Chapter 17 #2
Dani: Only with people
I’m curious about.
Dani: So… where in Tennessee?
Me: Small town. Outside Nashville.
Farm country.
Dani: Wait. Like…
an actual farm?
Me: Horses. Hay. Chickens.
The whole thing.
Dani: That explains a lot.
Me: Such as?
Dani: Why you’re so calm. And why
you look like you belong outdoors
more than anywhere else.
How did you not love that?
Me: I didn’t want that life back
then. Kinda wanted to get out
and see the world.
There it was. More than I usually shared. The truth, stripped simple.
Dani: So you left?
Me: Joined the Marine Corp.
Haven’t been back since.
Dani: Was your family
okay with that?
I stared at the blinking cursor. Seventeen years weighing heavily in my mind.
Me: No.
I didn’t leave home because I hated it. That’s what people always assumed.
I stayed longer than most young kids do before running off to the service. I was twenty before I left for boot camp, and it was long enough to know exactly what life on that farm would look like if I stayed. I was supposed to want.
And for a while, I did.
I loved the horses. The rhythm of riding. The way the world narrowed down to breath, movement, and muscle. There was peace in that.
I was supposed to take all of that over. Same as every man before me, but somewhere along the way, I realized I didn’t want to die in that small town. Didn’t want my whole life decided before I had a chance to choose it.
So I left.
I was the first in generations to walk away, and sometimes I wonder if they still see me as a traitor to the land.
I sat there for a moment thinking about the farm, about my family, about the fact that I hardly knew anything about them. And after a few minutes, I realized I hadn’t received a response from Dani. It was a few more minutes before her name lit up my phone.
I took me a moments to register that it was a call and I hesitated to answer.
Not because I didn’t want to talk to her, but because I did, too much.
Because something about hearing her voice felt riskier than reading words on a screen.
The idea of her voice sent a pulse racing through my ear like a drum.
Texts gave me space. Distance. A chance to keep things clipped and controlled.
A call didn’t.
It meant tone, pauses, the parts you couldn’t edit.
The phone buzzed again as I exhaled through my nose and answered. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Dani said, softly. “I know we were texting, but… that felt wrong. You know?”
I leaned back against the hotel headboard, staring at the ceiling. “Wrong how?”
“Like this deserved a voice,” she said. “Not bubbles on a screen.”
That did it. Straight through whatever defenses I still had up.
“Yeah,” I said after a beat. “Okay.”
There was a quiet stretch, and I could hear movement on her end, maybe her pacing, maybe just settling somewhere comfortable. She had a way of filling silence without crowding it.
“So,” she said gently, “tell me about Tennessee.”
I scrubbed a hand over my jaw. “Not much to tell.”
She hummed, clearly unimpressed. “That’s not really an answer.”
I huffed out a breath as I stared at the faint crack in the ceiling, gathering words I usually kept buried.
“I grew up on my family’s farm,” I said finally. “It was a slow life, each day was pretty much the same. I spent more time doing that than anything else because I had to learn it all so I could take it over when my parents got too old to manage it themselves.”
“And you didn’t want it?” she asked.
“I thought I did. For a while.” I paused. “But I wanted more than that life.”
“So you left.”
“Joined the Marine Corps,” I said. “Haven’t been back since.”
Her breath held just enough to tell me she felt it.
“Were they okay with that?” she asked carefully.
I let out a humorless laugh. “No.”
Seventeen years pressed down on my chest all at once.
“I was twenty when I left for boot camp, two years after I graduated high school. Stuck around long enough to know exactly how my life would look if I stayed and it’s not the life I wanted.”
I could picture it even now, just as if I was there. The early mornings. The dirt under my nails. The weight of expectation was heavier than any pack I’d ever carried.
“I loved the horses,” I admitted. “Riding was the one time I really felt excitement out there.”
“That sounds nice,” Dani said.
“It was.” I said.
I swallowed.
“So what really made you leave?” she asked, this time more obvious with her curiosity.
“My dad was a tough man. Everything was work. You didn’t talk about what you wanted, you did what was handed to you, and you were grateful.
” I could almost hear his voice before continuing, “And I realized one day that I didn’t want to die in that small town without ever seeing what else was out there. ”
“I take it they were not too thrilled about that,”
“Basically” I said.
It hadn’t happen all at once. It started with shorter conversations, then missed holidays, and eventually nothing. Even after Elena had died and Harper was born, they stayed there and I build a life here. It had been a long time since I’d spoken to my family, let alone saw them.
“I’m sorry,” Dani said finally. “I think I get it though. You’re someone who chose himself and not everyone understands that.”
“I don’t know about that,” I muttered.
“I do,” she said. “My parents immigrated here just before I was born. I’m first-gen.
A lot of expectations.” She hesitated, and her voice wavered just enough for me to hear the weight underneath the words.
“Sometimes it felt like every choice I made had to mean something. Like if I didn’t go after the big things—good grades, a great job—I was letting them down. ”
I could hear it then, an unfamiliar edge beneath her brightness. Maybe it was the way she hesitated, her voice faltering ever so slightly as if grounding herself. “They sacrificed everything,” she continued. “So sometimes it feels like wanting something different is… ungrateful.”
“That pressure doesn’t disappear,” I said.
“Nope,” she agreed. “You just learn how to live with it.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. “Guess that makes sense.”
A beat passed, then her tone shifted—lighter, teasing, like she knew exactly when to pull me back from the edge.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I think the cowboy-to-Marine detour worked out.”
I shook my head, a reluctant smile tugging at my mouth. “Don’t get used to the nickname.”
“Too late,” she said cheerfully. “I changed your contact.”
“Please don’t,” I said, but there was no bite in it.
“Already done,” she said. “Non-negotiable.”
My phone chimed with a screenshot, showing my name now replaced with Cowboy ??.
I couldn’t help but stare at it longer than necessary. My thumb brushed over the cowboy emoji almost absentmindedly, and a warmth spread low and slow in my chest.
I sighed. “What am I going to do with you, Counselor?”
“Appreciate my sense of humor,” she said.
That one pulled a laugh out of me. “Guess I don’t really have a choice.”
Our call drifted after that, moving from the heavy topics to the ordinary details that somehow felt more intimate. I asked about her day, figuring I could keep things light by focusing the conversation on her.
She told me about a brutal morning in the public defender’s office, describing a client who’d finally caught a break, how sometimes it felt like swimming upstream, and other times, like she couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
She let a hint of pride slip in, admitting the wins kept her going.
There was a softness in her voice when she talked about her job.
Then she talked about Cami, how they’d been inseparable since high school, how some friendships didn’t need maintenance because they were built into you.
She laughed when she told me about the plans she and Harper had for the next day, already plotting breakfast, dance practice, and something involving slime that I chose not to ask follow-up questions about.
Every so often, she tried to turn the conversation back on me.
“So what about you?”
“How’s work really?”
“Are you even sleeping?”
I redirected every time. Asked another question. Let her keep talking, because it felt safer that way.
I had no intention of letting her in, anymore than I had. I’d already slipped enough. She’d be gone when I got home in a few weeks, back to her life, her job, her world. Getting attached, allowing her more into our world that I already had to, felt like a mistake I didn’t have the luxury of making.
The digital clock on the bedside table cast a faint glow, an ever-present reminder of minutes slipping by.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped checking the time.
When I finally glanced at the clock, it read 9:57 pm.
Her voice had softened, words stretching slightly at the edges, that warm, sleepy cadence settling in.
We said our goodbyes slowly, like neither of us were quite ready to be the one to hang up.
“And Logan?”
“Yeah?”
“I like the accent,” she said. “Just so you know… And the way you say my name, especially when you’re tired.”
Something about that made me want to keep talking, just to please her. That feeling alone felt dangerous.
“Night, Counselor,” I said, my voice rougher than before.
“Night, cowboy.”
The call ended, but I stayed there for a long moment, phone in my hand, chest tight in a way that wasn’t unpleasant.
I didn’t know when I’d let her see that much of me; I just knew she’d made it feel easy.
I set the phone down beside me and stared at the wall, jaw tight, heart doing something it hadn’t done in a long time. This girl and her nicknames, her brightness, the light she seemed to carry within her, would be the death of me.
And that scared the hell out of me.
For a long moment, I sat with the subtle—the kind you can’t outrun, the kind that makes it impossible to lie to yourself.
Beneath the worry and the ache, under every excuse I kept rehearsing, there was something else there, too.
I just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, put a name to it.