Tonight.I had to seal the Crossroads tonight.
And I had less than nine hours to figure out how to make a potion I’d never made before, using a flower I barely understood, with magic I was still learning to control.
And Owen didn’t know yet what tonight was about to ask of me.
What it might ask of us.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dinnerwasslow-cookedpotroast—fall-apart tender—served with buttery mashed potatoes and a rich gravy made from the cooking juices.There were green beans with bacon that tasted like the best thing that ever happened to me, and of course, Madeline’s homemade biscuits—hot, soft, and unfairly perfect, especially considering she’d “somehow whipped them up” while I was having an existential crisis in her living room.
And then, as if she wasn’t already showing off, dessert.
Homemade peach cobbler with Blue Bell vanilla ice cream.
I was pretty sure I’d died and gone to heaven.If heaven came with homemade cobbler, I’d like to file a formal complaint for being kept from it this long.
I was also so stuffed I didn’t know how I was going to get up from the table again without assistance and a forklift.
Between bites, I was regaled with tales of Owen and his older brother, Colt, growing up and getting into all sorts of trouble.Owen, however, looked less than amused—chin tipped down, that familiar warning in his eyes.
“… the time Owen decided he could jump the creek on Colt’s ten-speed,” Dougal was saying.
“Dad,” Owen groaned.“Please, stop.”
“What happened?”I asked, smiling.
Dougal ignored him with the confidence of a man who knew how to embarrass his children.“Didn’t make it.Fell right in.Came home dripping wet and covered in mud.”
I giggled.
“Maddy made me hose him off before she’d allow him to step foot in the house,” Dougal added.
He reached for Madeline’s hand and gripped it.She was grinning at him—soft and bright, like the story lived somewhere warm inside her.
“I’d just mopped,” she said.Then her gaze met mine.“And there was no way I was allowing muddy footprints on my clean floors.”She sounded indignant even now.
I laughed.
“Colt was mad for weeks,” Dougal said.
“Why?”I asked.
“Because I ruined his precious bike,” Owen said, a grin breaking through despite himself.
“He’d saved all summer for that bike,” Madeline said.
“How old were you?”I asked.
“Eight.Colt was fourteen,” Owen said.“I thought he was going to murder me.He didn’t talk to me for days.”
As I sat there listening, I realized something that made my throat tighten.
This was what had been missing from my childhood.Family that felt warm instead of… managed.
Iris wasn’t exactly fun to grow up with, and Clay only cared about rodeos and when he could start riding bulls.And my parents?
They were never like this—casual, playful, trading stories like they liked each other.
