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“How is he?” My voice is barely audible. “Dane, I mean.”

The clarification is unnecessary. I just wanted another excuse to say his name.

“Better than he’s been for a while.”

I’d ask what he means, except Chevy’s not finished.

“I’ll delete the call if you want me to. Dane can wake up in the morning, hungover as shit, and never know how close he came to restarting the process of getting over you.”

I can’t breathe under the comforter anymore, and I drag it off my head.

“It’s up to you, but if you want me to leave it, you need to do something. Talk to him or get your ass back to Phoenix. Otherwise, let me delete it so he can move on.”

His voice echoes through my head, and I close my eyes, waiting for the ache in my chest to stop.

The day after the bachelorette party, Dane and I went to breakfast with Keaton and Liam. We both wore our sunglasses inside. A pair of lurkers. After, he dropped me at the airport later. I looked back at him before I walked through security, and he was watching me, unmoved from where I’d left him. I imagined running to him, twisting one or two more days out of my trip. Dane magnetized, but something inside me repelled, nudging me the opposite direction, and I boarded the plane.

I’m starting to think I’ll always board the plane. He needs the chance to move on without me popping back up in his life, only to leave again.

“Thanks, Chevy.”

“Take care of yourself, Lex,” he says. “You’d better show your face at Christmas.”

Before I leave LA, Idownload a copy ofDarkest Desiresto my phone. I reread the first half throughout my trip at rest stops and gas stations. I don’t need to get to the end to answer Marco’s question.

Dentons are strong, steady, and always there, waiting and ready to prove he’s not going anywhere. I’m a fucking Daphne—always pushing people away before they leave on their own. Dane’s the Denton, wasting his soul-crushing, sticky love on one of us Daphs, who doesn’t have the faintest idea what to do with it.

By the time I walk up the steps to the porch, it’s dark. I open the door, and the smell of cinnamon hits me.

“I told you not to make a big deal,” I say on my way into the kitchen.

Maggie’s smile relieves all the tension that’s been warring inside me the past few weeks. I’ve missed her. I’ve missed Colorado.

“Welcome home,” she says.

And it feels like I might be close.

The shock of finding outmy mother’s been up the I-10 for so many years calls for a reset, time to regain my footing. Not that I had much to begin with, but I stand by the saying. I sit by the river and walk in the woods until I carry battle wounds from branches scratching me, and I frequently return with a slight limp from stepping in a hole and turning my ankle. But I’m a badass woman of nature now.

Weeks in, and I’m still reminding Maggie my “pit stop” is only temporary.

She always responds the same way. “Everything is temporary, my dear. You living here, me living at all. The whole damn planet will disappear one day.” Then she usually pats me on the leg and offers me a snack.

She gets tired easily now, sleeping in the afternoons when she used to be out, cutting bull thistle or organizing in George’s office. When I ask if she wants to get a checkup, she tsks and lectures on a woman’s right to nap after nearly ninety years. The next day, the stubborn woman cleans my room top to bottom while I’m at work to prove she’s not lacking energy.

After finding out I was staying with Maggie again, Katie Sayer, The Home Slayer, asked me to come back as her assistant. I have no idea why. The woman went and got me coffee more often than I did her.

The week before Thanksgiving, she calls me into her office. I figure she’s finally come to her senses, but then she offers to pay for me to get my realtor’s license. I clutch at my chest like she popped the question, asking me to swear my undying fidelity to her. The proposition is the kick in the ass I need to make a decision. Calls are made, and courtesy of a vague threat from Keats to spill something that happened at sleepaway camp when they were eight, her cousin offers me a job. She’s starting her own interior design business in Virginia Beach. I have no idea what the hell a merchandising specialist does, but I’m sure one of my skills will transfer. Knowledge of mid-priced homes or my ability to point at shit on walls.

Time seems stuck on fast-forward, the days getting shorter—literally, since the sun sets at a ridiculous hour now.

Before I know it, I’m in my countdown phase, under the two-week threshold. It never ceases to amaze me how keyed up I feel, knowing I’ll have new places to explore, unknown streets and faces and now an entire coastline.

My almost-daily stop at the grocery store is the last thing I need to do in town. I have it down to a science, the aisles memorized. Today, though, I get distracted with flowers displayed at the front of the store. Most are white petals, a few standard bouquets of red roses, but smack dab in the middle is an eruption of color.

Flowers fall in the same category as produce for Maggie—something that might outlive her—but the pinks and yellows and oranges remind me of San Francisco. Of Steve’s tower and my painting. It wouldn’t be right to leave them for someone else. Someone who doesn’t know about bright spots. So, on my way to the register to pay, I set them in my basket.

I drop my keys twice, trying to balance the brown paper grocery bags while I unlock the door. As I kick the door shut behind me, I sigh and toss the mail on the table. Once I set the bags on the counter and hang my coat, I unload, pulling out the very yellow bananas first.

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