I should have handed her the keys to my house too. Then I’d be the one running out of town, and hey, the open road is just ahead. I could take it. I could just keep riding, but the thought of anywhere else makes me irritable. I’ve been outside of Wickett. It’s a big world. People are assholes. At least here, people already know I’m a miserable dick and stay away.

Now if Savannah knows what’s good for her, she’ll take that property and unload it on those bloodsuckers who were willing to pay twice what it’s worth just to complete their little shopping plaza.

I hope she does. I don’t even care about my shop anymore. The idea of going back to work makes me sick. I wanted to go back to the way things were before but I should know better. There’s no going back now.

I saw this coming. I really did.

And it’s clear she knew. She fucking knew the whole time.

It all makes perfect sense now. She could climb into my bed, keep her feelings at bay, knowing the whole time my future was her ticket out of town.

This is the kind of shit Hazel does. She tries to mastermind everything without letting anyone in on it. She thinks—thought—she knew best. Why couldn’t she just let me be? I was alone—depressed and grumpy, sure—but I was fine. That’s what I was used to.

But no, she had to go out and find my biological fucking brother. How long did it take her to find him, I wonder. Did she just Google my dad or does she have some expensive private investigators track him down? Other than the pictures of my old man, I have no memory of his face. The few things he did show up for when I was kid were not memorable enough to store away in my brain, and I couldn’t pick the fucker out of a lineup today.

Not that him being in a lineup would be surprising. Asshole is still doing forty-to-life for shooting someone in a bar, drunk off his ass. The only reason I know that is because my biological mother—technical title, not a term of endearment—told me about it in one of her rare parental visits that she actually showed up to.

Ryder knew his face from memory. Curiosity has been gnawing at me since that night, and I’ll admit I want to know what it was like for my dear little brother. If he recognized his face in that picture, does that mean he was around? Did he have an actual family instead of getting put in foster homes here and there, getting kicked out for being disagreeable, prone to violence, with a history of running away?