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The night Aiden broke my arm was the moment I knew.
Being persistent with the wrong person is death.
But what feels like another death is Resurrection.
Going home feels like failure. Crawling back to a town I rejected. Leaving behind a family I loved. And all for what? Because the past Dakota McGraw wanted to outrun the town she was born? Because I hated how every Friday night football ruled. How our town thought Applebee’s and our local chili potlucks were the prime of life.
I wanted culture, the world, and I had it.
Now it feels like I’m being punished for wanting, for dreaming. It feels like Resurrection was right all along. All I have are broken dreams to go along with broken bones.
I cover my face with my good hand and breathe in.
“How am I going to do this, Davis?” My voice cracks. “Tell my father…”
“It’ll be okay.” His brown eyes spark as his gaze locks on my face and holds. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll find a solution where you’re safe.”
I fight that panicky urge building within. “I don’t want anyone in town to know about the baby,” I blurt.
Davis flinches. I didn’t miss the same expression last night. The painful look on Davis’s face as he glanced down at my stomach and then up so fast he could have gotten whiplash.
I look down at my stomach, look away. Part of me wants it, part of me hates myself for keeping it. Because it’s like letting Aiden win all over again.
Dread pushes against my chest as we get closer to Resurrection. Gray columns of the sugar beet factory rise and meet the horizon. The pale sky of Montana blooms with clouds. At the sight, all my nerves come rushing back.
Home means safety. But it also means questions. Hard looks in the mirror.
A pregnancy, and a baby I have no idea what to do with.
As the late afternoon sun casts its shadows, I pause on the porch outside the screen door that leads into my father’s cabin. It feels weird to knock, but it feels even stranger to set foot in my childhood home. My father’s bright-yellow vintage Jalopy sits in the drive. Still rusted, still waiting for that oil change. No doubt kittens are living in the engine.
Beside me, Davis lifts his brows in a go-ahead gesture.
But before I can knock, the door is yanked open.
Fallon.
Her nostrils flare when she sees me, her hazel eyes dancing over my black eye, my cast. Then, without a hello, her gaze punches to Davis. “Well, looks like the cowboy cavalry came to the rescue.”
Davis crosses his arms over his massive chest and shakes his head.
All I can do is stare.
I haven’t seen my little sister in over six years, just brief glimpses of her barrel racing in YouTube videos or on Instagram. She’s no longer the feisty tomboy I left behind. She’s devastatingly gorgeous. Lean and leggy, with colorful tattoos covering every inch of bare, muscular flesh. Her long caramel hair is loosely braided. She looks fierce, beautiful and annoyed.
“What?” she asks sharply.
“You grew up.”
“Astute observation,” she says with an eye roll.
Propping the door open behind her, she turns on her heel. “Dad!”
I sigh, feeling awkward and unwelcome, but I follow her inside. What small distance I assumed was between us is a chasm.
Aside from the strange medicinal smell in the air, everything in my childhood home is the same. Antlers, family photos, and my father’s framed stills from his Westerns line the wall. The tattered sheepskin rug laid out over the hardwood floor. Across the hall, the kitchen with its white, flowered cabinets, farmhouse sink, and long family table. Down the hall, my old bedroom and Fallon’s.
“Is it them? Dakota?” comes the gruff sound of my father’s voice. And then Stede McGraw is hustling out of the back bedroom, wiry and disheveled, boots stomping across the floorboards. His surprised, gray-eyed gaze gives me a once-over before he wraps me up in a tight hug.
