Prologue
Carey – Thirteen years ago
Famous last words: “He’s a good guy. You’ll see.”
Frannie swore to me. She promised me she knew what she was doing, dropping out of high school to elope with Doug Morris, Dipshit #1 in the long lineup of teenage dipshits in our little town. It was a mistake. I knew it in my bones, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She’d made up her mind. Frannie was like that—determined. When she made a decision, she stuck to it, every damn time.
“Carey, I told you,” Frannie said. “You never listen. You can’t dream anymore. You turned that part of yourself off, but it’s all I do. I need to get outta here. I don’t wanna be stuck in this stupid town. Will you ever leave it?”
Shrugging, I shook my head. I didn’t have the answer to that question. But I had the answer to a more important one. “Frannie, he’s not good for you. He makes promises he won’t keep. You’re gonna regret this, and your dad’s gonna be so mad. Have you thought about that? What about your mama, your sister? You know the rodeo will most likely end in disaster. Didn’t you learn anything when my ol’ man died?”
Her face fell; she knew how hard it had been for my mama and me since my dad died, but she shook those thoughts away. “Carey, don’t you understand? My daddy is the reason I want outta here. All he cares about is appearances. He doesn’t care if I’m happy. He just wants me to look good for his stupid campaigns.” Biting her bottom lip, digging her teeth into the skin hard, she took a deep breath, trying to avoid the truth, and finally said, “And my mama will be fine. She made her choice, stayin’ with a man who cheats on her and treats her like garbage. Besides, once Doug makes it on the pro circuit, I’ll have the money for school. I’ll make somethin’ of my life without my dad’s help, and then he’ll be proud of me. This’ll all be water under the bridge. But if I don’t go now, I’ll never do it. I’ll end up at UDub, studyin’ pre-law, and I’ll be miserable.”
I’d loved Francesca McKinnon since the very first day I moved to Wisper, Wyoming.
It was a speck of dust on the map, but my mama and dad had moved us here when I was eleven, almost twelve, because it was closer to all the places my dad had needed to be for his rodeos. He was a bull rider till it killed him.
Frannie and me, we were next door neighbors, best friends, and, instantly from the moment we’d met, in my mind at least, soul mates.
And now, standing between our houses, me in my boxer shorts and T-shirt, and her in her tightest jeans, a long red sweater, and no shoes, she was saying goodbye. I always loved her in red, her fiery copper hair, same as mine, competing with the color. Maybe it was dumb, but it was the reason I loved her the moment I’d set eyes on her. Like we’d been made for each other. Like we matched. She had the most beautiful rosy hue to her skin under her millions of freckles, and I knew I’d miss that flush of color the second she was gone.
Frannie knew me inside and out. My every fear, every joy, the sadness I felt watching my mama’s happiness bleed away slowly, more and more every day since my dad passed. She knew the frustration I felt at the loss of control over my own life. I’d been such a carefree kid, riding my bike around town, fishing on the weekends, and hanging out with my friends and Frannie every night. But that all came to a screeching halt.
She knew how my dad had treated my mama on his selfish and self-centered quest to be a rodeo star, and I was afraid Frannie would end up in the same kind of situation. Doug Morris wasn’t known for his compassion or concern for others.
I couldn’t stomach a life like that for Fran. She may not have loved me the way I loved her, but she was the person I confided in. The one who filled my arms at night when I shared every thought I’d ever had with her.
I had no clue why she’d decided to leave town with him. She wouldn’t tell me, and it hurt, but at seventeen, I didn’t have time for love anyway. I was still in high school, but my nights and weekends were spent working two jobs to help my mama with the bills. My dad’s death had left us with a pile of medical debt and a mountain of regret. Mama blamed herself for never trying to talk him into working a normal job. She said she’d always known the risks he took rodeoing, but that she knew the joy it brought him, too, and she could never bring herself to ask him to give it up, even for me.
He’d put us both through a lot, her more than me, but still, she’d loved him.
So Frannie’s plan to run away to “follow her dreams” sounded like a pile of horseshit to me. It sounded like the same bullshit dreams my dad was always yammering on about, the bullshit that got him caught under a two-thousand-pound bull with a broken neck.
Her leaving now, though, it was confirmation to me that I wasn’t what she wanted. I wasn’t enough. She wanted a bigger life, something much grander than Wisper, but I was afraid a bigger life meant something completely different to Doug than it did to Frannie.
Life would quickly catch up to her. Hopefully, she’d come home when it did, minus her jackass boyfriend, but what if she didn’t? What if she got stuck out in the world, stuck out in real life, and I wouldn’t be there for her every day? Her family wouldn’t be there. She’d be alone.
My heart ached to think on it.
I didn’t want her to go.
I wanted her to stay with me where it was safe, where there was no chance of broken necks or broken promises. Maybe it wasn’t the exciting life on the road or the fantastical call of the city and fancy culinary schools that could make her famous someday, but it was home. She was my home, and I’d never wanted anything more than to be hers.
There was a time when I thought she might have wanted that, too, but now I knew I couldn’t have been more wrong. Somehow, she and I had gone from soul mates to barely friends, and I was forced to watch as she drifted away, metaphorically and, now, literally.
But even so, I had to at least try to talk her out of this stupid plan. “Can’t you at least wait till after graduation?” I said. “Don’t you want that? A high school diploma? To see all our friends graduate? Don’t you want your parents to have that?”
“I already looked it up. I can get my GED. It won’t take long at all. And Mama’ll get over it. She has Jilly for all that stuff anyway. You know she lives to be their perfect daughter.” Squaring her shoulders, she said, “And my daddy can kiss my butt. I’m tired of bein’ a prop to him. He won’t let me go to culinary school. It’s law school or it’s nothin’.” She shook her head. “You know this. We’ve talked about it enough times.”
“I know but, Frannie, just wai—”
“I can’t wait, Carey. You know I can’t. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. You always will be, and I love you, but I’m almost eighteen. It’s my decision, and I wanna live.” She stepped closer to me, resting her hand on my cheek. “Please understand?” Her eyes lingered on my jaw while her fingers stroked the stubble I had yet to shave ’cause she was sneaking out at five in the morning. “Will you just trust me that this is what’s best for the both of us?”
How could her leaving be good for me?
But where Frannie was concerned, I knew when I’d been defeated. Shaking my head, I sighed. Nothing I said would stop her.
“Promise you’ll call me when things don’t go the way you want? ’Cause they won’t, Frannie. They ain’t gonna go your way.”
She pressed her forehead to mine softly, then kissed my cheek for the last time, whispering, “Isn’t there one thing you dream about? Just one? You’re so serious, but isn’t there one thing that keeps you up at night ’cause you can’t stop wishin’ and hopin’ and wantin’ that thing?”
Yeah, there was one thing. Looking in her gray eyes, feeling all my hope leaking out with every blink, I tried so hard to show her the love I felt for her. I hoped, if she could see it in my eyes, maybe she’d stay. And there was a flicker. But then it was gone, and she looked away.
“This is how I get what I want from life, Carey. I don’t see any other way. And I’m gonna prove you wrong. You’ll see.” She hugged me and that was it. She was really going, and as she walked away, she peeked back over her shoulder. “I promise I’ll call, but it’s gonna be to tell you when all my dreams come true. So get to workin’ on your own dreams, you hear?”
But my dream had just walked away from me on a cold morning in March, not even three months till graduation.
And when she crossed the Wisper border with Dumbass Doug Morris behind the wheel of his old, beat-up pickup truck, that dream died.
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