Page 110 of Sudden Summer

She giggled. “Ew. I’ve been walking outside all day with those feet. They’ve got to be filthy.”

“You washed them off at the springs earlier. They can’t be that bad,” I teased. Besides…I like my girl a little dirty, what can I say?”

“Alright, easy there, Cowboy. We’ve still got business to talk about before we get to pleasure⁠—”

“I’m not pushing for anything.” I cleared my throat, kissing her foot one more time before I went back to massaging it. “You don’t have to look very far for land.”

Her brows furrowed, the cutest little lines taking place between them. “What do you mean?”

“We’ll use my land. Well, my part of the land here, on the ranch. I guess it will really all be mine to look after here one day soon.”

“I’m not following? You’d want to put another house here, with ours?”

“No.” I chuckled. “Don’t you remember after Jessie turned twenty-one, my parents had that big family meeting?”

She shook her head.

“Well, they sat all of us kids down, and told us they didn’t want the land being on one kid’s shoulders like it had been with my dad, and my grandad, and his dad before him. We figured out how to split the land, with enough staying for the ranch needs, but I have about fifty acres down the west road a ways. Would be the perfect place to set something up. There’s already a well drilled out there. We could do two or three houses to start. Maybe get a garden growing, have a quiet place out in nature…it’s peaceful and healing. They’d have the protection of living on the ranch, and it’s not so far out that we couldn’t have Hawk and the guys come install some really great security for whoever would be staying there.”

Birdie set Juniper’s empty bottle down, holding her hand out to me. I laced my fingers through hers.

“I think that sounds like the perfect plan.”

“A beautiful legacy for your patient.”

She nodded, her eyes dropping to our daughter, fast asleep in her arms. “When it’s done, it’ll be a beautiful legacy for us all.”

Lachlan

The waiting room sound chimed as my therapist, Dr. Sloane Donovan, logged on to our session.

“Hi, Lachlan. How are you doing today?”

“Hey, Doc. I didn’t cancel this week, so I guess that’s a win, right?”

“Yes. I’m always happy to see you in session. But I’ve noticed that tends to be your greeting when something has happened. What’s going on?”

I sighed, sitting back in the chair before running my hand over my jaw. I should have shaved before the telehealth visit. I knew it was going to bother me, consume all of my attention, and still, I couldn’t do it.

“I had another nightmare.”

“About the accident?” she asked, her voice even.

“Isn’t it always?”

“Well, yes. So far it has been. But that doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t change as we dive deeper into therapy.”

I shrugged, my good leg bouncing up and down under my dining room table. “I hope it does. I can’t really keep going like this. If it’s not the physical pain in my leg, it’s the goddamn mental scars etched in my brain.”

Sloane nodded. “How did you handle the dream?”

“Like I usually do. I woke up sweating, my leg was throbbing, and I felt like I was going to throw up.”

“The same sensations you’ve described when we talk about leaving the house,” she noted.

I nodded. Fuck. I thought we’d have more time before she brought that up.

“Do you think the nightmare is happening again because of the progress you are making with your agoraphobia?”