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Strike that.
Thisman.
Are we going too far or is it just far enough?
“So, he doesn’t know about your SVT.” A statement, not a question.
I turn my attention back to Max. “I haven’t told anyone,” I admit.
“Rubes. Don’t you think someone should know?” Max’s voice is a growl of frustration. “You’re alone out there on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. What if something happens?”
Shards of glass line my stomach. Max’s words have me flashing back to the night after the Neon Grizzly.
We shut the bar down, went wild.
Too wild.
Before I passed out in front of Charlie, I felt it coming, a rush of adrenaline from my orgasm, and then my heart crashed. It was a bad combination—sex, dancing, alcohol—and it backfired.
I can’t risk that again. Can’t risk Charlie asking questions.
Since that night, slow and steady is the way to go.
“Nothing’s happened,” I lie, pushing a big hunk of hair out of my eyes. “I still have Zooms with Doctor Lee. I’m taking my medication. I’m okay, Max.”
“What about him? This Charlie guy, this cowboy, does he feel the same way you do?”
I sit back on my heels, letting the gardening gloves slide from my hands. This isn’t the conversation I want to have with my brother.
Resurrection is my escape, but clearly, I can’t run far enough away from my brother’s worry.
“Even if you tell him, you’ll get hurt. He’ll get hurt. You’ll both get hurt.”
I glare at the screen, ignoring the ache in my heart. “We aren’t anything. Besides, he’s not in it. I promise you, when I leave, he won’t even miss me.”
“Ruby.” Max sighs. He looks up and waves as the bell chimes. His smile is sad. “Everyone who knows you misses you.”
I swallow.
“You can’t stay there forever,” he reminds me.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Liar. The whisper in my head coils around me, has me trying to pretend I haven’t been imagining myself living in Resurrection. Having a garden, getting a house, meeting my neighbors, running a flower shop downtown. This town is like a soul revival, and I’ll never be the same. I don’t have that restless feeling I had back in Indiana, in any of the cities I’ve stopped at on this road.
Here, with Charlie, it feels like home.
Deliriously so.
Maybe it’s my fault.
Maybe I have this misplaced daydream I’ve had all my life. Positivity. Happiness. Gratitude. Even in the face of death, I’m content to play an idealist, where Max and my father are realists. Alarmists.
Fear doesn’t solve anything, and the longer I’m in Resurrection, the more I realize something deep in my heart.
Without fear, you have freedom. Fearlessness. No restraints. Every doubt I’ve carried my whole life, I’ve left in the dust here in this wild Montana earth. I’ve grabbed onto my life with both hands.
Because of Charlie.
