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6
LANEY
“All set?” he asked as he buckled up and put the truck in gear.
“Yeah, and thanks, Everett,” I said, clearing my throat.
Was there a frog in there?
“No problem.”
“Where were you comin’ from anyway?”
The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Shifty’s.”
“What’s a shifty?” Paisley asked, scrunching up her nose.
“It’s a person,” he told her.
Shifty’s weathered face filled my mind, and I couldn’t help the smile that stretched over my lips. He’d always been a kooky old man, and his wife was pretty out there too. They lived on a massive plot of land just outside of town, covered in junk that they called treasure.
When we were kids, the seven of us kids—the Wilson boys and the Cole sisters—used to run through the fields at the back of Shifty’s house and dig through all the stuff, looking for anything of value. Not to take it or anything horrible like that, simply to see if there really was treasure buried underneath all that junk. One time, he caught us. Chased us away with a rake, laughter breaking through his stern hollers about trespassing on his private property.
“How’s he doin’?” I asked, chuckling at the memory.
“He’s the same. Nuts. My dad sent me out there to take a look at his truck. You’ll never guess what I found under the hood.”
“What?”
“A squirrel.”
I frowned. “A squirrel?”
“Yep. Tragic, really. The little bugger must have crawled up in there somehow, and when Shifty started his truck …” He let the sentence fade off, allowing Paisley and me to fill in the blanks. At our disgustedly shocked faces, he threw his head back and laughed. “Sorry, probably could have kept that to myself.”
“I could have lived my entire life not hearing that story, sir,” Paisley said with an indignant huff as she leaned back in her seat.
I shared a look with Everett—one that spoke of plenty worse stories he could tell her—then looked away before it dragged on too long.
He shook his head as if to clear it. “So, I heard you’d be comin’ to town for the reunion, but I was pretty surprised to hear your boy toy would be with you.”
Was that jealousy in his tone? Oh, brother. I turned to Paisley with a look that I hoped said, Can we please bail on this dumpster fire? She seemed to get the message and shook her head, eyes holding a not-so-subtle warning.
“Riley was a last-minute addition. Well, I was too, I guess. But I’m surprised you heard. You don’t read all those gossip rags do you?”
He smirked, but didn’t deny it. “The whole town’s been talkin’ about it ever since the news broke. It’d be hard not to.”
“Right.”
A stilted silence fell over us as he meandered toward town. He’d been right, even though it wouldn’t be much more than a few minutes by car, it would have been rough to walk. These boots were absolutely not made for walkin’. They were made for a silly little pop-country princess who’d thrown away her regular boots because they’d held too many memories of days spent with him.
I let out a breath and tried to smooth the tension in the air. “How’s your family? The boys all keepin’ out of trouble?”
“Oh, yeah. The wild bunch ain’t so wild anymore. We’ve all grown up.”
“Are they all out of the military?” I asked, trying not to think about how this wild boy, in particular, had aged like a bottle of fine whiskey. Six years wasn’t too long, but it’d done great things for Everett.
“Nope,” he replied. “Travis is still in the Marines, but Adam and Jackson are home.”
