Chapters (43)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Epilogue
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Readers Guide
- QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
She looked at him, and he itched all over like he hadn’t gotten rid of enough drywall dust. “You know you’re not coming back to Montana.”
He gritted his teeth and hunched his shoulders. It was like she could sense the arguments he’d been having with himself. Every mile on the way down here and nearly every hour since then. “I’ll figure it out.”
It tasted like a lie. How could he figure his way out of the family of his blood needing him in one place and the family of his heart needing him in another?
“You can’t change who you are,” Andra said. “I know you want to be there for your mom, for me and the horses and everybody in the world who’s hurting, but you can’t, LJ. You belong here. This place is your heart, built up into a city, and it needs you.” She wrapped her arms over her chest, and it was the old, brittle way she used to move. “I’ve been so selfish. I wanted you to teach me to cook and laugh, and help me remember what safe felt like. I needed you so bad I pretended I didn’t know what you needed.”
Energy pulsed up through his legs, into the thick muscles of his stomach and chest. People had been telling him his whole life that what he wanted was unrealistic, and he’d managed to pull off most of it anyway. He didn’t want his life dictated to him by anyone, not even the woman he loved. “So what, now you’re going to tell me what I need?”
“Yes,” she said. “Because you won’t. You’d endure anything if it helped someone else, but you don’t deserve that, LJ. I know you want to help me, and you did.” Her voice caught, and she said it again. “You did. But I’m not going to let you walk away from your home and your family for me.”
“I wanted you to be my family.” His hands were too big, his voice too rough. He knew she was about to tell him no, and he wanted to break his own bones just to feel the pain of it.
Fresh tears welled in her eyes, blurring the brilliant green. “I came down here because I wanted to find a way to make things work between us. I had no idea how wrong I was for you, because I never really knew all of you until I came here.” She gestured out toward the street. “This place is what it is because everybody knows each other’s story. How could you ever have a family who didn’t know everybody here? Who didn’t speak the language? I don’t play, LJ. I can’t even sing. And if I came here, looking like I do, being who I am, and being with you . . . they’d hate me for it.”