“You don’t know that. You don’t even know me.”
“But I told you, I felt sad when you looked at me because you felt sad.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Sure it does,” she said as she picked another dandelion and held it out to me.
I didn’t take it.
“My freckles make me sad, and I don’t like them. You getting angry makes you sad, and you don’t want to be that way. So, why on earth would I stay away from you?”
This girl really was crazy. “Not the same things.”
“They are to me.”
“They’re freckles,” I said as I leaned forward to tug on her long braid. “Just a part of you like this is.”
“You get angry. It’s just a part of you.”
A heavy breath left me when I fell back against the tree and watched her, staring at me like she really believed what she said.
This girl I didn’t know at all.
This angel who had fallen into my life.
Saying things no one else ever had. Looking at me like there wasn’t something wrong with me. Like I was just Beau.
Not the violent Dixon boy. Not the angry one.
Just Beau.
“Are you real?”
Another one of those giggles left her, head tilted back and everything. “Of course I am,” she said when she faced me again. “Better question! Do you like lemon?”
Crazy girl.
Crazy, angel girl, that’s what Savannah was.
“Uh . . .” My shoulders bunched up. “I dunno. Sure?”
“Me and my mom made lemon pound cake for your family, and it’s so way good. You should try it.” She stood and held a hand out for me to take, reaching for me like she wasn’t afraid of me at all.
I took it.
Letting her help me up as I tried to understand how she could say and think the things she did . . .
We hadn’t made it out of the trees when I figured it out.
She saw me push Hunter against the house. She saw me being held down when my anger was already fading. Which meant she hadn’t seen a whole lot of anything. Nothing close to the worst I’d done.
“You’ll see somethin’,” I said quietly. “Somethin’ that’ll change your mind about me. About, you know, what’s wrong with me. Just so you know . . . it’s okay. I’ll understand.”
She grabbed my arm and turned me toward her. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Because you turn into the Hulk?”
I looked away as my teeth clenched tight. As my chest burned in a funny way that was cold and hot all at once. “I don’t like that name.”
“Okay then,” she said like it was as simple as that. “Because you turn into a bear?”
A laugh broke past my shame, and I glanced at her. “What?”
She shrugged. “You were kinda roaring like a bear when I found you.”
“I—sure. ’Cause of that.”
“Well, I happen to like bears,” she said and held out the same dandelion from earlier to me.
I watched her for a while before taking the dandelion and starting for the house again with her by my side.
“You sure you’re not an angel?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think so. My dad calls me ‘Pumpkin’ . . . maybe I’m one of those.”
I laughed and knocked my shoulder against hers.
She skipped away, laughing as she did and looking at me over her shoulder. “Come get me, Beau Dixon!”
I watched her dart away, too stunned to move for a few seconds, before taking off after her.
Running after someone without that sickly feeling covering me. Without anger pushing me faster and faster.
Chasing that crazy, angel girl because she wanted me to. Because I wanted to.
Had a feeling when I finally caught up to her that I wanted to spend every day chasing Savannah Riley.
“That sounds perfect, then we’ll be ready for you at noon on the twenty-ninth,” I said as I scrawled down the last of the details. “Please let me know if you have any questions before then.”
After a quick goodbye, I ended the call, my expression falling when I set the bed and breakfast’s phone on the counter. “Next weekend’s full too,” I said to the kitchen lamely, hating that the excitement of that moment was missing. That I couldn’t share it with Beau . . .
Hating that he wouldn’t be there for the graduation weekend or the full weekend we had just ahead. That he wouldn’t be there to say let’s live that dream before the first guest arrived, as he had since we’d first opened up Blossom Bed and Breakfast.
Hating that he wasn’t there at all.
I rubbed at the burning ache in my chest that hadn’t seemed to dull these past weeks. The stabbing betrayal that lingered and twisted in the moments when I had too much time to think. Like now.
Pushing my calendar away, I turned from the kitchen, refusing to give my thoughts the chance to form. I had a to-do list that would keep my hands and mind busy for days if I was lucky.
But just as I was stepping into our large supply closet to grab cleaning supplies, the front door opened.
Hope bloomed so fast and so deep that my next exhale sounded like I was in pain as I turned and raced for the entryway . . . only to come crashing down around me when it was Sawyer heading toward the kitchen instead of his oldest brother.
“Oh,” I said thickly, throat working feverishly to swallow past the knot there. “Hey, Sawyer, hi.” My head bobbed all kinds of awkwardly as I stepped closer to where he was watching me curiously. “Did y’all forget something last night?”
“No, just coming to check on you.”
“Oh. Well, I—” I waved toward the kitchen and living room just beyond it, trying to shrug as I did. “Everything’s fine today. Nothing needs to be fixed. I don’t need help with anything.”
He stepped back to lean against the kitchen archway, folding his arms across his chest as he did. “Yeah, that isn’t what I meant. Where are the kids?”
“School,” I answered a little uncertainly, even though I was sure of that, and Sawyer would’ve known the answer to that too.
“Levi?”
“Napping. Why do I feel like you’re interrogating me?”
“Do you have guests checking in?”
I straightened my back and tried to stare him down. “Sawyer Dixon, I am not playing twenty questions with you. Why are you here?”
He gestured to my kitchen. “I’m trying to figure out why you have enough desserts to feed all of Amber sitting in your kitchen when none of that shit was here last night. I wanna know if you’re okay. I need to get a feel on where you’re at after what we told you last night.”
“Stop looking at me like that. I couldn’t sleep,” I ground out, refusing to let him make me feel worse than I already did. “You already know I’m not okay, and as for last night?”
“Beau showed up at the ranch yesterday morning,” my mother-in-law had informed me after dinner had ended.
A ragged breath had ripped from my lungs as I’d looked around to make sure my kids weren’t within hearing distance of her.