Page 10 of The Lies We Told Ourselves

“Obtuse?”

She stuck out her tongue, and I rolled my eyes.

“I think you should cut the pay down to match my decreased hours,” she said reasonably.

“No.”

“No?”

“Agreed.” I was purposely aggravating her now, but the little wrinkle in her nose that she got when she was annoyed verged on adorable.

“I don’t know what to say,” she muttered.

I didn’t respond, and we drove the rest of the way into town in silence. I knew what it was like to be in a situation you didn’t see a way out of. I also knew what it was like for someone to step up and give you a solution. My grandfather had done it for me when I inherited the ranch and enough money that I’d never have to worry about how to run it. I swore there and then that I’dwork to pay it forward in any way I could, and that was why the ranch was changing into what it was.

I pulled the truck into a spot near the grocery store, and we both climbed out. I told Val she needed to stay in the back of the truck and then gave her some fuss to take the sting out of it. She’d probably nap the entire time, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t feel bad for leaving her behind. We went everywhere together, but she wasn’t allowed inside the store.

“Will she be okay in there?” Reece asked, looking back at Val sadly, who’d already laid down on the blanket I kept in the flatbed for her.

“She’s already asleep.”

“She won’t jump out and run away?”

“No.”

Reece pouted for a second, but then her attention was fully on the town as we walked to the store. “Wow, this place is so pretty.”

I guess it was. Growing up around here probably meant I didn’t appreciate Willowbrook as much as I should. For a small town with little tourist traffic, it was clean, busy, and surviving from the local community alone. For now. My brother and his fiancé were on a mission to change that, though. They had big plans to bring in the tourists and get the town’s economy booming.

It needed it. Because as pretty as Willowbrook might have been, the signs were showing that we were slipping in the wrong direction. Starting with the fact that the local doctor had retired, and no one had taken up the practice. The dark windows concerned more than just me, but the townspeople seemed in denial, if not completely oblivious, to what it could mean.

I held open the door to the grocery store, and Reece stepped inside. I watched as she tensed, looking around at hersurroundings as she made sure she knew the layout and who was inside.

She walked straight past the carts, so I grabbed one. I wasn’t here to be her damn bag boy.

Reece wandered the aisles of the grocery store, every so often glancing over her shoulder at me as if to check I was still there. By the time we’d made it to the end of the third aisle, there wasn’t a single thing in the cart, and I’d had enough.

“What is wrong with you?” I growled.

She came to an abrupt halt and looked at me with wide eyes.

I nodded at the empty cart. “Why is this empty?”

Reece looked confused for a moment. “I don’t know. Why are you following me and not putting anything in it?”

She sounded annoyed, and I’d have smiled at the glimpse of fire inside her if I wasn’t so annoyed right now.

“I’m not shopping for you. I don’t know what you like. You need to do it yourself.”

“Shopping for me?”

“Why else would we be here?”

“Because you told me I had to come.” She looked confused again, and I cast my mind back to earlier. Surely she knew we were here because she had nothing to eat in the cottage.

“You don’t have any food, and I’m not watching you starve.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her back to the first aisle before I turned her to face what was offered. “Shop,” I said, nudging her in the direction she needed to go.

Reece looked at me with a bemused look on her face, pulling her bag tighter to her side, and then slowly walked down the aisle, actually looking at the shelves this time. When we made it to the end, and she still hadn’t put anything in the cart, I was ready to shake her.

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