Page 7 of Rancher's Return

She rounded on her daughter. “We’re going to have a talk later. Have I taught you nothing? Have I taught you nothing aboutsafe sex?”

“We weren’t having sex,” Lily said, looking filled with horror.

“Oh come on,” Marigold said. “Do you think that’s where he was going to stop?”

“Hey,” Colt said. “I am very serious about consent.”

Lily looked up at him. “So you mean thatiswhat you wanted?”

Colton suddenly looked trapped. Good.

“It’s what they all want,” Marigold said.

“Mom,” Lily said. “Can you please leave your teen trauma in the past?”

“No,” Marigold said. “I can’t. Because the result of my teen trauma is standing in front of me making more trauma. Let’s go, Colton. I’m taking you home. Since I can see that your car is not here.”

“Mom...”

“You’re certainly not driving him home.” And suddenly, she had a horrifying image of her daughter doing something drastic, running away or worse, if she were left unattended. “You’re coming with us.”

“Mom, I...”

“First of all, Lily Rivers, if you are going to mess around with a boy, you better do it when your mother isn’t about to come home. Keep track of the time.”

“Are you lecturing me now for not being sneaky enough?”

“I don’t know.Maybe.” Marigold had never been caught with a boy once.

“It’s not like I thought you would care that much,” Lily said. “I thought you would understand.”

“Just come with me.”

She led the two sullen, silent teens down to her car. They both sat in the back seat, and she didn’t argue, even though part of her wanted to. “Give me directions to your house.”

“I don’t know the number yet. We just moved here.”

“Are your parents home?”

“My dad is,” he said. “I mean... I only have a dad.”

“Okay,” she said, doing her best not to feel sympathy for him. He was a sexual predator. Well. He wasn’t a sexual predator. But she still felt wary of him.

“I can give you directions,” he said.

“Good. Please.”

She was filled with adrenaline. And anger. And she hadn’t really thought through what she was going to say to Colton’s dad when she showed up. Something along the lines of...Keep your kid away from my daughter or I’ll castrate him?No. There had to be something less psychotic than that. Maybe.

She followed his directions out of town and off toward the mountains. Then she turned onto a dirt driveway, her car jumping around in the potholes. “You really live out here?” Maybe he was trying to get them lost.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know, it sucks. There’s not anything to do.”

She heard him cut his sentence off just before the last word was out of his mouth, which was the only thing keeping her from leaping into the back seat.

She had spent all of Lily’s life being both mother and father to her daughter. So it seemed completely right in that moment that she had felt very Liam Neeson. A particular set of skills, etc. But because she was a mother, her ultimate response had been less violent. Still, it included shaming him.

This felt like action, anyway, because when she was done with him, she was going to have to deal with Lily and having a very real talk about contraception and safety and all kinds of things she had sort of thought she had already done. Now she worried it hadn’t been enough.

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