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“You never told him,” I say.

“Wasn’t my place. He left for the same reason you stayed. I figured you had your reasons. Everything that happened with your brother—” She pauses, look in her eyes like she’s somewhere twenty years ago, but a rawness in her voice like it all happened yesterday. “It was hard for Ford. Calling the cops. Finding him the way he did.” She flicks a smile and wave to someone who passes by. We both look at Ford, now laughing with jugs of cider in his hands. “But he had to leave so he could come back.”

I let her words sink in; they aren’t new, but coming from her, they hit different. Harder.

A woman calls her name, and she holds up a finger to buy another minute.

“I never left,” I say, more to myself than her. “He left and came back good, and I . . .”

She squeezes my arm, the unexpected contact making me flinch. “Scotty,” she says, her tone firm yet warm, “there are a million ways to be good.”

I nearly collapse.

“Mama,” Ford says, stepping next to us and slipping his hands around my waist. “Stop trying to scare off my date.”

Charlene lifts her chin, but her eyes stayed locked on mine. “Wouldn’t dream of it, darling.”

With a squeeze of his bicep, she disappears into the crowd, leaving me shell-shocked and stripped bare.

Ford spins me to face him, handsome smile on his face as the strings of lights make his eyes shine like two balls of blue fire. “I’ve been a bad boyfriend.”

“The worst one I’ve ever had,” I say, wrapping my arms around his neck. “I was starting to have second thoughts about this whole thing.”

“Not allowed.” He kisses my bare shoulder then looks at me, expression turning more serious. “What’s wrong?”

Your mother just punched me in the throat with her words.

Through the crowd, I spot Charlene standing with a small group of women. Her eyes meet mine before she laughs at something they say and looks back to them.

“Nothing,” I tell him. “Being around so many live bodies is a shock to my nervous system.”

His lips twitch. “You’re nervous.”

“No,” I argue.

“Yes.”

“Fine,” I relent with a sigh, his palms moving across my back. “A little.”

He chuckles, tilting my chin to look at him. “It’s me, Scotty. It’s us. We’re old news, really. Half the people in this tent have already seen us make out.”

At this, I laugh. He’s not wrong.

Without warning, he pulls me onto the hay-covered dance floor. The music is fast, but Ford moves us slow, dropping his forehead to mine. With one of his hands on my back and mine around his neck, our connected hands tuck between us.

I tense; he grips me tighter.

“Don’t get skittish on me, Viper.”

I glance from him to everyone around us, including Wren and Luke who are laughing as they dance. It’s hard to breathe. I’m split between existing in this moment and knowing I don’t fit here at all. It’s a cheesy scene in a movie that would make me audibly gag, but as much as I want to drop a match to the bales of hay and run, I want it to stretch on and on and on.

I need air.

I push back from Ford but he reads my panic, holding me tight and kissing me hard. I freeze. His thumb pressed against my chin, he opens my mouth, and though it’s just barely, swipes his tongue along my lips. The taste of cider on him holding me captive in the now. He slips both hands into my hair and grips his fingers into my scalp, claiming my mouth as his in front of everyone in Ledger.

When someone lets out a loudwhoop!from next to us, reminding us we are far from alone, we laugh into each other’s mouths, pulling apart. I tuck my chin to my shoulder, a rare feeling of shyness washing over me.

Ford’s chest rumbles with a laugh. “All I need to do is bring you out to a dance floor to quiet that tongue?”