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CHAPTER ONE
ALAINASULLIVANALWAYSlanded on her feet.
It was the thing she was most proud of. Her ability to pivot when things went wrong. Dad cheats and abandons the family and ranch? Pivot. Learn new skills and work the land as best she could, until Fia had decided renting the ranch land out was more profitable for them. Mom leaves, no problem. Lean in harder to whatever her sisters were doing.
But the reality was, she didn’t want to garden. That had been Fia’s solution to keeping Sullivan’s Point open. Gardening and farming. Alaina was arancher. And that was what she wanted. Fia had plans, and when Fia had plans...well, no one could deviate from them. She had a prescribed place she wanted everyone in and it came from a very good place.
When Alaina was twelve, her dad left. And Fia had held the broken pieces of their family together. When Alaina, the baby of the family, had turned eighteen their mom had moved away too, and Fia had clung tighter to the remnant of all they were, and with the force of her love she’d kept them going.
It made it hard for Alaina to say what she wanted, because she didn’t want to step on her sister’s heart. And the farm and garden stuff was totally her sister’s heart. But Alaina hadn’t gotten mad about it; she’d just started planning.
It had gone hand in hand with her plan to grow up, get some experience and stop being treated like a kid.
But that ill-conceived plan had landed her where she was now. In this situation where she couldn’t figure out how to pivot at all.
This was life-changingbad. Two-pink-linesbad.
The-jackass-ran-offbad.
The jackass she had convinced herself she had feelings for because...
And this was the problem with her feelings. With the way she was always trying to rush in and fix everythingright this second. Because she hated being uncomfortable. Because she hated being sad.
Because she hated living in a world where she couldn’t control the things happening around her and the minute something happened that...the minute something hurt she did everything she possibly could to make that go away.
She was gritty-eyed, because she couldn’t cry.Wouldn’tcry. In Alaina’s world it was all the same.
This was all because of Elsie. Her best friend.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t fair to blame it all on Elsie. It was a series of complicated missteps. They hadn’tseemedlike missteps at the time, though. That was the problem.
It had all started with Alaina’s ridiculous crush on Hunter McCloud. Or maybe it had started with Elsie’s crush on Travis, which had turned into Hunter trying to help Elsie figure out how to get Travis, which had resulted in Hunter giving Elsie flirting lessons, which had...
Well, when Alaina had discovered Hunter and Elsie were sleeping together she hadn’t been all that thrilled.
But Elsie wasn’t just sleeping with Hunter. She wasin lovewith him.
It had hurt, but really, what could Alaina do in the face of love? She’dlikedHunter a lot. She’d had a whole lot of fantasies about him being her introduction to sex. But she hadn’t wanted to marry him or anything.
It wasn’t Elsie and Hunter getting together that had hurt, not so much. It was that Elsie had lied to her.
It was the feeling that—yet again—Alaina had had absolutely no idea what was happening in her own life. It had reminded her of the world blowing apart when her dad had walked out. She hadn’t seen it coming. And it had devastated everything.
She’d imagined Hunter and Elsie laughing about her. About her futile crush on Hunter, and she knew Elsie wouldn’t do that to her except...
It had put her right back into that dark space she’d been in at twelve when she’d found out life wasn’t perfect after all. And she couldn’t stand being unhappy like that. Couldn’t stand being uncomfortable.
And then she’d started scrambling, to figure out how to land on her feet. To figure out how to make it okay.
And Travis had been the solution.
She didn’twantto be hurt by Elsie. She didn’twantto be hurt by Hunter. She didn’t want to be hurt by anything. So she’d just decided...
Travis was cute and he was just as good as Hunter. She’d invited him out to Sullivan’s Lake and she’d watched him and another one of the hands show off and she’d decided he really was very cute, so why not?
They’d all gone to the bar later, and partway through the night she’d followed Travis out to his truck, then he’d driven around the back of the bar and they’d done it in the cab of the truck. It was fast and it wasn’t so good for her. It had hurt.
You a virgin?
