooming pleasure that unfurled within him. When he reached for her and pulled her into his chest, his hands shook from the immensity of it. His voice wasn’t quite steady when he asked, ‘When? When did you first realize you loved me?’

‘When you gave me that piggyback ride back to the house.’

‘I remember.’ He closed his eyes, thinking back. ‘You said, “You’re dangerously close to becoming my favourite person in the world, Jesse Jones”.’

Skye smiled. ‘It was the most I could give you. Even then, I was trying to convince myself it was just infatuation because you were my first.’

‘And I was thinking of ways we could meet up, keep whatever we’d started alive. See where it would go.’

Skye looked up at him. ‘I guess we ended up there anyway.’

TJ dropped his lips to hers, but right before he kissed her, he murmured, ‘I guess we did.’

Chapter 36

Scottsdale, Arizona – March 2, 2027

They spent the last two weeks of February in San Antonio, Texas, because Skye was able to qualify for the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo based on her standing in the WPRA. Although the rodeo was big and loud with no slack, she and Kai progressed to the finals and took fourth place.

People started to notice.

Strangers at the rodeo would greet her and wish her luck on her next run. Several even asked to have their picture taken with her. A little cowgirl, who couldn’t have been more than ten, told her, ‘I’m gonna be like you one day,’ and that … that had hit Skye deep in her soul.

For so long, she’d been running, hiding, surviving. She’d never allowed herself to dream that she’d get far, let alone that she’d build herself up enough so that a single little girl would admire her and want to be her. It was both a powerful and humbling experience.

Her rapidly spreading popularity might have worried her had she been less realistic. But after the rose and the note, Skye knew that there was no point in hiding. Holden either had her schedule or had paid whoever his henchman was to find out where she’d be going next.

But even though they couldn’t do anything about the information Holden gathered, they prepared as best they could.

TJ made her reach out to her grandma’s attorney, the executor of the will, and although it wasn’t an easy conversation, Skye had been relieved when Mr Simcock, an ancient man with a broad face of wrinkles and bushy white eyebrows, had validated her concerns without question. Apparently, Grandma Jo hadn’t held back her opinion of Holden to her attorney either. And after Holden had tried to contest the will, any last doubts of Mr Simcock’s had been erased.

Together, they had drafted Skye’s pre-emptively revised plans for the trust, which included cutting off her parents completely. For weight, she included a handwritten note, signed by Mr Simcock, explaining her actions and detailing, why, if anything happened to her, the trust shouldn’t revert back to Caroline.

The only downside, the only catch, was that the draft document was just that: a draft. Until she actually turned twenty-five, Skye couldn’t have the document witnessed, signed, and finalized, because the money wasn’t yet hers to control.

Still, with Mr Simcock’s assurance that he’d finalize the document as soon as possible on her birthday, March fifteenth, Skye was appeased. In fact, she was eager. There was a little girl in her, one who had taken all that fear and hate and built something out of it, something strong.

Now, as they rolled over the cattle grid and onto the Joneses’ dairy farm, TJ warned her, ‘My mom is going to cry when she sees you, so be prepared.’