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I’d done enough of that.
When we were little, it was pigtail pulling and frogs in her desk. In middle school, it was toilet papering her house and teasing her. But when Poppy came back from summer break freshman year of high school, it was like I’d never seen her before. I knew her by her whip-crack mouth, not her newfound curves. I knew her by her wild, open laugh, not by the length of her shiny dark hair. I knew those lips for slinging jokes, not for their rosy plumpness.
I’d floated into her like I was hypnotized. Late that August at a bonfire on Wyatt Schumaker’s ranch, I kissed her and asked her to be mine. I never even considered anyone else, not from the moment she said yes.
She hated me for leaving because it was easier than admitting the truth: I was always going to get out of this town. We just never thought I’d get that far out of town.
Yes, I left. But if a full ride at Harvard wasn’t a good reason, I didn’t know what was. Breaking up was inevitable—I reminded myself of this regularly. It didn’t matter how much I loved her or she loved me. Didn’t matter what either of us wanted. I wasn’t coming home, and she wasn’t leaving Lindenbach. There was nothing to do but choose.
Thing is, every choice has a price.
My price was her. And I was still paying for it.
Truth was, she broke up with me. I never cheated on her with Lana, despite what it might have looked like. The truth? I almost quit school and came home because I couldn’t stand to be without her. I quit coming home because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to leave her.
But the real truth was that the truth didn’t matter. Done was done, and her hatred was my penance.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Evangeline asked, watching me.
“It’s the best shot we’ve got.” I put the Escalade in park outside the barn and killed the engine. “I’ve gotta play this game to advance my career, but it means crushing her one final time. I hate it, but what choice do I have?”
She didn’t say anything, just kept watching me.
I reached for the portfolio with Poppy’s fate in it. “Disqualifying her is the only way to save her from what I’ll have to do to her if we run against each other.”
“If she doesn’t pass the trial.”
“The odds aren’t in her favor.”
She sighed. “I wish there was another way.”
“Me too.”
I opened the door and climbed out, steeling myself for the show I’d need to put on, folio in my hand. It was funny, really, the clauses in Lindenbach’s mayoral laws, which hadn’t been revamped since the mid-eighteen hundreds, just added on to. And what we’d found was better than anything I could have hoped for when looking to get her out of the way.
The barn door was open halfway, and no one inside had seen us yet. I’d heard the Blums had renovated parts of their thousand-acre farm for events, and this barn was apparently one of their venues. It’d been beautifully restored and updated with planked hardwood and iron chandeliers sporting delicate glass medallions, the duality of elegance and rustic detailing undeniably charming. Tables were set up in rows, each manned by volunteers, including the entire Blum family. Even Dottie, their cousin Presley, and her mother Birdie.
One face looked up at our entrance, and then the whole lot of them stopped and stared, Poppy last.
I made a show of looking around as Evangeline and I entered the space. “I heard you’d renovated, didn’t know you turned it into a ballroom, Dottie. You must be booking like crazy.”
As I’d hoped, Dottie was snared by her manners. Cheeks flushed, she stammered, “Thank you, Duke.”
I jerked my chin toward the hayloft. “Poppy, didn’t we used to get fresh right up there?”
“Nobody says get fresh, Duke,” she shot, marching in my direction. “I hope you have a real good reason to be on my property. I’d hate to load your ass with buckshot this early in the morning.”
I laughed in a silent room full of blank faces, aside from Jo and Poppy, who looked ready to flay me and feed me to the pigs.
“There’s a clause in the old bylaws that the city is invoking. Thought you’d want to know.” I extended the portfolio in her direction, and she snatched it out of my hand.
“And you wanted to be the one who told me?”
I shrugged, determined to play it cool. Easier for her to believe I didn’t care.
Easier for both of us.
She huffed and opened the folio, her brows stitching closer together with every sentence she read. “This can’t be real.”
“It’s real. City council is already working on it.”
Her gaze rose to meet mine, her blue eyes churning with rage. “Calf roping? We have to rope calves as part of our entry?”
