Page 36 of The Hometown Legend

Gideon didn’t like that he’d accomplished that through intimidation. He hadn’t meant to but he still lost control sometimes. He still couldn’t always handle himself.

With rage boiling in his blood, he walked back to his truck and sat there for a moment before firing up his engine. For one second, he thought about figuring out where Rory was. It was weird, how she’d become a touchstone in some ways. She’d been in the forest when he’d first arrived. She’d brought him pie. She’d been at the parade.

No. He wasn’t going to Rory.

He decided to drive to Mapleton. It was the nearest town that was any kind of size, that had chain restaurants and the like. He’d spent most of his time in Mapleton when he was in high school. That’s where the school was, but it was also where everyone had hung out. At the diner, the Minute Market. It had been where the action was.

It made him laugh now. He’d lived in major cities in the years since then. Hell, for a year he and Cassidy had lived in Dubai.

This was not a city.

But at the time it had felt like that, and he wished... He wished that he could make himself feel that again. The way he felt at seventeen, cruising down the road in his car, high on a football game win. He pulled his truck into the Minute Market. Because he’d always gone there then, too. For a hot dog and a Slurpee. He had not had a Slurpee in longer than he could remember. And he didn’t know why he wanted one now. Maybe he didn’t want it. He just wanted to feel something. Something other than anger.

He pulled in too quickly, and that earned him dirty looks from some people who were already in the parking lot. He got out of the truck and walked in. There was a pretty woman about his age standing in one of the aisles, a headband pushing her blond hair off her face. She was exactly the kind of girl he would’ve liked back then.

She looked up at him, and he tried to smile, and she looked away so quickly she couldn’t have made it more clear she didn’t want him to make eye contact.

Well. The charm was not intact, that was for sure.

He went down the aisle with the hot dogs, got one, then got a blue Slurpee out of the machine. He had never really been certain what that flavor was. He took it up to the counter, where there was a girl working who might very well have been seventeen. Her hair was dyed black and blue, and she had a face full of piercings. “Just this,” he said.

“Serial-killer vibes, Daddy. I like it.” She smiled at him. And he was pretty sure she was flirting with him. Though he didn’t understand a single word she’d just said.

“I’m not a serial killer.”

“It’s a vibe.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Sorry. Didn’t realize you were, like, old like that.” She rang him up. He had no clue what had just happened. A completely normal woman had not wanted his eye contact, and the other one had called himdaddy. So. That was the day. That was the fucking day.

He took his Slurpee and his hot dog out to his truck and leaned against the hood. He had no idea what to make of...anything that had just happened. He’d lost his prospective employee, talked to his ex-wife, terrified the guy he was buying his ranch from with his...serial-killer-daddy vibes, and he’d driven out here to get a Slurpee and a hot dog like it would make him the fucking big man on campus again. And all it had done was remind him that he was a stranger in a strange land.

There had been a time in his life when he’d been sure everything would be fine. But he didn’t know that anymore. He was very seriously afraid he was going to fail here. That he wouldn’t be able to manage the ranch, that he’d alienate his family. Hell, everyone.

It was all unbearable.

And the Slurpee tasted like shit. What the hell had he been on when he was in high school? He dumped the whole thing in the garbage and ate the hot dog in three bites, then drove back to Sullivan’s Point. Right as he was about to walk inside, Lydia called him. “I thought maybe I would come up and visit you.”

“Not tonight,” he said. “I’m not in the mood.”

It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if she came to visit him, he wouldn’t be able to be pleasant and that wouldn’t be any better.

“Oh,” she said. And he knew that he’d hurt her, but she was just in a long line of people who’d had a weird interaction with him today. And he was all fed up.

“I’ll see you maybe tomorrow.”

“Okay, Gideon, whatever you need.”

He knew shewantedto mean that. He just didn’t know if she did. Because obviously she’d wanted him to move back, and she wanted to get a certain thing out of that.

And now she wasn’t getting it.

He’d wanted to start over. He’d been so sure that going back to the beginning was his way of finding something. But he sure as hell hadn’t found it yet.

He was starting to doubt that he was going to.

He got off the phone with Lydia and went inside, kicking his boots off. He didn’t bother to undress to get in bed.

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