Page 48 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

That was less calming. Sierra realized in that moment that she was used to what they liked to say toher. But Boone was off-limits, as far as she was concerned. Hearing his name in her mother’s mouth now, when so much had changed—well.

It felt like her mother had taken a swing at her. Sierra didn’t like it at all.

“I’m not following you,” Sierra replied coolly. “How does what I do after my divorce have anything to do with what Matty did all throughout our marriage?”

Her mother sniffed. “I think we all know exactly what you did throughout your marriage, Sierra. Perhaps less of a high horse, please.”

In his chair, Kenneth tutted. “Now Mary Catherine,” he said, reprovingly. But nottooreprovingly. “Let’s not fling accusations about.”

“I never cheated on Matty,” Sierra said, as matter-of-factly as she could. “If you think that I was having an affair with Boone the whole time, I can help you with that. I wasn’t. I wouldn’t. But I also see no reason to waste time now that I’m free. I’ve already wasted so much time. Too much time.”

Mary Catherine very dramatically threw her hands in the air. “You’ve made us an absolute laughingstock,” she said. “Our daughter, run off with some cowboy and become amilkmaid? I’m ashamed to show my face outside of this house. What’s next, Sierra?”

“I don’t know,” Sierra said. She settled back into her chair and folded her hands in her lap. “You mean what’s next for you? Well, I’ll tell you, Mom. I think you should take some time and have a really deep think about why it is you’ve always treated your own daughter so shabbily.” Mary Catherine made a huffing sort of sound, but Sierra kept going. “Even now, you’re predisposed to defend a guy who not only cheated on me repeatedly since the beginning of our relationship in high school, but wasn’t very nice to me when he was around, either. Why are you okay with that?”

“You were with Matty for a long time,” her father chimed in before her mother could finish all the outragedhuffing, and now he sounded far more reproving. “I know it’s the fashion to act as if everything was always terrible when a relationship ends. But if it was so egregious, why would you have stayed? And for all those years?”

And that was a terrific question, Sierra thought. If not one she really wanted to dive into with the two of them. Whyhadshe stayed?

She knew the answers. She’d told Boone why. But looking at it now, when her life had changed so much for the better in so short a time—so much that it was unrecognizably more joyful andwonderfulin every regard—she had to ask herself if she was really willing to put all of her choices into the hands of inertia.

If she’d chosen to stay, that was on her. Maybe that was what had made leaving so easy. All it had taken was her making up her mind and then going.

Maybe that was the answer to everything. She had only been as trapped as she allowed herself to be, and she didn’t have the language to explain to her sad, rigid, judgmental parents how free she was now.

Or how she was never, ever going back to anything that resembled what she’d left.

Her parents started talking, stiffly enough to make it clear they wererising aboveSierra’s many provocations, about the news. About the usual town gossip. About the things they liked to talk about in their pre-dinner hour, every night without fail.

But Sierra was thinking about Boone.

She could still remember seeing him for the very first time. It was hard, now, to peel away all the layers of the best friend he’d been to her for so long and the lover he was now. Though it was possible that was the whole point, she thought. She could remember that first sighting, but she couldn’t rememberherselfbefore him.

She could still see that long-ago morning with perfect clarity. The morning she and the ridiculously cute boy from Cowboy Point had laid eyes on each other on the very first day of junior high school. Because it had been… a transformation.

Not that she would have called it that back then. She hadn’t had the words for it. She hadn’t been able to explain it, not that day or for years after. Because she’d felt that connection to him immediately. They’d walked into that classroom together, looked at each other, and smiled.

Thinking about it now, it was like the whole world—and her entire life—turned around that moment.

A year later, she’d known, hadn’t she? She and Boone had gotten closer and closer that year. And sure, there had been external considerations. Like what her parents had wanted for her—or more for themselves, and they’d never been shy about sharing their expectations. She’d been perfectly clear about who they would and wouldn’t approve of. They’d always been awful about her friends. She’d assumed that when boys were involved, they’d be worse.

Besides, she’d already known the kind of people they were. And how unduly pleased her father had been that she and Matty were in the same grade.

Like that would help him somehow.

But again, that was casting blame on a lot of things that weren’t her. Like she’d simply been carried along all this time, swept this way and that by other people’s choices and desires. Like she’d never had any of her own.

That just wasn’t true. It wasn’ther.

There wasn’t one single part of her that didn’t react—badly—to the notion that she’d been helpless all these years.

And so she had to wonder if what she’d really been reacting to was thebignessof it all. Everything with Boone was so huge. It had been terrifying. It still was.

She had been a girl who wasn’t even allowed to make a noise in her own home without getting in trouble so the idea of all of the intensity that swirled between her and Boone, all of that oversize emotion, all the places it might lead and the things it might mean—

It was no wonder that when Matty had asked her to go to Homecoming with him, a request that she’d always suspected had been something of a dare from his equally obnoxious friends, she’d said yes.

Because Boone as her friend she could handle. Boone as a mainstay in her life, she could do.

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