Chapter 7
By the time I turned onto the gravel drive leading to Aunt Maggie’s place—after passing it once, then somehow doing it again—my eyes burned from being awake too long. The sun hung low at my back, spilling soft golden light across the mountains ahead of me.
I’d spent half my childhood here. Summers that smelled like wildflowers and mountain air, Violet always a step ahead of me, daring me to jump higher, climb faster, be braver. Everywhere I looked held memories of happy days with the people I had loved and lost.
I cut the engine and stepped out, gravel crunching beneath my boots, then turned slowly, taking it all in.
The property hadn’t changed much—two houses, just like always.
The big one sat farther back, solid and quiet, its windows catching the light.
An older couple had lived there when I was younger, their kids grown and gone, but I didn’t know if that was still the case.
But it was the smaller house near the road that stopped me in my tracks.
Aunt Maggie’s house. Violet’s house.
Everything was downtrodden, beaten down by years and snow.
I couldn’t remember if it was this bad before, but the paint peeled off the siding in chunks now.
The porch leaned a little, looking as tired as I felt.
A ceramic frog with a chipped foot sat on the top step—the same one I’d given Aunt Maggie one year for her birthday.
Off to the side, a bright blue bike leaned against the railing.
I couldn’t stop staring at the flowerpots lining the steps, every shade of the rainbow imaginable. Bright and mismatched in that messy, joyful way my sister loved.
My chest squeezed tight.
While I was in Chicago trying to prove I wasn’t a helpless mess, Violet had been here. Living in the house Aunt Maggie left us. Raising her daughter. Turning childhood summers into something permanent. Something real.
I’d stayed away because coming back meant facing her.
Over the many bad days we’d shared in our early lives, she and I had developed an ability to see straight through each other.
I’d stayed in Chicago because I couldn’t bear the thought of her looking at me and knowing exactly how miserable I was. How badly I’d failed.
And apparently, she’d stayed here, unable to tell me that she was sick.
She’d lived here without me.
She’d died here without me.
“Dizzy!”
The sound cracked through the morning air, familiar enough to splinter something inside me.
I jerked my head up just as a blur of blue fleece came flying down the driveway—Junie, all wild hair and flushed cheeks, rain boots slapping against the gravel.
She was bigger than I remembered. Older.
The last of my strength seeped out of me, and I fell to my knees, arms open. Before I could even brace myself, she slammed into me at full tilt. Junie threw her arms around my neck like she was the one here to hold me together.
For a heartbeat, everything else disappeared. Chicago. My job. The endless highway. The house. The emails full of paperwork about cremation waiting for me to read. All of it fell away under the weight of a little girl clinging to me as if she never wanted to let go.
I buried my face in Junie’s wild, poofy hair, breathing her in. She smelled like maple syrup and cold mountain air. “Hi, sweet girl.”
I pulled back just enough to cup Junie’s face in my hands, tears streaking her cheeks, a gap-toothed smile splitting through them.
“I told him you’d get here fast,” she said with a grin.
I pressed my forehead to hers, hearing just enough of Violet in her voice to splinter something in my chest. “Yeah, well,” I whispered. “I was so excited to see you, I had to get here as fast as I could.”
A low throat-clear sounded from behind us—deep, deliberate.
I looked up.
Boots first. Scuffed leather planted wide in the gravel, toes dusted pale from the drive. Denim stretched over thighs that looked unfairly solid. My gaze dragged upward, slow and unwilling, taking in broad shoulders filling out a well-worn T-shirt, strong forearms browned by the sun.
His face was still hidden, tucked into shadow beneath the brim of a black baseball cap. The sun sat at my back, outlining him in light but giving me nothing where it mattered. Dark hair curled at the nape of his neck.
Even without seeing his eyes, he looked like he could chop wood, fix fences, and ruin lives before breakfast.
Junie twisted beside me, grinning wide.
“Ty, this is Dizzy!” she announced. “Dizzy, Ty.”
He shifted his weight, one hand hooking into his pocket. “Yeah, kid. I figured that out.”
The sound of his voice, low and rough, hit like a cold plunge, sharp and breath-stealing.
Recognition didn’t creep in.
It slammed.
I knew that voice.
I let Junie go and stood, brushing dust off my leggings with both hands before sticking one out toward him. “Daisy,” I said. “Violet’s sister.”
He looked down at my hand, the brim of his hat still shadowing his face. My pulse stumbled, hoping I hadn’t misread that night three years ago. Surely he remembered me, right?
I sure hadn’t forgotten him. I’d never looked at a cheeseburger the same.
Time ticked by slowly as I waited for him to move, but he stepped forward and put his hand in mine. Warm. Rough. Familiar in a way that made my stomach flip.
“Ty,” he said. A pause. “Or Huddy, I guess.”
As he lifted his head, the light finally caught him—caught the crooked curve of his mouth first. I looked up, excited to see the man I’d been hunting down for years. But the sight of his dark mustache made my brain stutter, skidding sideways into the past.
Three years ago, he’d only shaved it on a dare. Only because I told him I had a weakness for them—big, stupid Tom Selleck mustaches that had no business working on anyone.
And Huddy, incapable of losing even a silly game of Truth or Dare, had done it.
Of all the times I’d imagined finding him again someday, nothing, and I mean nothing, had prepared me for the fact that he still had it.
A flicker of amusement lit his eyes, quick and sharp.
That wasn’t a stranger introducing himself.
That was a man who remembered exactly where we’d met, what we’d said, and how it had felt.
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it—half nerves, half you have got to be kidding me.
“Ty Hudson.”
Those hazel eyes I’d never been able to get out of my head lit with amusement. “So, you figured it out, then?”
“Not nearly as cool as Sir Wallace T. Hudsington the Third, but yes,” I said. “Hard to ignore your face on Chicago Storm banners around the city once I paid attention.”
Three years ago, I hadn’t known his real name.
He’d just been Huddy—the hot guy with the beard and the crooked grin who’d spent one unforgettable night with me doing nothing and everything.
For months, I’d tried to find him. Not in a stalkery way, but a please tell me that night happened kind of way.
But he’d retired and disappeared before I ever got the chance.
No interviews. No charity appearances. Nothing.
It was like he’d fallen off the face of the earth.
It was dizzying to stand this close to a man I’d spent the last three years dreaming of. A man I’d half convinced myself I’d imagined. Told myself those few hours had been small to him—something he forgot before the elevator doors even closed.
But now he stood here, wearing my weakness on his face like a weapon.
That didn’t feel like he forgot me. Not at all.
For a moment, neither of us said a word. We just kept shaking hands far longer than appropriate. His mustache twitched—almost a smile, almost not. My mouth hovered somewhere between a laugh and something dangerous.
Three seconds of eye contact, three years of unspoken history.
“Do you want to see the kittens?” Junie piped up, tugging on the hem of my shirt.
I dropped his hand as if it had burned me, feeling my cheeks flush with heat.
Once I started walking with her, June skipped a few steps ahead of us, boots crunching against the gravel.
“Okay, so first let’s meet Dolly Pawton—she’s the barn cat, and she had kittens.
Five of them. They’re perfect. Then there’s Cluck Norris.
He’s the rooster. He’s very mean. Oh, and Uno—he’s the llama with only one eye.
He’s new. We got him at the auction. He likes me more than Ty because his eyes are the color of woodchips.
Did you know llamas are related to camels? ”
She delivered the list like she was introducing the world’s weirdest royal court, and I grinned down at her.
“I did not,” I said, then glanced at Ty. “Dolly Pawton, huh?”
He didn’t even blink. “Lotta mice.”
A laugh burst out of me, bright and startled, out of place with the reason for this visit. “She’s working nine to five, just trying to make a living?”
The corner of his mouth twitched beneath that unfairly perfect mustache—barely there, but heaven help me, I saw it. A subtle nod.
It hit me again how hot it was that he had a sense of humor tucked beneath all that broody cowboy quiet.
Ty hung a few steps back, hands shoved into the pockets of his worn jeans. At his side, a sleek black dog with three legs hopped along in perfect rhythm, his own personal shadow.
I crouched, holding out a hand. “And who’s this handsome guy?”
“Rowdy,” Junie said with a smile. “He got hit by a truck when he was a puppy, but Ty saved him. Now he’s the boss here at Copper Ridge.”
I looked up at Ty, squinting against the morning light. “You save puppies and grow mustaches? Dangerous combination, Huddy.”
His mouth twitched again—closer to a smile this time—and it did ridiculous things to my insides.
“Don’t encourage him,” Junie muttered, sounding far older than her eight years. “That’s what Emmy says.”
I faltered for half a step. Emmy.