Page 5 of Honey Bee Hearts

My phone dings with the same notification and I glance at it. The urge to check it is strong, which is strange. I haven’t felt such an urge in so long. The world has been fuzzy since the accident, more like background noise than anything else.

“I think you should check it,” Jinx declares. “Maybe it’s your mom.”

“Mom stopped talking to me long before the accident,” I remind her. “Remember? I cut her off and she got mad and broke my vase as she left?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jinx nods. “Well, it could still be important?”

Mom hadn’t even bothered calling after the accident. The hospital had even called her while I’d been under since she was listed under my contacts as “Mom.” She never answered. Despite the many voicemails they’d left her, she’d never shown up. But that’s okay. I wasn’t alone there. I still had Jinx.

Sighing, I pick up my phone and unlock it. The background picture of me and Jinx in our ren faire costumes appears as my background and my chest gets tight. It takes me a few long minutes to steady my breathing, so I don’t have another panicattack. I’ve had far too many of those lately. Still, it’s hard to face the very last photo Jinx and I ever took together.

“Your armor work was phenomenal,” Jinx muses as she leans over my shoulder. “Shame they had to cut it off you.”

I quickly swipe open my email app and wait for it to load. An email pops up with the subject line, “Get ready for your stay at Circle Bee Ranch,” and I frown as I click it open.

“This must be a mistake,” I mumble as I scroll through the message. “‘We’re excited to welcome you to Circle Bee for your month-long reservation. Here’s what you need to know’ . . . What is the world?”

“Oh!” Jinx exclaims. “Happy Birthday!”

I blink. “It’s not my birthday yet.”

“But it will be by the time you’re on this trip. It isn’t until September,” she points out.

“I. . . don’t get it. Why would I go stay at a ranch?”

Jinx throws herself on the couch. The cushions don’t move. “Remember that night we got drunk and watched all those old westerns without realizing what we were watching?”I look down at the email again and notice both my name and Jinx’s on the reservation. “Well, I booked us a trip for a month long stay for your birthday, because you said you wanted to be a cowgirl for a while and find us some cowboys. I would have told you before now, but. . . well, you know.”

My heart squeezes. “I’ll cancel it. I can’t afford something like this right now.” I haven’t even been able to go back to work yet. I’ve been dipping into my savings since the wreck and the medical bills are starting to stack up even with the insurance claim covering a lot of it.

“It’s already paid for,” Jinx argues. “All inclusive, too. I wanted it to be the very best.”

My eyes well as I look down at the reservation again. September. That’s only two months away. “Even dead, you think of me.”

“Always, Everhart,” she smiles. “Or should I say, Cowgirl?”

Her image fades away, leaving the couch as pristine as it had been before. I drop my phone and fall to the floor, the hardwood bruising my knees, but the pain is nothing compared to what I’ve endured. It’s nothing at all.

The panic attack hits me so hard, all I can do to hold myself together is curl up in the fetal position on the floor. I try the counted breathing Dr. Julia recommends.

When that doesn’t work, I simply lay there and cry.

Chapter 3

Rhett

Ipull the veil from my hat and wipe the sweat from my face as I prepare to unload the supplies from the back of my truck. The ladies are doing excellent, and as always, Bee-yonce’s hive is doing far better than Susan Bee Anthony’s. There’s just nothing stopping the Queen Bey. When I go to lift the crate, I realize I’m not alone, and sigh.

“You just going to hover there like a ghost?” I ask Colt where he sits on the porch steps with Dolly Paw-ton, our very own retired drug bloodhound. Retired by force, not by choice. Dolly is barely five years old, but she’s a stubborn old gal. We’d gotten her from Steele Mountain Ranch, one of Ole Red’s pups back in the day, and she’d come with the silly name. She’d served with Colt on the police force, but when he’d left, she’d come with him. Good thing, too. Dolly isn’t so much a drug dog as a dog that sometimes decides to oust every illegal item within a five-mile radius. She’s got the best damn sniffer I’ve ever seen and an attitude to match it. ‘Bout the only person she listens to is Colt, and even that is sometimes iffy.

“We’ve got a problem,” Colt says instead of answering my question.

I sigh again, this time heavier. “Don’t we always?”

He grimaces. “This one is different.”

Releasing the crate I’d been about to lift, I instead unzip my white bee suit and pull my arms from the sleeves before tying it around my waist. It’s always risky to expose so much skin to the sun when I’m as pale as Casper, but I’m sweating up a storm and clearly I’m not about to get inside anytime soon. I brace my hands on my hips.

“Well, what is it?” I ask, watching him carefully as he pets Dolly. “Another money request? The bank circling us like sharks again?”

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