Page 36 of At First Dance
I shrug. “Storm’s gone. That helped.”
His eyes linger on mine just a moment too long, then he nods and gets back to work. I linger near the stalls, petting a curious horse who nuzzles my shoulder like we’re old friends.
“Hey, Rowan?” I ask.
“Yeah?”
“You said something about a camp once. Give me all the details?”
He glances at me, brow raised.
“For kids,” he says, jabbing the pitchfork into the hay with practiced ease. “To learn about farming, animals, and where food comes from. Thought it’d be a good summer thing. Especially for the ones who don’t have much else to do.”
I blink. “That’s… really cool.”
He grunts.
“No, I mean it.” I step closer. “I would’ve killed for something like that as a kid.”
He pauses. “Yeah?”
I nod, then smile a little. “I was a latchkey kid before I was a headline.”
Rowan leans the pitchfork against the wall and crosses his arms, giving me his full attention.
“I grew up in a double-wide trailer behind a gas station. And I say double-wide loosely. Half of it was waterlogged. The entire place should have been condemned. It was nothing more than a shack with vinyl siding,” I say. “My mom worked two jobs. My dad was barely a name in my house, let alone a presence. If I wasn’t at school or home, I was at the bus stop with a book and a pack of crackers. We didn’t have money for summer camps. We barely had money for shoes that fit.”
His jaw tightens slightly, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“My mom always wanted better for me. But… she doesn’t always go about it in the healthiest way. When I won a local talent show at eleven, it was like a switch flipped. Suddenly,she’s my manager. My coach. My publicist. There’s no more after-school anything, no friends, no weekends.” I swallow. “Just rehearsals. Pageants. Auditions.”
Rowan’s expression doesn’t soften. If anything, it sharpens.
“You were a kid.”
“Not for long,” I say quietly.
Neither of us speaks for a moment.
Rowan pushes away from the wall and crosses to a nearby saddle stand. His voice is low when he speaks. “You ever want to be just… a woman? Out here, mucking stalls, playing with goats?”
I smile at that even though it aches. “Yeah. More than I knew, honestly.”
He meets my gaze. “You can be.”
Those three words land harder than I expect. Maybe this place really is what I’ve been looking for all along. Even if I didn’t know it.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out to find the screen lighting up with the name I’ve been avoiding.
Mom – Mobile
The letters glare at me like an accusation.
She called five times yesterday, and I refused to answer. I respond once with a text.
Me:
I’m safe. I need some time.
