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“Mm. How’s your Harvard application coming along?”
“It’s not. I’ve been a little distracted. Honestly, I still don’t know where to put my focus.” I toyed with my spoon. “How are things with the farm?”
Travis glanced at me, then Mom.
“First things first,” Mom said, shooting him a look. “Your father’s health is the most important thing right now. Let’s concentrate our energies there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Travis said.
“Okay, Mom,” I said.
My brother and I exchanged smiles. Lynette Caldwell, rain, shine, or tragedy, never changed.
We spent the afternoon in Dad’s room, mostly holding his hand while he slept. He couldn’t speak with the breathing tube in place. So many tubes: in his chest, his neck, his stomach, plus an IV in his arm and an oxygen monitor on his finger. A thin white bandage poked up from his hospital gown, covering the seam where his chest had been cracked open.
While he slept, Mom worked on her cross-stitch and Travis sat on the window ledge, scrolling his phone. I sat in one of the chairs beside Dad’s bed, eyes drooping. I hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours, and my thoughts became nonsensical. Breaking apart and reforming. Visions shifting and scattering until finally, I was in Connor’s arms, his beautiful green eyes gazing into mine.
There’s so much I want to tell you, he said.
Tell me, I whispered.
He bent to kiss me instead. I got lost in the sensation of pure want that bloomed in my belly and the heat that swept through my veins. I clung to him as the kiss became urgent, deeper, my mouth opening wide to take everything he could give me. We kissed like breathing until finally, I broke away.
Now it was ocean eyes holding my gaze. Blue-green and a million miles deep.
It was Weston’s arms around me. Weston’s hard body pressed to mine. He held my face in his hands, his thumbs stroking my cheeks, and the way he looked at me…
I’d never in my life felt so cherished.
There’s so much I want to tell you, he said.
Tell me, I whispered.
He opened his mouth to speak, then raised his head to look at something over my shoulder.
It’s time to go.
What? No…
“Auts? It’s time to go.”
I came awake with a start to my brother shaking my shoulder.
“What…”
“They’re kicking us out.”
I blinked and glanced around, the dream still clinging to me. I could feel Connor’s mouth lingering on mine. Or was it Weston’s? It had felt so real, both kisses. Connor’s, I could still feel on my mouth and body, while Weston’s, I felt somewhere deep, in the center of me…
I shook off the dream and leaned to kiss my father’s cheek. “Bye, Daddy,” I whispered. “Sleep tight. We’ll be back first thing in the morning.”
I had flown to Nebraska literally with nothing but the clothes on my back, so Travis drove me to Wal-Mart so I could get a toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, and underwear. Then we grabbed barbecue chicken from Sully’s BBQ and took it home.
Home.
The big rickety farmhouse with its old wallpaper and creaking boards. The kitchen’s smell of wood and time and my mother’s cooking. The sound of the chickens a little ways down the path to the barn, and the cows lowing in the field. As we drove up, the sun sank behind the crops, casting a gold and lavender hue over the horizon that seem to stretch on forever.
I understood why my brother was content to live here all his life. I loved it here but I’d always known, since I was little, that I wasn’t meant to stay. I would leave, but one day, I’d come back with the man I was going to marry and show him the sunset over our farm. I wanted to share my beginning with him, and see the place where he began too. His home. Then we’d venture out to find the place that was ours.
