It was only after she’d taken in all the glittering decor that she realized there were also plates of food. On every surface. Cheese, crackers, meat. Chips. Dips. Fancy things, Super Bowl–style things... it was a lot.
“In case you need to eat your feelings,” Arizona said solemnly.
Fia produced a couple bottles of wine and held them out. “And in case you need to drink them, though only you and Bix can have it since Arizona and are gestating humans.”
“She can have it,” Bix said. “I’m not a big drinker.”
A funny sentence coming from a former moonshiner who was now the resident brewer at King’s Crest. But Rue had accepted long ago that Bix was a funny one.
It was part of her charm.
“I’ll go easy on it,” she said. “Though I appreciate the thought. I’m trying not to slide entirely into a depression. Though, Justice is doing a good job of helping me stay busy.”
“I heard he took you on a ride today.”
Of course they had collaborated with Justice on this kidnap. “Yes,” she said. “I haven’t actually done a lot of riding ever really. I did it a few times when I was a kid because I was learning to be a country girl. But it wasn’t something that I got all that into. Mostly I spent my free time either running around with Justice or being at my grandma’s.”
She was a little bit older than Arizona and Fia, and Bix hadn’t grown up here, so she wouldn’t have been surprised if even the ones she had shared the ranch with in childhood didn’t know a whole lot about how she had spent her time.
“Well, you were one of my brothers’ friends,” Arizona said. “Obviously you had cooties like they did, even though you were a girl.”
“I would’ve been proud to share cooties with Justice,” she said.
She clapped her hand over her mouth to suppress a squeak when she realized how that sounded.
Arizona laughed. “Well. That’s unexpected.”
“And not what I meant,” said Rue.
“Yes, I know. You are platonically involved with my brother.”
Rue felt twitchy having that introduced into the conversation because her feelings were so on edge it was like she had a teeter-totter inside of her. It had beenmaking her feel strange things, think strange things. The same sorts of thoughts that burst into her mind and bloomed like a flower before she could grasp on to them and see what they were actually trying to grow into.
Earlier today it had been... a little bit treacherous.
“I’m sorry that asshole cheated on you,” Arizona said. “I don’t know anything about that, but I did end up bitter and twisted for years because the man that I fell in love with when I was a teenager left me.” She didn’t know Arizona all that well, but she did know there was more to the story than that.
She had been in a life-changing car accident shortly afterward that had left her scarred and with a permanent limp. But for years Arizona had been mean and standoffish to anybody who tried to get close to her, including Rue. Not that she had ever seriously tried to make friends with her, but she was Justice’s sister, so she had spent time trying to get to know her, and for a long time that had been an impossible thing.
“I really don’t want that,” she said.
“Micah Stone broke my heart,” Arizona said. “He didn’t mean to. It wasn’t a bad thing that he chose not to get involved with a seventeen-year-old girl who had way too many feelings for him. But it felt like it to me. I really let it poison a whole lot of good years of my life. I’m with him now because it was meant to be. The only thing I regret is that I wasted those years that I had by myself. Because they were valuable on their own. Because I’m valuable on my own. It took a little bit of untangling for me to realize that. Our dad really did a number on all of us, so I can’t even really blameMicah for how I handled that. But I know your parents aren’t exactly a walk in the park so...”
“I appreciate it,” Rue said, sitting down on the couch and picking up one of the jalapeno poppers. “I do. I don’t want to be bitter, and I don’t want to be stuck. I’m... I’m so happy for both of you,” she said, gesturing to Fia and Arizona. “But I’m thirty-two. And I really did think that I was going to be able to start my own family. I was with him for eight years. I thought this was it. I thought this was the beginning of my life. And now I have to figure out what else it looks like.” Not even getting into the fact that she now had a massive dent in her ego.
“That’s its own kind of painful,” Arizona said, frowning. “I wasn’t exactly worried about my biological clock when I was seventeen.”
“I’m getting worried about mine,” she said.
“It’ll be okay,” Fia said, moving to her and rubbing her back. “We’re almost the same age.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s more that I’m worried if I have to meet another guy and it takes me eight years to trust him enough to marry him then... You know.”
“Maybe Justice could be your sperm donor.”
Bix offered that cheerfully from her corner of the sofa, and Rue felt like she had been shot between the legs with an arrow. “What?”
“He is a fine genetic specimen,” Bix said. “I hear you can just use a turkey baster to...”
