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“I have a hard time believing you couldn’t find your way out. What happened?”
There was no way I was confessing everything to him. No way. Telling Zadie and Helen had been bad enough. I’d caught them giving me sad eyes a couple times since the beach. If Lachlan looked at me any different, I wouldn’t be able to deal. There’d be murder pillows, murder walls, maybe even murder dick.
I shrugged like my mind wasn’t full of chaotic murder plots. “I went to Berkeley for a year. Turned out, it wasn’t my vibe.”
“You’re a beach girl. Freckles on your nose, salt on your skin,” he murmured.
“It’s true. I missed the beach. I missed my family. My dad had to actually give my mother his full attention the year I was gone. I don’t know if he’ll ever let me leave again.”
“Townie for life, huh?”
Grinning, I tucked my head against his knee again. “Definitely not for life. That’s extreme. We’ll see where I wind up when I graduate. What about you? Not a beach boy, huh?”
“Nah, not a beach boy. I’ll be in Wyoming, working my family ranch with my dad.”
My nose wrinkled. “A ranch? I don’t even know what that means. Do you grow crops?”
“We have livestock. Cattle.” His knuckles smoothed along my cheek. “It means a thirty-thousand-acre ranch where we have two large herds of cattle and a couple hundred horses.”
“Aranch.” The concept was so foreign, I didn’t even know how to respond.
“I can’t wait to get back there.”
“What’s so good about ranching? And Wyoming? Until this moment, I wasn’t certain it was a real state. Actually, I’m still having trouble believing it.”
His chuckle was thunderous and rich. “What else would it be, you loon?”
“A vast conspiracy, obviously.”
He tipped my head back again, giving me a look that was unreadable. When his mouth twitched then curved, I was pretty sure that meant he liked me.
“It’s real. More real than a lot of places I’ve been. The part I like most is that every day is different, but there’s enough of the same to make it feel like home. The air is fresh, the skies are clear, the land is honest.”
“Do you ride a horse?” I asked.
“Yeah, I have a horse I always ride when I’m there. His name’s Ramses.”
“Ramses must be massive.”
Lachlan burst out laughing. “You’re right. He’s a goddamn beast.”
I nuzzled into his leg, trying to picture this giant man on his giant horse. I couldn’t quite see it. Maybe he’d send me a picture one day when he was in all his ranching glory.
It was absolutely insane that my stomach twinged. Lachlan would be leaving and never looking back, but that was almost two years away, and we weren’t even really…anything.
“I can’t see you ever being happy working in an office.”
“No, never,” he said softly. “I have to be outside, or at least fixing things with my hands.”
“You’re fixing me.”
And that was why I was having twinges. I was attached to him because of reasons that had more to do with me than him.
He gave my hair a gentle tug. “Do you know how good it makes me feel to take your problem into my hands and make it right? Damn good, Ellie.”
More twinges.
The sliding glass door whooshed open behind us. “Oh my god, what in the peanut butter is going on out here?” Helen appeared in front of us, sweeping her eyes from Lock to me. “This is a very unsettling tableau.”
