Page 56 of Rancher's Return

“Why are you saying this?”

“Because it’s true. It’s real. It’s happening.” She took a deep breath. “We’re going to college anyway. We are not going to end up together, Colton. This was... It was great. And you were great. There’s nothing wrong with you. But it’s not the right timing. And I think... I think because of them it’s never going to be.”

“You’re really breaking up with me at a dance?”

“We don’t have to be broken up until after the dance ends,” she said. “We could have one more dance.”

Colton’s face looked stony. “No. We can’t.”

“Please don’t be mad at me. Please. I like you. I care about you. And if our parents end up together then...”

He swallowed hard. And it was like he suddenly saw all the potential problems with all of this. They could never get to where they hated each other. Not if they were going to be stuck together as part of the same family, forever.

“Okay.”

“Let’s go back to the dance.”

“Sure.”

But there was something terribly blank in his eyes. And when he touched her hand, it didn’t feel the same.

But that was a good thing. It wasn’t supposed to.

She had made the right choice.

Because her mom wouldn’t tell her what was going on, she’d had to try to figure it out and handle it herself. Try to fix it.

So she had done the best she could.

Chapter Fourteen

Lily was safely off with her friends before the dance ended, and Marigold breathed a sigh of relief when the last of the kids filtered out of the gym.

She felt Buck approach, and she turned to him. Her heart lifted, lodging itself in her throat. He was just so...handsome. She wished she could see a way out of how complex all of this was. But there were just so many reasons for what was between them to not be the big romance. And yet it was beginning to feel like one.

She wasn’t sure what to do about that. The best thing to do would be to stop sleeping with him.

Yet she didn’t want to. Hadn’t she done enough behaving?

She didn’t want to behave.

She had lost this part of herself for so many years, and she felt like she was awash in new tones of color ever since the two of them had first kissed.

She couldn’t go back.

“I told the boys I was headed to my parents’ house. That I wouldn’t be home.”

“Oh.”

“I lied to them,” he said.

“You lied to them?”

“Yes. Because I’m a very bad man. And I would like to spend the whole night showing you exactly how bad.”

That was so cheesy. She shouldn’t respond. But she was responding to that. Because she knew about his brand of wickedness, and it lit her skin on fire. It lit her soul on fire.

“Are they going to be all right by themselves?”

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