There is a pause. “Really? My brother lives there.”
“Yeah. I ran into him.” Well, not exactly, but I’m not sure what to say.
“Oh, wow. How’s he doing?”
“Pretty good. He seems to really like his job.”
She laughs. “He does. It would be nice to see him more often. Tell him that for me, will you?”
My stomach flutters with nerves. “I will. I do have a question about him.”
“What?”
She might not even know. But then again, she might.
“We were talking, and he told me he used to have a crush on me when we were in high school. Could that be true?”
She laughs. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No, why?”
“Oh, Willow, it was so obvious he had a thing for you. Anytime you came over, he’d put himself wherever we were. I used to tease him about it.”
“I didn’t realize. If he had a crush, why didn’t he do anything about it?”
She laughed again. “Because I told him I’d ruin his life if he did.”
“Wait, you said that?”
“I did. You were my best friend. The last thing I wanted was for him to be creeping around you and scaring you away. Fortunately, he listened to me. He actually tried to convince me he saw you as a sister, which I didn’t buy for a minute.”
A sister. That’s what I overheard him telling her that one time.
“Okay, you’re being awfully quiet,” she says. “Don’t tell me you liked him back?”
“Well…”
“Oh my God! Willow! Are you dating my brother?”
I take a deep breath and just say it. “Yes.”
“I’m so happy for you two!”
I laugh. “You were just saying you didn’t want him creeping around me.”
She laughs, too. “That was when we were in high school. Now it’s cool. Please tell me you two will come back to Montana to visit soon.”
I would love to go back to see my family. “I hope so. Soon.”
“Okay, I’ll hold you to it. And it better be before the holidays.”
The holidays are several months away. It sinks in that I can actually go home this year. Maybe I can talk to my brothers and everyone can go home to Montana this year. My family and Durango’s family. I let myself get lost in the dream of it all.
CHAPTER 32
Durango
The momentI step into my house the exhaustion hits. We just flew back from a grueling assignment. And I don’t just mean physically. Moose and Axel were with me, and let’s just say Moose is still upset he was accused of possibly killing one of our targets, Damien. I tried to explain to him that it was Harding who thought he was a suspect, not us. But he’s still bitter.
