Page 8 of Falling Back to You

“Jerry.”

I blinked, and my jaw twitched as the needling nerve pain in my leg skyrocketed from sitting too long without stretching. “That he-devil is still alive?”

Jerry was the Gullivers’ Maine coon cat with a grudge against humanity and a god complex. He’d been old when I left town, but he must be prehistoric now. Plus, he was the stuff of legends. Even my former friends back in Queens knew about Jerry.

“And more ornery than ever,” Dallas confirmed. “Now are you watching for rock chucks or not? It’s prohibited within town limits.”

“Which I’m not in,” I stressed, pointing at the sign in front of me.

Dallas hitched a thumb behind us. “Mayor Gulliver moved the boundary fifty yards out to accommodate the Powells’ orchard. We didn’t bother moving the sign. Which means”—he tapped my window ledge—“you’re inside town limits.”

The tension in my neck bloomed into a headache behind my eyes. “You’re kidding.”

“I never kid about rock chucks.”

This was ridiculous. “I’m not on a nature tour, okay?” I threw up my hands. “I’m just . . . thinking.”

Overthinking, like usual, Macy-on-my-shoulder added unhelpfully.

Dallas crossed his arms over his chest. “Sure you weren’t looking for another reason to run?”

Ouch. Did I deserve that? Yes. But it still stung. “I’m not running,” I said firmly. “Why are you pulling me over? Now that we’ve established I’m not a peeping tom on small-albeit-cute rodents.”

Dallas rubbed a hand over his beard, looking almost . . . was that guilty? “Ruby told me you were coming.”

Of course she did. My baby sister was the only one who knew about my return in the first place. “Is the whole town aware of my movements now? Can I expect to get updates about my life on The Vine?”

“You telling me you’re still subscribed to it?”

I gritted my teeth. “No.”

Mom’s voice rang in my ears. Good girls don’t get angry.

I knew the words weren’t true, but it was easy to fall into old patterns being back here. I’d spent the last ten years trying to rebuild myself and my life in New York after a long string of mistakes. But coming back to Idaho had me feeling two inches tall again.

It’s time to heal bridges, not burn them. I’d come to make amends. And also because I had nowhere else to go.

You’re more than your mistakes.

Dallas took pity on me. “Figured you should have that conversation yourself. I won’t be feeding the gossip.”

“So kind of you.” Once The Vine, the town’s local news app—excuse me, gossip app—got a hold of me, I was toast. Burnt-to-a-crisp-no-amount-of-butter-can-salvage-this kind of toast.

He plowed ahead, ignoring my sarcasm. “I’m just here to see you inside town limits as a courtesy to Ruby and Lee.”

Mentioning my dad was a low blow. After fleeing town thirteen years ago, I’d left a hurricane-sized mess in my wake. Hurting my dad was one of those messes. One in a long list of things I needed to fix. Because that’s what I did—I fixed things.

My stomach churned with regret—both for the past and for stopping for lunch in Boise. I was nauseous enough at the thought of returning home before I’d added food to the mix. “So you can put me under township arrest, Eliot Ness?”

Dallas’s lips twitched under his neatly trimmed reddish-brown beard, more streaked with grey than I remembered. He was pushing forty now. “I forgot how snippy you can be, kid.”

Something in my shield cracked. This was Dallas. The older brother I’d always wanted to take a load off my shoulders. More than once he’d saved my sorry hide in high school when he walked me through algebra problems at the Satterfield kitchen table. And when I’d hit a mailbox the first day I had my driving permit, he’d helped me fix it without batting an eye.

Okay, he’d given me a kind lecture about checking my mirrors’ blind spots to make sure it didn’t happen again, but still, that was only after he made sure I was fine and we’d replaced the box.

“Sorry,” I whispered, flexing my white-knuckled fingers over the steering wheel. Already I was failing this whole “make my way back into the town’s good graces.” If I couldn’t even manage it with Dallas, how could I possibly get through the rest of my laundry list of people I owed apologies to?

Maybe I should place an ad in the local paper. Or better yet, make a post on The Vine.