Page 30 of The Promises We Broke
"Six months we've been working with him," Booker said as we made our way back toward the house. "You're the first person he's approached voluntarily."
"Horse has good taste, I guess," I joked.
Back at the house, I found myself thinking about what Booker had said. About being tired of fear, about the possibility that healing might happen more easily when you weren't trying so hard to force it.
"There's something I need to ask you," Booker said as we settled onto the back porch with fresh coffee. "And I need you to promise not to bullshit me."
I raised an eyebrow but nodded. "Shoot."
"Are you at least thinking about staying? Because if you're just going through the motions while you plan your next escape, we need to know that now."
The directness of the question caught me off guard. No careful dancing around the subject, no gentle probing. Just Booker being Booker, cutting straight to the heart of what mattered.
"Yeah," I said quietly. "I'm thinking about it. Barrett's birth... it changed something for me. Made me want to try being part of something again."
"But?"
I set down my coffee, running my hand through my hair. "But I don't know what staying would actually look like. I've been drifting for eleven years, taking whatever job paid the most and kept me moving. I don't know what I'd do here, where I'd live. You and Reece deserve your privacy, and I can't camp out in your guest room indefinitely."
"You don't need to figure it all out now," Booker said firmly. "You have time. You can figure it out as you go, or at least when you have two functioning legs."
I laughed, because he wasn't exactly wrong. "But I need to at least find a place to live or something. You two deserve your space."
Booker's mouth quirked into something that might have been a smile. "Didn't think I'd have so many of my brothers at the ranch, but it's not as terrible as I thought it would be. Besides, you're not exactly high-maintenance company."
The casual acceptance in his voice, the way he talked about my presence like it was normal and expected, made something warm unfurl in my chest.
"Sometimes when you think all you want is to be left alone," Booker continued, his voice taking on the thoughtful tone that usually preceded his rare moments of wisdom, "what you're really craving is a connection. And the connections that mean the most are always the ones you have to fight for."
The words settled between us, loaded with meaning that went beyond just my living situation. Because he was right. I'd spent eleven years running from connections, convincing myself that isolation was safer than vulnerability.
But maybe it was time to stop running. Maybe it was time to fight for the things that mattered, instead of assuming I didn't deserve them.
"I should probably get ready for Billie's next session," I said, standing and reaching for my crutches.
"Probably should," Booker agreed. "But Gage? Whatever you're fighting for, make sure it includes the things that are worth having."
As I made my way back into the house, Booker's words echoed in my mind. Fighting for connections. Fighting for the things that mattered.
And suddenly, with devastating clarity, I realized I'd be a fool if I didn't fight for Billie. Even if she didn't feel the same way about me anymore, even if too much had changed between us for romance to ever be possible again, I missed my friend. I missed the person who'd known me better than anyone, who'd seen the best and worst of me and loved me anyway.
I wanted her back in whatever way she was comfortable with letting me in. It was time to stop being a coward about asking for what I wanted, and it was definitely time to give Billie the apology she deserved.
Chapter 10
Billie
Monday evening found me sitting on my childhood bedroom floor at Aunt Helen's house, surrounded by the contents of a cedar box I hadn't opened in three years. Photos, letters, ticket stubs from movies we'd seen together, pressed flowers from bouquets he'd picked for me when we were fifteen and thought grand romantic gestures involved dandelions from the roadside.
Evidence of a love that had felt earth-shattering at the time and looked painfully young from the perspective of twenty-nine.
But also evidence that it had been real. Completely, devastatingly real.
I'd pulled out the box after hearing Mrs. Patterson at the grocery store describe Gage's heroic delivery of Barrett with the kind of dramatic flair usually reserved for action movies. The way she'd talked about his quick thinking, his calm under pressure despite his own injuries, had stirred up feelings I'd been trying to keep buried under professional concern.
The boy I'd known had been like that. Gentle with anything vulnerable, protective of anyone smaller or weaker, willing to step up when people needed him most. Hearing that those qualities were still there, that eleven years of whatever he'd been through hadn't stripped away his fundamental goodness, was doing things to my carefully constructed emotional walls.
I held up a photo from the summer before he left. The whole group of us at the swimming hole - Gage and me, his brothers, Delaney, a handful of other kids from school. We were all tanned and laughing, draped over each other with the casual intimacy of teenagers who thought they had forever. But it was Gage's face that drew my attention. The way he was looking at me in the photo, like I was the center of his universe.
