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Regret twists my stomach like a wet rag. Back then, I was so sure leaving was the right thing. But now? With thirteen years in the rearview mirror? Not so sure.

I never really had a home until I moved here. My mom was the poster child for people who shouldn’t be parents, and she moved us around a lot depending on who she was dating at the time. Her personality changed as often as our address, but one thing was always the same—I was in the way.

It was pretty obvious, even before my eighth grade teacher reported her for child negligence, that she didn’t want me around. She did one thing right though—she stuck me on a bus and sent me to live with my aunt in Silverwood, Montana.

Might as well have been another planet.

I knew that very first day that I did not fit in. My plan was to keep to myself. People let you down, and I knew I was better off alone.

Then I met the Holbrook family, and their ranch was a whole different level of chaos. Loud, raucous, and full of laughter. Never a dull moment, never a stick or a branch that wasn’t turned into some kind of sword, never a headlock or a wisecrack or a chore passed up.

I instantly felt at home there.

They took me in. Made me one of them. Set me on a path I never could’ve predicted. I had friends—I had a family. I felt wanted and known and seen and I’d never felt that way before.

Up until that point I thought I had to take care of things on my own. Look out for me and mine. Steal, if necessary. Fight my way through things.

Because of them, all that changed. After that candy bar, I straightened up. I didn’t steal. Or lie. Or fight, unless someone went after one of my teammates at the hockey rink.

I was at the ranch so often, especially in the summer, they put my name on the chore chart.

My aunt was happy to see me happy, and honestly, I’m guessing relieved someone else was taking me on as a burden. She wasn’t the right person to discipline me.

And the year after I graduated, lost, aimless, and full of shame, I didn’t need discipline so much as direction.

And just like when I was young, Briggs was always there. Every time I got into trouble, he was the one who bailed me out.

It was Briggs who talked the sheriff out of pressing charges. It was Briggs who vouched for me.

My brain snags on the memory of the fight that landed me in the back of the sheriff’s car for the third time in two months.

Not long after the accident.

I’d been out at Silverwood’s big Fourth of July festival, and I guess I danced with the wrong girl because this guy and his two buddies followed me out into the parking lot, clearly looking for a fight. I’d been living angry, and this guy knew enough about me and my situation to push all the right buttons.

He started with the usual threats, talking about his girl and me and my hands in all the wrong places, and even though I was pretty drunk, I did try and walk away.

But then he shouted, “No wonder your mommy didn’t want you.” I stopped walking, the words clicking open the lock on the rage that seemed to always be bubbling right below the surface.

I barely remember the actual fight, but they said if his friends hadn’t pulled me off the guy, I might’ve done more than break his nose. The sheriff showed up and tossed me in the back of the car. I sat there, handcuffed, the guy’s blood mixing with my own, knuckles cracked open, lip swollen, waiting for Briggs to show up.

Again.

The sheriff looked at me through the rearview mirror. “How many times are you going to do this?”

I clenched my sore jaw and stared out the window.

“And Briggs? He just supposed to keep helping you? While you just keep spitting in his face?”

I closed my eyes. I knew the right things to do, I knew the right way to act . . . I was just dead set against it right then.

Briggs showed up a few minutes later, and I heard the sheriff tell him that I’d used up all my chances. I decided at that moment that I had to go. Somewhere. Anywhere. I was done being anyone’s burden.

When I left, I was thinking I did them all a favor.

I repaid them by ignoring everything they taught me.

It must’ve felt like such a smack in the face. Makes me feel sick thinking about it.