Iris simply stared at her. “Really? That’s it?”

“Yes,” Sammy said, her eyes filling.

“He’s thirty-five years old,” Iris said. “He chose his life.”

“He didn’t.”

“I assure you that he did. Absolutely and completely. That man is far too stubborn to ever be railroaded into anything. I know that what he did for us when he was younger was out of duty, but this... The way that he works the ranch now, it’s not. It isn’t. He is absolutely everything that he’s chosen to be.”

“Well, I don’t want him to choose to keep on taking care of me if there’s something else that he wants.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What?”

“I mean, I think that you believe you, but I don’t think that’s really the problem. I think that you are scared. And you’re making it about him.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. You were asking me if I disowned you in the first thirty seconds of seeing me. Of course you’re scared. And I get it. Anyone who’s lived the life that we have would be. But I’m still here. Choosing to care for you. That’s the thing. We were always making choices. We were never forced into anything. And neither was he. The only thing we didn’t choose was losing our parents. The one thing you didn’t choose was having the father you had. But we chose each other. We damn well did. Why do you get to decide that his continuing to choose you isn’t real?”

“I appreciate where you’re coming from. I really do. I just... I can’t.”

“You’re just afraid. And there’s nothing wrong with being afraid. Until you let it decide what you’re going to do.”

“I can’t take a lecture from you, Iris. Not seriously. You know I love you, but you’ve never gone anywhere or done anything.”

“Maybe,” Iris said, her voice measured. Even still, Iris refused to be angry. “Maybe that’s true. But I don’t pretend to be anything else. You do. You ran around lecturing and giving advice. You tell other people to be brave when you have no intention of doing it yourself. Again, I love you. But let’s stop pretending that you’re not running scared.”

She began to walk away, and then she stopped. “And I still love you, by the way. You can’t push me away. Sorry, I’m not going to let you make yourself safe by trying to get rid of all the people in your life who love you. And you know what? I don’t think Ryder is going to let you do it, either.”

And when she was gone, Sammy could only stand there. Frozen. And even though she had been found, she could not escape the feeling that she was still in hiding.

That she was still bound up in all she had been.

She’d started this journey to prove she wasn’t stuck.

She’d only ended up proving that she was.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

IT HAD BEEN a week since Sammy had left, and he was still coping with intense bouts of feeling like he’d lost his best friend in the world. Because he had. That just happened to be layered on top of the heartache that he felt every time he took a breath. Every time he didn’t take a breath. Every time he moved.