“I feel bad running out on the apartment lease with Saint though,” I admitted. “He told me he can afford it on his own, but I still feel bad.”
Hudson laughed. “You kidding? That kid is a navy goddamned SEAL. He can write his own ticket. Do you have any idea how much he’s making in personal security right now? It’s insane.”
“I still feel bad.”
“Nah. He’ll be happy to have the place to himself when his job settles down enough for him to have sleepovers,” Hudson said with a wink in my direction.
“True enough,” Saint said with a laugh, reaching over my shoulder to steal my last piece of bacon. “In the meantime, I gotta catch a flight out tonight from Dallas so we all can’t stay long. You want to ride back with me and get your stuff?”
I glanced at Walker who sat next to me finishing his own breakfast. He was obviously avoiding participating in the conversation, but I could see the truth of it in his eyes. He was hoping I’d stay so we could talk.
“Nah. I’ll probably drive down there in a couple of days in Grandpa’s truck so I can fit my stuff and put the bike in the back. I told Chief Paige I could start after that. Thanks anyway.”
Saint winked at me and turned to arrange times with Hudson and our sisters. I turned to Walker. “I told Tisha she could come ride today. Do you want to call Jolie and arrange a time before we do anything else?”
“You sure you’re still up for it?” he asked with concern in his face.
I reached up to run my hand through his short hair. “Of course I am. I refuse to be the ogre who crushes that girl’s dreams.” I chuckled and squeezed his knee. “I’m going to get some dishes cleaned up while you go call. Anytime today works fine for me, and I meant it when I said she can bring anyone she wants.”
After sharing dish duty with West, I thanked Grandpa and Doc for breakfast and said goodbye to the Dallas crew. I found Walker standing at the fence to the ring where someone had turned out Doc and Grandpa’s favorite trail horses. I wondered if maybe they’d gotten up really early and taken a sunrise ride together.
“Hey,” I called to Walker. “Get everything squared away?”
He turned to face me. “I’m going to go pick them up in a couple of hours. And I talked to the Realtor about the house I’m moving into. Today is moving day, but I told her I already had the key and everything. There’s no rush since I don’t have that much stuff to move anyway. Mostly clothes. I’ll have to buy new stuff for the kitchen and family room. Oh, and I checked in with the families of the accident victims. No substance abuse and they’re all doing okay.”
“Do you want to take a walk and talk or would you rather go back to the bunkhouse?” I asked. Butterflies tumbled in my stomach at the anticipation of finally talking about what broke us apart almost ten years earlier.
“Is there somewhere we can go where no one will interrupt us?” he asked. “I’d offer the lake house, but there’s not a stick of furniture.”
I thought for a minute and snapped my finger when I came up with it. “My parents’ place. Come on.”
Instead of going back to the bunkhouse for car keys, we hopped on one of the ranch’s electric utility vehicles that was like a golf cart on steroids and made our way out to the far corner of the ranch where my parents’ old house was. As I drove, I felt Walker’s strong body beside mine, and I reached over to hold his hand. Any excuse to touch him.
It couldn’t really be this easy between us, could it? I’d been feeling a little on edge at how smoothly we’d fallen back in with each other. The last time we’d seen each other before we moved back had been when we were getting ready to be seniors in high school. Surely we were very different people now. I worried there would be a time when the differences between who we were then and who we were now would rear their ugly heads and show us the truth of the matter—that this could never really work.
And if that happened, I wasn’t quite sure I’d survive it.
We pulled up outside of the closed-up house and got out of the little vehicle. The garage code didn’t work since the power was cut off, so I had to search out a hidden key in a nearby planter.
I led Walker through the side door and into the house, noticing how abandoned everything looked. My parents hadn’t been gone more than a couple of years, but still the place seemed lost in time. Echoes of our boisterous family dinners seemed to fill the dark and dusty kitchen and the refrigerator still had flyers and photos pinned to it. Since my parents had moved to Singapore, all the furniture and kitchen stuff had stayed here. Walker and I wandered around peering into the various rooms on the main floor as if walking back in time to when we were teenagers running into the house after soccer practice and eating Mom and Dad out of house and home.