Page 8 of Text You Up

Me: If I’m yours, then you’re all mine. Come back to me.

I added a green heart emoji.

My ringtone blasted in the quiet of the mountainside. Dagger? My sister’s name flashed on the screen. Should I answer? I hesitated and locked eyes at a couple passing me on the trailhead—likely wondering why I wasn’t answering the obnoxious phone.

“Hello?” I passed the couple and could swear I heard the guy say city people.

“Hey Fifi. You never texted me back. Thought I better check in on my sister. Still guiding mobile homes to their camps?”

I gave up years ago at telling her to stop calling me Fifi. The more I said it annoyed me the more she used it. “They’re not mobile homes. They’re recreational vehicles and yes, nowhere else I’d rather be.”

“Well, why you were doing that, guess what I’m doing?”

Hopefully, my phone would lose service, but since I was barely along the foothills of town, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. “A fashion show?”

Eliza’s fake laughter hurt my ear. “No. I’m eating a salad at The BlackStone.”

My steps faltered and I stopped. I looked back toward town. “You’re here?”

“Dad and me.”

Dad and I. This couldn’t be happening. Spending an amazing time with Dagger and now it was going to be tainted with this. No way. “Ah, I’m not in town.” Technically true.

“Yes, you are. I spoke to your neighbor, Ann. She said you were up all night. She could hear you and your guest through the thin walls.” Eliza’s voice got all skeptical like she couldn’t believe I might have had company.

“Well, I was there. I left this morning. So sorry to have missed you guys!”

“I went to your job. It was tough. I was in high heels. You know it rained last night? Practically ruined them. But there was this cute little janitor boy that I sweet talked into cleaning them for me. Anyway, the goofy guy at the front said you’d be here all weekend because you were always here every weekend.”

Nick. Our maintenance man. He was twenty-nine and I’d clearly forgotten to warn him about any of my family members potentially showing up. Anger coursed through my blood at what a jerk Eliza was. Do not let her rile me up. Think about Dag. “Well, I’m not today. Sorry.”

“Oh, come on. Stop being so pathetic. And you wonder why you don’t have a boyfriend. You run around weeks on end with all those mobile home trashy people. It’s a wonder you don’t have like five babies right now running around with people like that—”

I pressed the end call button.

I could take a lot of stuff, but I wasn’t going to take her judgement on people she didn’t know and on the kind men and women that I worked with. Absolutely no fucking way. Plus, I wanted to scream at her, it was called trailer trash. She was clueless. Rude. Judgmental. Selfish. My phone buzzed again.

Eliza.

This was it. I blocked her number. “Nice knowing you, Eliza.” I inhaled a deep breath, trying to steady my shaky nerves. I’ve been alone without any connection to my immediate family for two years. Not including the few times Eliza reached out. It was crazy, but meeting Dagger was a wakeup call.

I didn’t need my selfish, judgmental sister in my life. She brought me zero joy. Maybe this thing would work out between Dagger and I, maybe it wouldn’t. But whatever happened, that one small slice of joy I experienced with him taught me how valuable time was.

And how much happier I wanted to be.

With someone I loved.

Was that someone Dagger?

I opened his last text message to me. You’re mine, Fionna. Your body. Your soul. All mine.

Yep. I was in love with the guy. No one had ever taken possession of me so quickly and so eagerly. So completely. So truthfully.

How did we make this work?

That was the million-dollar question.

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