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“Nice lasso,” I said, handing him a cup of lemon-lime.

He took it, draining half in a single gulp. “Not as nice as your egg run.”

We stood in silence, listening to the low-grade roar of the family behind us, the occasional squeal from one of the kids chasing a stray dog down the hill. I watched Damon’s reflection in the window of a parked car, how he seemed both relaxed and ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

He looked at me, really looked at me, the way people do when they’re about to say something that matters. “You’re not what I expected.”

I wanted to ask what he’d expected, but the words caught in my throat.

Instead, I said, “Neither are you.”

In what would have looked like a very romantic interaction, Damon brushed a strand of hair from my cheek and leaned forward. He whispered, informing me that Kenny couldn’t keep his eyes off of me, but I didn’t notice.

That was the first victory that actually mattered.

8

EX MARKS THE IDIOT

Damon

After the field day ended in a haze of laughter, grass stains, and the sweet, sticky residue of communal effort, we migrated en masse to the beach for a scheduled bonfire session, complete with smores and the Spanish Inquisition: Aunt Edition. The bonfire had been staged on the sand, just where the river met the bay and the water hiccupped up with each tide, leaving behind a foam and the tang of kelp.

There was a pyramid of driftwood logs taller than a man and soaked at the base with a modest, but sufficient, dousing of lighter fluid. The first strike of the match was ceremonial, lit by the groom-to-be. The crowd cheered as the kindling caught, and soon the fire was a living, breathing entity, sending sparks and the promise of toasted marshmallows up into the ether.

Mikayla was missing the fun, she was on the phone, caught in a boardroom crisis. She paced along the tideline with one finger in her ear, wind blowing her hair across her face in a way that made her look wild and half-feral, even as she spoke in the even, unflappable cadence of someone born to command.

Her absence left me exposed. I should have read the signs—a trio of women, all seasoned in the dark arts of family meddling, converging on the perimeter of my space with the deliberate slowness of large predators encircling a wounded deer. Mikayla’s aunts—Reba, Beverly, and Laura—had been the keepers and the chroniclers of every scandal, triumph, and romantic misfire that had ever transpired in the Parsons family. They wore their curiosity like jewelry.

Reba, the one with the high cheekbones and the surprisingly loud laugh, started the questioning with the subtlety of a hammer. “So what’s the real story, Damon Lockhart?”

“The real story?” I questioned, buying myself some time.

“How did you two meet?” Laura asked.

I could have gone with the rehearsed version, that we met on the ranch when she came to visit with my half-brother Deacon St. Claire, but these women were not normal, and they would sniff out a placating narrative the way a bloodhound finds a dropped sandwich. Instead, I told the truth, unvarnished and with all the absurdity it deserved.

“Well, I really have to give credit where credit is due,” I began, leaning forward and lowering my voice, which drew them all in. “I had a wingman.”

Laura perked up. “Oh?”

“Yep. Rambo. Rambo, the rooster.”

Beverly cackled, then asked, “You mean, like, an actual rooster?”

“Yes, ma’am. The meanest twelve pounds of poultry west of the Cascades.”

I had all three women’s rapt attention.

“So here’s how it all went down,” I said, stretching the moment and letting the audience settle in. “I was minding my own business, feeding the goats. I’d had about six hours’ sleep in two nights, smelled like hay and whatever I’d stepped in that morning, shirt half untucked, just living the dream. Then this rental car pulls up, and out steps the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in real life. Mikayla makes an entrance, I’ll give her that.”

“She always did,” Reba agreed, nostalgia softening her mouth. “Even as a kid she’d enter a room like royalty, remember?” She nudged her sister Beverly.

Beverly nodded. “She sure did. I don’t believe in past lives, but if I did, I would swear that Mikayla had been a princess or a duchess, something regal.”

“Well, Rambo noticed too. He has this thing about strangers, especially the pretty ones. He made a beeline for her, strutting like he’s top of the food chain. Mikayla tried to ignore him at first, but Rambo was not having it. He started to speed up, sort of an aggressive waddle, and she picked up the pace too. It was a full-blown game of chicken, pardon the pun.”

All three women smiled widely.