So yes, the life I’ve made here in this start-up community for the last three months has been interesting, fun, and surprisingly easy.

But it hasn’t been ideal.

Meemaw might be ridiculous, but she’s also right, I realize as I close the file drawer. How long can the two of us go on this way?

“What’s wrong?” Waylon asks immediately when he arrives home from his trip and finds me outside in the cold, watching the sunset over the pond instead of in the house, waiting and eager for him to take me before dinner.

I think about, then dismiss the possibility of answering, “Nothing.”

Living with Waylon, belonging to him is a whole ‘nother kind of self-improvement book. One that includes radical communication and speaking your truth no matter what. Even when it’s uncomfortable, embarrassing, or just plain crazy.

“How long can we go on like this?” I ask him softly, borrowing Meemaw’s question. “You keeping me here like this? Trapped?”

His eyes flare with that crazed gleam I’ve gotten to know so well. “You trying to leave again? Head back to Delaware? To that life you think you wanted?”

“You destroyed that life,” I point out. “Burned it to the ground. I’m just trying to figure out what your endgame is here. I know the Ruthless Reapers don’t live by laws or anybody else’s rules. You’re free or whatever. But I’m not. And I don’t think that’s fair.”

“I don’t care about fair,” Waylon informs me with a sharp shake of his head. “Not when it comes to you.”

“Okay, then how about choices?” I ask. “You knew…you knew from the start you had to give me choices. Climb on your lap or don’t. Give you my virginity or don’t. Let you into the dream house you built for me or don’t. Hell, you even gave me a choice when it came to either coming with you or shooting Jonathan.”

“That wasn’t a real choice,” he grumbles. “I would’ve figured out how to get you here even if you did let me blow his face off—which, to be clear, you should have.”

I almost laugh. Almost.

But I can’t.

“What if I made you a promise not to run?” I ask him. “What if I promised to stay on and be Angel Pond’s nurse practitioner and keep on submitting to you, even if I have a car and a phone and ways to get in contact with the world outside of this dream you created for me? What if I promise you could trust me like you trust your gut?”

His expression becomes somber in a way that reminds me of the man who sat with me on the porch and told me his deepest darkest secret.