“My father confronted you before he shared his findings with me,” Gage reminded her quietly, peering out over the herd of sheep still emerging from the pine grove before he brushed past her to keep walking. “I had zero time to process anything he said about you before he finished with his coup de grâce—that you’d already accepted his bribe to remove yourself from my life.”

She wanted to believe that she heard a hint of regret in his voice. Over losing her? Or over the fact that she’d hidden her past for the entire duration of their relationship?

Probably the latter, she thought as she hurried to keep up with him. She might not have accepted the payoff, but she was hardly blameless in the breakup. She’d started packing her things before she’d even talked to Gage. It was interesting to realize she’d been that defensive even then—already protecting herself from getting dumped by being the one to walk away first.

“I was furious with him,” she admitted, pulling out her phone to snap some more photos of the sharp cliffs jutting up from the creek bed. She appreciated having something to do with her nervous energy during an awkward conversation. “I felt embarrassed, too, that I’d been waiting for the perfect moment to tell you about my family and in doing that, I’d lost the chance to share that story in a less damning light.”

She switched over to video mode and filmed another minute of the sheep making their way down to the creek bed, hoping she could find a way to make the nature footage fun for her followers. She was losing her edge in a competitive digital marketplace. One more thing her divorce had cost her since she could no longer afford to attend the kinds of parties and events that people loved to see in her feed.

“Your father was on the run from the law. Is there a way to put a good face on that?” Gage moved farther down the hill leading to the creek, his long strides making it easy for him to cover a lot of ground.

At least the cheerful chirp of birds all around them helped her to detach from the frustration that normally came from discussing her father.

“Of course not. He’s a thief, and he should have turned himself in long ago.” She hadn’t seen her dad since she’d left home at seventeen bound for LA, but she’d always imagined him living in Mexico now, freed from the burden of raising a daughter. “At the time, he convinced me that he couldn’t possibly do that—turn himself in—because my mother had left us, and there would be no one to look after me if he went to prison.”