She shook her head. “Everything’s okay, or it will be. I’m going to New Orleans—I need to see LJ. I just wanted to say goodbye before I left.”

“What do you need to see him for? I thought you two got over your little flirt after the rodeo, but then he up and left with no notice and suddenly you were moping like you were engaged or something.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “What’s all this about, Andra?”

She gritted her teeth. “He’s given you no reason to talk about him that way.”

“No? Because before he came around, I didn’t have employees and daughters running off left and right.” He scowled. “You think I haven’t noticed how you’ve been all week? You never even dated him, and he’s making you miserable. He’s not like you, Andra, and he’s not from here. In the end, that’s going to bring you nothing but hurt.”

She didn’t bother arguing their relationship status with her father. She just stood, two stairs below him, and crossed her arms. “Do you remember me, Dad?”

“What?” His brow creased, the bags under his eyes deep in the light from the hallway above them.

“Because I don’t. I remember sneaking out to the barn and getting drunk with Stacia, and buying three dresses for every high school dance because I could never pick just one and you didn’t mind. But me . . . how I felt inside my own head? It’s just gone.” She pressed her lips together. “It wasn’t until LJ came here and shook everything up that I started to remember how it was to like being me.”

The furrow in his brow deepened.

“More than that,” she went on before he could start. “More than anything to do with me, he’s a good man.” Her throat went tight, trembling with everything those words meant to her. They were the two best men she’d ever known, and she had no idea how to bridge the gap between them. They were so utterly different and so completely the same. “I wish you could see that, too, because I love you and—” Her voice broke.

Dad was down both stairs between them in a flash, his solid arms wrapped around her back and the smell of Old Spice and horses warm in her nose.

“Don’t cry. Don’t cry now, sweetie.”

The sob tromped its way up her throat before she could stop it, and her shoulders shook. She couldn’t do this right now. She needed to get in the truck and make her own future, but her dad’s arms felt so safe and it had been a long, long day.