Page 68 of Lone Star Longing
“Maybe.” He didn't sound convinced. “How deep is it?”
“I’m not sure, but I think there are different depths. I wouldn’t want to go too deep, either. I like having my feet under me.” Even as she said it, she realized that that was really what she needed in her life. Her feet under her. Her path before her.
“Britt is coming back.”
All heads pivoted toward Con when he said the name of his ex.
“What? When? How do you know?” Sofia asked.
Con nodded toward Poppy. “Poppy talked to her cousin Meredith. She’s coming to town for her grandmother’s eightieth birthday.”
“When is that?” Ginny asked.
“Next weekend.”
“You think you’ll—do you think you’ll see her? Do you want to see her?” Lacey asked.
Con turned and met her gaze. “I’m not going to hide from her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Well, what she wanted to know was if he was going to seek her out, but she didn't say so. Still, she wondered why he brought it up.
“Do you want us to invite her?” Sofia asked.
That whipped Con’s head in the other direction. “No. I mean, I don't know if I want to see her in a public place. Not at first, anyway.”
Britt had destroyed Con’s heart. Not just broken it. Con had loved her, and she’d left him after the hardest year of his life, after his sister drowned. The thing was, she hadn’t just left. She’d gone to college, leaving him behind, sure. But she had completely ghosted him. Completely. If she’d come home to visit her family, she’d done so in a way that Con wouldn't know, and after a year or so, her family moved away, too. As far as any of them knew, Britt hadn’t been back to see her grandmother in all that time.
“So what do you want us to do?” Beck asked. “You want us to run interference? Or set something up? What can we do?”
Beck. Always looking for solutions.
“I don't know yet. I’ve only known for a couple of days, and I go back and forth. And you know, I’m just a rancher who never made it out of town.”
“That was always your plan, wasn't it?”
He shook his head. “No. Claudia was going to take the ranch. I was going to go to school and be a vet.”
“I didn't remember that. I just remembered that you were going to get married.”
“Yeah, well, now I see that never would have worked out. We know what her priorities are now.”
“What did she do with her life?” Lacey turned to Poppy. “I didn't know you were keeping in touch.”
“Not with Britt, but with Meredith, her cousin. She said Britt is a party planner in Houston.”
“As far away as she could get from Broken Wheel and still be in Texas,” Con muttered. “A party planner? Yeah, I guess I could see her doing that. She probably makes some good money.”
“And it’s not something she could do in Broken Wheel,” Poppy said. “That kind of money is only in Houston.”
“So what kind of party is the grandmother having? Like a big party?” Beck asked.
“Family reunion, I guess,” Poppy said. “They’re using the church hall for part of it.”
“So should we like crash it or something?”
“No, let this be about Mrs. Drexler,” Con said, his focus on the bottle of beer he cradled on the table. “She hasn’t seen them in a while. Let her enjoy her family. But you know, if we run into her here or something, just, I don't know.”
“Dude, twelve years. You’re differently people now. We’re all different people now.”
