Page 53 of A Forever Kind of Rancher

She hadn’t thought it through.

Sitting around a family dinner table with him and eating all together. Seeing where he could fit into her life. Into the most important spaces of it.

“And how was your day?” he asked, now looking directly at Wendy.

She blushed. She could feel it. Her whole face went hot and she hoped—she really hoped—her children would continue to be the preteen/teenage narcissists she could generally count on them to be and not notice subtle shifts in their mother.

“It was good, thank you. And yours?” She nearly coughed as she took a bite of her salad.

“Best I’ve had in a while.”

She almost kicked him under the table.

True to her word, Sadie melted away as soon as dinner was over, but Mikey lingered, and Boone and Wendy ended up at the sink doing dishes while she chattered about the drawing techniques she was experimenting with, and how her favorite YouTubers did certain kinds of animation styles.

Wendy looked sideways at Boone, who looked down at her and smiled. Her shoulder touched his, and it was her turn to feel like she was in middle school.

Her stomach fluttered.

And without thinking she leaned in and brushed her arm against his very deliberately, which earned her a grin.

And another stomach flutter for good measure.

“But I really need to get some alcohol markers, because I think it would help with making the lines on my art crisper.”

That jolted Wendy back into the moment. “Oh. Okay.”

They finished up the dishes and she walked back to the house with Mikey.

“I really like Boone,” Mikey said. “He’s cool.”

“Yeah. He is. I like him too.” An understatement, but the most she was going to say to her twelve-year-old, who blessedly hadn’t noticed any of the subtext happening all night.

Unfortunately, Wendy felt steeped in subtext.

And in the aching window into another life tonight had given her.

What would it be like if she stopped worrying about what she thought was smart, or right—in the context of what other people would say—and just went for what she wanted?

If she closed her eyes and thought of her perfect life, Boone was in it.

So why was she fighting that so hard?

To try and protect herself.

But that ship had sailed, along with her inhibitions, right about the time she’d first kissed him.

The only real question was if she was going to keep on letting her childhood, the pain in her past, Daniel, the pain of his betrayal and the years’ worth of lies decide what she got to have.

Yes, it was fast. But it also wasn’t.

Boone had been there all along, and so had her feelings for him.

She had kept them in the most appropriate place possible. She had been a good wife. She’d honored her vows.

But the feelings had been there all the same. Daniel had been a great reason not to act on them then. He didn’t get to be her reason anymore.

She was her reason.

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