Chapter 12: The Party

Lainey's POV

Boone came to our engagement party with a folded sheet of paper in his shirt pocket.

I saw it the second he walked onto the lawn at Ransdell Hill, a white square over his heart.

Hayes had invited him anyway.

"Thirty years," Hayes had said. "I'm not going to be the one who quits first."

Boone didn't come near me.

He took a bourbon from a waiter and stood at the edge of the lawn by the fence, alone.

I hadn't seen him in a week.

I'd gone back to Ransdell Hill the morning after the barn, and I hadn't gone home since.

Hayes never once mentioned his headlights.

He'd moved his things into the guest room across the hall that Sunday.

He said it was so I could sleep.

He said it pleasantly, and he kept his door shut every night after that.

Rule two, put back by the man who'd broken it.

It had been the longest week of my life.

The party was the kind my mother would have loved.

There were lanterns in the oak trees and a bluegrass band and a whole hog on a spit.

Half the county had come back to see us, and the other half had come to see Boone.

Hayes found me by the dessert table and took my hand.

"Come with me a minute," he said.

He walked me down the path to his barn, away from the lanterns.

It was dark and warm inside and smelled like cedar shavings.

The Clover filly put her head over her stall door and nickered at us.

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