Page 85 of One More Kiss

“Fuck off, Peyton,” Ethan scoffed. “You walked away five years ago. It stopped being your ranch even longer before that.”

“You have no idea!” I cried at him. “You’ll never understand.”

“Understand what?” Ethan challenged me. “That it’s where you were born? Where you were raised? Where you were first kissed? I know, I know it all. But do you understand that it has memories for me too? The only difference is that I made something happen so I could keep the place that made those memories.”

“You don’t have the same…” I looked over at him as he drove us back to the house. His lips were pressed together, his brow was lined with a frown, and his hands were tight on the wheel. “Forget it. It’s not important.”

“God, you’re so annoying.”

“Says you.”

“I don’t have the same what?” he demanded. “Attachment? Are you seriously saying that the ranch and house mean less to me than you?”

“No, I—”

“It was my home too, Peyton,” Ethan muttered quietly. “It’s been my home, while you were making yours elsewhere.”

Staring at him as he drove, I took the opportunity to study him more than I had last night when I was still reeling in shock that he had been standing in front of me. He looked good—he looked better than good—but he also looked…weary? Was that because he was tired of dealing with me already or because he was just tired? My parents died when I was younger. My mom passed when I was ten from cancer, and then my dad followed three years later when he was thrown from a horse and his neck was broken. At thirteen, Donna stepped in and took on the role of guardian. But Donna and my father had never been close, and it was a trait I seemed to inherit.

She wasn’t a bad person, she was nice, but we just didn’t…bond. We were like two different species of life form living under the same roof. Donna liked long flowy dresses and voluminous skirts. She wore brightly coloured cardigans and scarfs. Man, the woman had scarfs for every occasion. She wore bright blue eyeshadow and blood red lipstick, her nails always had a French manicure, and she listened to folk music. None of these traits were bad, well, maybe the folk music, but put it all together and it was just…a lot. She was a lot.

She was like an exotic bird that you just knew shouldn’t be nesting in a ranch house in Colorado, looking after a teenage girl who wore dungarees, preferred four-wheelers to afternoon tea, and who was happy in her own solitude.

The last time Donna had been in a teenage girl’s company was when she was a teenager herself. We were polar opposites, and nothing could breach the divide.

Until Ethan.

His father got hired for one summer by one of the local ranchers who had their own land but was renting a few fields for overspill cattle. Ethan’s father had a bad reputation, but he was a good worker if he kept away from the liquor, and I think Donna realised early on that it was Ethan who made sure his father turned up for work and that more often than not, Ethan was the one doing the work.

Ethan was the first boy I noticed. He was the first boy to make my tummy feel silly, and his gruff, no-nonsense attitude called to me. He also fascinated me because he and my aunt were…friends. Not in a creepy way, they were genuinely friends. He was the only person I could say she was maternal towards.

She looked out for him, and when his father went wandering, as Donna called it, she would go and get Ethan and bring him home to stay with us. He refused every time to be given a room, refusing to acknowledge that he had a home with us, so the sofa was his permanent bed. Soon, meals that had been eaten in silence before were filled with loud laughter and occasional arguments as he and Donna discussed politics or world affairs. He was fourteen, but he was smart, and the only time he and Donna disagreed was when they started debating religion.

He didn’t only bring companionship to my aunt, he was a friend to me too, and on my fifteenth birthday, he was my first kiss.

He was my first everything.

Until he wasn’t.

“You lost in there?” he asked me quietly as he took the turn off for the ranch.

“Yeah,” I answered him, my throat dry. Clearing it, I moved in my seat, turning my attention to the mountain peak. “I need a drink.”

“Whisky?”

Barking out a laugh, I shook my head. “Coffee, I think, is better for eleven in the morning, don’t you think?”

“Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere.”

“But is it though?”

“Reykjavik, Iceland.”

I squinted at him. “For real?”

“Yup.”

“Huh, you always know the random things,” I murmured.

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