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Everything fits in two boxes I’ll ship back to Dallas.
I stare at the meager contents of my life here, wondering if I’m making the right choice or losing my sanity. It feels like a whole life, an alternate world, that’s suddenly stillborn.
Heavy.
But I guess the fact that I’m not mourning it means a whole lot more.
Gram is the only living soul who knows my real reason for coming back here. Whenever Weston and I sit down to talk, I want him knowing this was my decision.
Nobody else’s.
He’ll still be in the hospital if he isn’t laid up at home, and that works to my advantage.
With his leg wrapped up, he won’t be able to walk away this time. He’ll have to lie down, listen, and wait until I’m good and done.
It’s my turn to live the life I sketched out years ago. Before I left Dallas for a dream I was so sure I wanted.
That’s the curious thing about dreams. They come and go nightly, but the repetitive ones?
Those are the dreams you sink your claws into, hold on tight, and let them float you away to a better universe.
I may be over fifteen hundred miles from North Dakota, but I know what I’m dreaming every waking second with my eyes wide open.
A life that includes Weston McKnight.
All of him.
Every single day.
...if that’s what he wants, and only if.
That’s the part that scares me.
Behind his growls and battered heart, I believe he loves me.
I’ve seen it in his eyes when they go all soft and starry, tranquil as the clear blue sea.
Convincing him his love is all I’ve ever wanted? There’s our big yikes.
He’s not an easy man to convince, even when it’s what he wants most.
Then again, neither am I.
That could be why we’ve butted heads so often. Two stubborn idiots, so madly in love they’re terrified to admit it.
Picking up a framed picture for the box, I pause and stare at the photo.
It’s an old one with Weston, Marty, and me. The boys sit on the front steps of Gram’s house and I’m kneeling behind them, my head stuck between theirs and my arms around their shoulders.
I was fourteen when Gram snapped the photo. It was about this time of year, mountains of yellow leaves piled on the ground and fire-red fragments still clinging to the trees. The boys just finished raking the yard when I’d brought them a couple cold sodas with those curly straws I love so much stuck in the glasses.
I sigh softly.
Setting the picture in the box, I cover it with packing foam and glance around the shoebox apartment that would honestly fit inside one of Amelia’s rooms with plenty of space to spare.
The unit came fully furnished, which is common out here. The city swarms nonstop with politicos who move in and out with nothing more than a suitcase on a regular basis.
The apartment served me well enough, but it’s not worth the nosebleed rent I’ve been paying every month just to have a short bus hop to the museum. I could buy a nice freaking house in Dallas and still have a payment barely half my rent here.
