“I know.” Jenna’s smile faded. “I hate that you’re going to sell and move away from Wildstone.”

Wildstone, California, was Piper’s hometown. Sort of. She’d moved here at age thirteen with her two younger siblings, Gavin and Winnie, to be raised by their grandparents. But in the end, Piper had done all the raising. It’d taken forever, but now, finally, her brother and sister were off living their own lives.

And hers could finally start.

All she had to do was finish fixing up the property; then she could sell and divide the money into thirds with her siblings. With her portion, she’d finally have the money and freedom to go to school and become a physician assistant like she’d always wanted.

So close. She was so close that she could almost taste it. “I plan to come back to Wildstone after school.”

Because where else would she go? Her only other home had been following her parents all over the world, providing healthcare wherever they’d been needed the most. But her mom and dad were gone now. Her family was Gavin and Winnie, and everyone in this room.

“But why the University of Colorado?” Jenna asked. “Why go so far? You could go thirty minutes up the road to San Luis Obispo to Cal Poly.”

Piper shook her head. She’d been stuck here for seventeen years. She needed to go away for a while and figure some things out—like who she was if she wasn’t raising her siblings. But that felt hard to explain, so she gave even her BFF the ready-made excuse. “U of C is one of the really strong schools for my program. And I think I’ll like Colorado.”

Jenna looked unconvinced, but she was a good enough friend to let it go.

“Don’t worry,” Piper said. “I’ll be back.”

“You’d better.” Jenna took another look at Piper’s list. “I can’t even make a shopping list.”

“That’s because you don’t go food shopping. You order in.”

Jenna smiled. “Oh, right.”

Outside the bar, they could hear a storm brewing. The news had been talking about it all week. Wild winds pushed against the building, making the lights flicker and the walls creak, but nobody even blinked. Wildstone people were a hearty bunch.

“Paint samples!” Piper remembered suddenly, and wrote that down.

“You know you’re a bit of a control freak, right?”

When you ran your world, everyone in that world tended to depend on you to do it right. That’s how it’d always been for her. She’d been in charge whether she liked it or not. Piper chewed on the end of her pen. “I’m forgetting something, I know it.”

“Yeah,” Jenna said. “To get a life.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do here?”