Page 33 of The One Who Saw Her: Boone

Twenty-six-year-old Vivi wanted coffee and a new life, but nobody had asked her.

She leaned back against a hay bale and stared up at the horse blanket sagging overhead. It wasn't exactly the secret hideout she'd envisioned as a kid, but it had walls, a roof, and, most importantly, no Boone Callahan.

Vivi let her thoughts drift back to that summer she’d been ten—the year she’d decided she was going to build a secret hideout in the fire escape corner of their cramped Upper West Side apartment. She'd spent days sketching blueprints in her notebook, scavenging discarded cardboard from the grocery store, and even convincing a few neighborhood kids to help.

When she proudly showed her plans to her dad—crayon-smudged, edges torn, but bursting with ambition—he didn't even glance up from his laptop.

"Sweetheart, that thing will collapse before you can even sit in it. Maybe don't bother," he said, tapping his pen against the desk.

She remembered the tight twist in her stomach, the way she'd nodded and laughed, pretending she wasn't crushed, as she tucked the sketch into her backpack. That was the first time she learned how to shrink herself and swallow her excitement before it showed.

Even now, years later, she could still feel that hollow ache. The sting of offering her best ideas and having them brushed aside.

Just like yesterday.

"What the hell is this?"

Boone's voice came from outside the fort.

Vivi closed her eyes. So much for no Boone Callahan.

"It's a fort."

There was a long pause. "You're hiding in a fort?"

"I'm healing in a fort. There's a difference."

The horse blanket lifted, and Boone's face appeared beneath it.

His eyes swept over the tiny space. "Move over."

"You will literally crush it."

"Move, Boots."

Before she could stop him, six-foot-three of stubborn cowboy ducked under the blanket and started forcing his way inside.

A hay bale shifted. The blanket dropped six inches. His shoulder knocked into hers, his knee landed somewhere between her legs, and suddenly there was Boone everywhere.

"This was designed for one person," she complained.

"No shit."

"This is exactly why you weren't invited."

He finally wedged himself beside her, knees practically to his chest, one massive shoulder taking up half the fort.

Vivi stared at him. Boone stared back. Then the blanket slipped off his head.

"This thing's a death trap," he said and just like that, ten-year-old Vivi wanted to kick him out.

“Why are you here, disrupting my time with Glow?”

“Glow?” he asked then held up a hand. “Neverminded, I don’t want to know. I’m here about last night.”

Vivi's wary eyes flicked up to him but softened at the sincerity in his eyes. "A lot happened last night. Can you be more specific?"

"I'm sorry for yelling at you," he said, removing his cowboy hat and balancing it on his bent knee. "I was harsh. And yes, I’m grumpy. I’m too busy keeping this place standing to have patience for anything else. But that doesn’t excuse me snapping at you. It’s a good idea and I shouldn't have spoken to you like that."