Page 36 of Love Me Again

Which was a dangerous thing to long for here. When she needed to be finding her next steps. Her next life. Without Dad.

Without Boone.

How was she supposed to plan her new life without the entirety of her past when she was here at his family’s cabin? With all these ghosts and strange new forces at work?

But how was she going to plan anything scrimping and saving and running?

She would stay, and she would keep her distance from the Tyler family as a whole. Working with Molly and the horses was fine enough, but the rest was on the other side of a line.

She settled herself on the couch with a notebook and her favorite pen and started to plan. She needed a job, so the smartest thing—once she had the assurance of divorce papers—would be to return to Montana and try to find a job as a vet where she was already licensed.

But, technically, she could get licensed in any state. She could apply to jobs anywhere. She could go anywhere.

Something about the lack of limits or obstacles or roots made that anywhere seem…dark and looming and not at all exciting.

So that when someone knocked on the cabin door, she was relieved. It was going to be Deb or Molly, either with food or some kind of invitation. She wanted to be irritated or baffled, but mostly she was just relieved.

Until she swung open the door and took in the large man taking up most of her doorway.

Boone held out a container. “Leftovers. Mom insisted.”

“Your mother insisted you bring this out to me?”

“Actually, she asked Molly, but I grabbed it before Molly could and hightailed it out of there. Molly tried to stop me, but she’s all bark no bite, because she won’t go after my leg and that’s the only way she would have stopped me.”

Josie felt too many mixed-up responses to that. The worst one was her heart twisting at the idea of his leg paining him and someone using it against him.

“Going to invite me in?” he asked, when she neither took the container nor moved out of the doorway.

She steeled herself against any soft feelings and glared at him. “No.”

His mouth curved. Not that devastating grin he’d aimed her way too many times to count, but that careful, self-deprecating smile that seemed to say yes, you caught me on my shit, but aren’t I cute trying?

She took the container out of his outstretched hand, then moved to close the door on him. But he inched his foot ever so carefully forward, stopping the movement of the door. And since she’d been in that hospital room listening to the doctor’s awful recitations of everything that bull had done to him, and she’d seen him walk the past few days, she knew that was his bad leg.

And like Molly, she didn’t have the heart to hurt him.

“But there are sugar cookies in that container, with my grandma’s famous frosting, and Micah—the bottomless pit—ate all the ones that were supposed to be for me.”

“Sounds very much like a you problem.”

“Just one? Just five minutes?”

The urge to let him in was so great, but she fought it. She was so tired of fighting, so her voice was just tired when she spoke. “Why, Boone? I seem to recall you standing right here that first day telling me you wouldn’t bother me.”

“I seem to remember you being quite disgusted with me for saying that.”

“No. I was…” She wanted to tell him she’d been relieved. Happy to hear it. She was a terrible liar, even when he lifted an eyebrow to make his point.

“You know, I spent most of my adolescence doing the opposite of what my mother wanted or asked of me,” he said.

It was a non-sequitur she certainly shouldn’t fall for, but fall she always did. “Why?”

He blew out a long, slow breath. “A question for the ages. Or maybe a therapist.” He shook his head. “I look back and… I don’t have an answer. Just that everything people told me to do felt like a shackle, and I couldn’t stand it.”

She supposed in some part that explained why he’d left and kept separate for a while. Why he might not have had some huge rift with his family but still stayed away. Not that it made her feel any better that he’d kept her away, like some dirty little secret.

“But a lot has changed since I got hurt. So many things I didn’t even realize until…”