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She read the frustration on my face. “Yes, Liluye called,” she confirmed without me even saying a word. “She said you left the bookstore lookin’ defeated. Things didn’t go well with Aubrey?”

“No,” I said, “didn’t go well at all.”

“I’m sorry, Ryder. Truly I am. I thought when I went to talk to Aubrey, she understood?—”

A red haze washed over my vision. “You didwhat?”

When she saw the anger flashing in my eyes, she fumbled to explain. “Y-yes. I needed to run a few errands in town anyway, so I stopped to see her Monday mornin’. I wanted her to know that it isn’t her I don’t approve of. It’s the situation.”

“Dammit, Mama. You wouldn’t approve of anyone I love, even if she was the goddamn queen of England! How could you do it? What’d you say to her?”

“Well, I just told her I understood that she needed to be a mother first, and if her boys weren’t ready for her to be in a relationship again, then she’d need to figure that out before you two jumped into anything serious, and if you’re set on this new business idea of yours, then she?—”

Manners be damned this time.

Throwing my head back, I screamed at the sky, “Fuck!” But then I remembered who I was speaking to andtriedto tamp down my temper. “Mama, I don’t give two shits about your approval. My choices and decisions have nothin’ to do with you. I need you to hear me right now: Butt the fuck out!”

“Ryder,” she breathed. “You’ve never spoken to me like this.” She pursed her lips, and if I had gauged the look on her face correctly, she was trying to hold back tears.

Goddammit!Now I’d made my own mama cry?

“There’s your Gemini twin comin’ out. Thank God we only see him once or twice a year.” She sniffled quietly, collecting herself and looking past me into the morning sun. When she could speak in her normal voice again, she said, “Well, have I made it worse?”

“Yeah, I think you did.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, guilt filling every syllable. Maybe she’d finally realized she’d crossed a line she shouldn’t have. “But she’s too old for you, Ryder. You know she is.”

Nope. Guess not.

“Damn you, Mama. She is not. Listen to me now. I don’t want kids. I never have. Even if Aubrey and I don’t make it, I will not be havin’ kids with anyone. There’s nothin’ wrong with me not wantin’ children, so it’s time you accept it. Process it. Do whatever you gotta do, but stop houndin’ me about it. Hear me?”

There were those tears again. But what did she think? That I’d pop out some toddlers easy peasy just so she’d be happy?

“You have three grandkids already. Maybe you oughta focus on them instead of me for a change. Take a damn vacation and go see ’em.”

Her breath hitched in a series of hiccups. “I-I just couldn’t stand it if she broke your heart.”

“Too late for that,” I said, turning to go… somewhere. Anywhere that wasn’t the inside of my head. Everything was falling apart. I wanted to rip my hair out. I lifted my hands and gripped it at the roots. “Fuck.”

“You really love her?” Mama asked.

I laughed. It was theonlysure thing I knew.

Looking out at the mountains, I drew in a deep breath and let it ground me, let it slow my racing heart. “Yeah, I love Aubrey, Mama. When I look at her, I see the rest of my life play out in front of me like a movie. She’s in every scene. I love her the way you love Dad. The way he loves you. Why can’t you accept it?”

There was true sorrow in her voice now. “How can I make it right?”

That stopped me in my tracks. If there was one thing my mama was good at, it was making young men feel guilty and then want to work their fingers to the bone to mend the fences they’d busted.

And I just happened to know of two newly unemployed targets she could set her sights on.

“Hey, cowboy,”a woman slurred when I took a stool at the local bar in the little farm town I found myself in up in Oregon. I ordered a Bud from the bartender as the woman ran her finger over my wrist on the bar top. “You lookin’ for a little fun tonight?”

No, I sure wasn’t. I wouldn’t be having any fun without Aubrey, and I’d spent the last two days up to my elbows in cow shit and crops of clover and, just for the irony, rye. So no. No drunken fun for me.

Scanning the dimly lit, barely occupied bar that looked like someone had thrown up neon and argon all over it, I noticed the woman’s purse and keys on the bar five stools away. The bartender caught my eye and nodded. He swiped her keys, pocketed them, and then he called her name.

“Marie, how ’bout we call your daughter to come pick you up?”