Page 66 of Best Friends, Tennessee

I snorted. “That’s not a secret. So are you, by the way.”

She sighed. “It’s just really good to have you back.”

“Thank you, Dani.”

“I know you hate it,” she said, giving me a side look.

“I don’t hate it that much,” I said. “I know I act like I do, but… I like getting the chance to be around you guys more, too. Mom wants to have a ten-minute conversation witheverycustomer and Dad wants to complain about the espresso machine instead of learning it. But working with you is always good.”

Danielle looked down silently for a little while, washing dishes. I could tell she was deep in thought, but I didn’t press the matter.

“You know,” she finally said, “before you said you were moving back, Mom and Dad were pretty sure they were going to sell.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Like,jokingabout selling? Like they always do?”

“No,” she told me, catching my eye. “Like talking to other local restaurant owners and interviewing prospective buyers.”

I took a step back from the sink. “No fucking way.”

She nodded. “I thought it was going to happen.”

“You didn’t tell me any of that.”

“Yeah. You had a lot on your plate already.”

I looked around the back kitchen, glancing out toward the front like I was seeing Red Fox for the first time.

It crushed me to think about not being able to be in this diner anymore.

I’d basically grown up in Red Fox. It had been a part of my family’s life forever, and even when it went through bad years and the normal ups and downs of a restaurant, I never thought my parents were anywhere close to actually selling the place.

They rolled with the punches.

They always bounced back.

They needed to change a few things on the menu and upgrade some furniture, but I didn’t think they’d been considering selling.

“They stopped thinking about it when I decided to move back to Bestens?” I asked.

“Decided to give it another good shot, at least,” Dani said. “They lucked out when they hired Thomas to try to get some quality baked goods in here. But they also knew you would be a huge help.”

“I feel like I barely help at all.”

Dani shook her head. “You’ve always been the best worker we’ve ever had here. When you were gone, do you know how often Dad said nobody could handle a rush like Ori?”

My heart squeezed a little inside.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t know that at all.”

“I swear sometimes you don’t know how much they love you,” Dani said.

“I thought of myself as the odd one out. I still do.”

“Just because you don’t ride horses and don’t like country music doesn’t mean you don’t belong.”

I felt a little wall building up inside me, brick by brick.

But I don’t want to belong. Not here. Not in a place that chewed me up and spat me out as a kid.

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