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“You sure you don’t want to come with me?” Luke asked, piercing Slate with one of his harder looks.
Slate didn’t want to have this conversation again. “I want to, Luke,” he said. “I do.” He shook his head. “I just feel like this is where I should be.”
“I know.” Luke sighed and went out the back door. He sat down on the top step on the deck he’d built with his bare hands and looked out over the ranch. This particular cabin sat right at the end of a road that led due north, many tall trees lining the west side of it to protect the field on the left from the harsh winds.
Slate followed him and sat beside him. He didn’t know what to say that he hadn’t said before. Luke had an entire tornado inside him that blew with ideas and emotions, and Slate knew to sometimes just let them swirl until they settled.
“We should go get some lunch,” he said. “Then I can help you pack.”
“I’m packed,” Luke said, glancing at him.
Slate’s eyebrows went up. “Really?”
“How hard is it? I have one suitcase with some clothes in it. Once I shower on Monday morning, all I need to do is put in my deodorant and my razor, and that’s it. I’m ready.”
One suitcase. Slate wondered how long it would take him to pack. Probably about the same amount of time it had taken Luke—ten minutes. If that.
They gazed over the hay field in front of them, which had just been mowed. Nick and Spencer oversaw a lot of the agriculture at Hope Eternal, and Slate had gotten to know them better over the past several weeks. He did live with them, after all.
Luke had not asked Hannah for a date, despite his crush on her. He’d told Slate and Jill that he wasn’t planning on staying at the ranch, and he didn’t think it was fair to start a relationship that would end when autumn arrived. Slate had let the topic drop, but Jill had kept at Luke for a week or two until she finally backed down too.
“I’m going to miss you,” Slate said. “When you get to your new apartment, you’ll have to do a video tour for us.”
“It’s not an apartment,” Luke said.
“What do you mean?” Slate looked at him. “You said you got an apartment.”
“It fell through.” Luke looked left, a tactic Slate had seen many times. He didn’t want Slate to be able to see his expression.
“So where are you going to live?”
“I found a place,” he said. “But I don’t want to do a video tour.”
“Why not?”
Luke exhaled heavily and turned to glare at Slate. “You’re relentless, you know that?”
“I am not,” Slate said. “I’m your best friend, and I’m concerned about where you’ll be living in three days.”
“It’s a little place in someone’s back yard,” he said. He pulled out his phone and started swiping. “It’s not nice, but I keep telling myself it’s not permanent.”
“That’s what we told ourselves every day in prison,” Slate said, not enthused by Luke repeating that mantra again. He took the phone from Luke and looked at the “shack” on the screen. “This is…small,” he said.
“It’s four hundred square feet total,” he said. “Big enough for a bed and a couch and a bathroom. There’s a row of counter space and a fridge,” he said. “I’ll survive.”
Slate swiped to see the interior pictures, and they weren’t terrible. “It looks clean at least.”
“Yeah.”
Slate handed the phone back. “You don’t have to go.”
“Yes, I do,” he said.
Slate nodded, because that was true too. Luke did have to go, just like Slate needed to stay. “You’re still going to see your family first, right?”
“Yes,” he said. “So I don’t have to be there until next Monday. Ten days, not three.”
“I stand corrected,” Slate said dryly, and they both laughed. They sobered quickly though, and finally Luke stood up. Slate did too, and they embraced.
