Of course. That was when her parents had died. It was easy for Sammy to forget that she wasn’t from the exact same background as the rest of them. Sometimes she felt like they were all the same merry band. In other times not. This was one of those times.

She had most definitely had her share of trauma. But it wasn’t the same. She had never known what it was like to live in a safe house, not until she had come here. But this place was where they had lost their innocence. Where they’d had their childhood ripped away from them.

She had never looked at Iris and seen fear. She had always seen her friend as someone steady. Even-tempered in a way that Sammy herself could never be. Practical and industrious.

But now she could see clearly just how contained she was. How perhaps her practicality was more necessity than anything else. How it kept her rooted here.

Both Rose and Iris were very different from Pansy, who had gone out and made a life of her own. Who had so consciously patterned herself after their father by becoming the police chief of Gold Valley.

Rose, on the other hand, was irrepressible. She worked on the ranch, fizzing over with energy. She ran wild over the place, but she definitely had a territory and a range. She didn’t venture out beyond the edges of Hope Springs, as it were.

And then there was Iris.

“You don’t have to be what everyone expects you to be,” Sammy said.

“Neither do you,” Iris said.

“I’m not,” Sammy protested. “I’m unconventional by design.”

“Yeah. Well, don’t be afraid to be conventional if you feel like it. You don’t have to go around surprising everybody all the time. You could just be.”

Sammy felt like the interaction had been flipped on its head and she didn’t really like it. She was much more comfortable in the advisory role. Acting as the more experienced and worldly woman in the group. Honestly, if Iris had ever dated a man, Sammy didn’t know. And Sammy usually managed to ferret out whatever information she wanted. And if she smelled a secret, she went right in for it.

And with Iris, she had never gotten the hint that there was one.

Rose wouldn’t be able to keep it quiet if she’d found a guy. That meant there wasn’t one. And never had been.

She looked up at her friend, who was staring at her with clear, amber eyes. And suddenly, Sammy realized she had been arrogant to think that she was the only one who observed anything about these people she lived with. Suddenly, she saw a world of opinions in Iris’s eyes. Opinions about her.

She wanted to turn away from that. She was used to Ryder and his opinions, but she often brushed him off. She did that because she was sure that half of his issue was that he was stodgy and boring. That he was reacting to whatever she did, whatever she wanted from that standpoint.