On Saturday mornings she cooked it for him. On Sundays, he did it for her. Unspoken, unwritten, but very real nonetheless.

He didn’t deserve bacon. Not at all.

Not after the way he had spoken to her last night. But...the problem was... The problem was it was hard to stay mad.

Well, maybe it was just hard to resist bacon. But she had slept on it. And actually, as she rattled around in her camper and pulled out a skirt, bangles, a thin T-shirt and a pair of sandals for the day, she felt even more resolute. She began to make a mental list. A mental list of all the things she had going for her.

She’d felt an indefinable sense of being incomplete for about six months now. Just the sense that she was on the edge of some new evolution or metamorphosis and she didn’t know what shape it would take.

Then her mom had said all that to her yesterday. Issued a challenge, essentially, and Sammy was a stubborn creature all the way to her soul. So the challenge had hooked itself in there and hung right on.

Then there was Pansy.

Pansy demonstrating what it was to grow. To move on. To make a life.

It was enough to bring everything into a crystal-clear vision in her head.

And Ryder didn’t trust her.

Fine. She would prove to him she wasn’t being spontaneous, crazy Sammy.

Well. Not just spontaneous, crazy Sammy.

He was worried about the camper, but she was going to ignore that for now. Because to her mind the camper was all that she needed. It would fit a bassinet nicely, and she intended to be a single mother, so there was no reason to dress it all up any differently.

As for health insurance, he did present a good point, and she was going to figure that out. It was on her list. Then she was going to have to figure out the whole father-of-the-baby situation. And that went on her mental list, too. So there, that was some planning. He wouldn’t be able to fault her for that.

She was being responsible.

Just like he had demanded.

With a bounce in her step and intent in her heart she made the trek across the field, to the edge of the gravel up to the front porch of the farmhouse. She loved this place. She had spent the first fourteen years of her life in her parents’ house, before moving into the camper. And for as long as she could remember it had felt like being in the den of some frightening and foreign creature.

It hadn’t felt like home. It hadn’t felt like a refuge. It had felt mean and like the whole house was made of the most brittle glass. And one breath could shatter it all.

She had learned to walk carefully. But she had never quite been able to master not breathing. And so the shattering had been inevitable.