My face screwed into disgust. “No.” I laughed once. “She knows I wouldn’t be happy about that. Things were good. Now, it doesn’t really make sense that I was so upset. We were working toward it. We’d just moved in together. She was committed to me. She loves me. I made us both miserable over it.”

Chief shook his head. “Shacked up, huh? That explains it. My wife always says to my daughters, ‘Why buy the cow if you get the milk for free?’ I bet she woulda said yes if you woulda made her wait to share your bed.”

I breathed out a laugh. “Maybe. We practically lived together anyway. Either I was in her dorm room, or she was at my place.”

“Or … if she agreed to move in with you, it’s possible she’s just taking things at her own pace. She didn’t say good-bye. She just said no.”

“If she says no again, I’m pretty sure it’s going to mean good-bye.”

“Sometimes, good-bye is a second chance. Clears your head. Anyway … missing someone makes you remember why you loved that person in the first place.”

I choked and then tried to clear the emotion from my voice. I couldn’t imagine walking away from America.

I wasn’t just in love with her. It was like taking my first breath, then the second, and then every breath after that. America had come into my life, and then she was the reason for it.

“She’s special, you know? She’s a daddy’s girl, but she’ll tell you where to stick it if she doesn’t like what you have to say. She’ll slap a giant to protect the honor of her best friend. She hates good-byes. She wears this little gold cross around her neck and cusses like a sailor. She’s my happily ever after.”

“She sounds like a firecracker. Maybe she said no to make sure you’re not going to leave at the slightest sign of rocky shores. I’m surrounded by girls, and I’ll tell ya … sometimes, they take shots at you to see if you’ll run.”

“I was fooling myself.” My voice broke.

Chief got quiet. “I wouldn’t say—”

“When I find her, I’m going to ask her. I’ll ask her as many times as it takes, but just being with her is enough. I had to literally be ripped away from her to understand that.”

Chief chuckled. “You wouldn’t be the first man to need a knock on the noggin.”

“I have to find her.”

“You will.”

“She’s okay. Right?”

Chief looked over at me. I could see he didn’t want to make a promise he couldn’t keep, so he simply nodded, the wrinkles around his light eyes deepening.

“You’d better find a garden hose first, or she won’t recognize you. You look like you lost a fight with a pottery wheel.”

I laughed once. I tried to resist the urge to rub the dried mud from my face, not wanting to make a bigger mess in Chief’s truck than I already had.