“Ah. So that’s why you want to move east? A do-over?”
“Why not, right? That town hates me. Fuck Larimer County, too. I’m really not that high-maintenance. I haven’t been arrested in like ten years.” He pauses to thrust the magazine at me. Then he taps the page. “There. I like that one.”
I look down at the drawing of the house. It’s a farmhouse. “Five bedrooms?” I look up at him, surprised. “Why five bedrooms?”
“Well, before last Sunday night, it was just a hypothetical. But now…” He shrugs. “I can see it, Daisy.”
“Kids?”
“I could be Spencer. Not rich, like Spencer, but I could have that life on my own terms. With my own pack of princesses.”
“Hmm.” I look back down at the house and start picturing bedrooms. Which is stupid. He’s not saying he wants this with—
“With you, of course.”
“Me?” I laugh. “You’ve known me for four days.”
“Wrong. I’ve known you for seven years. And here’s something for you to think about—I mean, maybe you were right to take off.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” He sighs and looks out his window, spends a few moments in thought, then turns back to me. “I was… whatever. A different guy back then. But you had me all excited, Daisy. I was really bummed when I found out your number was gone.”
“Sorry.”
“Things happen for a reason. So I can only assume you and I both needed our time apart so when we got here”—he points downward—“we’d be ready.”
“What are we ready for?” I ask, my voice low. And I’m almost afraid to ask, because I am getting my hopes up.
He holds up the magazine. “This. And that.” He points to the land.
I just stare at him for a moment. Wondering if this is real.
“You think it’s dumb.”
“What? No. I think it sounds like a dream, but I certainly don’t think it’s dumb.”
He turns the key in the ignition and nods, smiling to himself. “This is my plan. And I wanted you to know about it.” He looks over at me as he puts the truck in gear. “Just in case you’d like to go on this ride with me.”
There is no possible way for me to stop the smile. “You know what happened to my farm?”
Vic is just about to pull back onto the road, but he stops. “What do you mean? You sold it.”
“I did. But it’s worse than that. It’s gone. They just… bulldozed it. The house, the barns. All of it is gone. They parceled the land and now they’re building a subdivision.”
“Oh, fuck.” His frown is real and deep. “Shit, I’m so sorry, Daisy.”
“It devastated me. I drove by about two months ago. I had been doing that since we moved because I didn’t want to sell it. I had to. But there’s an old silo across the road. So I’d just pull in there and sit and look at my old home. Watching it go wild because no one moved in. And I went out there after the spring semester was over and it was just… gone. All of it just wiped away, like it never existed.” I sigh. “I haven’t told Vivi yet.”
“Don’t tell her.”
“She’s gonna find out one day.”
Vic shakes his head. “No. She’s not.” Then he really does pull out onto the road. We’re quiet for a few minutes and I’m kicking myself for ruining our good mood, but then Vic says, “Which bedroom do you think Vivi would like?”
And then I fall back into his dream world of two hundred acres and a farmhouse.
It’s an easy fall, too.
Way too easy a fall.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - VIC
The phone rings on Friday morning and I tap accept in a state of half-slumber. “Do you have any fucking idea what time it is?” I ask.
“Vicious?”
Oh, shit. I open my eyes and blink. “Uh. Hey there, sis. Don’t tell your mom I said the F-word. I’m just really fucking tired and it’s really fucking early.”
“No problem.”
I yawn. Loudly. “So. What’s up?”
“Can I stay the whole weekend at the farm? They’re picking up goats today. Baby goats, Vicious. I need these in my life.”
Fucking kid. She’s so damn cute. But she’s been doing this daily since we dropped her off on Tuesday. Every afternoon Daisy calls to ask if she wants to get picked up and Vivi puts it off another day. “What did your mom say?”
“She doesn’t know yet. I don’t think she’ll want me to. She probably misses me. But the pool party, Vicious. I really want to go to the pool party on Sunday.”
“Ya know what? I want to go to the pool party too. So you could always come home, then—hear me out—we could all go up to Ronnie’s farm on Sunday together.”
“What part of baby goats didn’t you understand?” She gets a little attitude in her voice and I can just see her planting a hand on her hip. “Vicious, I’m desperate for baby goats. I will die a horrible death today if I do not get to play with baby goats before lunch.”