To outsiders, the ranch is ours.
But legally, Oliver Abbott’s name is on every last deed, document, and pink slip.
He could take everything if he wanted—the only thing stopping him is my compliance.
“Does your father know you’re here?” I ask.
Her nose crinkles as she examines me. “Yeah. Why?”
“No reason.”
No reason that I could give her, anyway …
Rising from her rocker, she adjusts her bag over her shoulder before digging her keys from the inside.
“I was your person,” I say before she goes. “For the record. I was your person. It was real. And I loved you.”
Her chin dips and her gaze falls downward.
“What changed?” she asks after a long pause. Her whiskey-hued eyes rise onto mine.
“I wish I could say,” I answer. It’s the truth in every sense of the word.
The keys jangle in her hand and she chews the inner corner of her rosebud mouth. “You really haven’t dated anyone since I left?”
I’ve had offers and opportunities, but it never felt right. In my mind and in my heart, I was still with her, as ridiculous as it sounded. It didn’t need to make sense to anyone but me.
“Not a soul,” I say.
“You’re a strange one,” she says, an ode to one of the first things I ever said to her. We were maybe fifteen, and it was the third day in a row she’d asked to borrow a pencil from me in the back of our social studies class. While we’d been trading stolen looks all week, neither one of us had mustered up the courage to break any ice at that point—until the bell rang that day and she chased me into the hall to hand my pencil back. I told her to keep it, since she was just going to ask for it again the next day.
With a coy smile she asked, “Am I that obvious?”
“Obvious,” I said. “And a little strange.”
“Explain,” she demanded as we walked the hall side by side.
“Would if I could,” I quipped before ducking into my next class and leaving her dumbfounded in the hallway. I’d been studying her all week—trying to make sense of her White Out nail polish and glittery Chuck Taylors and the way she’d hum showtunes under her breath at random intervals, and how she had this innate desire for everyone to love her while simultaneously not giving a damn about standing out from the crowd.
She was strange.
Strange in the best way.
There’s a wistful twinkle in her eye as she makes her way down the front steps. “Goodbye, Wyatt.”
13
Blaire
* * *
“Hi, Renata.” I find her weeding a flower bed Monday morning. “Sorry to stop by unannounced like this, but I was hoping you could tell me where to find Wyatt?”
Her knees crack as she rises up from her gardening stool. “Good to see you again, Blaire. Wyatt’s in the machine shed last I checked.”
Heading to the big blue building with the steel roof, I slide my hands in the back of my jean shorts pockets and make the trek with my heart in my teeth. The tinny sound of an AM station playing from an old radio grows closer with each step, and I find him under the engine of his ’76 Ford.
“Morning, Wyatt,” I say. “Your mama told me I’d find you out here.”
He slides out on his creeper, wiping a slash of motor oil from his cheek with the back of his hand.
“Can I help you?” He rises to a standing position, and I’m quickly reminded of how the top of my head always hit perfectly at his chin and how good he smells when he’s been tinkering with machines all morning: metallic and earthy.
“You can actually.” I cock a hand on my hip and pull my shoulders back. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last night … when I asked you what changed and you said you wish you could say.”
He slides his wrench in his back pocket, keeping his attention trained on me. Lines spread across his forehead though he doesn’t say a word.
“I think you can tell me,” I continue. “You just don’t want to.”
“Does it matter at this point?” he asks. “Damage is done. There’s nothing I can say to take away your hurt, Blaire. Nothing I can say to change what already happened.”
“It absolutely matters.” I fold my arms across my chest. We never used to speak to one another with attitude like this unless we were flirting and teasing. There was only ever love in our tones. “Did I do something?”
“No.”
His one-word response doesn’t come with an elaboration, but I didn’t come out here just to walk away even more perplexed than before.
“I’m trying to get closure here,” I say. “Can’t you at least give me that? After everything?”
He works his way around the truck, grabbing two quarts of motor oil and a funnel, returning to the task at hand.