Chapter Nine

MATTS DOESN’T WANT to leave. It’s a strange sensation. Usually, he keeps time in his head at social events, counting down whatever feels like a polite number of hours before making his escape.

But when he’s well fed and relaxed from laughter and a couple of beers, sitting on a porch with a dozen other people and their various musical instruments—guitars, harmonicas, too many tambourines, and a single, ancient fiddle—when he’s surrounded by friendly bickering and shared stories and casual, gentle, touches to his shoulder or arm as people maneuver around him, he feels “home” would be too cheesy. Too presumptive. But something close to it, maybe.

Matts has spent his life trying to make a home wherever he is. First, it was at the farm, then splitting his time between the farm and his mother’s condo, then his mother’s hospital and hospice rooms, then a series of dorm rooms and billet bedrooms, and now, in adulthood, a shared apartment he still hasn’t gotten around to decorating. He’s never spent long enough in one place for it to feel like his. But some places that have felt close to home almost immediately: the farm, when he was young enough to notice the floral curtains and sprawling sunsets but not the fissures in his parent’s marriage; his second billet house, with a living room full of handmade quilts and a kitchen that always smelled like a warm oven, with crayon drawings on the refrigerator and a pond hockey rink in the backyard; and here, a hallway full of photographs and a back porch full of laughter.

When Matts does leave for the night, Sydney walks him out like she did the first time. Unlike the first time, she hugs him. And she lingers.

“We’re here for two more weeks,” she says into his collarbone. The implication is clear enough that even he catches it.

“Think you’ll be up for a jam session or two?” he asks.

“I do.”

“I’ll text you, then.”

It would be so much easier, he thinks, if everyone just said what they were thinking. If he could ask: Will I ruin whatever this is if I kiss you? And she could answer. And then he would kiss her, or would know better, and he wouldn’t have to spend the thirty-minute drive back to his apartment deconstructing every look, every touch that had occurred that evening.

She was still wearing his bracelet when he left. He doesn’t think it was intentional; he’s pretty sure she forgot she was wearing it. But Matts didn’t forget. And he didn’t ask for it back.

It feels like a triumph, though he can’t logically explain why. It’s not as if anyone will know it’s his. It’s not as if he’s marked her in some way. But he knows. And she knows. And maybe when she’s getting ready for bed and she’s taking off her rings, she’ll look at the bracelet and think about him, and maybe that’s enough.

His phone lights up with a call as he’s unlocking his apartment. “Hey, Aaron,” he answers as he tosses his keys into the bowl by the door.

“Hey, Matty,” Aaron says.

“Is this a good drunk or a bad drunk situation?”

Aaron exhales static. “This is a ‘your dad is a piece of work’ drunk situation.”

“Ah.” Matts is intimately familiar with those kinds of situations. “I take it the trip home wasn’t as smooth as you’d hoped?”

Matts’s dad has been getting his chemotherapy at the hospital there in Gunnison, but he had to go back to Denver for more scans earlier that day. Matts already talked to Aaron for nearly an hour—was late to Sydney’s because of it—getting a debrief on how the appointment went while his dad and stepmother got lunch. But apparently, the nearly four-hour drive back to the farm wasn’t easy.

“No,” Aaron says, and the word is loaded. “So now, I’m freezing my ass off in the barn with Erno and a bottle of Jack because shouting at a man with cancer is shitty, even if he deserves it.”

Erno is Matts’s horse—if Matts can still claim ownership. Erno is a roan blue draft-cross gentle giant named after Erno Rubik. Matts was there for his birth at ten years old and the first person to ever ride him at twelve. Erno is, quite possibly, the thing he misses most about the farm.

“Why are you with Erno and not your hellbeast?” Matts asks, opening the refrigerator to retrieve a sports drink. Aaron’s horse Trigger is a beautiful but exhausting leopard-spotted ranger mare who has tried to take off one of Matts’s fingers on more than one occasion. They put up with her attitude because she’s one of the best cow horses the ranch has ever had. She cuts like a dream and has more fight than flight in her.

“I moved some of the goats in with her while we’re working on the goat barn; there isn’t any room for me to join that party.”

Also, despite her attitude toward most humans, Trigger is weirdly obsessed yet always gentle with goats.

“Ow, fuck.” The line goes crackly for a minute.

“You okay?” Matts asks.

“Your stupid horse just tried to sit on me.”

“He probably just wants a cuddle.” Matts breaks the seal on the bottle and drinks half of it in one go as Aaron mutters back at him about stupid horses and stupid, stubborn old men. Matts sets the bottle on his nightstand and pins the phone between his shoulder and ear so he can reach for the GAN ROBOT plugged in next to the lamp. The Rubik’s Cube inside the machine is still scrambled from when Matts was using the app the prior night, and he presses the button that makes the arms release the cube. Falling back onto the bed, he considers it from various angles as Aaron tells him about the litter of puppies the neighbor had a week before and how he’s been on a third date with the sophomore at Western and isn’t sure if that means he needs to get her a birthday present next month or not.

Matts makes encouraging noises and starts spinning segments, the familiar shift of his fingers, the soft clicks of the internal mechanism, settling the anxiety that started building in his chest.

His father’s treatment isn’t something he can control.

But this—this is simple. Manageable.

Matts solves it and pops it back into the robot, then puts Aaron on speaker so he can get into the app and turn on the scrambler function.

“What about you?” Aaron says. “You ever ask out that girl you were talking about?”

Matts stills, watching the bot do its work. “No. Not yet.”

“What are you waiting for?”

Matts removes the cube. He hasn’t told Aaron anything about Sydney, only mentioned there was a girl. That seems wrong, now, as if he’s doing Sydney a disservice. It feels like minor blasphemy to hear her described as “some girl.” But Matts also has no idea how the conversation will proceed if he corrects the omission.

“She’s in a band.”

“Okay?”

“And they’re touring until May. So, I don’t want to try and start something until then.”

“Oh, touring. So, like an actual band. Guitar player? That’d be cool for you.”

“Lead singer and guitar.”

“Why are you being weird? Tell me the name of the band.”

“Red Right Hand.”

“Shit, I’ve actually heard of them. Couldn’t tell you the name of a song or anything, but hold on.”

The sound changes, and Matts assumes he’s been put on speakerphone so Aaron can google Red Right Hand. Matts retrieves the cube and starts spinning it. He knows what the first few returns of that search will be because he’s made it himself.

“Oh.” Aaron takes an audible swallow of his whisky. “Sydney Warren? That’s her?”

“That’s her.” Matts solves the cube too quickly. He sets it to scramble again.

“You know she’s uh—”

“Yes.” Matts tries to keep his voice even. The fact that Aaron is still using the right pronouns for Sydney is, frankly, more than he hoped for.

“Right.”

Matts’s palms are suddenly sweaty, cupped around his knees. He feels unprepared for whatever Aaron will say, even more so than Matts usually is in awkward social situations. How is he supposed to defend something, explain something he’s only just started to understand himself?

“Well,” Aaron says finally. “She’s hot. I never would have guessed.”

Matts reminds himself that is probably the best possible response Aaron could give, all things considered. He swallows his initial reply and chooses a gentler one.

“You should hear her sing. And play. I mean, you think I’m good at guitar? I went to her concert in LA, and yeah, the whole band is talented, but she’s something else. A lot more than just a pretty face.”

“Should have known it’d be a musician who’d finally make you want something more than a night at a time. That, or a Rubik’s Cube champion.”

Matts freezes, halfway through retrieving his cube from the robot again.

“Does Sydney know you’re a giant nerd?” Aaron asks.

“She does,” Matts says as dignified as he’s able.

“Well, I hope that…works out for you, then.”

“Thanks.”

Matts can hear Erno blowing in the background, and Aaron responds to him quietly before returning his attention to Matts.

“I’ll let you go. Thanks for letting me vent.”

“Thanks for keeping me updated.”

“Bye, Matty.”

“Bye, Aaron.”

He collapses backward and breathes at the ceiling for a minute. That went…well.

Matts rolls the cube back and forth over his sternum with a flat palm, considering. He exhales, pushing himself to his feet, and sets the cube to scramble one last time. Matts pulls off his shirt, turns on the shower, and tries to reclaim the loose-limbed happiness he found on the Warren back porch. He wonders if Sydney has gone to sleep yet. He wonders if she’s noticed she’s still wearing his bracelet and, if so, whether she decides to leave it on.

*

THE HOUNDS PLAY the Avalanche at home the Monday after the cookout, and Matts just barely resists offering the band tickets again. He’s glad he does, though, because it’s a loss, and while Sydney has to know that they don’t win every game, Matts doesn’t want her to witness them losing.

Tuesday morning, they don’t have practice, so he goes to Eli and Alex’s apartment for breakfast. Rome and Damien are already there, which is fine. Matts likes Rome. And Damien is nice, if intimidating. But for a while there, the summer before Rome was drafted, Matts inexplicably developed a friendship with Eli despite their history, and it was just the three of them. And Hawk. It was nice.

This is nice, too, just different.

Matts spends a good amount of time on the floor with Hawk. Before arriving, he stopped at the Three Dog Bakery to pick up some cookies for her and, as typically happened, they had a rack of toys by the register, so he ended up buying one of them too. The nearly three-foot-long, rainbow-colored snake has a squeaker in each of its half-dozen body segments, and Hawk is just as delighted about it as Matts thought she’d be. Everyone else, trying to carry on a conversation over the incessant squeaking, is less delighted. But that’s their problem.

Eventually, Matts drags himself away from the euphoric, up-side-down, snake-squeaking dog and washes up to help Eli with breakfast. Over the last year, Matts has found he enjoys cooking, provided he has clear instructions. It’s like math. Except when you solve the equation, you also get to eat the answer. He also just likes using knives. There’s something very pleasing about the repetitive sound, the feeling, the visual of dicing something. At this point, whenever Matts asks to assist, Eli automatically assigns him to the butcher block and starts handing him vegetables. Another nice thing about cooking with Eli is that he does the majority of the talking. Matts can lose himself in the pleasure of habitual movements and the soft drawl of Eli’s storytelling about the exploits of his best friend from home, Hawk’s recent vet appointment, and the figure-skating kids he’s working with.

Matts thinks it would be nice to have this one day himself—a bigger kitchen than his matchbox of a place now, with enough counter space to spread out all his ingredients and only have to worry about washing things at the end. He wants the friendly hip checks and ease of working with another person who’s familiar with not only the kitchen but him. He wants the lull of easy conversation interspersed with compliments on his bell pepper cutting technique. He wants gentle hands on his back and quiet encouragement—

He wants more, if he’s being honest.

He wants to share his kitchen with someone who shares his life.

He wants to work elbow-to-elbow with someone he loves who loves him, and when Matts passes her to rinse the sweet potatoes in the sink, he wants to stop, to gather her curls in one damp hand and duck to kiss the back of her neck. He wants her to slap him away, laughing, or maybe turn to kiss him properly and—

It occurs to him belatedly that this fictional future person has a face.

A familiar face.

Matts forces himself back to the present. He asks about Eli’s summer plans and listens to the answer while washing the potatoes without any additional daydreams.

Matts knows, his mother taught him young, that counting chickens before they’re hatched will only lead to disappointment. Hope is a dangerous thing, baby , she murmured into his hair after a lost mite championship game he was certain they’d win. Hope is a dangerous thing, baby , she warned him when her favorite mare was pregnant with Erno. You’re not guaranteed happiness , she whispered when she was first diagnosed. It’s best not to expect it and appreciate it when it comes .

He’s never been very good at that in practice though.

They’re just sitting down to eat when Matts’s phone rings. He only answers because it’s Aaron.

“You realize it’s not even noon, right?” he says in lieu of a greeting.

“Hey,” Aaron answers, and Matts realizes immediately that something is wrong.

“He’s going to be fine, probably,” Aaron continues. “But I’m at the hospital with your dad.”

Matts stands up. “What happened?”

“He fell down the stairs to the basement early this morning. Because the stubborn bastard refuses to admit that the chemo’s fucked him up, so he’s still trying to go about life as usual against the doctor’s advice. They’re pretty sure he’s got a broke ankle, which is not what I fucking need right now.”

“Do I—”

Aaron interrupts him before he can even get the question out. “No, you’re not getting on a plane over a broke ankle. I just need to vent, and you needed to know, so.”

“Hold on.” Matts presses the phone to his chest. Everyone is looking at him. “Can I take Hawk for a walk?” he asks Eli, and he probably should have asked a little quieter because Hawk immediately goes to sit by her leash hanging at the door.

“Yeah,” Eli says, “of course.”

“Okay,” Matts says a minute later as he exits the elevator, leash in hand and Hawk high-stepping with excitement beside him. “Vent away.”

After fifteen minutes and a very awkward juggle-the-phone-while-picking-up-dog-poop moment, Aaron winds down with “I don’t fucking know. On the one hand, he’s a better father than mine ever was, and he treats my mom like the angel she is. But God, he can just be so—”

“Yeah,” Matts agrees.

“Guess you’d know.”

“Yeah.” Matts takes an intentional breath, pausing to let Hawk sniff a suspicious stain on the sidewalk. “Do you need…help? I could hire someone to come and—”

“Imagine how that conversation would go.”

Matts exhales. “I’ll piss him off if I have to. I’m more worried about if you can keep doing this by yourself. Even before this, you were managing most of the ranch.”

“I’m fine.”

“This is the second time in three days you’ve called me.”

“Smartass. I’m fine for now . It’s still winter. Things are slow. Ask me again in the spring. Or if he breaks another fucking limb.”

“Okay.”

Aaron’s voice suddenly drops to a whisper. “They’re bringing him back from X-ray. I gotta go.”

Aaron hangs up before Matts can say goodbye.

Matts lets Hawk pull him forward and into movement again, still looking at the phone in his hand.

It would be easier if his father were a bad man. If he was intentionally cruel or malicious or if he’d raised Matts with neglect rather than love. But his father’s not a bad man. He made sacrifices Matts didn’t ask him to and enforced restrictions that chafed and had a disciplinary hand he’d learned from his own father that relied more on fear than respect.

His love hasn’t always looked the way Matts wanted it to, but there was never any doubt of it.

When Matts was younger, it was easier. Because first, his father was a hero. Then, in Matts’s teen years, he was a villain. Now that Matts is an adult, he knows neither is true. His father is just a man repeating history, doing the best he can with the example and expectations he was given. Just a man who’s fallible and imperfect and probably terrified right now. Which is a word Matts has never associated with his father. He finds it difficult to try, to picture him immobile, to picture him weak.

Matts opens his text conversation with Sydney and then remembers she drove to Austin with the band the day before for an interview and photoshoot, and they weren’t getting back until late afternoon. She’s probably somewhere in the purgatory of I-35 right now. Matts swipes back to his contacts and finds Devo.

Devo answers on the second ring. “You know you’ve called me and not my sister, right?”

“Yeah, hi,” Matts says. “I need to ride a horse. Please.”

The line is silent for several seconds. “Well, I guess you’d better come over, then,” Devo says.

*

WORKING WITH DEVO is a lot like working with Aaron: 95 percent silence, 5 percent sarcasm.

When Matts arrived at the ranch, head no more settled than when he called an hour before, Devo answered the door in barn clothes and said, “I hope you were serious about working for your horse lease.”

It was a relief to be asked for something in return, to fall into a familiar cadence of chores that Matts has been performing for most of his life. They turn out the horses, muck all the stalls in the barn, move the chicken tractor to fresh grass, and then Matts takes one of the four-wheelers around to fill the water troughs in the front pasture while Devo deals with returning some customer calls.

Boogie follows at Devo’s heels for the most part, though when they take a break for a late lunch—bologna sandwiches on white bread, homemade pickles, and creamed corn—Boogie lies at Matts’s feet. Probably because he knows Matts is more of a pushover than Devo, which is true. But Matts doesn’t like the texture of the outer edge of the bologna slices anyway. And it would be a waste to throw them away when Boogie is right there .

Matts and Devo are working on one final project when they hear a diesel engine coming down the drive. And as they’re putting the new tack room door on its hinges, Ben and Wade enter the barn.

“Afternoon, boys,” Ben says. “Wade just got here, and we figured we’d see if you two needed any help.”

“About done, actually,” Devo says around the door he’s holding.

Matts sinks the middle pin into place, stands, and taps in the final top one. He sets the hammer aside so he can shake both their hands.

“Does Devo have something on you, or are you here of your own accord?” Wade asks.

“He needed some horse therapy,” Devo answers for Matts. “I’m just making him work for it. We’ll head for the creek trail in a minute.”

Wade walks over to the ancient refrigerator by the back roll-top door and pulls out two water bottles. He proffers one first to Devo, then to Matts. They both accept.

“Family stuff?” Ben asks Matts as he breaks the seal.

“Yeah. My dad is sick. Cancer.”

Both older men nod. “You two close?”

He takes a drink. “We’re…complicated.”

“Sounds about right,” Ben says. “You want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” Matts admits. Or maybe a more honest answer would be not with you , but he knows that’s rude.

“Sydney’s on her way back,” Ben says, perhaps understanding the subtext of his statement nonetheless. “She’s an hour out. You want some quiet, or should I send her to find you when she gets here?”

“I’d like to see her,” Matts says.

“Shocker,” Devo mutters quietly.

Matts doesn’t think so.

“Well, you boys watch for snakes and keep an eye on the weather. Storm is supposed to roll in around dinnertime tonight.”

“Yessir,” they both say.

But neither Wade nor Ben appears interested in leaving them. And they’re both looking at Matts. He glances at Devo, but Devo appears just as stymied.

“I heard you came to the cookout last weekend,” Wade says. “I was disappointed to miss it this year.”

“Yeah,” Matts agrees. “It was great.”

“What’d you think of Power Wheels NASCAR?”

“Sydney’s a cheater,” Devo says.

“Didn’t ask you , son,” Wade answers.

Matts takes another drink, stalling. He has no idea where this line of questioning is going, and he doesn’t like not knowing. “More entertaining than actual NASCAR, I’d say.”

“And you met the rest of the family?”

He met a couple aunts and uncles and a pair of grandparents on Ben’s side, a great-aunt and a handful of second cousins on Tricia’s side.

“I did,” Matts agrees. “Pretty cool that nearly everybody plays instruments or sings. I’ve never had a big jam session like that before.”

Wade nods.

“The music gene is hit or miss on my side,” Ben says. “But seems everyone on Tricia’s side got it. Syd and Devo’s biological parents used to sing the most beautiful duets, back in the day.”

“Do they ever come to the cookouts?” It only occurs to Matts after he’s asked the question that it might be indelicate.

Devo ducks his head, scuffing the heel of his boot against the concrete. “Nah.”

“Good riddance,” Wade confirms.

“I’m assuming she told you about them?” Ben asks. “Why she left?”

“She did.”

They all stand in silence for a minute, arms crossed, not quite meeting anyone else’s eyes.

“I never could understand,” Ben says finally. “When they were pregnant, everyone asked if they was hoping for a boy or a girl, and they said the same thing, every time. ‘We don’t care, long as the baby is healthy.’ For some reason, that changed for them after the fact.”

Ben shakes his head. “Don’t make much sense. That you’d want a dead son over a living daughter. But that’s the choice they made. They haven’t seen Sydney since Wade brought her here.”

“And I stopped seeing them as soon as I turned eighteen, and they couldn’t use the legal fact of them still being my parents on paper as coercion,” Devo says. “They refused to come here, but they’d make me visit them a couple times a year before that.”

Matts is extremely out of his depth. “Good riddance?” he repeats.

Devo laughs softly. “Yeah, good riddance.” The timer on his phone goes off, and he throws a thumb toward the front of the barn. “I’ve gotta go turn off the sprinkler. We can head out after.”

Matts waits until he’s out of earshot, then turns to Ben. “Does it bother you that you’re not biologically related to them?” It’s probably a rude question, but he’s curious.

Ben exhales, hands on his hips. “It does. Not in the way you might expect. I couldn’t love them more if they was my own flesh and blood. I just wish I could say I was partially responsible for making them. I wish I could take credit for some little portion of what they are. What they’ll be.”

Matts has no response for that, but it makes his chest feel tight. He doesn’t think he ever wants kids, but he hopes he could love them like that if he did. Kids deserve to be loved like that. And he knows a lot of them aren’t.

“I think you can take some credit,” he says finally. “There’s a reason for the nature versus nurture debate, right? And you— I think it’s clear you’ve done a good job on the nurture front.”

Ben whistles for Boogie. “Well. That’s nice of you to say. Anyhow. I’ll send Syd out after you whenever she gets here.”

When Devo returns, wiping wet palms on his jeans, they walk down to the pasture. They collect and tack the horses in silence, and then Matts is swaying in a creaking saddle with cloud-diluted sun on his face and age-soft leather reins in his hands. He feels like he can properly breathe for the first time in weeks.

“We’ll follow the fence to the back pasture,” Devo says, pointing. “There’s a gate there and a trail that follows the creek for several miles. It crosses a couple folks’ properties, but everyone’s neighborly about using it, provided you don’t leave any trash behind. Sound good?”

That sounds good. Very good.

“Is there space on the trail for a gallop once we get them warmed up?”

Devo grins over his shoulder. “There is.”

*

THEY’VE HIT THE end of the trail and turned around when the sky starts to get dark. A bank of cumulonimbus clouds masks the beginnings of sunset, casting long, reaching shadows over the open trail in front of them.

Ten minutes later, they hear the first roll of thunder.

“We might want to pick up the pace,” Devo suggests.

Matts finds that wise.

They leave the trail to take a shortcut through one of the neighbors’ unfenced fields, and it’s then that Matts recognizes a figure approaching them on a horse, bareback, at a lope.

“Is that—”

“Yep,” Devo says. “Show off.”

Sydney pulls her horse to a walk once she’s a few feet away, one hand on her reins and the other holding her hat to her head. “Y’all somehow miss these fuckoff huge storm clouds?”

Her cut-off shorts trail white frayed edges down her tanned thighs. Her knees are scarred, her calves mud-smeared, and her bare feet press, easy and familiar, to the heaving belly of her horse. She’s still wearing his bracelet, too big and halfway down the forearm of the hand holding her hat against the wind.

The thunderhead roils behind her, dark and foreboding in an otherwise pink and orange sky. A sea of grass pitches like waves in the wind in the middle ground between them.

Sydney looks like the main character in a movie clip. Or maybe one of those giant southwest aesthetic oil paintings so many wealthy Texans seem to have on their entryway walls.

She is so, so beautiful.

“And that’s my cue to leave,” Devo says. “Thanks for your help today, Matts.”

“Yeah,” Matts says. “Any time.” He means it. “Thanks for this.”

Devo kicks his horse into a gallop, leaving them behind in a scatter of dirt clods.

“Hi,” Sydney says, reining her horse so they’re side by side. “My dad says you’re having an existential crisis.”

“Little bit,” he admits.

She glances heavenward. “Will it keep until we have a roof over our heads, or do we need to hash it out now?”

Matts likes the implicit assumption in that statement. That his existential crisis is theirs to work out.

“I suspect it will be ongoing,” he says.

“Well, in that case, we can start working on it after dinner, okay?”

“Okay.”

Their horses both pin their ears, and they look north, where the clouds are gathered, watching as purple lightning spider-webs down to make landfall in the distance. The thunder follows, low and rolling, several seconds later.

The air feels damp and full of static.

“I’ll race you back to the barn,” she says.

*

THEY GET BACK shortly after Devo. Wade comes down to help them get the horses all buttoned up and away, but the drizzle has turned into a proper downpour by the time they’re finished and running back to the house. They take turns showering and changing into dry clothes; Matts ends up wearing one of Sydney’s oversized Judas Priest shirts that fits him rather well and a pair of Ben’s shorts that do not.

They eat their dinner on the porch—leftover lasagna and vegetables warmed in the microwave with sweet tea in mason jars. It reminds him of being a kid, a warm plate in his lap and a quilt around his shoulders that smells like sun, likely dried on the clothesline in the distance. The rain on the metal roof and the wind chimes hung in the eaves are a familiar kind of music. And there’s Sydney, bedraggled and grinning at him between bites as she checks the weather forecast on her phone.

“Yeesh,” she says, tipping the phone screen so he can see the swath of yellow and red moving across the radar. “Probably isn’t safe to drive in this.”

Matts takes the phone from her. “Looks like there’ll be a break in thirty minutes.”

“Or,” she presses, “to be safe, you could just stay.”

“Stay,” he repeats, glancing up.

“The night, I mean. You said you’re contractually obligated to not do things that would potentially put your health in jeopardy.”

“True.” He draws the word out, then looks first at her left eye, then her right, as if one of them has some additional context he’s missing. “But I wouldn’t want to be an imposition.”

Sydney rolls her bottom lip between her teeth. “Matts,” she says, holding his gaze.

“Sydney,” Matts says.

“I’m trying to engineer an excuse for you to stay.”

“Oh.” The tension in his shoulders evaporates. He wants to ask at least a dozen follow-up questions, but he resists. “Then I could stay because we both want me to stay?”

“That works too,” she agrees.

He considers pointing out that there are four bedrooms in the house, and with Wade visiting, they’re all taken. But Matts doesn’t know how to do that gracefully or how to ask without making it sound as if he’s angling to share her bed, even if that would be his preference.

“You know,” Sydney says. “We got some strawberries from one of the neighbors on Friday. I was thinking I’d make a cobbler for dessert. You want to help me?”

He glances toward the kitchen and thinks about his daydream earlier. He can’t have all of it—can’t kiss her yet. Not now. Maybe not ever. But something is better than nothing. Something might even feel like everything.

“Yes,” he says. “Please.”